Haunted

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Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 5 Tonight on Dateline, one of the most haunting cases we've ever covered. After nearly 10 years, a trove of new evidence takes us deep into a family's dark secrets.

Speaker 6 This is me.

Speaker 6 July 29th, 2008.

Speaker 7 She feared for her life. She feared for her safety.

Speaker 6 If something happens to me or my family or all of us, we need to find Susan.

Speaker 8 I had no idea of how twisted, how dark that was.

Speaker 9 He was obsessed with her. A really sick wife.

Speaker 8 Yes. I talked with Susan about sex and anything else.

Speaker 10 This was her father-in-law. She was totally creeped out.

Speaker 11 Do you not want to find your wife? Yeah, I do. Why are you making this so difficult then?

Speaker 13 Well, it really hurts that people would try to say that I don't love Susan.

Speaker 14 I'm not sure that anybody said you didn't love Susan.

Speaker 15 They were saying that you killed Susan.

Speaker 14 Sometimes you kill the one you love.

Speaker 15 Here's Keith Morrison with Haunted.

Speaker 3 She's out there, somewhere.

Speaker 2 Must be.

Speaker 2 Maybe here in this desolate keeper of secrets they call the West Desert. Nearly 10 years since she vanished.

Speaker 4 And finding her is still a kind of passion or folly.

Speaker 2 But some stories just won't let go.

Speaker 2 It is just, it's just so vast.

Speaker 18 Really, thousands of square miles of absolutely nothing.

Speaker 18 With somewhere out there, mine shafts in the ground and places to hide hide a body.

Speaker 2 But where?

Speaker 2 Thing was, right from the start, there was something awful, some hovering presence. This missing woman, this young mother, was different somehow.
You could feel it here in the room with her husband.

Speaker 13 I've never hurt my wife.

Speaker 20 I've never.

Speaker 13 She's been suffering.

Speaker 2 And here with her father-in-law, it grew the strange feeling.

Speaker 8 There have been some accusations that I came on to her. Not true.

Speaker 2 Two extremely perplexing interviews. But of course, I didn't know the half of it, not then.

Speaker 2 Much stranger things were going on. In the story of a father, his son, and the woman caught between them.

Speaker 2 And by the end of the whole ugly saga, an entire family would be lost.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 21 Why that?

Speaker 2 We had an idea we could guess then.

Speaker 2 But now, nearly 10 years after it began, the long-withheld evidence is finally revealed. Private journals, written, spoken, filmed.

Speaker 22 I'm not as good a person. I'm rather depressed, moody, irritable when I get away from things that I know are right.

Speaker 2 Inside, private lives, hoping for redemption, but heading for hell.

Speaker 2 Inside the story of what happened to Susan Powell.

Speaker 6 Hope everything works out and we're all happy and

Speaker 6 live happily ever after as much as that's possible.

Speaker 2 It was Monday, December 7th, 2009. An overnight snowstorm had dropped a white blanket on West Valley City, Utah.
Josh and Susan Powell's sons, Charlie and Braden, missed their usual 6.30 a.m.

Speaker 2 drop-off at daycare. Entirely out of character for Susan, said her friend and daycare provider, Debbie Caldwell.

Speaker 23 This particular Monday, she didn't show up, and I wondered if it was because of the snow.

Speaker 2 She called Susan, called Josh, no answer. Called their workplaces, they hadn't shown up.
The whole family appeared to be missing. So she called an emergency contact, Josh's sister, Jennifer Graves.

Speaker 2 This is her in 2010.

Speaker 10 We were immediately concerned.

Speaker 10 That's unusual behavior, to say the least.

Speaker 8 One morning, I'm sitting in my office with

Speaker 18 life going on, and it's all changed.

Speaker 2 This is Susan's father, Chuck, back in 2011. He hadn't heard from Susan either.

Speaker 19 So I called around, and no one had heard from her.

Speaker 2 Josh's mom called the police.

Speaker 16 My son and his wife and their two children haven't responded to anything this morning.

Speaker 2 Jennifer and her mom met West Valley police officers at the Powell residence on Sarah Circle Drive. No sign of Josh or Susan anywhere.
So Jennifer gave police permission to break a window, get inside.

Speaker 10 When we first walked into the house, there were two box fans pointed at the carpet right in front of their love seat. That was just another layer to the oddness of the whole situation.

Speaker 2 Also odd, the couch was damp, the radio was on, and the family minivan was gone.

Speaker 2 And then Jennifer walked into the bedroom.

Speaker 10 Her purse sitting on the table beside the bed. Her wallet was in there with credit cards.

Speaker 2 Jennifer began to worry, and she wasn't the only one.

Speaker 16 Hey, Susan, I'm just worried about you.

Speaker 2 Messages began flooding Susan's inbox.

Speaker 16 I'm just checking regarding you. I really hope everything turns out okay.

Speaker 2 Jovanna Owings, the pals' neighbor, recalled visiting them the day before. Susan had called her over to help untangle some yarn.
Josh was in the kitchen making pancakes.

Speaker 26 He kept the boys in the kitchen with him while he prepared the meal. Susan and I just sat and talked.

Speaker 2 After they ate, Josh cleaned up while juggling the boys, so attentive.

Speaker 26 He went by Susan and he could see that she was a little bit chilled, so he put a blanket around her. And I thought, yeah, that is really nice.

Speaker 2 Chilled and soon tired. Susan went upstairs to take a nap, said Giovanna.
And Josh said,

Speaker 26 The boys and I are going to go sledding. I said, oh, that's nice.
And I was still going to stay untangling that yarn. And he said, well, I really need to lock the door.

Speaker 26 after you leave. And I thought, oh, yeah, I guess that means I should go, right?

Speaker 26 so i went up

Speaker 2 and now next day no susan and josh wasn't answering his phone what had happened to the powell family

Speaker 5 where was susan powell there is astonishing new evidence in this heartbreaking mystery if something happens to me or my family or still to come susan's secret videos her husband's secretive behavior do you not want us to talk to you?

Speaker 11 Do you not want us to talk to anybody and just leave you alone and hope that she shows up?

Speaker 5 And her father-in-law's secret obsession.

Speaker 10 She was totally creeped out by my dad.

Speaker 2 Susan Cox, back at the beginning, seemed primed for a decidedly sunny life.

Speaker 12 Certainly not the tragedy it became.

Speaker 2 Susan's mom, Judy, back in 2011.

Speaker 30 As she grew up, people were kind of drawn to her, and she was just a happy child.

Speaker 2 Happy, and at times a bit of a handful.

Speaker 30 I remember one time I was upset with her because she drew flowers in her bedroom wall.

Speaker 8 So I asked her, why did he draw the flower on the wall? She said, well, it's pretty.

Speaker 8 So I had to say, okay, let's not draw it on the wall, okay?

Speaker 2 After high school, Susan announced she intended to go to beauty school.

Speaker 8 Well, why do you want to be a beautician? And, well, because that's what she liked, was making people happy and making things pretty.

Speaker 2 But even more than that, more than anything, Susan wanted to make a family of her own.

Speaker 2 She was still a teenager when the romance began with a young man named Josh Powell at a function of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Josh kept an audio journal back then.

Speaker 2 It's just recently been released. And here he is describing the first time he noticed Susan.

Speaker 22 Well, I didn't know who she was. She was about to leave.
I called her back and I was like, hey, come here. Talk to me for a while.
And she did.

Speaker 2 And she seemed to like him. Even though, as Josh himself admitted, He was nothing at all like sunny Susan.

Speaker 2 People find it difficult to remain in my company over extended periods of time. Susan has loved every minute with me.
She loves the things that other people cannot tolerate about me.

Speaker 2 Must have, because

Speaker 2 less than three months after they met, they got engaged. Susan's parents, worried about that, thought maybe Susan and Josh were moving too fast.

Speaker 2 But Susan seemed determined. He was her guy.
Here she is leaving a playful message in his audio journal.

Speaker 31 Josh is mean to me, but only because I was mean to him, and then he was mean back to me, so I was mean to him more.

Speaker 16 And now he's being mean to me again, but I still love him.

Speaker 30 I think she felt sorry for him.

Speaker 30 He didn't have many friends,

Speaker 30 and I think she felt she could make him happy and that he would change.

Speaker 2 She was 19 years old when they married. He was 25.
His father, Steve, shot this wedding video. Steve was always hovering around with a camera.

Speaker 2 Seemed so innocent at the time.

Speaker 2 You're too close.

Speaker 2 And as it happened, Steve recorded just the kind of thing that made the Coxes cringe when it came to their new son-in-law. So he was shopping for a ring, and he told me it was going to be for his mom.

