Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (3 page)

But he was.

To her family’s continuing bewilderment, Susan Cox saw something in Josh that others didn’t see. He had originally tried to date Susan’s oldest sister, Mary, who didn’t care for him at all. On the night of one of Mary’s dances—where she had a date with someone else—Josh came over to the Coxes’ home to ask her for a date, unaware that this was totally inappropriate. He hung around her house, waiting for her until she came home. It was an awkward situation.

Mary didn’t want to go out with him, and she was alarmed when his attention turned to Susan. She kept warning Susan about Josh and advised her not to date him; there was just something about him that Mary neither liked nor trusted.

Josh Powell often exaggerated or told outright lies. Susan was so thrilled with her new romance that it never occurred to her to check out some of the things he said. He told Susan and her parents that he had a degree in business administration from the University of Washington. But he complained about his professors, saying that he knew more than any of them did.

Years later, when Nate Carlisle, a Salt Lake City reporter, attempted to verify Josh’s degree from the University of Washington, he found there was no record of it. Josh countered by saying he was on a “special list.” That was a lie, but he would never admit it.

Susan wanted to marry and have a family; her parents had been young when they wed and she had never known anything but a happy home. She was in love with love. When she looked at Josh, she was impressed that he had a job, his own apartment, and his own car. She either didn’t know that he’d lived with his father, Steven Powell, until he was twenty-six—just before they started dating—or it didn’t seem important.

To her, Josh seemed stable and ready to settle down.

“Josh wasn’t stable,” Chuck Cox says. “After ten minutes, anyone could see there was something wrong with him. He talked
all
the time.”

And it was mostly about himself. He was a braggart, and Susan’s parents didn’t agree with her that all he needed was love. And then he proposed to her.

“I tried to tell her that you don’t marry a ‘project.’ ”

Judy Cox and Susan’s friends threw a bridal shower for her. There weren’t many there—only her friends Rachel, Terry, Jody, and Josh’s sisters Alina and Jennifer. All of a sudden, another person walked into the room. They were all shocked to see that it was Josh. He was wearing a skirt, and lots of makeup, all dressed up as a female.

“He wanted to attend the girls’ bridal shower, and be in the spotlight,” Judy recalls. “It was really odd and embarrassing, and we told him he had to leave.

“When he did, I said to Susan, ‘You’re not going to
marry
him, are you?’ And Susan was upset.”

Judy remembers seeing “blackness” as the wedding approached and having a “very bad feeling.”

Susan married Josh Powell on April 6, 2001. She chose the Portland LDS temple, in Clackamas County, Oregon. She looked lovely and was thrilled with her beautiful wedding gown. It was white satin with a deep round neckline, fitted bodice, and full skirt. Josh wore a tuxedo and had a white rose in his lapel. Both of them looked very happy.

Outside the temple, plum and cherry trees were in full bloom. A sudden wind scattered the white petals over the grassy lawn as Susan posed in her wedding dress.

Susan’s and Josh’s families hadn’t met each other before the wedding rehearsal. While Chuck and Judy Cox were picking up the wedding expenses at a cost of several thousand dollars, they were shocked to hear Josh’s father, Steve Powell, grousing over the cost of the wedding party’s post-rehearsal meal at the Old Country Buffet, something just over a hundred dollars.

Although Steve and Josh’s mother, Terry, were divorced, they attended the wedding and the wedding reception. Judy and her family had provided the flowers, decorations, wedding cake, and a lavish spread of food. The wedding guests ate heartily, but the cake was only half-gone and there was quite a lot of food left over, too. Even so, Judy Cox was shocked when her daughter’s new mother-in-law asked if she could pack everything in her car to take back to Spokane for the wedding reception she planned for Josh and Susan on the east side of Washington.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Judy recalled. “She wanted it all—from the cake to the decorations to the flowers. I told her no. And she couldn’t understand why!”

The couple had a short honeymoon—one night in the Columbia Gorge Hotel.

Like so many women before her who believe marriage will change a man, Susan felt sure that she could make Josh happy, and that her family would see in Josh what she did.

