If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children (28 page)

—FROM A PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION BY
DR. JAMES MANLEY, DECEMBER 9, 2011

It was pure Josh, and would almost be humorous if it weren’t an alarming sign of how irrational he’d become. Charlie and Braden’s counselor hadn’t been “warned” about Josh, so when she met with him she was unprepared. He hijacked their meeting, couldn’t stay on topic, spoke rapidly, and went on “verbal rants” about the Cox family and the media. At one point, the counselor suggested an appropriate way for Josh to explain to the boys where “Grandpa Steve” had gone. She said that, for example, he could tell them “Grandpa made some bad choices and will be gone for a while as a consequence.”

Instead, as soon as the boys joined the session, Josh told them that the “Mormon police” had made up bad information about their grandpa and put him in jail and that they were trying to do the same thing to him.

To try to get Charlie and Braden returned to his care, Josh had to submit to an in-depth psychological exam. Dr. James Manley, a psychologist from Tacoma, was chosen by the state to do the evaluation.

Child Protective Services contributed background information on Josh—including the story about the counselor’s meeting with him—and Steve and Terri Powell’s divorce records, which Chuck had made available. Josh’s mother wrote a letter on his behalf; it said, in part:

In my experience, Josh is a loving and very engaged father in the care of his sons, and Charlie and Braden are happy, well-adjusted and vibrant children, even though they miss their mother.

Josh’s mother, now defender, seemed not to remember her ex-husband’s pornography hobby and how she had feared it would affect her children. Josh’s sister, Jennifer Graves, was so angered at her mother’s support of Josh—whom Jennifer was convinced had killed Susan—that Terri was asked to leave the Graves home in West Jordan, where she lived with the couple and their five children.

In the end, Dr. Manley diagnosed Josh with adjustment disorder with anxiety, and narcissistic personality disorder.

Sometimes referred to as “situational depression,” adjustment disorders are common. It’s the stress people feel when they go through a divorce, lose a job, experience a death in the family, or face other life changes. Normally, people adapt after a few months.

People with narcissistic personality disorder are excessively preoccupied with personal issues, including power, and feel that they are superior to others. People who knew Josh weren’t surprised by that; they had seen displays of his know-it-all attitude and control issues for years. The evaluation took two months, but Josh was able to have supervised visits with his sons from the beginning. It was clear to Dr. Manley and CPS social workers that Josh was so preoccupied and fixated on the Coxes—“the most dangerous people on the planet”—that he was completely unaware of how his behavior was detrimental to his sons. He simply could not shut up, even when his parenting skills were being assessed.

During one early visit with the boys, Josh kept telling them how much he missed them, thought about them, and was fighting for them—and then he badgered them with questions.

“Do you remember how much fun we have?” he asked.

The boys stared up at him, taking in every word.

“Make sure you tell people how much fun we have every weekend.”

A social worker had to interrupt Josh when his rants turned to the Coxes—“those people who want to take you away from me.”

Chuck Cox is bad.

The psychological exam didn’t pick up on Josh’s repeated lies. With a straight face, he told Manley that he was not aware of his father’s ongoing attraction to Susan. He denied sexually abusing Alina and attempting suicide when he was a teenager. At first, he said he had no arrest record—then finally, after some prodding, he admitted that he had spent five days in juvenile detention for theft. He said he didn’t know about his father’s trove of pornography.

Josh even kept his cool when Dr. Manley said he had learned that five or six images of computer-generated incestuous child porn had been found on Josh’s computer in 2009. Josh said it was no big deal. Josh also said there had been no problems in his marriage. He claimed Susan had been suicidal and that he didn’t know what happened to her.

He stuck by his story of December 6–7, 2009, the late-night camping trip and the return home to find Susan missing. He added that Susan “had been okay” with the trip.

In the psychiatrist’s own words, Josh was defensive, evasive, and glossed over things. It was obvious that Charlie and Braden were beginning to mimic what they heard their father say. The boys had said that their mother “was hiding from her parents because her parents abuse her,” and that “the Mormons are trying to steal them.”

