Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (6 page)

He had also drawn pornographic and devil images. There were several sketches of what looked like the Angel of Death, or perhaps a hooded monk with a scepter. There were photographs of nude
Playboy
models, with his disturbing comments. And there was a half man, half salamander with a
T
over its genitals.

How could this be?
Terry wondered, appalled.

Something was wrong in the house that Steven Powell had created. If Steven didn’t let Terry have custody of her older boys, she petitioned that they be placed in a normal, safe foster home. Indeed, she wasn’t sure she could manage them; they were big and physically threatened her.

“I love my children very much,” she explained. “[But] I am asking that minor children, Michael and Alina, remain with me and I am requesting that Joshua and John be placed with a third party until further hearing in this matter. I feel that it is very detrimental for all of us to remain in the same house with the Respondent. I feel he is not well, and it is obvious he is having severe adverse affects [
sic
] upon our children.”

Steven and Terry’s divorce took three years of fighting back and forth. Steven had moved into his own apartment, and he took his older sons—Josh and John—with him. Michael, eleven, Alina, seven, and Jennifer, eighteen, stayed in the family home in Veradale, Washington, near Spokane.

“My dad got Josh and John riled up,” Jennifer recalled. “They were angry . . . vocal and hostile toward my mom.”

Terry and Jennifer were truly afraid of the teenagers, fearful of what they might do to them.

“We had the doors locked against them coming in,” Jennifer said. “And they actually climbed up onto the roof—and that was a pretty tall house—like three stories. They climbed up onto the roof and were trying like—I don’t know—[to] damage the roof or something to get in. We were afraid and we called the police on them.”

In the end, Steven got custody of their minor children. Even Alina, who was still in grade school. She would never move from her father’s home and soon became his fierce defender.

Steven Powell’s sons—particularly Josh—suffered emotional and physical abuse at the hands of their father. He was a fierce disciplinarian. Three of Steven’s children were bed wetters, a problem that continued until they were eleven or twelve. When they wet their beds, Steven made them get in a bathtub that was filled with ice water. They had to stay there for at least half an hour, and usually more. Not surprisingly, their father’s “reprogramming” didn’t work; it only exacerbated the problem.

Josh was both dependent on his father’s approval and afraid of him. As a teenager, he left Steven’s house on May 6, 1992. He wrote a note to his father:

Dad,

We talked the other day about stuff
[sic]
of me moving out and either living with someone else or in my car. You said that I’d probably be more unhappy, but I’m going to find out.

Tonight I wanted to go to “Youth,” but you grounded me. After some thought I decided to go anyway.

I would come home but you’d just yell, and that’s the last thing I need right now, after a crappy week.

I have to say it was definately
[sic]
worth it. I feel alot
[sic]
better now.

I didn’t have time to prepare so my room is a mess. I’ll have to box up all my stuff later.

Michael or John might as well have my room like we talked about.

Things are a bit complicated now, so please try not to make it harder.

I think it’s going to work out.

Maybe we can be better friends this way.

Josh

PS I just didn’t want you guys to stay up all night worrying.

As emotionally abusive as he was to his wife, Steven Powell rarely dated after they separated. He did fancy himself a lady’s man and was especially attracted to women in their twenties.

Steven had an alter ego—Steven Chantry—who wrote poems and songs that he recorded in a soft, pleasant voice. Many of his lyrics were interesting, but most of the tunes were the same, and they were usually dedicated to an impossible love object. Steven had aspirations to be a famous recording artist. He often used his “career” as a conversational approach to young women.

To an outsider, Steven Powell, who was forty-six at the time, didn’t appear to be an abusive woman hater. He was about five feet, ten inches tall, and he had fairly handsome, somewhat delicate features. His dark hair, which he styled in a pompadour, was beginning to turn gray at the temples. His normal expression was mild, as if he could be no danger to anyone.

But Steven Powell controlled his offspring firmly, seeming to be in no hurry to have them become independent. John and Alina never moved out of Steven’s house; Michael joined the army for four years and seemed to be leaving the nest. But when he was mustered out, he moved back home and it appeared that nothing had changed. Eventually, Michael did move to Minnesota to attend college.

Josh, of course, stayed with his father until he was twenty-six. It isn’t difficult to feel sorry for the teenager that Josh Powell was in 1992. His father played him like a yo-yo, and although Josh showed some bravado in his note, one can also see that he wanted Steven Powell to tell him to come home.

Josh’s social ineptness and, again, false bravado, show in another letter he wrote during the same period. It was addressed to a girl, Cynthia,
¹
and he heavily edited it, with whole sentences scratched out. He may never have actually sent it; “VOID” is scribbled in black ink across the first page.

Cynthia,

It’s illegal for me to be here right now. It always was. Before I wasn’t too worried because it’s unlikely that the wrong people would find out. The people who know me like me
[
most of them
]
and no one cares that I’m here.

If Jack* sees me and turns me in I could be arrested. Do you think I care about that? And about you?

Lynn* may think I’m ignoring her, and you may think I don’t care about her, but I have spent more time with Lynn this past couple of months than I’ve spent with anyone. If you want examples, I went to her house for several hours just the other day. Lynn and I spending quality time together—untill
[sic] she
invited us over to Scott’s* house. After that she hardly payed
[sic]
attention to me because she was talking to Scott. That doesn’t bother me. I hardly noticed it at the time.

Lynn and I are good friends and I don’t think that’ll change.

For me high school is just a place to make and see friends, and that is what it’s always been.
[
crossed out
] When it comes to friends I make a special effort to see you through.
People just happen to introduce me to their friends and
[
crossed out
] alot of times I forget their names. Sometimes forget even having met them.
Then I always try to remember them and say hi when I see them.

