Missing: Susan Powell

hello everybody and welcome back to my channel today's video and the following videos this will probably be a two or three part series these videos will be about to the disappearance of Susan Powell but this is not a simple disappearance this case has so many twists and turns so many strange things and strange characters it's really going to surprise you before we get started on our video I want to talk to you really quickly about our sponsor for today's video a sponsor that I think you guys are gonna love it definitely fits in with what I think we hear in this community and on this channel are interested in and it's magellan TV Magellan TV is a new type of documentary streaming a membership and I know you guys love it when I say documentary I guess I say it in a different way than normal but that's just the way I say it but Magellan TV is awesome it has movies as well as series and they add new programs every week you can watch it anytime anywhere on your TV your streaming device like 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eight cents but today the first 100 visitors to go to Magellan tv.com slash Stephanie Harlow will get a one-month free membership trial I watched a movie and Magellan TV yesterday which actually goes pretty much hand-in-hand with the topic that we're covering today and the movie was called killer in the family there's tons of stuff about Charles Manson on there which I love I was watching something called Manson 40 years later and then there's also another series which I've become addicted to it's called crimes that made history and each episode covers a different case like Jack the Ripper or Princess Diana so if you guys are interested all the information that you need is in the description box you can check it out see if it's something you'd be interested in and try it if you want let's get right into the video so the Susan Powell case is a case that I had heard of you know vaguely briefly here and there I knew the framework for what happened but I never really knew all the details and I can tell you personally once you get into all the details this is a case you don't want to look away from some of the resources I used to research this case was the cult podcast this podcast takes a deep dive into the Susan Powell case if you are interested in finding out more because there's no possible way I could fit everything and even into three videos then you should definitely go and check that podcast out it's a very big bowl and the guy who does it is incredibly good at getting all his details and putting them together into a very well-organized and easy-to-understand format additionally I went through news programs and newspapers from that time and following the time it's kind of pieced together things there and I did have a case file which had quite a bit of information in it as well so that's pretty much what I used for this case as well as some other internet resources but I would say that 95% of the quotes or the journal entries that I was able to use for this video came from the cold podcast on February 5th 2012 a quiet neighborhood in Washington State was stunned when one of their neighbors a man named Josh Powell set his house on fire killing himself and his two young sons who were still inside this came three years after the disappearance of his wife and the boy's mother Susan Powell what could cause a man to do such a horrible thing not only to himself but to his two young sons as always to under and the end we have to go back to the beginning in many ways a Susan Powell story is one that many can relate to in many ways it's a story of finding yourself in a marriage that was different than the one you thought you were in the constant struggles in a relationship of finances opposing beliefs children in-laws and feeling neglected by the one person you want attention from more than anyone else in the world it's a story that transcends language culture and religion it's an entirely human story Josh Powell was born on January twentieth 1976 he was the second of five siblings and he lived with his parents Steve and Terry Powell in Spokane Washington when Josh was born both of his parents were active and practicing Mormons but by the time josh was 8 years old and his father Steve baptized him into the Church of Jesus Christ latter-day saints Josh's father had denounced all forms of religion a fact he kept secret from his wife Terry who was a devout Mormon Josh attended Franklin Elementary School and it was clear from a very young age that he was quite intelligent when he was in fourth grade he was able to calculate the volume of the school's playgrounds sandbox on his own but the time he was in fifth grade he could do long division which hadn't been taught yet but Josh seemed more of a hands-on learner he was able to learn and teach himself more complicated concepts as long as it was something that he was interested in but as far as a standard and traditional academic structure where he had to passively sit in a classroom and learn things that were being taught to him possibly things that weren't as interesting to him he wasn't the best the year he was in fifth grade a break began in his parents marriage his mother when she was 8 months pregnant with her youngest daughter she found a journal that her husband Steve had hidden from her the contents of this journal revealed a secret two-year up session that Steve it had for another man's wife he wrote in great detail about the fantasies he had had about this woman and when his wife confronted him with it he seemed unapologetic he said that if this woman's husband or two died he would be more than willing to take her as a plural wife and raise her children as his own now plural marriages at this point were no longer being practiced by the LDS Church and besides that fact Steve Powell was not a Mormon he was not practicing any religion he'd given that up years ago Terry who was about to give birth was not happy with this response in fact it scared her she thought that Steve might go so far as to make sure something happened to this other woman's husband to ensure that he could live out his fantasies in real life even though Steve was no longer a practicing Mormon he still went to church with his family every Sunday in the beginning but behind the scenes he was telling his three sons Josh John and Michael that Mormons were bad he said that the Mormon religion was a farce it was false and it was dangerous he also told them from a very young age that humans were just animals therefore they should be allowed to have sex with whoever they wanted whenever they wanted this went against everything that Terry was trying to raise her children to believe according to the Mormon faith sexual desire should only be fulfilled through heterosexual marriages with the dual purpose of creating life and reinforcing and strengthening the couple's bond sex outside of marriage was banned by the Mormon Church and this included premarital sex Steve also kept pornography inside of the home which was also explicitly a forbidden by the LDS Church and more disturbing than anything he wrote in his journal that he was feeling attracted to their oldest daughter Jennifer he wrote quote I remember many times sitting at the breakfast bar in her home when she would come into the kitchen in the morning dressed in a t-shirt and panties that would drive me nuts we went on a trip one time just the two of us and she wandered around in our hotel room and nothing but a bra and panties Jennifer along with the other children who were being raised as Mormons but Steve wanted to put a stop to that for his own selfish reasons I assume when Jennifer was a teenager he told her that the Book of Mormon wasn't real his wife found out about that and she was livid ended up being a breaking point for her and she moved out for a time but she did return Josh to would find his father's pressing influence affecting his choices and the way that he lived his life he loved being a boy scout and going on camping trips with his troop but since the troop was funded and run by the LDS Church Steve hated it he shamed Josh made fun of him in teased him for his interests and eventually after being made to feel stupid for liking Boy Scouts Josh just stopped going he turned instead to darker hobbies when he was 13 he chased his mother around with a knife he also killed his little sister Alina's gerbils and then made her touch their blood she was four at the time and teri claims she once walked in on her son's her two oldest sons Josh and John examining Alina the year after when Josh was 14 he attempted to hang himself when his mother saw the rope burn on his neck she insisted that he get help and go to counseling so right off the bat we can clearly see the Steve Powell was a troubled and disturbed individual and his son Josh possibly his other sons were following right along in his footsteps when teri moved back home she and Steve tried to go to counseling in order to make the marriage work divorce in the LDS Church is a tricky thing a marriage performed in an LDS temple is a celestial marriage meaning it's eternal it doesn't just last while you're here on earth when you get married in the LDS temple it's assumed that you are tied to this person for all of eternity and you'll be together in life and after in the early days when plural marriage was still being practiced in the LDS Church this meant that a man could marry as many women as he wanted and they would all be bound together in the celestial kingdom can you imagine now both