Josh had held a job for several years. He worked for his father. Steve Powell’s titular employer was the Washington State Department of Corrections, but he actually had nothing to do with the prisoners themselves. He was an “account executive” for the company that sold the furniture that convicts built under the Correctional Industries (CI) program. Their consumers were schools from kindergarten to twelfth grade and nonprofit companies.

Josh was an installer, which meant, basically, that he put legs on school chairs, tables, and desks. He chose the hours that he wanted to work, had complete control of his own time, and worked when he wanted to.

“Two weeks after their wedding,” Chuck Cox remembers, “Josh came to me, wanting to borrow money. I suggested that he either take on more installations or get a better job.”

Josh didn’t follow his father-in-law’s advice. Instead of working harder, he asked the furniture company to pay him mileage. But he went further. He insisted that, legally, they
had
to pay him for his travel costs from job to job. Instead, they fired him.

“He called them two weeks later,” Chuck says, “to ask them if they missed him! They told him they didn’t, and they were doing just fine without him.”

It is an understatement to say that Josh Powell lacked tact; he had a severe deficit in getting along with people, particularly anyone he worked for. He didn’t appear to have trouble
getting
a job; his problem was keeping it. He was hired next by the Home Depot. Within a short time, he told his boss he had hurt his back on the job and couldn’t lift heavy items—a big part of his job description—and he also couldn’t resist pointing out things that the Home Depot was doing wrong. Once again, he was fired.

Susan was the one who worked steadily. She was a hairstylist for Super Cuts, and then Regis, and she really liked her job, but she wasn’t making enough to keep them afloat financially.

Josh took a job as a car salesman. He lasted a week before, once again, he was let go.

He and Susan could no longer afford to keep their apartment and they had to move in with Josh’s dad, Steven Powell, for three weeks. Steve had been divorced from his children’s mother, Terry, since the early nineties. Terry and her daughter, Jennifer, were living then in Spokane, but Steve’s other children all lived with him: Josh’s sister, Alina, and his two brothers, John and Michael.

There really wasn’t enough room in Steve Powell’s house for two more people, but he hung a sheet in the dining room to mark off a makeshift room for the recently married couple.

It was an untenable situation for Susan. They had no privacy and the Powells’ living setup was so different from the Coxes’ home. Almost from the beginning, her father-in-law made her nervous. He stared at her and made remarks that seemed much too personal to her, and were full of sexual innuendo.

Susan was relieved when Josh’s next job was at an assisted living facility for the elderly. Both Josh and Susan were in training to be assistant managers. Providentially, the position came with an apartment and three meals a day. The couple qualified because they had no children and no pets. Susan longed to have children but their financial situation was too precarious to think about it for a while. And she was only nineteen; there was time.

At last, she and Josh had some privacy and she was happy to get away from her father-in-law’s creepiness. After their training, Susan and Josh were assigned to a home for the elderly in Yakima, Washington. Susan hoped that the assisted living field might be a niche where Josh would fit in. She got high praise from the company but he didn’t. Two months later he was out of a job again, and they had to move.

Susan grew alarmed as she realized that her bridegroom simply could not get along with people, especially anyone in authority. He complained and criticized his bosses until he was let go. His résumé was a mishmash of short-term positions.

Josh clearly needed to be in control, and he felt most of his jobs were beneath a man with his intelligence and education. A lot of men in their twenties go through the same thing, but they learn to bite their tongues and learn as much as they can on a job in the hope that they can move up.

Every place they moved in Washington State, Susan got along fine. People liked her, and she was able to keep her job with Regis. But she had had to resign when she and Josh were sent to their new—if short-lived—positions in Yakima. It was Josh’s third try—and the company owners finally deemed him “untrainable.”

Then they had to move to Oregon for training seminars on his next job. “He insisted that Susan stop cutting hair and follow him wherever he moved,” her father said. “But Josh went to the Oregon seminar and began to tear down management in front of those attending. And of course he got fired again.”

