Utah police throw in the towel on Susan Powell's murder

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Utah police give up on solving Susan Powell's murder...

Police close Susan Powell case, offer new details
20 May`13 — For the first time, Utah police said Monday they believe Susan Powell's brother-in-law was "heavily involved" in getting rid of her body, even as they announced they couldn't solve the sensational case of a mother's disappearance after a nearly 3 ½-year investigation.

West Valley police said the focus shifted to Michael C. Powell after Josh Powell killed the couple's two boys and himself in a deliberately set house fire 15 months ago. Police announced Monday they were closing the investigation of Susan Powell's disappearance, citing a lack of leads coupled with Michael C. Powell's suicide months ago. They also released the case file, which shows Josh Powell had an affair with a woman he met through a dating service. The file includes other details, and contained emails from Susan Powell's father, Chuck Cox, who expressed hope his daughter might be found in the days after her December 2009 disappearance.

Cox believed Josh Powell poisoned his wife's pancakes before she was taken from the couple's house. "The question is, where did he put her and will we find her before she does die?" Cox wrote in an email to Utah authorities, according to the police file. "One possibility is that she is still alive, but we need to find her before she does die, if the poison was not a fatal dose, she may ... be found." The police file contains tens of thousands of pages of documents, photographs and video, and interview notes and voice mail messages.

In one file, police revealed they interviewed a West Valley City woman who said she made contact with Josh Powell on the dating service Live Links six or seven months before Susan disappeared. The woman, identified only as Kourtney in police files, said she knew Powell by the name John Staley, and didn't know he was married. The woman said Powell gave her $800 over the course of their relationship — for reasons that weren't detailed in police reports — and that she only discerned his real identity after news broke of Susan's disappearance. The woman was interviewed by police in August 2010. Police said they based their suspicion of Michael C. Powell's involvement partly on a car he left at an Oregon junkyard only weeks after Susan Powell disappeared. The junkyard is about 200 miles from a forest outside Salem, Ore., where authorities searched last week, looking for a body. The search turned up nothing, and police said they ran out of clues.

Deputy West Valley Police Chief Mike Powell — no relation — said authorities believe Josh Powell killed his wife, and that his brother later got involved in a cover-up. Michael C. Powell denied any wrongdoing while under investigation. It wasn't until last August that Utah police discovered Michael Powell's Ford Taurus at the junkyard outside Pendleton, Ore. DNA recovered from the upholstery inside the car's trunk proved inconclusive, they said. The Powell brothers used sophisticated computer encryption to communicate, according to West Valley City Deputy Chief Phil Quinlan. Investigators have been unable to decipher that encrypted communication, he said. Investigators said they focused on the brother last year, when Josh Powell changed his insurance policy to list Michael Powell as a primary beneficiary, rather than his wife or children.

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