Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (11 page)

More than ever, the Powells simply wanted it all to go away. In less than four months, Susan would be gone for two years. All that time without a word. Steven Powell was furious that Chuck wouldn’t just let it drop. Why did he have to keep talking about it, and handing out his damned fliers? Didn’t he know how upsetting this was to their mutual grandsons?

Probably less upsetting than losing their mother.

Neither grandfather was deterred by the media teams who stood by with mikes and cameras watching what one reporter called “a surreal scene.”

Did either man know what was about to come to a head in this tangled case? When Josh drove up and broke into tears, it would seem so. The world was closing in on him.

Chapter Nine

The Utah police were searching in the west desert of Utah and also near Ely, Nevada. Breaking news bulletins shouted that “remains” had been found, and that they could be what was left of Susan. But the decomposed body was soon identified as a Mexican citizen—a male.

Then there was another find of what looked like a human body. But that rumor kept diminishing. First, there was supposed to be a body. And then charred bones. And, finally, the news that only ashes were found. Unidentifiable ashes. Impossible to tell if they were human or animal. Or wood, for that matter.

In the mines that were shallow enough to explore, searchers found nothing but rubble. They risked their own lives for several days, all to no avail.

Susan might very well be at the bottom of a mine, but if she was, the person or persons who had hidden her there had made sure she would never be found.

*   *   *

In Puyallup, only five days after the parking lot argument, the case was about to explode wide open. Detective Gary Sanders had written an affidavit to obtain a search warrant to search Steven Powell’s house again. The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department was seeking permission to search for Susan Powell’s journals, photographs, digital media to “include but not limited to” laptop computers, desktop computers, or any type of device that could store digital media copies of Susan’s journals.

Searchers would also seek images or papers that contained password information to access encrypted digital media. And “any other fruits or instrumentalities determined to be evidence of the crimes of aggravated kidnapping, homicide, and obstruction of justice.”

Photographs and videotape of the interior and exterior of the Powell home, garage, or other structures on the property would be searched for, along with three Dodge Caravans and a light blue Chrysler Town and Country minivan.

The search warrant was granted on August 24, 2011, by a Pierce County Superior Court judge.

On August 25, at least fifteen law enforcement officers, some from the West Valley City, Utah, police department and some from Pierce County, met for a briefing at Pierce County’s South Precinct. They were told what to look for at Steven Powell’s house and what was to be seized (if located). A tentative time to execute the search warrant was being discussed at 2:15 that afternoon when Ed Troyer, the public information officer for the sheriff’s department, got a phone call from a television news team saying they had heard “something was going to be going on at the Powell residence.”

Troyer notified Ellis Maxwell, who conferred with Gary Sanders. They agreed that they should move ahead with the search warrant as soon as possible. Neighbors around Steven’s tan and white house witnessed a group of squad cars parked in front, and then a phalanx of officers gathered near the front door.

One of Steven’s male relatives answered the door naked. Steven Powell was not at home, but Josh, Charlie, and Braden were, along with Alina and John Powell, Josh’s siblings. It was a very hot afternoon, and once the residence was secured, the Powell family members were asked to wait outside, where it was a bit cooler. Embarrassed by the stares of neighbors, Josh asked if they could move to the backyard. That was fine with the search team; they particularly wanted to avoid upsetting the little boys.

Charlie and Braden knew Pierce County detective Teresa Berg and leapt into her arms when she arrived, and they also seemed secure with Adam Anderson, the head of the Forensic Unit.

Luckily, they were young enough that they didn’t understand what was happening.

Alina Powell was angry at the intrusion and kept going back into the house, staring down the officers who asked her to stay in the backyard. It was all very uncomfortable—but there was no other way to do it. The investigators couldn’t take any more risks that Steven or Josh might destroy possibly vital evidence.

Gary Sanders and Ellis Maxwell logged in the names of all the law enforcement personnel who entered the house, noting their times of arrival and departure.