man and women may enter a celestial marriage with only one partner at a time but if a man's wife dies he can enter into a celestial marriage with another woman and he will be considered sealed to both his deceased wife and his current wife in the celestial Cain they will all live together so it's a very serious commitment to Mormons to get married because you will theoretically be with this person forever for an eternity despite her husband's shortcomings and progressively outrageous behavior Terry really did want this marriage to work she was doing everything she could to raise her children in the faith that she truly believed in while Steve Powell living under the same roof was doing everything that he could to damage the work she was doing he even began writing for anti LDS papers and speaking out publicly against the church there's a couple themes that will constantly reveal themselves as we find out more and more about Josh Powell and these themes for the most part remain consistent throughout his life one of these was his constant desire to connect with somebody of the opposite sex and his constant frustration that he couldn't but it wasn't for lack of trying Josh had incredibly high self esteem and he had no problem approaching girls they just never seemed to be interested in him they only wanted to be friends he would then continue pursuing them to the point where it would become inappropriate when he was 16 he met a girl named Sarah who was a few years older than him he was romantically interested in her but she simply saw him as a church friend and a younger brother of sorts after he'd made several advances towards her she let him know that she was about to go off to college and she had no interest in starting a relationship she told him that she would just like to be friends and he said okay but one day he kissed her out of the blue Josh would constantly be friends owned by these girls but even after clear boundaries were set by them he would ignore them and oftentimes he would just plow right through them I suspect to Josh Powell the boundaries that they set didn't even exist to him he seemed like the kind of guy who if he heard the word no he would think you'd said try harder and we will soon see that he gets this from his father another theme and pattern that will emerge in the life of Josh Powell is his inability to succeed in the work force he had a hard time keeping a job and he was never able to really decide and settle on one that he wanted to do when he was still in high school he got a job at the local car wash but when money went missing out of a car during his shift he was fired around this time while josh is dealing with being rejected by Sarah and then fired by the carwash Steve Powell has a conversation with his son while he's driving him to school I guess that Steve thought this would be a good time to break it to Josh that he and his mother were getting a divorce and this appears to have been very traumatic for 16 year old Josh it was all he could think about at school during the day he was very distracted he kept wondering why his mother would do something like this and then when he got home there was a kind of intervention set up in his living room his mother was there her brothers his uncles were there and the bishop from their church and pretty much she told him mostly what Steve had already told him that they were getting a divorce she was going to be staying in a house and he was welcome to continue living there but there was gonna be rules he'd have to follow now and Josh had never had a rules before these rules were pretty simple and straightforward no swearing or crude talk no r-rated movies and curfews at 11:00 p.m. Terry presented her son with a paper that listed these rules and at the bottom it said if you break any of these rules mom reserves the right to throw you out and Josh was expected to sign it contractually stating that he saw and understood what she was saying and what she expected of him but he was angry and he lashed out he blamed his mother for the divorce and he told her he wasn't going to be following her rules that night he and his brother decided to go to a party which Terry was fine with but as they were leaving she said just make sure you're home by 11:00 or the door is probably gonna be locked Josh had no plans of being home by 11:00 and I don't think he took her seriously because later that evening he called her and he was like is that or really gonna be locked if we don't come home by 11:00 and she was like I don't know try it out and see what happens which made him angry all over again he said I'm not coming home and he hung up and he didn't go home that night and he didn't go home the next night either basically hid out and stayed with a friend his father tracked him down and extended and offered to him that he couldn't refuse Steve said that he he was getting his own apartment and that his brother John would be living with him and would Josh like to live there as well Joshy dead I asked myself while going through this case was this the point where Josh started resenting women and needing to have control over them he already blamed her for the divorce he didn't like her taking a charge of her own life and her own household or setting rules for those who would be living in her household this anger and resentment also shows itself in a letter he wrote to his old friend Sarah who had gone off to college the one he tried to kiss and she'd friendzone him she was telling him in the letter how different college was from high school and for some reason Josh Powell took this very personally as an insult he wrote back to her I never said anything before when you offended me I assumed it would stop it will stop if you have to keep saying other people are better than me then don't say it to someone else sorry if I seem like a jerk I'm just mad I'm tired of you patronizing me I'm better than most of the people I know I'm not being conceited either it's just a fact it's about time you realize it such a venomous and self-righteous response to what seemed to be an innocent letter showed just how highly Josh thought of himself and how anyone that didn't share this lofty opinion of himself could kick rocks his unwarranted aggression towards this girl who he had expressed romantic interest in before his overinflated ego his defensive nough swell with a role model a male role model like Steve Powell who could really be surprised his parents divorce was not amicable it became very ugly very quickly Steve told the courts that his wife was a religious freak a zealot even in a cultist his two sons that were living with him Josh and John signed a declarations against their mother after being coached on what to say by their father in Josh's declaration he said we seem to do a lot of arguing over religion and where and when we have to go to church and what we have to believe I feel that it is a lot of scare tactics and brainwashing and I think the younger kids should be protected from that Jennifer who was not under her father's spell and was the only other child besides Josh and Jan who was old enough to understand what was happening she wasn't having it she told the courts that it wasn't her mother that the kids needed to be protected from it was her father and her brothers she told the story of a day when her father and her brothers had come over the house her mother Terry had some legal paperwork in her hand and Steve Powell tried to grab the papers out of her hand when Terry resisted he slapped her when Jennifer grabbed the phone to try and call the police Steve yelled at her to put the phone down she did put the phone down but she also grabbed up the papers that her parents had been fighting over and she ran outside with the intention to get into her car and lock the doors she didn't make it to the car however because once she got out into the front yard she was tackled by Josh he tackled her to the ground and then he held her so she couldn't move and the two began to rustle and roll around in the grass for these papers Steve Powell came to the door told them to both get inside he knew that they were doing this in full view of the neighborhood and even though he wasn't a good guy he didn't want everybody to know it he didn't want everybody to know what was happening behind closed doors Steve still had access to the home even though he wasn't living there and he was involved in a very hostile divorce he told the judge that he had an office there and he needed to be able to come and go as he pleased so that he could work from that office or retrieve things from that office and for some reason the judge thought that this would be a perfectly acceptable situation but of course Steve Powell didn't restrain his activities to his home office he roved around the house looking for things that he could use to incriminate Terry in the divorce or things that she was planning to use against him there was times that he even accessed her bedroom so she had to put a deadbolt on it and when she did put a deadbolt on it he tried to cut it off he also took things out of the house that he had no right to take one day he was trying to leave the house with a chair when Jennifer tried to stop him he grabbed her hair and pulled so hard that a couple strands of her hair were left in his hand after this the court did take note terry was granted custody of the two younger children Michael and aleena but Steve was granted visitation he had no sense for respect or boundaries he would show up to Michael in Elena's school when he wasn't expected and