Speaker 17 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 So I was helping him look, and he was looking at this ring that I had on. Actually, I paid Foxes to get an associate discount.

Speaker 2 Hoping to save a few dollars, Josh had tricked Susan into buying her own engagement ring from the department store where she worked. He paid her back, but still.

Speaker 2 Susan, though, didn't seem to worry about it, was eager to start a new life with Josh.

Speaker 33 There's my handsome husband.

Speaker 17 I feel

Speaker 17 I love you. I love you.

Speaker 10 She was an outgoing

Speaker 10 bright person. He's less social,

Speaker 10 and so I think that probably was a draw to him too.

Speaker 2 There wasn't a lot of money at first, so they moved in with Josh's dad near Seattle.

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 2 private places.

Speaker 2 It would be years before the real story emerged, but for now, let's just say things didn't go well.

Speaker 2 Which is why Josh and Susan left Steve's place and eventually moved to Utah.

Speaker 19 Where, said Jennifer, they seemed fine.

Speaker 10 It was pretty good in the early years.

Speaker 10 When they first came here, you know, it was pretty happy.

Speaker 2 Susan's best friend, Kiersey Helliwell, remembers the Powells. Then, three years into their marriage, they still behave like newlyweds, she said.

Speaker 32 They would always be cuddling at my house. My husband would walk by and see them kissing on the couch and say, get a room.

Speaker 2 They had two sons, Charlie and Braden. Stayed married for almost nine years.

Speaker 2 Until that cold December day, when everyone was frantically frantically searching for the Powells.

Speaker 32 I thought they'd gone off for a drive up in the mountains and slid off a cliff or they're knowing Josh, he took them on some dirt road. They're stuck in the snow and freezing to death.

Speaker 2 Friends and family tried to reach the couple all morning, but their calls kept going to voicemail. So neighbor Giovanna had her son call from his phone.
And this time, Josh answered.

Speaker 26 And I said, Josh, nobody knows where you're at and you've got to get home right now. Everybody's worried.
And he said, okay, I'll be home soon.

Speaker 2 Giovanna explained the urgency of the situation.

Speaker 26 I told Josh that Susan hadn't gone to work and that no one knew where she was at. And he said, oh, I'm sure she went to work.
She must have gone to work.

Speaker 2 More than two hours went by and still no sign of him. Police had asked Jennifer and her mom to leave while they searched the Powell home for clues.

Speaker 2 Now, back at her own home, Jennifer kept dialing Josh's cell, and he finally picked up. For a moment, Jennifer thought maybe everything was okay.

Speaker 2 But as she listened to Josh talking, she realized, No, it's not okay.

Speaker 10 Susan's not with him. The boys were with him, but Susan's not there.
He said he went to pick her up at work, and

Speaker 10 she wasn't there.

Speaker 2 Which didn't make any sense because Giovanna had already alerted Josh that Susan did not show up to work. Josh and Jennifer agreed to meet back at his his place, so she raced back over.

Speaker 2 And Josh did make it home. Eventually,

Speaker 2 the story he had to tell?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 28 you'll see.

Speaker 35 Coming up.

Speaker 7 There's this pink Motorola razor flip cell phone.

Speaker 5 A new clue for police and new questions for Josh.

Speaker 7 Why do you have Susan's phone? And he was just like a deer in headlines.

Speaker 29 You feel like you're under arrest.

Speaker 28 I don't know.

Speaker 36 When dateline continues.

Speaker 7 I've never had a case like this where a family's missing and nobody has any idea where they're at.

Speaker 2 Ellis Maxwell was the lead detective on the Powell case back in 2009. It's only now, now that he's retired, that he's able to talk about the investigation that still haunts him.

Speaker 7 I was in the office and the sergeant came in. It was like, hey, the patrol's out on a missing family.
We reach out to him and see what we can do to help them.

Speaker 2 Yes, sir, said Maxwell, and off he went to the Powell House.

Speaker 37 So when you got there, did you have any indication, any inkling that this was going to be a big deal?

Speaker 7 No, none at all.

Speaker 2 In the beginning, You're just kind of open-minded, going, okay, maybe they chose to elope with the kids and not tell anybody and they'll be back this afternoon or tomorrow but then detective maxwell heard from giovanna josh had resurfaced with the boys but without susan so he waited around for hours no josh josh's sister jennifer was waiting too and when josh called jennifer's cell phone around 6 p.m An impatient Maxwell asked to speak with him.

Speaker 7 I identify myself and say, hey, you need to get to the house now. Like, we need to talk.
We need to find Susan. Well, she should be at work.
Well, she's not, Josh. Come home.

Speaker 7 Well, I need to stop and get my kids something to eat.

Speaker 38 Did he say where he was at that point?

Speaker 7 No, no. And then he kind of ignored me and was talking to his kids.
You guys want pizza or you want burgers?

Speaker 7 And I'm like, Josh, stop and listen. You need to come home and get the kids fed.

Speaker 2 It was close to 7 p.m. when Josh finally arrived home with the boys, about an hour after that phone call, and nearly nine hours after everyone had started frantically searching for the family.

Speaker 2 Detective Maxwell thought that for a husband whose wife was missing, Josh seemed oddly unemotional.

Speaker 7 He didn't seem bothered or moved by anything.

Speaker 2 Maxwell asked Josh why hadn't he been answering his phone all morning? Josh said he had it turned off. He was afraid of draining the battery.

Speaker 7 However, as I'm leaning into this minivan, there's a charger plugged into the cigarette lighter.

Speaker 7 So I just noted that for later.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Maxwell asked Josh to follow him to the station, answer some questions. The boys came along.

Speaker 22 Okay, it's 1915 hours on the 7th of December 2009. I'm with Josh Powell in regards to his missing wife, Susan Powell.

Speaker 2 These recordings of Josh's first interview with police were tightly guarded by law enforcement for years.

Speaker 22 Do you know where Susan's at?

Speaker 28 No.

Speaker 22 When's the last time you seen her?

Speaker 22 Probably about midnight of last night.

Speaker 12 Susan had gone to bed, said Josh.

Speaker 19 So what did he do?

Speaker 2 Well, Josh told the detective he loaded his boys then two and four into the minivan in the middle of the night.

Speaker 22 What time did you leave the house?

Speaker 22 Seems like 1:30 or 2.

Speaker 2 To go camping, he said in December in the middle of a snowstorm.

Speaker 2 Maxwell was, to say the least, skeptical.

Speaker 22 I mean, the last thing I'm going to do, and you know,

Speaker 22 I thought it was load up my kids and go drive out to the desert, you know what I mean? Well, for some reason, well, well, I know, but I wanted to try out the generator.

Speaker 2 And what about that damn couch in his living room?

Speaker 22 Um,

Speaker 22 he wanted me to clean the

Speaker 22 couch, so I did. So, like, what, like a washcloth or something, or

Speaker 22 an upholstery cleaner.

Speaker 22 Okay, so you used the rug doctor and cleaned the couch, yeah,

Speaker 2 and that, said Josh, is why the big fans were blowing. Detective Maxwell returned to the main question: Where was Susan?

Speaker 22 So, where would you think she would be at? Well, I think she would go to work.

Speaker 22 She didn't go to work, dude. Where's her cell phone now?

Speaker 28 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Detective Maxwell asked to search Josh's minivan, and they found something significant right there, buried in the center console.

Speaker 7 There's this pink Motorola razor-flip cell phone. And I remember my partner saying, why do you have Susan's phone?

Speaker 7 And he was just like a deer in headlights.

Speaker 2 Josh stumbled through a story about how he forgot he'd borrowed Susan's cell phone the day before.

Speaker 7 It's just lies, just a bottle of lies.

Speaker 2 If Josh came in as a witness, he walked out as a person of interest. With instructions from Maxwell, returned to the station first thing in the morning.

Speaker 2 And then Maxwell made a decision that at the time seemed reasonable.

Speaker 7 We discussed whether or not we had enough for a search warrant to keep the house,

Speaker 7 and it was decided that we did not. Looking back, if there was one thing I'd do different, it'd be write that search warrant that night.

Speaker 2 That's because the next morning, Josh did not report to West Valley PD. He stayed home, cleaning.
Recently, I sat down with Josh's sister, Jennifer, again.

Speaker 10 He was running around the house, cleaning things, wiping things down, picking things up. Why would you do that? Your wife's missing, and you're doing your laundry.

Speaker 2 Josh finally showed up at the police station nearly four hours late and said.