What would they find inside? In the prior search warrant, now more than a year in the past, Steven Powell had been agreeable and seemed to hold nothing back. In fact, he had actually seemed pleased that the FBI agent came along on that search. But since then, Steven had grown annoyed and resistant to requests from both Utah and Pierce County detectives.

After Adam Anderson had finished taking photos of everything stipulated in the search warrant, the men and women searchers swarmed over the house. Once again, seasoned detectives would be taken aback by what they uncovered as they combed the contents of every room.

At 3
P.M.,
Josh Powell asked if he could have his mobile phone and Bluetooth, and Ellis Maxwell went to Josh’s bedroom and returned with them. Then Josh said he wanted to take his sons and leave. Gary Sanders and Maxwell searched the blue minivan, found nothing of evidentiary value, and released it to Josh.

Josh told Charlie and Braden that they were going to McDonald’s, and he was allowed to leave with his boys.

Josh didn’t come back until after the investigators left. Ellis Maxwell noted that Josh had not asked one single question about how the investigation into his wife’s disappearance was going, or if this search warrant meant that the detectives had new information.

The main intent of this massive exploration was to find anything inside that might have evidence bearing on Susan Powell’s vanishing. The “surreal” sense of this case was exacerbated. The law enforcement officers didn’t find as much as they thought they might about the night of December 6, 2009, when Susan vanished, but they found items that shocked even veteran investigators.

For almost two years, everyone had focused on Josh Powell, the oldest of the Powell sons. But West Valley City chief Buzz Nielsen had often said that he didn’t feel confident enough in the evidence they had to arrest Josh.

Not without Susan’s body.

As it turned out, Josh, the apple, hadn’t fallen far from the tree as he’d downloaded sexually suspect sites into his computers. Steven Powell’s bedroom, closet, and bathroom yielded more items that showed his almost-psychotic fixation with Susan.

Ellis Maxwell and Gary Sanders had been designated as the
only
detectives at the Powell house who would sift through possible evidence to determine what would be seized. They began their onerous task.

The earlier search warrant had yielded the surreptitious photographs that Steven had taken of Susan. On August 25, 2011, there was more—much more. Searchers found several VHS and 8mm videocassettes, many with Susan’s name on them, women’s underwear, used tampons, a length of long brown hair that appeared to have been pulled from a sink drain, and more still photographs of Susan, both dressed and in her undergarments.

There were also several spiral notebooks where Steven had written about Susan. Although he began his notations sounding like a shy, insecure, lovesick schoolboy, he progressed rapidly to detailing his unbelievably salacious sexual fantasies about Susan. He used the most degrading four-letter words to describe parts of her body and his own frequent masturbation while he thought about her.

Steven Powell appeared to be convinced by his own delusions, believing that his daughter-in-law harbored lust for him! He hypothesized that when Susan sat quietly, looking away from him, she was actually masturbating in her mind and reaching silent climaxes because she was so sexually turned on.

A hundred. Two hundred. More than three hundred pages filled with typed entries or Steven’s sprawling handwriting. He read quiet seduction and temptation into everything Susan did.

Steven recalled in an early notebook that he had professed his love to Susan openly on July 13, 2003. He was dismayed and puzzled when she seemed to avoid him after that. If he saw her at all, she was with Josh.

In December 2003, Steven was helping Susan and Josh pack for their move to Salt Lake City.

“She was at least somewhat friendly, though not visibly happy,” he wrote in his spiral notebook. “Toward the end of the day, she was posing again, doing her sexual thing with me. She sat on the floor with her body facing me for about five minutes with her legs spread wide, and her right knee bent with her heel nearly touching her crotch. We had just unassembled her bird’s cage, and she was idly playing with the screws with one hand, picking them up and dropping them on the carpet . . . When Josh left the apartment for about five minutes, she turned her head to the right and held it there, so that I was facing her left profile and had opportunity to look her over and drink her image in. I just stood and stared at her, neither of us speaking, moving my eyes from her beautiful face to her crotch, her face to her crotch. Back and forth. She knew what I was doing, and I knew she was letting me do it . . .”