Josh next mentioned a girl who “has no friends” and said he always tried to be “nice” to her, but he scratched that out so thoroughly that it is difficult to read that paragraph.

“I like knowing alot of people,” he continued. “So if that was a problem, you should have told me without getting mad.

“Friday night you were too busy with everyone else . . . so when I saw one of my friends I decided to go say hi. I thought I would see you third quarter . . .”

It is poignantly clear that the teenage Josh Powell really didn’t have any friends and was probably making up the story about being “illegal” to sound more interesting.

He found living in his car was impossible, and he didn’t have anyone he could move in with, so he returned to his father’s house. How privy he was to Steven Powell’s secrets may never be known. Certainly, no one outside the family and his ex-wife had any idea about the depth of Steven’s hidden obsessions about sex and younger women.

When he was in his teens, Josh had made a halfhearted attempt to commit suicide, and he once actually pulled a knife on his mother. He had also killed family pets. There is no record of his getting counseling or being treated by a psychologist or psychiatrist after those incidents.

It was almost ten years before Josh Powell met Susan Cox. He was so damaged by then that disaster loomed ahead like an oncoming train. Josh Powell would one day become one of the most hated men in America, and yet one wonders exactly what drove him to it.

¹
The names of some individuals have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time each appears in the narrative.

Chapter Five

In December 2009, Susan was still living with Josh and their sons in West Valley City. She had told friends that she “wouldn’t take this crap” from Josh any longer, and if things didn’t change for the better by their ninth anniversary, on April 6, 2010, she was going to leave him. Susan wasn’t a meek goody-goody, and she used words like
crap
when they were called for. She wanted a life. She wanted Charlie and Braden to have a life. And she was almost at the very straggly ends of her rope.

Susan Powell wasn’t as brave as she sounded, however, she was afraid. She had hidden a letter in a safe deposit box, along with her will. She wrote that she might suffer an accidental death, and asked that someone check into it. She told no one out loud about this fear.

She wasn’t exactly asking for help; Susan wanted justice, even as she realized that might be all she would ever get. She had exhausted almost every avenue of help she considered. She had prayed, sought counseling, tried to go along with Josh’s rules, tried to be a good mother no matter what blockades he put up in her way, and then prayed again.

Even her own parents and sisters had no idea how bad things were for Susan. If they had, they would have stepped in and, somehow, done their best to get her and the boys safely away from Josh.

And then, in the late fall of 2009, it seemed that things were getting better in Susan’s situation. Josh had a new job—this time as a temp doing books and computer work for a trucking firm. He was called to work for them now and again, and he could do many of his computer tasks at home. His new employer apparently liked his performance, so much so that he was hired as a full-time employee.

“We were pleased and relieved,” Chuck recalls. “Christmas was coming, they both had jobs, and it looked as though it might be all right after all.”

Susan wasn’t so optimistic. Although she made preparations for Christmas, she still marked April 6, 2010, in her mental calendar. Her closest friends were forewarned of her anxiety. Josh had had myriad jobs before, jobs that gave her hope—but he always ended up being fired. And his behavior toward her hadn’t improved all that much. She would stay five more months. It seemed to her that it would be a miracle if her husband actually changed, and she hoped for that, but she was fully prepared to leave him in April if she had to.

*   *   *

December 6, 2009, was a Sunday, a bitterly cold day in the Salt Lake City area, with icy, windblown rain and half a foot of snow piling up on the ground. The minimum temperature was 10 degrees. It wouldn’t get any higher than 25 degrees. In the desert areas of Utah, the wind roared across the plains and whistled down the thousands of mine shafts there. It was not a day when anyone would choose to go out into the weather—not unless they had to.

When Susan’s friend JoVonna Owings dropped in, she invited her to stay for a late brunch, and Josh seemed okay with that. In fact, he seemed more convivial than usual. Although he
never
cooked, he announced that he would make pancakes for them. He made a big deal of how he served the hotcakes, designating each stack to a particular person. He carefully set Susan’s plate in front of her.

It turned out to be a pleasant meal, although Susan began to feel ill and very tired soon after. At about five, her stomach was upset and she vomited, apologizing to her friend as she explained that she had to lie down for a while. JoVonna told her not to worry about it and left. Josh said he was going to take the boys—Charlie, four, and Braden, two—out sledding for a while.

One of their neighbors saw Josh’s blue Chrysler minivan pull back into his driveway between eight and eight thirty. As most of those living on their street did in deference to the cold, Josh pulled his vehicle into the garage.

That night was uneventful as families went to bed; most of the parents had to start the workweek in the morning.

One neighbor, however, was awake into the early morning hours. She was sick with something like the flu and she was too uncomfortable to sleep.

At about 2
A.M.,
the woman heard someone arguing loudly outside. She listened because it sounded serious, but she didn’t know what to do. A man was yelling, “Get in the car! Get in the car!”

Then she heard a woman shouting, “No! No! You’re going to hurt me if I do!”

Apparently the woman had finally gotten into the car, but within a minute, the neighbor woman heard the vehicle come to a brake-screeching stop.

Then the argument and shouting began again.

“Get back in the car, right now,” the man ordered.

Evidently, the woman did what he said because the argument stopped. The witness peeked through her window and saw a light-colored minivan racing away.

She didn’t call the police, thinking she had probably just overheard a family argument, and she didn’t want to be a busybody. Still, the incident troubled her and she didn’t sleep much that night, wondering if she should have done something more.