Speaker 8 On the way over here, I actually did call my attorneys and

Speaker 39 they shared the said said I should definitely have an attorney.

Speaker 29 If I didn't read you, Miranda Reids.

Speaker 28 Have I?

Speaker 29 Do you feel like you're under arrest?

Speaker 28 I don't know.

Speaker 28 I didn't even think it was that.

Speaker 28 It

Speaker 39 didn't even sink in yesterday, but

Speaker 11 I don't know where she's at and she ain't back yet. Do you not want us to talk to you? Do you not want us to talk to anybody and just leave you alone and hope that she shows up?

Speaker 11 Is that what you want us to do?

Speaker 21 No.

Speaker 2 At the very same time, a few miles away, another detective was conducting a different and much more revealing interview. The person being questioned?

Speaker 2 Josh and Susan's son. Okay, Charlie.

Speaker 10 How old are you today? Four. You're four?

Speaker 5 Coming up, newly uncovered interviews reveal new clues from Susan's own young boys.

Speaker 10 Who were you camping with?

Speaker 10 My dad and my mom.

Speaker 40 Your children are telling our detectives that mom went with you guys last night and that she didn't come back.

Speaker 10 Okay, Charlie. How old are you today? Four.
You're four?

Speaker 2 This recording has been kept under wraps for years. Now we have it.

Speaker 10 Well, what did you do last night? Go camping. You went camping?

Speaker 10 Tell me about camping.

Speaker 10 Camping is one

Speaker 10 very hot snow.

Speaker 2 Little Charlie Powell, telling a detective about that mysterious late-night camping trip in the snow.

Speaker 10 Who were you camping with?

Speaker 10 My dad and my my mom and my

Speaker 10 little brother. Dad, your mom

Speaker 10 and your brother? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Dad and mom.

Speaker 2 Which of course contradicted Josh's story that he took the kids camping while Susan stayed home. Charlie said his mom went with them but she did not come back.

Speaker 10 See, my mom stayed where a crystal are. Where what are? Where a crystals are.
The crystals? Crystals?

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Your mom stayed where the crystals are? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 10 Crystals? Crystals are of things that grow in rocks.

Speaker 2 Crystals that grow in rocks? It was hard to know exactly what four-year-old Charlie saw. But the key thing was, he said his mom went along on the camping trip.

Speaker 2 Maxwell decided to roll the dice and confront Josh.

Speaker 40 And your children are telling our detectives that mom went with you guys last night

Speaker 40 and that she didn't come back.

Speaker 20 She did not go with us.

Speaker 39 They know that she didn't go with us.

Speaker 2 Maxwell didn't think he had enough for an arrest. So he asked Josh if he was willing to cooperate further.
When Josh declined, Maxwell told him he was free to go.

Speaker 34 You could leave any time anyways.

Speaker 40 I, yeah.

Speaker 29 I mean, let me think about it for

Speaker 39 a couple days.

Speaker 11 Your wife is missing, Josh.

Speaker 28 Yeah, but I've always...

Speaker 11 And you want to think about it for a couple of days?

Speaker 2 But before Josh left, Detective Maxwell shared some news.

Speaker 29 Your house is ours for right now.

Speaker 29 We're not going to let you back into that house.

Speaker 2 Detectives had, perhaps a little late, obtained a search warrant.

Speaker 2 And while Josh was at the station, investigators scoured the just-scrubbed house of his and detected tiny drops of blood beside the living room couch.

Speaker 7 They were about the size of a ballpoint pin.

Speaker 2 And when tested, turned out to be drops of Susan's blood. Not enough to prove anything, but more than enough to ramp up suspicion about what happened to her.

Speaker 2 Investigators also seized Josh's computers and that rug doctor he said he cleaned the couch with, and his cell phone. And they got a warrant to search Josh's minivan.

Speaker 2 He agreed to wait in the lobby, and they did find something.

Speaker 7 In a compartment in the floorboard of the van is a white garbage sack that is full of pieces of sheetrock that is heavily burned from an object that he destroyed.

Speaker 7 And that object is in there as well, but it's obliterated.

Speaker 2 It looked to Maxwell as if Josh had put something on that piece of sheetrock and then incinerated it. Maybe with the acetylene torch Maxwell saw in the Powell's garage.

Speaker 7 He was obviously very concerned about whatever that item was. And so, yeah, you got to think that, okay, that had something to do with her disappearance.

Speaker 2 They sent the burnt object out to get tested. And meanwhile, hoping that Josh might lead them to Susan, police installed a GPS tracking device in the van.

Speaker 2 But when Detective Maxwell tried to return the van to Josh.

Speaker 7 I missed him by 10 minutes. He took a taxi out to the Salt Lake International Airport where he rented a rental car.

Speaker 7 And once he rented the rental car,

Speaker 7 he was gone.

Speaker 2 Josh disappeared for two days. And when he finally turned up, Detective Maxwell discovered he'd racked up more than 800 miles on that rental car.

Speaker 12 Where did he go?

Speaker 7 No idea. He could have went into Nevada.

Speaker 15 Colorado, Idaho.

Speaker 7 We never ever found out where he went.

Speaker 2 Josh could have done anything, destroyed more evidence, even moved Susan's body. They just didn't know.
And however much they suspected Josh, they couldn't prove he'd harmed Susan.

Speaker 2 So they kept investigating. In particular, Maxwell wanted to trace Josh's movements in those crucial first hours and days after Susan disappeared.

Speaker 2 Police had confiscated both Josh and Susan's cell phones. But...

Speaker 7 Josh had removed the SIM card out of both of them phones. So there was no SIM card in Susan's phone and he somehow popped the SIM card out of his cell phone before we took it when nobody was looking.

Speaker 2 But they were able to get Josh's phone records and discovered he did something odd that very first morning after his neighbor Giovanna called.

Speaker 2 Data from cell phone towers placed Josh in West Valley during the call. But as soon as he hung up, he drove about 20 miles south toward the campsite where he said he'd taken the kids.

Speaker 2 And then he turned around back toward West Valley.

Speaker 7 And it's at that point that he calls Susan's phone and leaves her a voicemail that he's on his way home from their camping trip. Hello, Susan.
We are on our way back.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 I can't believe that somehow my brain missed the day. I thought today was Sunday.
That was really, really stupid. But

Speaker 17 anyway, hopefully he got to work okay.

Speaker 2 But remember, Giovanna had just told him Susan did not make it to work. And Josh had confirmed with his sister Jennifer that Susan wasn't at her office.

Speaker 2 And yet minutes after he did that, he pulled up outside Susan's building and left her another voicemail. Hello, I'm out here.

Speaker 16 I'm in front. I can't talk to you so thanks.

Speaker 7 He knew that she wasn't there, but that was part of his plan.

Speaker 2 But for all their suspicion, they still needed proof. Detectives spoke to a long list of people, including Josh's brother, Michael, who'd come down from Washington shortly after Susan disappeared.

Speaker 2 The police suspected he knew something, but he never told them what. And Josh kept slipping through their fingers.
Endless frustration.

Speaker 2 When Maxwell got the lab result from that object Josh had apparently worked so hard to destroy, the FBI gave us a report back saying that it was some sort of metal,

Speaker 7 but they couldn't identify it either.

Speaker 2 And Josh, after taking some time to think about it, never again talked to the police without an attorney present.

Speaker 2 But even as the investigation continued, he did decide to talk, one-on-one,

Speaker 2 with me.

Speaker 5 Coming up, Josh Powell tells his story.

Speaker 13 Well, it really hurts that people would try to say that I don't love Susan.

Speaker 14 I'm not sure that anybody said you didn't love Susan, but they were saying that you killed Susan.

Speaker 36 When dateline continues.

Speaker 2 More than a year and a half had gone by since Susan Powell's disappearance when we set up our cameras in a suburban hotel near Seattle. By this time, Josh was living not far away with his father.

Speaker 2 and had agreed to talk to us. We'd made an appointment for a late afternoon.
And we waited.

Speaker 2 And waited.

Speaker 2 He arrived close to midnight, two very hyper little boys in tow, and offered us his theory.

Speaker 13 I think that Susan

Speaker 20 simply left.

Speaker 15 Simply left.

Speaker 14 I mean, just at midnight, one o'clock in the morning, just I've had enough, I'm out of here.

Speaker 15 Was she angry those days?

Speaker 13 No. Was she distressed?

Speaker 9 Was she upset about anything?

Speaker 13 Nope.

Speaker 14 Did she express any, you know, desire to have things change?

Speaker 15 Nope.