“God is bad. The police are bad, but God is really bad,” Charlie had said.

Josh would talk nonstop about the Coxes, the Mormon church, and the police, yet he would not admit to feeling any stress in his life. He portrayed himself in a positive light in his answers to all the questions, so much so that it threw off some of the testing results. On the measure that determines the potential of child abuse, the “abuse scales” were not elevated because he denied stress, unhappiness, depression, or any other problems.

The conclusion? There were no concerns that he might abuse his children.

Dr. Manley’s report indicated that Josh had “excellent parenting and interpersonal skills,” although he needed to learn to “consistently place his children’s need for an emotionally safe and stable environment ahead of his own [needs].”

He also suggested that Josh seek therapy in order to have a place to vent other than to his children. Josh could continue his weekly visits with his sons—plus he was about to get a second supervised visit each week. State policy mandates that visitations be held in the least restrictive setting, with a caseworker present. Since Charlie and Braden couldn’t go near Steve’s house—even with Steve in jail—Josh had rented a house nearby. His visitations could be held there.

DSHS never told the police in Pierce County or in Utah that the visits were being moved to Josh’s house. And, for their part, the West Valley City police were still silent about the fact that it was Susan’s blood that they’d recovered from her house, and that she had left a note saying she was afraid her husband might kill her.

Whether it was policy or safeguarding their own turf, the agencies responsible for finding Susan and protecting her children didn’t say much to each other.

41

Charlie, I sure miss you. I was thinking of ways to stay close to you boys. You could tell me in your letters what you want me to bring to our next visit. Perhaps a toy or a certain kind of food. Everything I do is for you. I love you and I’m working hard to see you more. Love, Daddy.

—JOSH TO CHARLIE IN A LETTER, FALL 2011

Josh was in dad mode during a visitation observed by Dr. Manley. He was making lunch and giving Charlie and Braden a tutorial on the merits of cheese at the same time.

“Cheese has protein,” he explained as he unwrapped presliced American cheese from its plastic wrapper and started building sandwiches.

“Protein is a part of every cell in our bodies,” he said. “What other food is protein found in?”

Charlie and Braden, six and four, didn’t know and were more interested in playing with their remote-controlled cars.

“We also find protein in meat, chicken, and fish, like sushi. Also, milk and eggs,” Josh went on. He looked over and it was clear that he’d lost his audience. The boys couldn’t have cared less.

He tried and he tried, but it wasn’t working.

Manley’s psychological evaluation noted that Josh was rigid and overly controlling with the children. In a report, Dr. Manley wrote that in addition to talking to the boys about inappropriate topics, like Mormons and the Coxes, Josh “tends to offer a high degree of structure [to] his and his sons’ interactions. At times, his interaction style seems forced or staged. He seems to be trying too hard. Whether this is Mr. Powell’s baseline parenting style or is due to his present high degree of stress is unclear.”

All visits were supervised by the fifty-nine-year-old Griffin-Hall, who was required to take detailed notes. She noticed right away that this was a man who never relaxed with his sons.

He started many visits by saying, “Charlie and Braden, I have a surprise for you!”

When he made the boys pancakes, he decorated them with faces, eyes and ears.

When a recipe required flour, he went to his supply of 3,000 pounds of wheat—the only tenet of Mormonism he still practiced was food storage—and ground it himself. He explained to his sons that the nutritional value was greater than commercially processed flour because the fiber and oil were left in.

Every visit included an elaborate exercise, proof of his prowess as a teacher, a father.

He demonstrated magnetic force, using a science toy with flashing lights and bells and whistles.

He explained gravity.

He taught the boys the principle of vacuum pressure.

He lectured on the properties of water.

When he forgot the hammers for miniature tool kits he’d organized for each boy, he was distraught. They made do using a wrench to pound the nails with. When the boys lost interest, Josh would say their names loudly and they’d snap back to work—for a few minutes.

Griffin-Hall was impressed with how Josh planned the visitations, which may have been the point. She felt that he was trying to impress her and the court through his interactions with her. That didn’t mean that being with his children was some charade. She thought the young father was sincerely interested in his boys.