wasn't supposed to be there and he would take them out of the school for lunch on days that he was allowed to have them he would keep them for several days after he was supposed to return them I think this was his attempt to regain control over a wife that he thought he'd lost control of additionally I think that it was a sign to Terry that he could take the kids whenever and she wouldn't be able to find him Jennifer spoke of a game that her grandparents Steve's parents had played with their own children during their own divorce the game consisted of one or the other taking the kids and hiding them to see how long it took for the other parent to find them they called this game the kidnap game which sounds like a whole lot of fun Terry consistently lived in fear that one day her estranged husband would take Michael and Alina and never come back not only did Michael and Alina become pawns in this game that Steve Powell was playing with his wife but Steve Josh and John also made attempts to turn the two youngest children against their mother telling them that Terry was the reason they couldn't all be together Terry was the reason that they couldn't live happily ever after and they couldn't see their dad as much anymore Jennifer said that although her father never made an attempt to kidnap those kids in a way he did kidnap them he kidnapped them mentally he had a way of twisting facts to make it seem as if Terry their mother was the evil one and the bad one and the one whose fault all of this was and I feel so bad for Michael and Alina at this time because a man who would use his own children or hurt his own children in order to hurt his wife is an evil man I don't care what else he did before or after I don't care if he's the nicest guy in the world if he ever does that to me you're evil in his journal at this time Josh referred to his mother as a try your seeker who wanted to bleed a Steve Powell for all he had he also called his sister Jennifer a witch and in a letter to a friend he said I would kind of like my mom to be dead during his junior year Josh struggled in school and his grades showed it he was distracted and in a way I think he was torn he was obviously on his father's team but his mother said there would be times where she'd see a glimmer of her son the son as she knew he would seem to disapprove of what John and Steve were saying or doing but that glimmer of hope would pass as soon as it came when Josh was a senior in high school Steve moved to pulip Washington about a four and a half hour drive from his old home changing schools a few months before graduation didn't help Josh's grades or feelings about school in general he didn't make many friends but he quickly attached himself to a girl named Mary Cox from his high school once again this girl was not interested in being his girlfriend either than the pattern with Josh and women continued on for someone who is constantly striking out Josh seemed to think he had a good handle on what marriage was and what made it successful when his sister Jennifer got married to her husband Kirk graves in 1994 he attended the wedding afterwards he wrote in his journal if I were to place a wager on the outcome of their marriage I would have to bat against longevity who knows maybe they'll beat the odds maybe it was because Jennifer and Kirk had only been dating six months before they got married maybe Josh was secretly jealous that his sister had found love and he couldn't even find a date or maybe he was bitter because his father had not been invited to the wedding he managed to graduate from high school despite his academic troubles and he started working at a cabinet shop in Kent he also tried to start his own woodworking business called Powell's custom furniture he ran and operated this business out of a storage unit needless to say it wasn't successful Steve meanwhile was trying to do everything in his power to make Teri's life as miserable as possible even from afar he refused to pay child support and he continually called a CPS her to report her for neglect the fall after Josh graduated he enrolled at Pierce College Josh purchased a motorcycle and he took to wearing a black leather jacket in fact his day-to-day look was very James Dean asked he wore his black leather jacket a white tee blue jeans and sneakers every day the motorcycle was his only means of transportation from home to school and work but it was also around this time that he began to become disenchanted with his father a bit the environment living with Steve Powell was very hostile and Josh said that Steve was always encouraging his children to argue with each other about religion while at Pierce he was given a couple of joke awards in the spring of 1996 mr. know-it-all and mr. political one of his professors remembered a Josh being very introverted at least in his classes but he remembers exactly where he sat and a girl who always sat next to him his calculus professor remembered Josh being a very active participant in class always reaching out if he needed more help he said he was an overall terrific student the girl who Josh's professor was referring to the one who always had next to him in class may have been Becky Becky was a fellow student he'd met her at one of his classes and he was interested in her and she seemed legitimately to reciprocate his interest but in the end he felt that their values were too different to work he wrote in his journal about Becky and what she liked to do on her downtime how she liked to go dancing he said quote I think dancing is an intimate activity to be shared with a loved one I don't see the point of dancing with strangers she went to bars with her girlfriends and one time while I knew her she went by herself since her friends weren't available I think this is not a ladylike activity I have decided to direct more energy into finding a girl that has similar attitudes on love intimacy time education alcohol and such issues wow so much judgment in so few sentences a lot of things would change about in for Josh in his college years as I stated earlier Josh had started to notice the negative effects of living with his father so when he left Peirce and enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle he decided to live on campus but that wasn't much more of a positive experience for him remember he has certain attitudes on love intimacy education alcohol and other such issues but this was a college dorm that he shared with other young men that didn't necessarily share his views on these issues his roommates threw parties where there was booze and drugs available and Josh often felt pressured by them to partake they got a real kick out of him because he didn't drink and he didn't swear and he didn't have sex and so they would tease him and sometimes even bully him one of the pranks they played on him was telling him that another student a gay student was at one of these parties and that this student was interested in having a relationship with Josh and when Josh recoiled in horror they got a kick out of it he teased him and they were like isn't college about having new experiences isn't that what you're here for finally he requested a room transfer stating a letter to the college throughout my stay in that first apartment I was bombarded with loud noises throughout the night I was the subject of a sick joke that became sexual harassment my personal belongings were stolen by my roommates or their guests and I was a victim of assault and battery the assault and battery claim that he's making there happened when his roommate basically tackled him to the floor I'm not sure if it was aggressive or if they were just playing around but that is what he's talking about here while he was living on campus Josh discovered the internet now he been online before but this was a whole new world he had a high-speed Internet connection he was able to kind of close the door to his room and just spend hours and hours alone surfing the internet he made his first email address while he was here and he had started out at the University of Washington studying architecture but he didn't stick with that for very long by 1997 he had decided that he was going to be an actor so he became involved with the school's drama program and he even got a part in the school's production of little Abner but it wasn't even a speaking role and he was kind of agitated about this he thought that his acting skills were so good he deserved a bigger part so he gave up he just didn't want to be an actor anymore instead of doubling down and perfecting his craft and working hard to get better he gave up Josh thought he was depressed and he didn't know why his inability to succeeded anything his inability to get a girl to go out on a date with him it did not help his increasing feelings of loneliness sadness and depression he wrote in a letter to a friend my dad seems to always get mad at me when he sees me my brother and I concluded that my dad resents me he often says rude things to and about me actually the things he says are not true he perceives them because he wants to I try not to get mad but it's hard sometimes so like I said earlier Josh had a very high self esteem and he didn't ever probably just walking up to a girl and saying hey I like you you're pretty and he did just this with another girl she was part of a college group called Campus Crusaders for Christ and he began to spend time with her and her friends who were all born again Christians it had been awhile since Josh had participated in any religious activities since leaving his