Missing American woman (born 1981)
Susan Marie Powell (née Cox; born October 16, 1981) is an American missing person from West Valley City, Utah, whose disappearance and suspected murder in December 2009 garnered national media attention. Her husband, Joshua Powell, was named by law enforcement a person of interest in her disappearance but was never charged. Joshua killed himself and the couple's two young sons in February 2012 after custody of the boys had been given to Susan's parents.
West Valley City police closed their active investigation into Susan's disappearance in May 2013, stating their belief that Joshua killed Susan and that his brother, Michael (who died by suicide in February 2013), aided him in concealing her body. Since then, there have been repeated attempts to have Susan legally declared dead.
Background.
Joshua Powell was born on January 20, 1976, to Steven and Terrica Powell in Puyallup, Washington; he had two brothers, Michael and John, and two sisters, Jennifer and Alina. The Powell household was deeply dysfunctional due to Steven's abusive behavior and his disaffection with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). According to divorce filings by Terrica in 1992, Steven shared pornography with his sons and refused to teach or enforce limits on certain behaviors. As a teenager, Joshua allegedly killed gerbils belonging to one of his sisters and threatened his mother with a butcher knife. He also attempted suicide on at least one occasion.
By the late 1990s, Joshua was living in Tacoma as a student at the University of Washington. It was here that he began a relationship with a woman named Catherine Terry Everett, whom he met at a local LDS Church congregation. After the two moved into an apartment together, Joshua exhibited possessive behavior towards Everett. She later recalled he refused to allow her to visit her family by herself and added: "He would have restrictions and limitations on what I could and couldn't do when it came to my family." When Everett visited a friend in Utah without Joshua, she decided not to return to Washington and broke up with him over the phone.
Joshua met Susan Cox, a classmate at his LDS Church Institute of Religion course, during a dinner party at his Tacoma apartment in November 2000. The two began a relationship and married in the Portland Oregon Temple in April 2001. Joshua obtained a bachelor's degree in business and worked for a number of different companies over the subsequent decade. Susan, a trained cosmetologist, took up a job with Wells Fargo Investments after the family relocated to West Valley City, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. The Powells had two sons: Charles, born on January 19, 2005, and Braden, born on January 2, 2007.
For a brief period following their wedding, Joshua and Susan lived with her father-in-law Steven in South Hill, Washington. Steven developed an obsessive infatuation with Susan and followed her around the house with a camcorder, used a small mirror to spy on her while she used the bathroom, stole underwear from her laundry, read her journals and posted love songs online under a pseudonym. In 2003, Steven confessed his amorous feelings to Susan, who rejected him; the encounter was inadvertently captured by Steven's camcorder microphone. The Powells moved out-of-state soon after, partly so Susan could distance herself from Steven.
Susan's journal entries and email correspondence indicated the presence of marital discord. There was tension with Joshua over his refusal to attend church with his family and over his continued contact with Steven despite his father's ongoing advances toward Susan. Susan's friends also pointed to Joshua's "extremely controlling" behavior towards his wife and his extravagant spending habits. Joshua filed for bankruptcy in 2007, declaring over $200,000 in debts. Susan recorded a video in July 2008 surveying property damage she attributed to Joshua, and wrote a secret will that included the statements, "I want it documented that there is extreme turmoil in our marriage" and, "If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one."
Disappearance.
On the morning of December 6, 2009, Susan, Charles and Braden attended church. A neighbor visited them at home that afternoon, leaving at about 5:00 p.m. This was the last time Susan was seen by someone from outside the Powell household.
At first, relatives reported the entire Powell family missing on December 7. Joshua's mother, Terrica, and his estranged sister, Jennifer Graves, went looking for them at their house shortly after being informed that the children had not been dropped off at daycare that morning. They called police after failing to make contact with Joshua or Susan. Police broke into the house, fearing the family were victims of carbon monoxide poisoning. They found no one inside, but noticed two box fans blowing at a wet spot on the couch. Susan did not show up at her job on December 7; her purse, wallet and identification were all found inside the house. Her cell phone was later found in the family's only vehicle, a Chrysler Town &amp; Country minivan, that Joshua had been using.
Later that day, at about 5:00 p.m., Joshua returned home with the two boys and was taken to the police station for questioning. He claimed he had left Susan sleeping at home shortly after midnight on December 7 and had taken his sons on a camping trip to the Pony Express Trail in western Utah. Police visited that area on December 10, but found no evidence of the campsite that Joshua had described. They also found it suspicious that Joshua would take his young boys out camping in blizzard conditions after midnight when they were scheduled to go to daycare just hours later. Joshua had additionally not told his boss that he would not be coming into work that day, and explained to police it was because he had thought it was Sunday rather than Monday.
After a second round of police interrogation on the evening of December 8, Joshua rented a car at Salt Lake City International Airport. His whereabouts after leaving the airport remain unknown. Around eighteen hours later, at about 4:00pm on December 9, he called his mother from a new phone whilst on Interstate 84 in Tremonton driving south towards Salt Lake City. He would later tell Jennifer Graves that he had been driving laps around the city, getting on and off freeways at random. Police would later discover that Joshua had placed an additional 807 miles on the odometer of his rental car. 