And yet, she couldn’t escape her thoughts on what had happened to Josh’s wife.

She was skeptical, but on the “one in a million chance” that he had not killed Susan, Griffin-Hall did the best she could to keep his visits centered in the present and on activities with the boys.

As the weeks passed, she was halfway expecting Josh to be arrested and Chuck and Judy to be given custody. That was, she thought, the best chance those little boys would have of a normal life.

In addition to watching Josh prepare homemade banana cream pie and science experiments, she witnessed a visit when Josh led the boys out to the garage to show them the new camping equipment he had bought.

In many ways, even in the controlled confines of a supervised visit or a psychological exam, Josh was the kind of parent he had always been. The rare occasions he made time for his sons when they were living in Utah often involved a lesson. Without a purpose or a lesson, Josh was awkward. It was as if he needed a script in order to connect with his sons.

While the boys lived with his enemies, the Coxes, Josh wrote Charlie and Braden letters every day. That took some effort, too. Letters had to be sent first to his social worker, Forest Jacobson, who in turn sent them on to the boys. But when Josh asked his sons about the letters, neither Charlie nor Braden seemed to remember getting them. Jacobson tried to explain to Josh that the boys might have read the letters but not paid as much attention to them as he wished. Josh wanted them to write him every day, too, and gave them paper, envelopes, and stamps.

*   *   *

Josh’s rental house was a gray-blue, three-bedroom rambler on 189th Street Court East in Puyallup, just a couple of miles from Steve’s house. Alina and Johnny stayed put at Steve’s. The rental was close to Emma Carson Elementary School, where Charlie was enrolled in first grade. Though there were neighbors all around, a stand of Lombardy poplars and several tall Douglas firs gave the house privacy. The place was sparsely furnished, but visitors said it was tidy. Josh had set up shelves in one of the bedrooms and unpacked toys for his sons—a playroom in unfamiliar surroundings, like most of the places they’d been since their mother’s disappearance.

Between late September 2011, when Charlie and Braden went to live with Susan’s parents, and November, when Josh rented the house, his once-a-week visitations were held at the offices of the Foster Care Resource Network (FCRN), one of hundreds of businesses that contract with the State of Washington to provide social services. Griffin-Hall supervised, both there and later when the visitations were moved to the rental house.

Josh brought toys and projects, and lunch, including sushi—which the boys devoured—and pizza and sandwiches. On the very first visit Josh brought his pet bird. While Griffin-Hall tried to explain that the bird wasn’t allowed in the offices, the boys had a tantrum. She relented but wrote in her report, “The bird will not attend future visits.” She also wrote that at one point Charlie asked Josh “if he was going to get lost, too.”

Like their mother.

On that visit—timed so that no other families would be at FCRN at the time—Josh brought a portable campfire and set it up in an outside play area so they could roast marshmallows and hot dogs. As Josh unpacked the van, Griffin-Hall saw a hatchet in the back of the vehicle.

Griffin-Hall, herself the mother of four boys—now grown—and foster and adoptive mother to ten other children over the years, loved Charlie and Braden and they treated her like a grandmother. She had a hearty laugh and the three of them shared stories and told knock-knock jokes in the car as she drove them from the Coxes to Josh’s rental house and back. Charlie and Braden loved Griffin-Hall’s Prius, and liked to watch the gas and electrical gauges.

“This car’s good for the environment,” Charlie said.

*   *   *

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the boys and Griffin-Hall arrived at the rental house to find that Josh had cooked an entire turkey dinner, with two kinds of pie for dessert. Josh joked that he had been watching Paula Deen and Rachael Ray shows on television.

One of Griffin-Hall’s responsibilities was to supervise Josh and make sure he didn’t talk about certain topics around his sons—especially the Coxes, religion, and the custody case. But Josh couldn’t contain himself. He was so curious about the boys’ Thanksgiving that he couldn’t put into practice a skill Griffin-Hall had been trying to teach him: to stop and take a few deep breaths and reconsider what he was about to say.