mother's home he hadn't really wanted to but now he found a group of people who were all friendly warm and welcoming and that struck a chord in him Josh wrote in his journal an experience that he had at one of these events which is very indicative to how incredibly isolated and lonely he was feeling he said quote many of us were sitting on the floor a cute little black baby boy came up to me and sat on my lap he said I love you I knew he did and in my heart he was the only one who did love me at the time finding a potential place to belong Josh also became born-again but at the end of the school year when Josh had to move back in with his father for the summer this became a point of contention between the two of them Josh had rediscovered faith and Steve was vehemently against any form of religion they got into constant arguments and Josh finally realized that this was probably what his mother went through with Steve what she experienced trying to practice her own beliefs and her own faith in her own home and feeling constant pressure and criticism to not do so so he returned to Spokane to reconnect with his mother and her side of the family throughout learning about Josh Powell his life and experiences and it often struck me how odd it was that someone could seem at times so introspective and self-aware and at other times so completely clueless about the things he was doing and how wrong they were he wrote in his journal around this time I think certain aspects of my character could use some improvements I may be a much easier person to be around with these minor adjustments for instance I say what I think sometimes I need to remember that people don't want to hear some things teri is seeing a change in her son encouraged him to move towards a more positive path she suggested that he start going to some youth activities at the LDS Church he wrote in his journal my mom suggested that I go to family home evening I decided to go and hang out there until I could make some real friends at Eastern Washington University but as I went each week I found my old friends from junior high school they were nice to me and I made some real friends despite the fact that I told them I wasn't at all interested in their church his family at this time noticed this change in him he was calmer more even-keeled more open-minded in the past he'd been so angry with his mother and sister but now it seemed like he wanted to mend fences enrolled in Eastern State Washington University and this is where he met Kathryn who would become his first real girlfriend Kathryn was originally from Utah and she was part of the LDS Church but she moved from Utah to Spokane Washington to live with her aunt in her uncle after graduating from high school and having a rough breakup from a boyfriend when she got there she started going to singles ward which is where she met Josh a singles ward was basically a place that single LDS Church members could go to meet other single church members they were like separate congregations presided over by a separate bishop but only single adults would 10th in 2017 the LDS Church made a decision to phase out single warts altogether John as young the head of the latter-day Saint marriage and matchmaking Department stated the Brethren had unanimously agreed that it was time to stop making our bishops play matchmaker and for the church to officially retract president Brigham Young's menace to society statement so for some context and a quick tidbit of interesting history Brigham Young was the second president of the LDS Church from 1847 until he died in 1877 he was also the founder of Salt Lake City and Brigham Young University is named for him additionally Young was a polygamist with 55 Y's 54 of these women were not Mormons when they met him he converted them so obviously depending on how you look at it and what you believe in he was a controversial character he did make a statement at one point that single man over the age of 27 are a menace to society he pretty much thought that if men didn't get married by that age they were just gonna run rampant and you know cause trouble it's widely debated whether Brigham Young ever actually said this but it has been used for generations by mothers and grandmothers to encourage their male offspring to not drag their feet when finding a wife anyways back to Josh and Catherine she was 19 and he was 22 as usual he was the initiator he introduced himself to Catherine and she thought he was cute but initially he told her that he just wanted to be friends and I almost have to wonder if this was some kind of like reverse psychology thing that Josh Powell was trying out like every time I talked to girls they tell me they want to be friends but if I say that I want to be friends before they can say it maybe they'll feel rejected enough to want to be my girlfriend eventually obviously it did turn into more after they officially started dating Josh went to visit his sister Jennifer in Utah for a few weeks and he talked to Catherine every night on the phone but at one point he got scared and thought that they were moving too fast so he and adepts but then he changed his mind again and he wanted her back and this time catherine was a little hesitant not only because he had flip-flopped so many times and that can get kind of exhausting in a relationship but because not only did he want her back but he wanted her to move in with him and cohabitating and premarital sex and all that jazz that's strictly forbidden by the LDS Church which they were both part of Catherine's uncle disapproved of this decision and her relationship with Josh in general but catherine moved in with Josh anyway he was living back at Steve Powell's house and Catherine moved in with him there and the intention was that while they lived there they could save money and get their own place but while they were living there Josh spent every cent he had he was just buying everything things for their new apartment you know furniture stuff like that for an apartment that they wouldn't even be able to afford because they didn't have any money after he was done buying everything for the inside of this apartment after he was done spending all of his money he spent Catherine's to Catherine and Josh would sometimes work for Steve installing furniture and whenever Catherine got a paycheck Josh would have her sinus over to him and he would deposit it in his own bank account that she didn't have any access to and that would be the last she'd see of the money that she'd earned Catherine also made some observations about josh's of family and his siblings while she lived there she said that his younger sister Alena was a nice girl a good kid John was cold and detached and Michael was like Josh's little shadow whenever Josh was around Michael would follow him and want to do everything he was doing and want to be with him she said that Steve Powell was nice like a father figure to her but she did notice that there was a lot of tension between him and Josh and they were constantly arguing what did stick out to her though was that Josh never seemed to want Catherine to be alone with any of his family members like he didn't want them to talk or be together one on one then a few months they got a small apartment in Seattle Josh went back to the University of Washington and Catherine enrolled in the local community College when Catherine's a student loan check arrived at their apartment Josh took it and deposited it into his own account he did not give her the money and according to her to this day that debt is still there on her credit when there was some structural issues with their apartment Josh thought that he might turn his attention to a career in law he wrote a letter to his aunt saying I am considering becoming a lawyer because I have no respect for that ELQ I would not be afraid to slaughter my opponents I would go after bad people of all sorts especially lawyers and judges so he wants to start his own furniture company he wants to be an architect than an actor and now a lawyer who goes after other lawyers a cannibal lawyer and this is what I'm talking about the way he goes from thing to thing to thing once it becomes something that seems like it might be too hard or that he has to put actual work into he moves on to the next he yo-yos between periods of actual self-awareness and then delusions of grandeur it seems as if the nice young man who had started to get back onto the right path had back slid and was up to his old ways although they were technically living in sin Josh thought it would be a good idea for he and Catherine to join a married congregation so a congregation in the LDS Church for married people only and he told her that if anybody asked if they were married that she should lie and say yes this made her uncomfortable not only was what they were doing living together wrong but now Josh wanted her to put on this facade and put on the show of being his wife when he would tell her privately that he had no interest in ever getting married or even having kids as a girl who had been raised in the LDS Church it was an understanding for her that she would get married and have a family and raise her family in the same faith and now all of a sudden after this guy had convinced her to move in with him and lied to the church he was telling her he didn't even want to get married or have kids they control began in small ways at first Katherine would make friends at church and Josh didn't like it so he'd find a way to get in between the relationships there was a computer in their apartment but