Speaker 15 Did she continue to assert that she loved you? Yeah.

Speaker 14 And God knows she must have loved your children.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 She loved them probably more than she loved her own life. Would that be fair for me to say?

Speaker 14 And yet, she,

Speaker 20 at midnight or 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock in the morning that night in December,

Speaker 13 got up out of her bed and simply left.

Speaker 14 And hasn't even sent you a note to suggest she's still alive.

Speaker 15 Is that what's happened?

Speaker 13 I don't know what's happened to her. I don't know where she is.

Speaker 2 She must have left while he was out camping with the boys, he said.

Speaker 2 But of course, that was another question.

Speaker 2 Was it reasonable to believe a man would suddenly decide to wake his kids in the middle of the night and take them camping in a snowstorm?

Speaker 39 Those are just the kind of things that we do.

Speaker 20 We go out and have fun.

Speaker 12 In the middle of the night?

Speaker 8 They're weak.

Speaker 13 We have a habit of traveling at night.

Speaker 13 Susan learned it even as a child.

Speaker 20 Why didn't she go with you?

Speaker 13 She didn't want to.

Speaker 14 Why not? Because she was mad about something.

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 13 She was tired.

Speaker 2 And then Josh brought up a whole new idea. A nasty allegation.
Was this the real reason Josh agreed to be interviewed? Josh said Susan must have run away because of damage inflicted by her parents.

Speaker 13 She's been suffering.

Speaker 13 She has a very low self-esteem. because of severe emotional abuse as a child.

Speaker 2 He knew all this, he said, because Susan documented parental abuse in her teenage journals.

Speaker 13 Susan's journals are clearly extremely important

Speaker 13 to her disappearance.

Speaker 2 Odd then that he refused to show Susan's journals to the police, even though they asked repeatedly.

Speaker 2 And anyway.

Speaker 14 If she's alive, why wouldn't she contact you?

Speaker 13 I think that the pressure that

Speaker 13 is surrounding this entire situation

Speaker 13 is making it very difficult on her. This is a very hard thing on her self-esteem.

Speaker 14 Why would it be a hard thing on her self-esteem?

Speaker 13 People are trying to paint her as the image of perfection. Her parents want to deny everything about her.

Speaker 13 that is real and that is that makes her who she is,

Speaker 13 whether it's

Speaker 13 good, bad, or indifferent, she does not feel that her parents love her.

Speaker 2 By this time, we knew a lot about Susan and her family. We knew Josh was lying.
We asked him to describe his own loving relationship with his wife. Was he struggling here?

Speaker 15 Tell me about Susan.

Speaker 15 You have the floor.

Speaker 14 Anything you want to tell me about her.

Speaker 15 Well.

Speaker 13 she and I have always had a lot of

Speaker 13 good times.

Speaker 13 We have a lot of fun.

Speaker 13 We have a lot in common.

Speaker 15 What do you have in Connor? Well, we're both very

Speaker 13 diligent

Speaker 13 about our finances and we try to be diligent about cleanliness. Of course we have our children in common.
But she loves me and I love her.

Speaker 20 We love each other.

Speaker 2 Make no mistake, said Josh. He wanted his wife home.

Speaker 13 I would like her to be found.

Speaker 13 I would like her to come home. I want her to see my sons.
They're her sons too. They love their mommy.

Speaker 20 What do you tell them about her?

Speaker 13 I just tell them that we don't know where she's at.

Speaker 14 Do you worry that somebody will charge you with a crime that will prevent you from being with them?

Speaker 15 Nope.

Speaker 14 Don't think that's going to happen?

Speaker 15 Nope.

Speaker 20 What makes you so sure?

Speaker 13 Because I never did anything that someone would be able to charge me with.

Speaker 2 As he said all this, Josh was well aware that the investigation was continuing and police might be getting closer.

Speaker 15 There's a kind of ramping up, I suppose, of the pressure that surrounds

Speaker 14 Why? They must be onto something, people assume.

Speaker 13 I would think no.

Speaker 13 I would think that they're probably not onto something. According to my attorney, the less they have on a person,

Speaker 13 the more they basically harass a person.

Speaker 14 So, what you're suggesting is they're just trying to rattle your cage.

Speaker 13 It would seem.

Speaker 15 Are you rattled?

Speaker 13 I'm pretty pissed off.

Speaker 2 And then, as we talked, you returned to the question of love and Susan.

Speaker 13 Well, it really hurts that people would try to say that I don't love Susan.

Speaker 15 I'm not sure that anybody said you didn't love Susan, but they were saying that you killed Susan.

Speaker 14 Sometimes you kill the one you love.

Speaker 15 Well,

Speaker 13 I never hurt Susan.

Speaker 20 Never hurt her.

Speaker 13 I've tried to defend her.

Speaker 2 But was he really defending Susan? Or someone else?

Speaker 13 Susan never told me about any inappropriate relationship. My dad never told me about any inappropriate relationship.

Speaker 2 His dad?

Speaker 2 Now we were getting somewhere.

Speaker 35 Coming up.

Speaker 8 I talked with Susan about sex and anything else.

Speaker 34 Did it strike you as odd that you talked to your daughter-in-law about sex?

Speaker 5 Another disturbing conversation.

Speaker 20 Josh wasn't concerned about this?

Speaker 8 I didn't talk to Josh about it. I just enjoyed the moment.

Speaker 2 It was just 12 days after Susan Powell disappeared when her husband, Josh, while others were desperately searching for her, slipped away.

Speaker 2 took the boys and went to live with his father, Steve, near Seattle.

Speaker 15 And you know the saying, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Speaker 2 If my conversation with Josh was strange,

Speaker 2 my interview with his dad

Speaker 2 was very disturbing.

Speaker 8 I mean, I talked with Susan about sex and anything else.

Speaker 34 It strike you as odd that you talked to your daughter-in-law about sex?

Speaker 12 That's very odd.

Speaker 8 Very odd. But she was very open about things like that.

Speaker 2 Remember, Susan and Josh lived in Steve's house for a few months, about a year after their wedding. During which time, Steve claimed his daughter-in-law kept coming on to him.

Speaker 8 Susan would come in to my office after she waxed her legs and she would say, you know, feel my legs. They're pretty smooth.
Susan was very open and I would say very aggressive

Speaker 8 in male-female relationships. And she called the shots.

Speaker 14 What did Josh make of this

Speaker 15 openness, if I can put it that way? Presumably he experienced that sort of thing too.

Speaker 8 He said about it at one point, but he seemed pretty cool with it too, because sometimes, you know, Susan would want me to massage her back or something.

Speaker 8 She would, I mean, Josh would be right there and she would ask me to massage her back. That kind of a thing.
She was very relaxed around me.

Speaker 2 More than relaxed, he said. In Steve's mind, Susan wanted him.

Speaker 2 He said he could see it clearly after her second child was born, and he would hold the baby.

Speaker 8 She would come up and rather than reach out and grab Brayden and take him from me, she'd come up and press herself against my hands and then I'd have to, you know, pull my hands out from between

Speaker 15 her and

Speaker 2 Braden just, you know, just very strange.

Speaker 20 Josh wasn't concerned about this?

Speaker 8 You know, I didn't talk to Josh about it. I mean, you know, I just enjoyed the moment.

Speaker 2 Yes, he said that. He said he had no idea why Susan would ever leave her kids or him,

Speaker 2 Steve.

Speaker 8 We're on board with anybody else who says Susan loves her kids, and it's difficult for us to understand why she would walk away from them.

Speaker 8 It's difficult for us to understand why she would walk away from her parents, why she would walk away from Josh. I even wonder why she would walk away from me.

Speaker 8 She and I had a good relationship.

Speaker 2 Even though he couldn't explain Susan's disappearance, he said he was convinced Josh had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 15 If I were you. I would have had those Dark Nights of the Soul too, wondering,

Speaker 15 am I wrong about my own son?

Speaker 20 Could he have

Speaker 15 done that? Yeah. Where do you put those thoughts and how do you work through those?

Speaker 8 Oh, when Susan first disappeared, I was totally devastated because I was worried about her, I was worried about my son, and I was worried about my grandsons.

Speaker 8 But it was all dispelled within a week after Josh arrived with the boys.

Speaker 2 Steve claimed he did probe Josh about Susan's disappearance.

Speaker 15 What did he tell you?

Speaker 8 I mean, I just observed him and I observed, I would say things like,

Speaker 8 Josh, you know, the most abusive thing that a father could ever do is

Speaker 8 murder his wife, you know, things like that. And I just gauged his reactions to this.
You were testing him. I was testing him.
I wanted to see his reaction to this kind of stuff.