Steven concluded that Susan was deliberately responsible for his getting an erection and that she herself was agitated and aroused.

“When she gets aroused, she becomes quiet like that, and plays a little cat and mouse game. She plays the demure act, as if trying to avoid the attention she knows I am paying to her.”

This excerpt from Steven Powell’s journals is mild when compared to his other writings about Susan, his erections, and his masturbation sessions several times a day. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of priapism.

Steven had written a number of songs, all inspired by his “love” for Susan. The one that seemed to describe his obsession best was “I Will Love You in a Secret Way.”

For years he had peeked at her, stalked her, taken furtive photos of her in her most private moments, and frightened her as she sensed that his interest in her was nothing like what a father-in-law should feel for his son’s wife. Now, in this journal, it was Christmas Day 2003, and Steven panicked at the thought of Susan moving far away from him.

He wanted to see her one more time, and she had refused to come to his house again. Steven Powell had heard Josh mention shopping at Costco, so he drove to the mammoth store, hoping to get one more glimpse of Susan before she left the state.

“Pulling out of a parking space, I scraped someone’s bumper and had to deal with that,” Steven began. “Luckily, he accepted a twenty-dollar bill to buy a bottle of touch-up paint. I was agitated because I was afraid I would miss an opportunity to see Susan if she was at Costco. When I got to Costco, they were
there!
Their van was parked next to the tire-install bays and Josh was outside talking to someone.

“Susan was still sitting in the van, reading. Neither noticed me even though I drove by facing Susan and looked at her. I flipped around and parked where I could videotape her. It was too dark to get a good image of her in the van, but she got out to go into the store and I caught her from behind mainly. She turned around, apparently to yell something at Josh and I got a dark grainy shot of her face . . .”

Steven pasted many still shots from his videotaping in the spiral notebook to illustrate his memories. Susan was trapped, unknowing, within his cameras.

He didn’t leave. Neither Susan nor Josh was aware that Steven waited outside Costco for almost an hour, hoping to get more videotape shots of Susan. He did capture more grainy shots, some of which were of Susan looking over her shoulder. Steven wondered if she was looking at him, letting him know that she knew he was there.

Steven Powell went on for eleven more pages detailing his stalking of Susan at Costco. And then he added nineteen pornographic pages about how he lusted for Susan.

It would be an invasion of her privacy, of her very soul, to quote those pages, so I won’t. The two detectives—one from Utah and one from Washington—were appalled by Powell’s journals. He went on so long in his obscene fantasies that they almost became boring in their repetition. Oddly, he had made no effort to hide them, possibly thinking that the investigators would never come to search his house again.

Susan could never have guessed how dark her father-in-law’s mind really was. His scrutiny and imagination went far beyond anything she could have visualized. Did Josh know? Probably not. Once more, Steven Powell appeared to have no guilt about the way he coveted his son’s wife.

*   *   *

After Josh and Susan had moved to Utah, Steven began a new journal. Although he still proclaimed that Susan had opened up a new view of the world for him, a view that showed him that younger women
did
find him “sexy and attractive,” he noted that no woman could ever replace Susan, because they were meant to be together. “I am the voyeur,” he said. “She is the exhibitionist.”

But it didn’t take long before Steven Powell became fixated on another woman in her twenties. She worked for a company that often had booths at trade shows that Steven attended.

Joan* was a beauty contest winner, engaged to be married soon, and had been friendly to Steven—friendly as a woman might be to someone her father’s age. When he emailed her, she usually responded politely and kindly.

Now Steven believed that this new woman was coming on to him. As always, he began his journal entries sounding like an infatuated high school boy, but he soon descended into vulgarity and intensely disturbing scenarios.

In the hot August afternoon, Ellis Maxwell and Gary Sanders seized Steven Powell’s journals as possible evidence in Susan Powell’s disappearance, astonished by the sexual snake pit the search warrant was uncovering.