it was Josh's and Katherine was only allowed to use the computer when he was there and I mean they're right there sitting next to her looking over her shoulder and what she was writing neither of them had a car they only had Josh's motorcycle which Katherine did not know how to drive so if she wanted to go anywhere she had to go with Josh one day Katherine decided to get acrylic nails put on which she was very proud of she was feeling very pretty and she showed them to her boyfriend and he turned around and told her he hated it he thought they were ugly and stupid and he hated them so she ripped them off or tried to rip them off her own fingers which anybody who's ever had acrylics nails put on knows how difficult this can be especially when they're fresh when she couldn't get all the nails off she had to go back to the salon to have them removed which is a very painful process and as a result of her trying to tear these acrylic nails off and having to go to the salon to basically have them pried apart from her real nails she acquired a vicious infection in one of her fingers as she cried in bed that night from the pain of the infection Josh simply turned his back on her and said you did this to yourself when her uncle died Josh wouldn't let her go to the funeral because he was still salty about her uncle not supporting their relationship initially she began to realize at one point that her boyfriend was exerting much too much control over her life and that if she pushed back even a little bit he would get angry and sullen one night they got into an argument she locked herself in the bathroom and he forced his way in finally in March of 1999 Katherine took a trip back home to Utah to visit her family and with some time and distance and perspective she realized just how toxic and unhealthy the relationship she had with Josh Powell was so she called him and told him she wasn't gonna come back and could he just put her things into storage after Katherine left and he couldn't steal her money anymore Josh got some roommates to help him pay the rent in an apartment near the college campus now these were Church friends people that he knew from church so they were definitely more his speed than his previous college roommates yet he still found a way to find fault with them he did all the grocery shopping he insisted on doing all the grocery shopping but then he would get agitated if somebody eats something that he bought he wrote in his journal they don't seem to appreciate all the things I do for them I owe them nothing it makes me want to unshare and get rid of them I just want them gone so I don't mind being a nuisance to them boy well I be happy when they aren't wearing out my nice things anymore I probably shouldn't get too mean with these guys because it could affect my reputation so something to note about josh is he liked to spend money and most of the time it was money that he didn't have running up debts and credit cards etc he wanted to buy things that he wanted and he liked having nice things but he was very possessive over these things even if these things were located in a shared space he would still get greedy and obsessive and possessive about them he reminds me of the person who like does things for people but then gets angry when those people don't behave in the way he wants them to like I did this for you now I own you or now you have to do what I want you to do or be who I want you to be or you're insulting me and being ungrateful we find Josh again in 1999 while he's living at this off-campus apartment becoming obsessed with yet another girl this girl was Brazilian she spoke Portuguese so he tried to learn the language so that he could communicate with her I guess even though she also did speak English he wasn't shy about showing her just how interested he was in her even though they weren't dating he would show up at her house unannounced and bring things like a plant or flowers he wrote her these lengthy oversharing letters about his mother and fathers vorse about his search for religion about his experiences with past girlfriends it got to the point where he was showing up at her house unannounced so often she had to say listen my parents don't like this you can't do this you have to give me a heads-up if you come by and here's what he wrote about that in his journal my general experience is that most girls hate that but that's the way I am that's the way I'd like to be spontaneous and creepy and it gives you an idea of how quickly he would get attached even though not only were they not dating but this girl had made it clear to him that she wasn't romantically interested in him he devoted time to talking about her in his journals writing her fees literally long letters and continuing to drop by unannounced once this happened some more the girl finally put her foot down and she was like listen this is this is over this is this can't happen okay we can be friends but that's all I want you guys stop coming to my house okay so they decided to be friends that's great that's fine whatever he moves on oh he did move on very quickly in fact to her younger sister and he repeated his same pushy and creepy tactics with her which even he seemed to realize weren't being received well he wrote in his journal if there was a girl who was interested in my brother and then she got interested in me I would probably be very cautious with her too I might feel like I was her second choice the sister was more than cautious she was not interested in Josh and she found it incredibly creepy when he would just show up at her house or her job sometimes carrying a video camera even though this girl repelled his advances as her sister had done he showed up to her house with flowers and asked her to be his girlfriend she promptly friend-zoned him but he sent her letters afterwards like he had sent to her sister over sharing personal details expressing feelings of love and passion that could not possibly actually exist he said at the end of one of these letters I want you to me I love you when you said you wanted to be friends I tried to get over you but no other girl comes close the only thing I don't love about you is that I can't reach you it's a super great way to close out a letter where you're trying to get a girl to be your girlfriend by telling her the things you don't like about her and to even use the word love with a girl that you barely know that you haven't even been on a date with and who has consistently repelled any advances that you've made it's a little concerning he fell in love with almost every single girl he met he thought he'd found the one anytime he found anyone was it just a desperation to connect with someone or was Josh's failure to understand and respect boundaries a sign of something darker when his roommates began to get in the way of his infatuation with these two girls by telling them who Josh really was he'd had enough and left the apartment and Seattle he moved back in with Steve in January if you thought it was the end of Josh's two creepy romantic interests you're wrong they keep going in March he visited his sister Jennifer in Utah and he'd been chatting online with a girl who was in one of the elbe as a group you know kind of matchmaking chats online and so I guess while he was in Utah visiting Jennifer he decided that he would meet up with this girl now in my opinion I don't think he actually went to Utah to see Jennifer I think he went to see this girl that he'd been talking to briefly online because this is what he says in his journal I went down there to Utah to see her spent a couple weeks and a few thousand miles the furthest I've ever driven for a date that was a great experience although obviously it didn't work out obviously the girl said that there was something about Josh they gave her the creeps but if Josh noticed that she was creeped out by him he didn't seem to recognize it or admit it he wrote in his journal we have had that understanding that when were together it is about each other even if I may not marry her I was thinking about how sweet she is to me this is a girl he spoken to online a few times a girl he's met in person once and he continues to talk about her in his journal even when it's ended and she's not talking to him anymore he returned to Washington but he couldn't remain living with his father for much longer he only lasted about six months more Steve was not supportive of Josh's religious beliefs there was always a swearing and alcohol in the household but Josh moved out and he got his own apartment in Tacoma this time solo the whole roommate thing had not worked out for him very well before so he figured it was best to just keep to himself he enrolled in Business School at the University of Washington Tacoma and he became an active member of the church there even though he made some friends including girls none of these girls were interested in being anything more than friends with Josh this is reflected in a passage that he wrote in his journal I have to just feel that I can't get through to any girl that I really like that the only girls that pay attention to me are the ones that I'm not interested in anyway but he was here in Tacoma that he matched the 19 year old girl who would one day become his wife and the mother of his children her name was Susan Cox and he'd actually met her before a long time ago when she was 12 and he was 18 remember Mary Cox another girl that Josh had tried to have a relationship with but she just wanted to be friends so while they were friends Josh went over to Mary's house