Speaker 15 And?

Speaker 8 It was good. I was totally satisfied with it.
I mean, you know,

Speaker 8 I was totally comfortable with everything he said. He passed with flying colors.

Speaker 2 Investigators and at least one family member suspected Steve was covering for Josh.

Speaker 12 So what is it like for you when people accuse you and revile you

Speaker 18 or your son, as the case may be?

Speaker 8 Well, it just doesn't happen that often. I mean, we know where we stand.
We sleep well at night. We don't feel any guilt for anything that has to do with Susan's disappearance.

Speaker 8 You know, we're totally comfortable with our own position.

Speaker 8 So, no, it doesn't affect us at all.

Speaker 2 So, what happened to Susan?

Speaker 2 Well, he said he had thought about this, and maybe, he said,

Speaker 2 maybe she was a thief on the lamb.

Speaker 8 Susan worked for Wells Fargo Investments. She worked for Fidelity Investments before that.
She had access to all kinds of private information and investment accounts.

Speaker 12 So, you're thinking that she may have embezzled and

Speaker 8 I'm thinking it's a possibility. They haven't discovered it yet.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Or maybe she knew if she stayed, she might hurt her boy, said Steve. What if, as it seemed to him, she was on the verge of an emotional crisis?

Speaker 8 We're very, very grateful that we have two little boys that are still alive. This is a woman that had some really deep problems.

Speaker 8 Josh has even suggested that maybe she left because she was concerned about what she was doing to the kids.

Speaker 2 But even more likely, said Steve, she just ran off with another man.

Speaker 8 Was she leaving because she was so involved with this other guy she just wanted out?

Speaker 8 And Susan was very suggestible.

Speaker 8 I can see that from her journal.

Speaker 2 Her journals again.

Speaker 2 The police still wanted them. The Powell men still refused to hand them over.

Speaker 2 But that was about to change, along with just about everything.

Speaker 35 Coming up,

Speaker 5 Steve Powell's secret obsession, the videos. Never seen on network television before.

Speaker 10 This was her father-in-law, she was cringing inside.

Speaker 5 And later, a daring plan to learn the truth about Susan's disappearance.

Speaker 10 That was going into the lion's den.

Speaker 36 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 5 Back to our story. She vanished nearly 10 years ago.
What happened to Susan Powell?

Speaker 13 I think that Susan simply left.

Speaker 15 Simply left.

Speaker 36 Her husband quickly came under suspicion.

Speaker 29 Do you feel like you're under arrest?

Speaker 28 I don't know.

Speaker 4 Her father-in-law under scrutiny, too.

Speaker 34 Did it strike you as odd that you talked to your daughter-in-law about sex?

Speaker 12 That's very odd.

Speaker 5 Now, something never seen on network television before. Evidence of a strange obsession.

Speaker 10 She was totally creeped out by my dad.

Speaker 5 And ominous new evidence from Susan herself.

Speaker 6 And if something happens to me or my family or all of us.

Speaker 5 Will any of this help solve the mystery? Here again, Keith Morrison.

Speaker 2 Detective Maxwell had been trying to get his hands on Susan's high school journals for months, hoping they would provide a clue to finding her. He suspected Josh had brought them to Steve's place.

Speaker 7 But we didn't have enough probable cause or evidence to say that these journals were inside of Steve and Powell's house.

Speaker 2 And then this has divided two families bitterly.

Speaker 44 It's put deep suspicions on Susan's husband.

Speaker 2 My interview with Steve aired on the Today Show, and I didn't know it back then, but That video we shot proved what Maxwell suspected. The journals were in Steve's home.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that was huge, huge, because that's what got us inside the house. If we didn't have that, I don't, there's no way we've got it.

Speaker 2 August 2011, more than a year and a half after Susan disappeared, citing our video as evidence, investigators obtained a warrant to search Steve Powell's home. And there they found Susan's journals.

Speaker 2 Pages filled with normal teenaged angst. Nothing whatever to suggest abuse by her parents.
Police never found any evidence of that at all.

Speaker 2 But those journals were not all they found.

Speaker 2 Not even close.

Speaker 34 Steve, they discovered, kept a trove of videos.

Speaker 2 They've never been shown on network TV before.

Speaker 2 They range from the mundane.

Speaker 10 I got you the second season last year, Susan.

Speaker 2 Season for my birthday.

Speaker 2 To

Speaker 2 well, creepy doesn't begin to describe it.

Speaker 8 I just had

Speaker 8 what is probably the most erotic experience I've had in my entire life. Susan has been feeling ill.
She had a cold.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I offered to rub her feet, to rub her toes, to give her some

Speaker 8 stimulation. And

Speaker 8 oh my god.

Speaker 8 Josh was was sitting across the room

Speaker 8 on the chair, and he wasn't always watching, so I sort of took liberties as he didn't watch.

Speaker 2 Steve had claimed in our interview that Susan came on to him. What the video showed was something else entirely.

Speaker 2 He was obsessed with her.

Speaker 10 I'm going to walk past you now.

Speaker 2 In the video, Steve followed Susan around with a camera.

Speaker 31 Oh, move your hand, move the box.

Speaker 8 Anyway, I just wanted to get get you in that dress. That's all.

Speaker 2 Sometimes Susan seemed to play along.

Speaker 8 Do something good for the video cameras.

Speaker 10 No, I'll do this.

Speaker 10 Stop it.

Speaker 2 Your dad zoomed in. She did show off her legs once.

Speaker 10 This is a week after waxing.

Speaker 31 No hair.

Speaker 2 Other times, she seemed to have no idea her father-in-law was stalking her.

Speaker 8 That's Susan. Susan.

Speaker 8 There's Josh

Speaker 8 standing with her, but I

Speaker 8 really want her.

Speaker 8 I wish she would look my way. She was so pretty today when she came over to the house.

Speaker 2 Susan, you are beautiful.

Speaker 2 Doug, you're a beauty.

Speaker 2 When Detective Maxwell watched the tapes, he could plainly see there was something deeply off-kilter about Steve Powell's behavior toward his daughter-in-law.

Speaker 28 See, I'm married good.

Speaker 8 Yeah, no kidding. Wow.

Speaker 2 He even recorded music about her.

Speaker 2 I can love you in a secret way.

Speaker 2 I can love you each and every

Speaker 17 day.

Speaker 15 It's awful.

Speaker 15 It's awful.

Speaker 7 It's awful. I don't ever want to hear it.
It was an out, I think, for him

Speaker 7 to display

Speaker 15 his love for her.

Speaker 2 Another tape captured a conversation Steve had with Susan in his car. He didn't realize, though he put the lens cap on his camcorder, he'd left it running.

Speaker 2 I'm probably wrong, but I've really fallen in love with you.

Speaker 33 For the last year and a half, you're about the only thing I can think about. Probably began

Speaker 33 coming into my office and the feel your legs, smooth, relaxed, whatever.

Speaker 2 He recalled the time he gave her that massage.

Speaker 33 You know, that experience on the couch, I mean, I know

Speaker 33 that,

Speaker 33 I mean,

Speaker 33 it was a massage, right?

Speaker 33 But, you know, just being with you for two hours and holding you.

Speaker 31 I mean, I was extremely aroused, and I think you were somewhat aroused, at least I thought.

Speaker 31 I don't know where you're going with this. Married to your son, and I should just be the daughter-in-law,

Speaker 31 which puts me a step beneath your own children. That's where I'm comfortable.

Speaker 10 Oh, she was totally creeped out by my dad.

Speaker 8 Did she talk to you about it?

Speaker 10 Definitely.

Speaker 2 Josh's sister Jennifer told us Susan felt trapped.

Speaker 10 This was her father-in-law, and she was trying to put on a good face, even as she

Speaker 10 was cringing inside.

Speaker 9 What did your dad want out of this?

Speaker 15 Besides Susan, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 10 You know, I don't know.

Speaker 10 That obsession with Susan.

Speaker 10 It's just this sick, weird, twisted fantasy that I just don't even understand

Speaker 10 how people can get to that place.

Speaker 2 Jennifer said Susan was an innocent. Steve, a sick man, determined to see flirtation where it simply didn't exist.
That time Susan showed off her waxed legs.

Speaker 10 She trained in cosmetology. Sure.
And so that was like a focus of her life. It was like, look, this is my creation.
I have clean legs. And of course, she's going to tell other people.

Speaker 2 Susan told Josh about Steve's inappropriate attention. And Josh was furious with his dad.
But.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 24 he...

