Charlie talked about his mommy being “lost.”
Chuck, particularly, vowed to keep the search for her before the public, and appeared on nationwide network shows as well as local shows. Susan’s photos became familiar to millions of people. And yet no one reported any sightings of her that seemed to fit.
Susan had left absolutely no paper trail, and she hadn’t called anyone. If she was alive someplace in the world, it had been impossible to trace her whereabouts.
In the summer of 2011, Josh and Steven Powell continued their campaign to convince the public that Susan had a sordid past.
On July 14, Josh and Steven appeared on the Today show on NBC. They bragged that they were in possession of two thousand pages of Susan’s journal entries. During their interview, the cameras panned over a laptop computer in the background so the viewing audience could glimpse Susan’s handwriting in red and blue ink. Josh and Steven even allowed the show technicians to reveal some of the sections that Susan had written.
Steven told the media that Susan’s journals were very important because she had detailed her relationships with many men and wrote about her “sexual fantasies.” He all but crowed as he said he and his son would be releasing more and more of Susan’s diary pages, and also upload them to the website they had set up in an effort to locate her.
It was ridiculous; most of Susan’s “relationships with men” entries were about girlish crushes, and not even vaguely titillating.
Detectives Gary Sanders and Ellis Maxwell were very concerned by the obstructive behavior Josh and Steven were demonstrating. They wouldn’t share Susan’s journals with the law enforcement departments who were desperately trying to locate her, but they were prepared to pick and choose from her personal thoughts and post them for the world to see.
Steven Powell and his children believed that they were within their rights as they castigated Susan. They had not shown one scintilla of concern about her fate, but that may well have been part of Steven and Josh’s insistence that she had run off with the man who went missing in Utah/Nevada about the same time she did.
The missing man—Steven Koecher, thirty, of St. George, Utah—hadn’t been seen since December 13, 2009. His car was found parked in a cul-de-sac in a posh neighborhood in Henderson, Nevada, near Las Vegas. Wrapped Christmas presents were in the car. A security camera in a nearby home snapped frames of a man resembling Koecher walking away from that vehicle. Koecher’s mother told reporters that he hadn’t known Susan Powell. The only connection they had was the proximity of the dates they vanished, and Steven and Josh Powell had seized upon that coincidence to add weight to their espoused theory that Susan had run off with another man.
Koecher is still missing as this is written. In the last year, his mother has been widowed and has lost her father to death, but she still keeps her Christmas tree lit year-round, hoping that her son will return. Koecher is blond, blue-eyed, and five feet, eleven inches tall.
Aware that public opinion wasn’t on their side, Steven Powell claimed he had no idea why his family was unpopular. “Why don’t people try to get to know us?” Steven asked rhetorically. “If they did, I think they’d like us.”
Perhaps. Perhaps they would not have.
Steven’s comments about how sexually involved he had been with his daughter-in-law became more snide and sickening. He actually told reporters that Susan was an “exhibitionist” who sometimes appeared partially undressed in front of him, that she flirted with him. In an interview with KOMO-TV in Seattle, he described his relationship with her as clearly romantic—and physical, stopping just short of saying they had been intimate.
If only in his own mind.
This, of course, warred with what Susan had told her closest girlfriends and her sister Denise. Steven Powell had made her skin
Chuck, particularly, vowed to keep the search for her before the public, and appeared on nationwide network shows as well as local shows. Susan’s photos became familiar to millions of people. And yet no one reported any sightings of her that seemed to fit.
Susan had left absolutely no paper trail, and she hadn’t called anyone. If she was alive someplace in the world, it had been impossible to trace her whereabouts.
In the summer of 2011, Josh and Steven Powell continued their campaign to convince the public that Susan had a sordid past.
On July 14, Josh and Steven appeared on the Today show on NBC. They bragged that they were in possession of two thousand pages of Susan’s journal entries. During their interview, the cameras panned over a laptop computer in the background so the viewing audience could glimpse Susan’s handwriting in red and blue ink. Josh and Steven even allowed the show technicians to reveal some of the sections that Susan had written.
Steven told the media that Susan’s journals were very important because she had detailed her relationships with many men and wrote about her “sexual fantasies.” He all but crowed as he said he and his son would be releasing more and more of Susan’s diary pages, and also upload them to the website they had set up in an effort to locate her.
It was ridiculous; most of Susan’s “relationships with men” entries were about girlish crushes, and not even vaguely titillating.
Detectives Gary Sanders and Ellis Maxwell were very concerned by the obstructive behavior Josh and Steven were demonstrating. They wouldn’t share Susan’s journals with the law enforcement departments who were desperately trying to locate her, but they were prepared to pick and choose from her personal thoughts and post them for the world to see.
Steven Powell and his children believed that they were within their rights as they castigated Susan. They had not shown one scintilla of concern about her fate, but that may well have been part of Steven and Josh’s insistence that she had run off with the man who went missing in Utah/Nevada about the same time she did.
The missing man—Steven Koecher, thirty, of St. George, Utah—hadn’t been seen since December 13, 2009. His car was found parked in a cul-de-sac in a posh neighborhood in Henderson, Nevada, near Las Vegas. Wrapped Christmas presents were in the car. A security camera in a nearby home snapped frames of a man resembling Koecher walking away from that vehicle. Koecher’s mother told reporters that he hadn’t known Susan Powell. The only connection they had was the proximity of the dates they vanished, and Steven and Josh Powell had seized upon that coincidence to add weight to their espoused theory that Susan had run off with another man.
Koecher is still missing as this is written. In the last year, his mother has been widowed and has lost her father to death, but she still keeps her Christmas tree lit year-round, hoping that her son will return. Koecher is blond, blue-eyed, and five feet, eleven inches tall.
Aware that public opinion wasn’t on their side, Steven Powell claimed he had no idea why his family was unpopular. “Why don’t people try to get to know us?” Steven asked rhetorically. “If they did, I think they’d like us.”
Perhaps. Perhaps they would not have.
Steven’s comments about how sexually involved he had been with his daughter-in-law became more snide and sickening. He actually told reporters that Susan was an “exhibitionist” who sometimes appeared partially undressed in front of him, that she flirted with him. In an interview with KOMO-TV in Seattle, he described his relationship with her as clearly romantic—and physical, stopping just short of saying they had been intimate.
If only in his own mind.
This, of course, warred with what Susan had told her closest girlfriends and her sister Denise. Steven Powell had made her skin
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