and he played the piano when they met for the second time he spotted her at a church activity called Institute Institute is a religious class for young adults aged 18 to 30 the point of Institute is to strengthen the relationship with Jesus at a very crucial period in someone's life Josh thought Susan was pretty so we went up to talk to her and that's when they discovered that they had met before Josh had been a senior in high school 18 years old it was pretty much right after he had moved to Pual up with his dad here are his own words from his journal where he remembers the day that he met Susan when she was 12 so we had mad at her house and she remembered me as the person who came over and played piano but she was much too young relatively speaking for me considered dating but if I think back I think that I looked at her and thought she is really cute too bad she's too young now five or six years isn't a huge age gap in a relationship when you're in your 20s or your 30s but when you're 12 and 18 it is and the fact that a an 18 year old man was looking at a 12 year old child and thinking she's cute too bad she's not old enough for me to date it's a serious red flag something's not right about Josh Powell at this time Josh was very much in debt and he could barely make ends meet but he still decided to have these dinner parties at his house for friends and church acquaintances it seemed according to his private thoughts that these dinner parties and the guests at them were perceived by him as intrusions and an annoyance he wrote people come over to my house and instead of eating what I'm offering them big book in my freezer oh I want to make orange juice to go with dinner and I want to cook this with our dinner well eventually when they start doing that it gets extremely expensive to have these dinners so I felt like that has been a burden that I can't take see what I mean about him being that person the person who invites you over for dinner and asks what you want to drink and you say orange juice and he's like seriously seriously it's not as if he offered them Johnnie Walker red label and they took his Blue Label importa I can literally see josh serving up dinner and Counting out like three tater tots per plate and then if anybody wants another Tater Tot or tries to take another tater tat he's like come on man Susan Cox attended one of these dinner parties and after they ate she volunteered to help him clean up and do the dishes he wrote about this later in his journal she said that doing dishes together with me that very moment she decided that she loved me and for me doing dishes with her was a turning point for me when I thought it's not over he was referring to the fact that he'd been pursuing her he met her at the Institute but there was another boy a friend of his who was also interested in Susan and they were kind of competing for her attention until it got too hard and Josh gave up like he does with everything that night they kissed and Susan said in that moment she knew that Josh was the one finally Josh Powell had found someone who returned his affections who wasn't going out and dancing and drinking at a bar by herself god for bed Susan thought Josh was a pretty good catch he was older than her head his own apartment he was going to college and he seemed to have his life together she also thought he was attractive a church boy who drove a motorcycle and wore leather jacket but Josh did not have his life together he was deep in debt and in a precarious financial situation which you can decipher from his own words written in his journal in the past it seems like I've had the goal of have more now have a computer now have a TV and VCR and all these things now and forget about the future don't worry about saving money I went into debt pretty heavily 19 year old Susan had a clean credit history which gave her a whole new appeal to Josh Powell Josh and Susan began seeing each other and he talked about her in an audio journal he kept not only did he keep a written journal but he kept an audio journal I think she is incredibly beautiful and a lot of that is because of the way she treats me it's the way she takes care of me and my house she comes in here and she is the one person that I can feel comfortable with in my house she'll start doing the dishes or dust something just because she is standing there for a minute and she doesn't have anything else to do and I know that this is a real part of her and it's important to me to have someone who takes care of me and our stuff and our space together it's an odd way to talk about someone you've just started dating he doesn't talk about her attributes in a way that that they stand on their own apart from him he talks about how she makes him feel what she does for him how she takes care of him and his stuff he feels comfortable with her being in his apartment because she's not going to wear out all of his nice things and drink all of his orange juice November 11th the 2000 was their official dating dates this the day they started dating it was their first date it was also the time that they first started talking about marriage Josh speaks in this slow breathy creepy voice in his audio journal about Susan how he knows that she's the one I love this girl Susan Marie Cox every day I love her more I become more and more certain that I want to be with her so I'm slow to warm up it's taken me a while to realize that I do want to be with her forever after Susan graduated from high school she enrolled at the Jean Suarez Academy for beauty to study cosmetology and she was a motivated and hardworking young woman she went to cosmetology school during the day and afterwards she went to another job in the evenings at the JC Penney jewelry counter from very early on Susan began spending a lot of time at Josh's apartment and spending nights there at first her parents didn't catch on because she was living with her sister Mary at the time but they would soon figure it out he proposed to her on January 5th 2001 less than two months after they'd started dating a few weeks before he popped the question Josh visited Susan at the jewelry counter at her job and he told her that he was looking for a gift for his mother a ring and would Susan help him pick it out and then would she buy it with her employee discount Susan was picking out her own engagement ring a piece of jewelry that she chose with another woman in mind not knowing that it was hers Josh talked about this ring and what it represented to him in his journal I don't want her to have the most expensive looking ring in the world I don't want her to have a big rock to attract someone who would want to hurt her or mug her or mug us as we're together I just wanted her to have a modest ring with the best quality diamond I can possibly find something that will tell her that I love her without necessarily acting like a magnet for the attention of the world the wrong attention from the world her family and friends were not super happy about this engagement nobody could really figure out what Susan saw and Josh they didn't have anything in common he was kind of weird kind of treated her in a an indifferent sort of way but what are you gonna do the heart wants what it wants and for a guy who was not interested in ever getting married or having kids just very recently with his axe Catherine he wanted to tie the knot with Susan quick this new urgency in getting married as soon as possible may have had something to do with fact that Josh was up to his old tricks spending his girlfriend's money just as he had done with Catherine he possibly wanted Susan to be in a position where he'd legally have access to whatever she had and she couldn't run away like Catherine had I'm sure at first Susan thought that she was just helping him out of course they're going to be married this was gonna be her husband that's what husbands and wives do for each other what's mine is yours she had no idea how bad it would get Josh was still in school and she assumed that once he graduated he would get a full-time job and start contributing financially Josh wrote in his journal Susan's been putting out a lot of money on some of this stuff lately and I really haven't had the money to do it and I need a computer to live to get my classes done so she's been helping me out with some of it the day they applied for their marriage license they got into a big fight and she said she didn't want to see him and could he drive her home but he didn't drive her home instead he got her in the car and then he drove to a5x where he proceeded to leave her in the car while he went inside to make copies later he wrote in his journal that he hoped she would you know calm down and stop being as mad at him while he was in there making the copies so he was basically trying to buy time for her to cool off when he got back into the car she was not cooled off she was still mad but instead of driving her home once again he drove to the post office and mailed in their marriage applique this should have been a sign if you're getting into a huge argument like this where you don't even want to be around each other on the day that you're filling out your application to become married maybe it's a sign to just chill out for a couple of days make sure that there's no existing resentments hanging in the air before you mail and paperwork that is the first step to you becoming tied together for an eternity but I don't think that Josh really gave her much of a choice she was this passive occupant in his car he was driving her all over and he's the