Speaker 10 He allowed

Speaker 10 my dad back in.

Speaker 2 Steve assured Josh it was all Susan's fault. And apparently Josh believed him.
Steve wrote in his journal, Josh seemed upset with me for a while after I told her I loved her.

Speaker 2 Now he openly despises her.

Speaker 2 Was that a motive?

Speaker 2 And Steve added in another, the reality is, I don't think Susan is upset at me.

Speaker 2 He was still convinced Susan secretly loved him.

Speaker 8 See, we're all hiking together, and I'm here too.

Speaker 31 You're watching. He's got a terrible team.

Speaker 2 Poor Susan, trapped in a sick triangle with a father and a son.

Speaker 8 That's about it.

Speaker 2 But it turned out, Steve. wasn't the only one recording things.

Speaker 5 Coming up, newly released evidence from Susan herself.

Speaker 45 I'm trying to deal with forgiving my father-in-law.

Speaker 32 Susan hated him with a passion.

Speaker 4 Personal writings share her private pain.

Speaker 15 There was definitely domestic abuse in that marriage.

Speaker 2 So much of Susan Susan and Josh Powell's marriage was captured on video with Steve Powell obsessively documenting his own perversions.

Speaker 8 This is

Speaker 8 when I got Susan for Christmas.

Speaker 2 But now we know something else. Newly released evidence that shows Susan had been doing some secret documenting of her own.
Journals, emails, messages to friends.

Speaker 2 A detailed record of her concerns and fears about the men in her life. In her journal, Susan made it clear Steve Powell creeped her out.

Speaker 45 I'm trying to deal with forgiving my father-in-law of what he's said done.

Speaker 45 As I try, he continues to reoffend, which makes it even more difficult. I'm to the point where if I had fur, it would bristle whenever I know Josh is talking to his dad.

Speaker 12 Susan's best friend, Kiersey, knew her true feelings.

Speaker 9 Steve seemed to think that Susan was terribly attracted to him, that there was a reciprocal relationship there.

Speaker 15 That's what he told people.

Speaker 32 Yeah, Steve was very deluded, if he thought that, because Susan hated him with a passion.

Speaker 2 Susan thought Steve was determined to come between her and Josh.

Speaker 32 Susan would tell me, no, his dad is trying to break us up, because somewhere in his sick, twisted mind, he thinks that if we're broken up, that I'll go live with him.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 2 But even Susan had no idea how deep-seated Steve's infatuation had become. When police raided his house, they didn't just find videos.

Speaker 2 They found trophies.

Speaker 7 Horrific, awful, sick things that Steve collected of Susan's, like her tampons and pubic hair and her garments and her underwear. I mean, all the way down to her fingernail and toenail clippings.

Speaker 2 All very creepy, but not criminal. And while Steve's behavior certainly troubled Susan, newly released evidence shows she found Josh's behavior even more troubling.

Speaker 45 I can't believe our marriage deteriorated so quickly. I feel so blind and naive and foolish.

Speaker 2 Josh had stopped going to church, couldn't seem to hold down a job, but he did everything he could to control Susan. Even though she was the main breadwinner, he insisted on managing their money.

Speaker 32 He told her that it was too expensive to have two vehicles, so he sold their second car and told her that he needed the van and so she needed a bike to work seven miles each way.

Speaker 32 And it was down a very busy street without a bike lane.

Speaker 21 And she did it. She did it.

Speaker 32 And after a few months of that, myself and some of our other friends convinced her to stop because we told her how dangerous it was.

Speaker 2 This from Susan's Facebook message to a friend.

Speaker 45 He is mainly emotionally, verbally, and financially abusive. Basically, I'm a single mother with this guy that lives with me and dictates to me what I can do in my spare time.

Speaker 45 Anne takes my paycheck and spends the money.

Speaker 7 She didn't have access to her paycheck.

Speaker 7 Josh managed all of that. Josh would give her an allowance to go buy groceries.
But that allowance was maybe acceptable in the 1950s.

Speaker 7 Not in the 2000s.

Speaker 2 When she was really strapped for cash, said Kiersey, Susan would call her.

Speaker 32 Begging for hot dogs to feed her children and I would immediately be horrified and say, please come over here.

Speaker 7 Yeah, there was definitely domestic abuse in that marriage. You had the financial abuse and then you also had

Speaker 7 verbal abuse where he would belittle her and talk down to her. Their relationship was structured as if the male is the dominant, the female is beneath him.

Speaker 2 Privately, Susan told her friend she believed Steve was to blame for Josh's behavior.

Speaker 45 Anytime he's talking with his dad, I'm irritated. He accidentally swears or slips snide negative comments about me, the church, my family.

Speaker 45 I think a lot because he's talking to his dad so often, who truly thrives on negative and seems to encourage it with Josh.

Speaker 2 But the more hostile Josh became, The more Susan seemed determined to make things work.

Speaker 45 I'm bothered that he's not going to church and is the opposite of everything I married, but I'm willing to be patient even into the eternities for him.

Speaker 32 I said, Susan, it's kind of like the analogy of how to boil a frog. Put them in a bucket of cold water and gradually turn the heat up until they don't realize it, and then they're boiled.

Speaker 32 And that's exactly what's happened to you. And the way he's treating you is not okay.

Speaker 9 How did she react to that?

Speaker 32 She was very thoughtful.

Speaker 2 That's when Susan began keeping a file folder at work titled Josh Issues and told a coworker if she ever went missing, hand it to the police.

Speaker 7 A file folder with letters that she had written.

Speaker 2 In one of those letters, about six months before she disappeared, Susan described a family camping trip in the West Desert.

Speaker 45 So we left about four in the afternoon and started driving south. Josh got advice from some friend about a place where you can dig for geodes, crystal sparkly things inside rocks.

Speaker 2 Crystals in rocks.

Speaker 2 Eerily similar to the description her son Charlie gave in his interview with the detective after Susan vanished. An unwitting clue?

Speaker 2 Perhaps it was.

Speaker 2 And then there were more in a safety deposit box whose contents were secret for years.

Speaker 2 But now we know what was in it.

Speaker 35 Coming up.

Speaker 6 This is me.

Speaker 5 A secret video and growing fear.

Speaker 6 Making sure that if something happens to me or my family or all of us, she was actually afraid that Josh might do something to her.

Speaker 36 When dateline continues.

Speaker 2 To her friend, Susan Powell seemed like an open book, willing to share the ups and downs of her marriage to Josh. But it turned out, she didn't tell them everything.

Speaker 2 Detective Maxwell discovered that Susan kept a safety deposit box, and inside it was a handwritten will.

Speaker 2 Chilling to read it now.

Speaker 45 For mine and my children's safety, I feel the need to have a paper trail at work which would not be accessible to my husband.

Speaker 2 The will was dated June 28, 2008, nearly a year and a half before Susan disappeared.

Speaker 45 If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one. In a margin, she wrote, I love you, Charlie and Brayden, and I'm sorry you've seen how wrong, messed up our marriage is.

Speaker 45 I would never leave you.

Speaker 2 When Susan's will became public and Kearsey saw it?

Speaker 32 I was shocked and I couldn't understand why she didn't tell me that. She was actually afraid that Josh might do something to her.

Speaker 2 Earlier, as their troubles were increasing, Josh had doubled her life insurance to a million dollars. Susan mentioned it to her friend Debbie Coldwill.

Speaker 23 I said, that's just an enormous amount. You're worth more dead than alive.

Speaker 2 And maybe sensing she had to protect herself, Susan also left this.

Speaker 6 This is me.

Speaker 6 July 29th, 2008.

Speaker 2 A video she recorded about a month after she wrote the will, after she met with a divorce attorney.

Speaker 6 Covering them all my bases, making sure that if something happens to me or my family or all of us, that our assets are documented.

Speaker 6 Hope everything works out and we're all happy and

Speaker 6 live happily ever after as much as that's possible.

Speaker 2 Once she asked her father, Chuck, if he thought Josh was abusive.

Speaker 8 I said, well,

Speaker 8 he's not hitting you or anything, so it's not maybe physically abusive at this point, but it's certainly emotionally abusive.

Speaker 2 When Josh canceled Susan's cell phone, Chuck got her a new one and urged her to take the boys and leave.

Speaker 3 Why didn't she?

Speaker 2 Debbie told us that Susan, devoutly LDS, felt forever committed.

Speaker 23 She really hung on to the idea that she was going to have an eternal family. When we get married, we believe that we are going to be families for time and eternity.

Speaker 2 But in the year after Susan wrote the will, she did get tougher.