Even if Josh Powell had taken only a few courses in business administration at the University of Washington, it was obvious that nothing had sunk in. He was at an entry level in all of his short-lived jobs, but he could not keep his mouth shut. His own ego was his stumbling block, and he acted as if he were smarter than anyone.

Chapter Two

In 2004, Susan Powell was pregnant with their first son, Charlie. This gave her even more reason to want her marriage to succeed. Josh and Susan decided to make a fresh start in Utah. Although Susan didn’t go into details with her family, they knew that she felt uncomfortable around her father-in-law and believed he intruded on her marriage too much. She hoped that moving out of state would lessen his impact on their lives. Susan and Josh hoped to find job opportunities in the Salt Lake City area and get themselves on a solid financial program.

Chuck and Judy Cox worried about Susan, who was more than eight months pregnant and living far away in Utah.

“We didn’t know if she could count on him when she went into labor or after the baby came home,” Judy recalls. “So we made a trip down there in January.”

Charles Braden Powell was born on January 19, 2005. Susan’s parents’ instinct that she might need them was right on target. When she went into labor, Josh inexplicably said he couldn’t drive her to the hospital because he had something important to do. He asked Chuck and Judy to take her. They were happy to do that but hoped her husband would at least show up for his first child’s birth.

When Josh did show up at the hospital two and a half hours later, he brought his laptop computer with him. What had been more important than being with his wife as she labored to deliver? Josh explained that he had to back up the hard drive on his computer!

Indeed, he sat in a corner of the labor room and worked at his computer, barely noticing what his wife was going through. Chuck Cox watched, silently fuming.

“When she was in transition and really in pain, I went over to Josh and told him to put his computer down. Susan needed him to hold her hand and comfort her. He kept delaying, I finally said, ‘Put your computer down,
now
!’ ”

Josh finally complied when Susan was only a few pushes away from delivering, and she gave birth to Charlie in a few minutes. “See,” she told her father. “Josh was here when I needed him!”

Chuck didn’t have the heart to tell her what really happened.

Susan was thrilled to be a mother, and Josh appeared to be genuinely pleased with baby Charlie. He held the infant proudly, but he refused to let either Judy or Chuck hold him.

“Charlie was his possession—he
belonged
to Josh,” Judy said. “And he shut us out completely.”

*   *   *

At first, Susan and Josh’s move seemed to be a good idea. They had bought a nice home in the 6200 block of West 3945 South in West Valley City. A close southwest suburb of Salt Lake City, West Valley City has a population of something over 130,000 and is the second-largest city in Utah. There were plenty of job opportunities there in 2004.

Susan and Josh made friends with their neighbors, Kiirsi and John Hellewell, who were members of the Mormon church, and they connected with other members of the closest LDS stake.

The Powells and Hellewells spent a lot of social time together, sharing picnics, barbecues, and movies. Kiirsi and Susan were soon best friends, and Kiirsi’s husband accepted Josh, saying, “If you’re friends with Susan, Josh is part of the deal.”

Both Josh and Susan were hired by a brokerage firm, Fidelity Investments. She quickly became a trusted employee popular with her coworkers. But, once again, Josh Powell became too verbal in his opinions about the faults of his new employer. Once again, he was fired.

It was only his first job in Utah, and Susan tried to believe it was just a wrong fit, and that Josh would soon find another position.

While Susan stayed on with Fidelity, Josh decided that he’d be better off working for himself and chose a career in real estate, where he thought he had what it took to be a success. Using money that Susan had managed to save for opening a beauty parlor in their home, Josh bought signs, lockboxes, and other paraphernalia Realtors need. The housing market was going great at the time. People were remodeling and flipping houses, and buyers were actually bidding against one another for homes, standing in line to make the best offer.

Josh sold a few houses, and he was enthusiastic about his success. He wanted Susan to get her real estate license, too, and join him in his business. As she usually did, she agreed to do that and got her license. She also went to work for Wells Fargo to ensure that they would have a steady, predictable income and medical insurance.