one that mailed in the paperwork they got married in the Portland temple on April 6th 2001 although Josh invited his brothers sisters and parents the only two members of Josh's family who were actually allowed into the temple for the ceremony we're Jennifer and Terry true believers in the church the temple didn't allow anyone to walk in if they were not active in the religion so Josh's father brothers and sister Lena who is now heavily under the influence of Steve Powell all waited outside it was almost as if as soon as their marriage was legal and binding as soon as they said I do he flipped the switch if he'd been odd and withdrawn and judgmental before now that's pretty much all he was Josh and Susan spent their wedding night at the Hood River Inn on the Columbia River this evening would be a sign to Susan of what was to come in their marriage Josh spent the night playing with his camera they had the reception the next day and Steve Powell was in attendance recording the event on his camcorder he seemed to especially focus on Susan in this footage it seemed now that Josh had changed his mind about his sister Jennifer's marriage which initially he had given low odds of lasting now he wanted what she had I really want to emulate my sister's marriage she has a wonderful situation with her husband he wrote in his journal he claimed that he knew in his heart he and Susan were real and long-lasting because most people don't have our friendship we talk like most people don't talk in their marriage even some people with incredible awesome marriages they don't talk like we talk we talk about everything I have no idea how Josh knew what other peoples and parishes were like or what they talked about behind closed doors are among themselves in their marriage but this is just a sign that he thinks anything that he's affiliated with or anything he's connected to is better than anything anybody else has but Josh and Susan's marriage from the get-go was not smooth sailing he had some bad habits that got on his wife's nerves he was constantly late to everything all the time even to his own wedding he was a habitual procrastinator he was lazy he wasn't motivated he moved at his own pace he wasn't interested in anybody else's timeline or the reality of a timeline he did things when and if he wanted to Susan also kept a journal she had done so since she was 8 her father said that she was encouraged to keep a journal because it was good for your future generations to be able to learn from your wisdom and life experiences in her journal she wrote we did not trust renting and are paying off Josh's debts while he waits to finish his last quarter in school for his bachelor's in business management and get a job and for his credit to clean up so we can get a loan for a house I want a house to call mine and come home to so I could prepare meals for Josh and clean and decorate this house to clean and decorate would not come anytime soon in 2002 nine months after they were married they were evicted from Josh's apartment they didn't have any money even though Susan was working at two jobs so they moved in with Steve Powell again in order to save up for their own place this was when things would get very odd Steve John and Michael were already living there and an additional two people would mean that living conditions were about to get really cramped they didn't have their own bedroom they had to sleep in the living room with sheets hung up to kind of give them some privacy but for a couple who's pretty much in their first year of marriage considered newlyweds still this wasn't the kind of see that they needed and Steve Powell always seemed to have his camcorder going his favorite subject appeared to be his new daughter-in-law she later would tell a friend that soon after moving in she began to feel very strange around her father-in-law she would always catch him looking at her and one day she caught him trying to watch her while she got undressed there's a video he recorded from this time where he's focusing the camcorder on her and he said we don't get many girls around here you know so you're gonna get the full treatment if the full treatment means being as creepy as possible as inappropriate as possible and making your daughter-in-law feel as uncomfortable as possible there sure is the treatment that she got Susan initially was grateful for her father-in-law's help and she was an open and friendly and outgoing girl but her openness was interpreted by Steve as flirtation he would later claim in an interview that she would constantly come on to him or tease him she'd lean over him so that he could smell her hair or have him rub her legs to hear him talk about it I guess that it does seem a little strange but the incident with the legs that he's referring to was actually completely innocent and completely different than than he had described it susan was in beauty school she performed waxing services on people and she waxed her own legs and she was very proud of herself when she did good work so one day while she was clothed she came in to Steve Powell's office and they were talking and she was like oh I waxed my legs a week ago and look at this there's still no hair and she put her leg up so that he could touch her leg and see that it was still smooth it wasn't inappropriate it wasn't sexual it was a flirtation but Steve Powell's crazy Susan knew that her father-in-law made her feel uncomfortable but she didn't know the half of it it appeared that Steve had developed an attraction to Susan in obsession and infatuation for Susan very much in the same way he had once felt an inappropriate attraction to his own underage daughter he not only took pictures and videos of her when she knew about it but he took pictures and video of her when she didn't he had pictures of her in her underwear doing her hair in the bathroom a picture that was clearly taken through a partially opened door in secret he began taking her underwear out of the hamper and storing them in sealed and dated bags he took her sanitary products out of the garbage and stored those in sealed and dated bags I'm not kidding I wish I was when she went into the bathroom he used a mirror to watch her from underneath the door Steve Powell also kept a journal among other things and during this time he's very vocal about Susan in these journals and other ways of recording his life and thoughts he wrote what I've written about Susan represents the first time I've mentioned a fetish and what might be considered sociopathic the fact is I can hardly control myself when it comes to her I mean who looks under the bathroom door with a mirror I tend to think a lot of guys do he wrote about collecting pieces of hair from her brush and sniffing them he said that Susan was his greatest problem and greatest passion and then he fantasized about kissing those lips one day when she told him she thought his house was too dark he considered selling it writing that if Susan agreed to marry him he would buy a different one in her journal Susan refers to this time staying with Steve Powell as very dark Josh had progressively been moving away from his faith as time went on but under the influence of Steve it became worse and more noticeable she knew that they had to get out of there in order to properly start their lives as husband and wife by March of 2002 Josh hadn't gotten a job at the local Home Depot but he promptly lost it luckily Susan got a raise and a promotion at her job using what money she had they were able to move out of Steve Powell's house and move into their own apartment in Yakima I guess renting didn't sound too bad now faced with the alternative the following June Josh graduated from Business School and Susan was there to support him and so was Steve Powell with his camcorder once again training on his daughter-in-law I imagine that Susan thought once Josh graduated he would settle down get a full-time job and start contributing but Josh had never been good at following rules and he always thought he was smarter and better than everybody else and this was not an exception when it came to employers so he could not keep a job like I said this is a theme with Josh Powell he's the kind of guy who wants to be his own boss once to start his own business wants to become a multi-millionaire but he has no intention of putting in any work or effort to do it he wants it to be no effort or low effort or he doesn't have anything to do with it he even considered enlisting in the military when his younger brother Michael did but that thought passed as soon as it occurred to him I'm sure we all know people like this but Josh Powell took it to a whole new level even though they were no longer living with Steve Steve Powell could not get Suzan off of his mind he would drive to Yakima and tape Susan without her knowing while she walked into work he would tape Susan while josh was dropping her off at work and they were talking in the car he would tape Susan and Josh through the windows of their bedroom while they were in bed together Steve would also visit his son and his daughter-in-law and one of these times when Josh wasn't home Steve offered to give Susan a back rub a massage when he got home he set up his camcorder got in front of it and as he undressed he relished the memory of it out loud I just had what is probably the most erotic experience I've had in my entire life he explained in great detail what parts of Susan he had touched saying she didn't even mind that she seemed to enjoy it what Susan had seen as an innocent favor from her father-in-law