Speaker 7 I think the biggest change with Susan was she was building this confidence within herself. She wasn't being submissive to Josh.
She was standing up for herself.

Speaker 2 And apparently Susan believed it was working. An email to a friend.

Speaker 45 Things have totally changed. Mainly me having more of a backbone.
And in response to this, Josh is surprisingly more reasonable.

Speaker 2 Josh became affectionate. This, weeks before she vanished.

Speaker 45 Josh said, I love you, as he dropped me off this morning.

Speaker 2 But Detective Maxwell found evidence he was actually planning something that had nothing whatever to do with love.

Speaker 2 That same month, Josh bought a roll of tree rat and a settlement settlement torch, deep cleaning supplies, tools to make Susan disappear.

Speaker 7 It's all kind of premeditated purchases.

Speaker 2 By that time, according to her emails, Susan was beginning to feel ill.

Speaker 45 So the nausea I'm experiencing right now and daily throughout the day since last Friday is all in my head?

Speaker 2 Then she disappeared.

Speaker 19 and loved ones wondered.

Speaker 2 The night before, remember, she had eaten the pancakes Josh prepared and then complained of feeling tired.

Speaker 8 When I heard Josh had fixed them pancakes for dinner

Speaker 8 and put the pancakes on each person's plate and then cleaned up the dishes immediately afterwards, I mean, I just get chills down my back. I just...

Speaker 8 I've seen how he treated her in the house. I've seen how much he cares to help with dishes or cooking or anything.

Speaker 37 Which is to say, not at all. Not at all.

Speaker 8 Absolutely not. They were so out of character that it was just, that was scary.

Speaker 7 We have a suspicion of, you know, maybe he

Speaker 7 drugged her, poisoned her with some sort of a substance.

Speaker 2 To find out, they'd have to find her.

Speaker 2 And they had at least an idea where to look. Once, Josh had joked that if he ever murdered someone, the perfect place to dump the body would be an abandoned mine in Utah's sprawling West Desert.

Speaker 2 The West Desert is also known for something something else. Geodes, the crystals in rocks.
Both Charlie and Susan described, it all seemed to fit.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 7 we searched and searched that West Desert. We didn't find her.

Speaker 2 Police needed help, and Josh's sister Jennifer came to them with an idea. She too suspected Josh, so she offered to meet with her brother, confront him, and wear a wire when she did it.

Speaker 15 What was that like?

Speaker 10 That was going into the lion's den

Speaker 35 coming up. It's your wife crying out loud.

Speaker 5 What happened? For the first time on network television, the undercover plan to learn the truth.

Speaker 10 It was scary.

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Speaker 8 There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 10 Really, honestly, that's what I went to go do: to try and get a confession.

Speaker 2 Josh's sister, Jennifer, had grown close to Susan after the Powells moved to Utah. And now, with suspicion surrounding Josh, she felt she had to know what happened to her sister-in-law.

Speaker 7 She approached me and

Speaker 7 said, Hey, what do you think about me wearing a wire and going to Steve's house and confront Josh?

Speaker 2 Detective Maxwell liked the idea.

Speaker 15 We were really hopeful that maybe by her catching Josh off guard and saying, hey, they're getting a lot of evidence on you.

Speaker 7 Like, it's probably time now that you come clean. We thought that would work.

Speaker 2 Josh was living in their father, Steve's house. Jennifer went there, knocked on the door.

Speaker 10 So it was like, you know, fortress. They're fortressing up, protecting Josh.
And I am walking in. It It was scary.

Speaker 2 Detective Maxwell sat in the car just a few blocks away, listening in as Jennifer and Josh talked.

Speaker 46 We've been hearing rumors.

Speaker 2 This is the first time this audio has been aired on broadcast TV.

Speaker 46 This rumor is that you're fighting us with him.

Speaker 46 No, I don't understand why there's

Speaker 46 what rumors hear.

Speaker 2 Jennifer asked Josh about the night before Susan disappeared.

Speaker 7 How he responded and what he said to her, I think, was also telling.

Speaker 21 Like guilty,

Speaker 7 he was telling her that his attorney told him that he can't talk to nobody about this case.

Speaker 15 She's not a cop.

Speaker 7 It's a sister.

Speaker 46 Put my mind to ease and tell me what happened.

Speaker 44 I'm your sister.

Speaker 46 Singing with my friend. She's your wife.
You're crying out loud. What happened?

Speaker 46 I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened.

Speaker 10 I asked very direct questions to Josh, trying to get him to confess.

Speaker 2 She asked him about his two-day 800-mile drive in that rental car. Where did you go?

Speaker 46 My mother.

Speaker 2 She asked Josh about all that house cleaning he'd been doing the morning of his interview with the police.

Speaker 46 Who said that right after their wife had pronounced missing? Why was you out making? Why weren't you out trying to do something? Why were you running around the house cleaning?

Speaker 46 And on sweat

Speaker 46 and trying to cover it up.

Speaker 9 I bet that escalated pretty fast.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and yet

Speaker 10 he was surprisingly devoid of emotion even then,

Speaker 10 which is disturbing too. I lead it up to the point where I finally am like,

Speaker 10 just tell me where her body is.

Speaker 46 Where is Susa?

Speaker 46 Where is Susan?

Speaker 46 Where's her body? Did you dump it somewhere?

Speaker 46 I've already told

Speaker 46 you

Speaker 46 what has happened to her or where she's at.

Speaker 2 Direct questions didn't seem to work. Jennifer tried a different strategy.

Speaker 46 I'm confused. Why is it that you absolutely refused to go to church? You said it was completely, absolutely a waste of time and then suddenly you started going recently.

Speaker 46 I don't understand what that was. Like three weeks before she gets disappeared and you suddenly decide to go.
Was that a plan?

Speaker 46 This is part of a plan.

Speaker 2 I don't know what you're trying to say here, Jenny.

Speaker 10 And it was.

Speaker 10 I pushed. I did.
I tried.

Speaker 2 And then, as they talked, their father Steve appeared. You need to face reality.
Okay.

Speaker 46 That doesn't sound like reality.

Speaker 46 And that's your distance.

Speaker 46 I think it's time to go ahead and find out the low tonight.

Speaker 10 I knew my dad had a volatile temper, and I really didn't know what he was going to do.

Speaker 46 We are a

Speaker 46 guest of what you are.

Speaker 2 Jennifer left, got in her car, and she just knew Josh did it.

Speaker 2 She didn't know it then, but even as Steve was defending his son, he was writing this in his own journal.

Speaker 2 I feel like Josh did a truly stupid thing and probably disposed of her body in a very grotesque way. I want Josh to be with his boys, but I'm also angry with him for murdering such a beautiful woman.

Speaker 2 And Steve wrote something else. that plays now like a terrible prophecy.
That he could do such a thing once suggests suggests he could do it again.

Speaker 2 If things go too badly, he could murder the boys and hang himself.

Speaker 2 But at the time, there just wasn't enough evidence. Police couldn't arrest Josh.

Speaker 2 But they did arrest Steve for something else he was doing with that video camera.

Speaker 7 He was videoing little kids. out of his bedroom window into another home right next door.
Right next door.

Speaker 2 Steve Powell was charged with voyeurism and possession of child pornography.

Speaker 2 And because Josh had let his young sons share a home with an accused pedophile, the court took the boys from him and sent them to live with Susan's parents temporarily.

Speaker 2 For a moment, it seemed the law had the upper hand over the Powell men.

Speaker 2 That is,

Speaker 2 until Josh played his final card.

Speaker 35 Coming up.

Speaker 31 I'm sorry to everyone I'm hurt.

Speaker 5 Josh Powell's last message and his ultimate, unthinkable act.

Speaker 27 He wouldn't let me in the door.

Speaker 15 It's just been a... And what do you do next? And what do you do next?

Speaker 36 When dateline continues.

Speaker 2 We looked at the Powell boys here in the place where Josh allowed us to film them. And our heads were full of questions we couldn't ask them.

Speaker 21 What happened to them, Mother?

Speaker 3 What had those little boys endured?

Speaker 10 We can't talk about Susan or Campbell.

Speaker 2 When a detective interviewed Charlie, the older one, back in 2010, it was clear he'd seen things he'd been told not to talk about.

Speaker 2 Susan's parents, the Coxes, were relieved when the boys were sent to stay safe with them.

Speaker 2 But Josh vowed to get them back and took his argument to the judge.

Speaker 39 I'm here for the best interest of my sons, and I believe that in the best interest of my sons, they should come home and be with me.