Investigation.
Upon searching the Powell residence on December 9, investigators found traces of Susan's blood on the floor, life insurance policies on Susan for US$ and a handwritten letter from Susan expressing fear for her life. DNA test results, released in 2013, matched one blood sample with Susan, while another sample was determined to have come from an "unknown male contributor."
In August 2012, West Valley City police released documents showing Joshua took actions that were regarded as highly suspicious following Susan's disappearance. He liquidated his wife's retirement accounts, cancelled her regularly scheduled chiropractic sessions and withdrew his children from daycare. He had also previously spoken to coworkers about how to hide a body in an abandoned mineshaft in the western Utah desert. 
Police interviewed the Powells' elder son, Charlie, who confirmed that the camping trip Joshua described took place; however, unlike his father, he stated that Susan had gone with them and did not return. Weeks after her disappearance, a teacher reported Charlie had claimed that his mother was dead. Furthermore, Susan's parents, Chuck and Judy Cox, claimed that while at daycare several months after the disappearance, Braden drew a picture of a van with three people in it and told carers: "Mommy was in the trunk."
Investigators informed the media that they planned to question Joshua again, and subpoenaed all footage and interviews (aired and unaired) of Joshua from local television stations. On December 14, Joshua retained an attorney in connection with the investigation, and police stated that he had grown increasingly uncooperative. A few days later, Joshua took his sons to Puyallup to stay with his father for the holidays. By December 24, Joshua was considered a person of interest by investigators. On January 6, 2010, Joshua returned with his brother Michael to pack the family's belongings, indicating he was moving permanently to Puyallup.
Developments in 2010–2012.
In Puyallup, Joshua occupied a home with his two sons, his father Steven, his brothers Michael and Jonathan and his sister Alina. Joshua indicated that he would rent out his house in Utah. It was reported that he returned to Puyallup after he had lost his job in West Valley City.
Soon afterwards, the website SusanPowell.org was launched. Described as "the official website of Susan Powell," the site's anonymous entries defended Joshua as the victim of a smear campaign by Susan's family, his estranged sister Jennifer and the LDS Church. Additional posts also speculated that Susan's disappearance was connected to that of Steven Koecher, a former journalist who had vanished in Nevada the same week as Susan, and that the two had run off to Brazil together. Joshua and Steven were widely believed to have written these posts. In late 2010, both men claimed that Susan had abandoned her family due to mental illness and that she had left with another man. Susan's family rejected these claims as being "unsupported" by any evidence.
Investigators' scrutiny extended to Steven upon learning from a family friend that he had been obsessed with his son's wife. Computer images seized from his house in 2010 turned up 4,500 images of Susan taken without her knowledge, including close-ups of specific body parts. Police also turned their attention to Michael after learning that he had sold his broken-down Ford Taurus to a wrecking yard in Pendleton, Oregon, shortly after Susan's disappearance, and had later ordered satellite images of the lot. When police found the car, a cadaver dog indicated that decomposing human remains had been in the trunk. DNA tests on the car proved inconclusive.
On September 14, 2011, Utah authorities discovered a possible gravesite while searching Topaz Mountain, a desert area near Nephi, that Joshua had visited often as a campsite. There were signs of recent soil disturbance and shoveling, but after digging a few feet down, police were unable to find any remains in spite of careful sifting of the soil. Federal anthropologists also ruled out the possibility of the site being an ancient burial ground. Police continued to examine the site for a time but offered no explanation as to why they previously announced the finding of remains when none had actually been confirmed. Authorities said they were following a scent detected by their sniffer dogs.
Relations between and within the Powell and Cox families became increasingly hostile. After the police raided their home in 2011, both Joshua and Steven spoke to major news outlets regarding journals that Susan had allegedly written about the relationship between Steven and herself. Steven claimed that he and Susan had been falling in love prior to her disappearance, and he cited the content of the journals (written when Susan was a teenager) as evidence to support his theory that she was mentally unstable and could have run away with another man. A judge issued a permanent injunction forbidding Joshua and Steven from publishing any material from Susan's journals, ordering the pair to either return or destroy any journals already published.
On September 22, Steven was arrested on charges of voyeurism and child pornography after police found evidence that he had secretly videotaped young girls and numerous women, including Susan. John Long, assistant attorney general for Washington State, said that Joshua was a "subject" in this investigation. A friend of Steven claimed that he was preoccupied with pornography and "was hung up on [Susan] sexually." Chuck Cox, Susan's father, filed for custody of her children the day after Steven was arrested. A Washington court eventually granted Cox temporary custody of the boys, ruling that Joshua would have to move out of Steven's residence if he wanted to regain custody. Joshua rented a house in South Hill, but authorities later alleged that he had never actually moved into there, merely making it appear as if he had satisfied the court's instructions while continuing to reside at Steven's residence.
In late September 2011, Jennifer Graves stated her belief that her brother Joshua was "responsible for his