Steve had perceived as an open invitation to continue his obsession with her I have long known that they have had a very unstable relationship and that josh was only using her as a means to a financial end there's never any money for her to do nice things for herself because all their money goes to pay off debts Josh accumulated while he was single and living with Catherine and while he has a good point it's pretty clear that he has no good intention at this time essentially he's imagining a world where Josh and Susan are no longer married and he can have Susan to himself he wasn't shy about expressing these feelings to other people he told his friends he told his daughter Alina one of his friends told him he needed to back off because coming between his son's marriage wasn't going to be a really good thing for their family Steve Powell had many many videos of himself doing things on camera usually featuring an article of Susan's underwear or pictures of her he did many many things guys disgusting disturbing things the things he said and did on those videotapes I obviously cannot say them in here but I have a document that has them in it and I'll link it in the description box if you're if you're interested after a while Josh got self-righteous at work again and he started going to HR about this senior living care facility that he was working at seeing that they were asking him to do illegal things and so he no longer had that job but he was going to be going on a new endeavor a new career path he was gonna be a trucker on July 13th 2003 Josh gave it a try for the first time going on his first ride with a big rig Sue's and his wife was there to see him off and so was his father Steve Powell with his video camera again when Josh disappeared into the distance Steve who was harboring all these feelings and emotions for Susan offered to give her a ride to her parents house which was about an hour away she accepted and he recorded her with his camcorder getting into the car he thought that he turned the camcorder off once she was in the car but he didn't and so we actually have an audio of that conversation that they had and it's very hard to listen to essentially the gist of what happened is he told her I have feelings for you I'm in love with you while she was trapped in the passenger seat of a moving vehicle he told her for the last year-and-a-half you're about the only thing I can think about I don't know where it began probably began when you were living with me when you would come into my office and let me feel your legs your smooth legs and it just went from one thing to another the experience on your couch six months ago it was a massage right but just being with you for two hours and holding you and Susan says nothing she's silent what could she say what would you say he keeps talking when she doesn't respond maybe he took it as permission to continue his inappropriate advances and he says maybe I'm getting the wrong signals from you maybe I'm interpreting something that I shouldn't be interpreting you know for example when we were sitting on the couch it felt like you were I mean I was extremely aroused and I felt that you were somewhat aroused at least I thought finally she says I don't know where you're going with this I'm your daughter-in-law I'm your son's wife I should be to you one step under your own children so I mean he should have gotten the message at this point right she's being very clear that she's uncomfortable that it's weird that she's not about it but he doesn't get the message kind of like Josh never used to get the message with all those girls that he was interested in and he would keep pursuing even when they told him they weren't interested he said to her Susan when your daughter-in-law walks into your office and shows you her legs you know what I'm saying she says I'm sorry that I did that and we can't undo it so let's try to forget it the ride continues like I said it's an hour drive so it continues pretty much in silence Susan tries to return to normal conversation but Steve redirects her again and he asks her if she's upset at him for talking to her like that and she responds no it's it's nice that you said something so that I can now make it clear to you how I feel and we don't have to worry about this anymore and he says to her I appreciate that I really do are you gonna talk to Josh about this and she responds is there anything I don't talk to Josh about and then gets out of the car so Steve Powell goes to his daughter Alena and he's man you know I really thought we had something me and Susan and and then she just told me like she wasn't interested in the car and Alina another female another young girl she doesn't say dead this is insane this is your son's wife you need to back off she says Susan's a tease Steve wrote in his journal I am in so much pain right now I don't know where to turn with it I spoke to Alina who's been very supportive of my infatuation or obsession her advice was to accept that Susan is a player and that's what players do they lead guys on this will probably be one of the last entries about Susan my desire and my love for her it wasn't his last entry not by a long shots because he reviewed the video once he figured out that the camcorder had caught the audio and he heard something completely different than what actually happened during that conversation the conclusion he drew from hearing the conversation playback was that it hadn't been a hard no from Susan there was still a chance you would think once Susan told Josh about this that he would be upset with his father that there would be serious issues in the relationship between father and son going forward and initially he was upset but then Steve told Josh that hey your wife led me on she was having me feel her legs you know she's done this to me what was I supposed to do but to react to it and then Josh was like good point and did nothing so imagine being in Susan's shoes right your father-in-law gets you alone in a car tells you he's a sexually attracted to you and you know wants to be with you you tell him that's not gonna happen then you tell your husband what his father did and your husband does nothing she must have voiced her concerns loudly and often enough to have Josh at least understand and agree that it was a good idea to get out of Washington states so they moved they moved to Utah Steve helped them move and he wrote about it in his journal he said I helped them clear out their apartment Wednesday now Josh doesn't need me for a while it's interesting that he was upset at me for telling Susan I loved her but eated my help too much to stay away Steve also had access to a storage unit that Josh and Susan shared and while he was helping them move he would go into the storage unit and look around there's an entry in his journal dated January 11th 2003 where Steve says I've had access to their storage room for a few days and couldn't help but notice too enticing storage boxes one labeled Susan's photos and one Susan's journals when it comes to Susan I stopped at nothing I helped myself to everything in those boxes and have scanned hundreds of pages and photos I don't feel in the least guilty about these things I scanned everything into my computer and now have copies of dozens of early pictures and all her journals up to late 2003 if she loves me as I think she does she will not be upset in fact she will be thrilled that I'm so interested in her Josh hasn't read them and never will as I've already said Susan kept a journal and had kept a journal for many years but of course the things inside of these journals were private especially from her teenage years she talked about friends and crushes and things that she was feeling inside things that a man in his 50s should not have been helping himself to much less scanning into his computer for his future use what Steve didn't like about the journals though was that there wasn't enough talk about Steve he was confused as he wrote in his own journal about the presence of himself and her journals what's most profound to me is there's nothing positive said about me I'm almost a footnote and with all the other negative comments about me she doesn't mention a word about my sexual proclivities which include taking video clips of her from head to foot it's too bad she is silent about sexual magnetism between us it would have been an interesting read I would have even enjoyed it if she had called me Satan incarnate for trying to lead her into sexual sin but there is nothing so it's clear that not only is the Powell a troubled man but a very delusional man and his son Josh was not too far behind him so I'm gonna and part one here we pretty much covered all of Josh Powell's background which is very important to what happens in the future we covered how he acted as a teenager with his relationships how he treated his ex-girlfriend Catherine how he and Susan mattes their wedding the beginning of their marriage Steve Powell's obsessive crazy and inappropriate infatuation with his daughter-in-law Susan and now they're moving to Utah so we'll pick up part two where they've arrived in Utah and things just get worse thank you guys so much for being here let me know what you think in the comments stay kind and stay beautiful and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 517,426

Rating: 4.8762264 out of 5

Keywords: susan powell, josh powell, steve powell, missing persons, true crime, stephanie harlowe

Id: PIEENmEOwwE

Length: 79min 35sec (4775 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 08 2019