Speaker 2 It was Detective Maxwell who provided the evidence that made the court's decision easy.

Speaker 2 During those early searches of Josh's home, police had confiscated his computers, and one of them, a collection of cartoon pornography.

Speaker 7 Once the judge saw that, the Cox family was awarded temporary custody.

Speaker 2 With the boys safely in the care of their grandparents, the judge ordered Josh to take a psychosexual evaluation and a polygraph test.

Speaker 2 Maxwell thought after two long years on Josh's trail, maybe finally he was closing in.

Speaker 15 We were all excited.

Speaker 2 And then the judge allowed the boys to to visit Josh. A social worker was to take the boys to Josh's house, then stay and observe.

Speaker 2 But that's not what happened. He explored his house.

Speaker 2 It was incomprehensible, horrifying.

Speaker 27 Do you know if anyone's in the house?

Speaker 27 Yes, there was a man and two children. I just dropped off the children and he wouldn't let me in the door.

Speaker 2 He had booby-trapped the house, snatched his sons, locked out the social worker, and lit the match.

Speaker 32 My phone started ringing, and it was a reporter. And he said, did you hear that there was an explosion at the house Josh is renting in Graham, Washington? And I said, what do you mean?

Speaker 32 And he said, we're getting reports that there's three bodies found and two of them are the children.

Speaker 15 And I just screamed, no, and I hung up on him.

Speaker 2 Right away, Kiersey called Susan's dad.

Speaker 15 Chuck, is it true?

Speaker 32 And he said, I don't know. I'm driving there right now.

Speaker 8 When I got there, there were police cars, fire trucks, and a line, and the house was smoldering. So I going, okay, yeah, it happened.

Speaker 2 We spoke with them days later, Chuck and Judy Cox. They were still very much in shock.

Speaker 15 So I went back to the house and...

Speaker 8 My wife is there and I said, yes, it's true. They're gone.

Speaker 15 And then it's just been...

Speaker 15 What do you do next? And what do you do next?

Speaker 2 Susan's friend, Debbie Caldwell, who had helped care for Charlie and Braden, tried to process it.

Speaker 24 It was my worst nightmare.

Speaker 10 I went instantly from

Speaker 24 wishing Susan was alive to wishing she was dead so that she could be there to greet her boys as they went to heaven.

Speaker 2 And into this terrible time came Josh's own voice, one last voicemail to his sister sister Alina, perhaps in his way, finally, a confession.

Speaker 16 I'm going to say goodbye.

Speaker 16 I am

Speaker 16 not

Speaker 16 able to live without my son,

Speaker 16 and I'm not able

Speaker 16 to go on anymore.

Speaker 16 I'm sorry to everyone I've hurt. Goodbye.

Speaker 2 But why?

Speaker 2 What drove that man?

Speaker 18 How has it informed your life these past ten years?

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 10 it became an awfully central piece of my life for a long time.

Speaker 2 A whole family destroyed. Many more lives shattered.
How do you make sense of something like that?

Speaker 2 Well, Josh's sister, Jennifer, told us she thinks she knows.

Speaker 10 My family has a pattern. in it.

Speaker 2 A pattern. The Powell family's final, dark secret.

Speaker 35 Coming up.

Speaker 9 This thing hit you really hard.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it did.

Speaker 4 Susan Powell's enduring mystery.

Speaker 12 Do you think you'll ever find her?

Speaker 7 I hate that question, to be honest with you, Keith.

Speaker 2 Jennifer Graves is her married name, but she was born Jennifer Powell. She's had a lot of time to reflect on that legacy.

Speaker 12 It was a tough family to grow up in.

Speaker 10 Yeah,

Speaker 15 it was a little bit rough.

Speaker 2 Steve Powell and his wife had five children. Jennifer was the eldest.
Josh was second. As Jennifer grew up, she began to see her father's many deceptions, and she gradually withdrew from him.

Speaker 2 and watched in some dismay, she said, as his hold on her younger siblings appeared to grow.

Speaker 10 My dad is, he was really good at

Speaker 10 being charismatic and

Speaker 10 weaving those lies into something that my siblings found believable.

Speaker 24 Sure.

Speaker 25 Were all your siblings so much under your father's influence?

Speaker 10 Quite a bit, yeah. It was pretty strong on all of them.

Speaker 2 He could reel them all back in whenever he had to, except for you.

Speaker 15 Well, yeah.

Speaker 10 So I wasn't taking the bait.

Speaker 2 Jennifer is the one member of the Powell family to say openly she thinks Josh killed Susan and Steve may have helped instigate it.

Speaker 10 My

Speaker 10 brother Josh would frequently talk to my dad on the phone. He would call multiple times a week and talk to him for

Speaker 10 sometimes multiple hours at a time. And every time he would become more agitated and mean to Susan and she complained about this on many occasions.

Speaker 2 It was more than just Josh's meanness, said Jennifer. And she revealed to us a family secret which may explain quite a lot.

Speaker 10 My family has a pattern in it. There has been generational abuse that has not just begun with Josh.
It didn't just begin with my father.

Speaker 10 It began before that, perhaps before I even am aware of it.

Speaker 2 It was seared into memory, she said, starting all the way back with her grandparents.

Speaker 10 They played this game they called the kidnapping game. They tried to keep the kids away from the other parent for as long as they could, and then

Speaker 10 the other one would find the children eventually and kidnap them again and go hide.

Speaker 2 Her father, Steve's version of the kidnapping game?

Speaker 10 Instead of playing a physical kidnapping game, he played a mental kidnapping game.

Speaker 10 He twisted everything. He tried to turn the kids against their mother and really created a strong division in the family.

Speaker 2 So when Josh was under suspicion and felt the walls closing in.

Speaker 10 What does he do? He turns to murder, the ultimate form of kidnapping.

Speaker 2 During the investigation, Detective Maxwell had become aware of the generations of abuse that plagued the Powells. But Josh's last desperate act left him reeling.

Speaker 7 I never would have ever thought that Josh would have done what he did with those boys. But if I can't have them, but if I can't have them, nobody's going to have them.

Speaker 2 A year after the fire, Josh's brother Michael also committed suicide. Detectives had long suspected he helped Josh cover his tracks and maybe helped get rid of Susan's body.

Speaker 2 In 2018, Steve Powell died too, a heart attack.

Speaker 9 He's dead, the kids are dead, Steve's dead, Michael's dead.

Speaker 7 Yeah. My God, there's no closure.

Speaker 2 A month after Josh murdered his boys, Maxwell went back to college to get a degree in psychology.

Speaker 7 I went to school so that

Speaker 7 it would help me, I think, to kind of understand.

Speaker 7 people of his caliber and how they can do something so awful and not express an ounce of emotion.

Speaker 9 This thing hit you really hard.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah, it did. It wasn't until beginning of 2019 that I really fully dealt with

Speaker 7 all the trauma that came from that case.

Speaker 2 This December marks the 10th anniversary of Susan's disappearance. Officially, it remains an open investigation.

Speaker 19 And for all the time that's passed, public interest has not waned.

Speaker 3 This is Cold, episode one.

Speaker 1 I'm Dave Cawley.

Speaker 2 Dave Cawley, an investigative reporter for KSL News Radio, an NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City, recently created Cold,

Speaker 2 an 18-episode podcast on Susan's case and the new evidence he's helped uncover over the years.

Speaker 25 It's almost a foregone conclusion that Josh killed his wife Susan in December of 2009.

Speaker 2 Cold has been downloaded 25 million times in its first 10 months.

Speaker 2 In May of this year, volunteers again walked the West Desert and, like everyone before them, came up empty.

Speaker 12 Do you think you'll ever find her body?

Speaker 8 Whoever is looking for it?

Speaker 7 I would hope, and I hate that question, to be honest with you, Keith, because the way he carried himself throughout this investigation, I think speaks volumes that he's confident that she would never be found.

Speaker 2 The Coxes are suing the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services for failing to protect the boys from their father. The DSHS denies the allegations.

Speaker 2 The trial is set to start early next year.

Speaker 2 And they're thinking about other women now. Chuck and his wife travel the country to tell about their Susan, her life, her disappearance,

Speaker 2 and its meaning.

Speaker 25 What has she come to represent?

Speaker 8 I guess Susan's come to represent what happens when you stay too long,

Speaker 8 when you don't get out and get some help.

Speaker 34 Still think about her every day?

Speaker 8 Well, definitely.

Speaker 8 I know she'll be very happy that we have not given up looking for her, but also that we are turning this mess that Josh Powell created into something positive for other people.

Speaker 5 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8th Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 3 Good night.

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