and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
- It was horrible.
We're normal people,
and the person you're dealing with
is a psychopath.
- It's the story that haunted the country:
the case of Susan Powell.
- I was like, "This can't be real."
And he professed to love them.
- Could it have been prevented?
- As you listen to it now, what does it do to you?
- It's excruciating.
- The 9-1-1 dispatcher shares his story about that day.
- I wish I had recognized the urgency of the situation.
- Also, the startling details of a plot unfolding.
- Nobody knew what was going on.
- And a father's unraveling.
- He just saw there was no way out.
- Intimate emails from Susan herself,
the young mother's private fears in her own words.
- It's the genuine belief of a good many people
that you killed her.
- Her husband speaks, a final, eerie interview.
- I love my sons more than anything.
I put them first. I put my family first.
**
- Hello, and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
The details are hard to believe.
The disappearance of a young mom named Susan Powell
and what befell her two little boys.
Her husband Josh talked to us
while possibly concealing unimaginable secrets.
Would investigators ever learn what happened to Susan?
Here's Keith Morrison with...
- It is so sad to look at them now,
this apparently perfectly normal family,
just a young father and his two young sons,
walking a postcard shore,
skipping rocks across the surface,
but under the surface of the man's own skin,
well, what was beneath the surface?
How in the name of heaven did this...
come to this?
- You'll hear an exclusive interview
with the man who took that call
and who has been criticized
for not getting help immediately.
And you find yourself vilified, really.
What was that like? - Well, i-it's awful.
Part of the problem is that, like most people, I think,
um, I was aware of Josh Powell's story,
but I didn't associate his name with the story.
- We will retrace Josh Powell's last steps,
mysterious trips to a gas station,
a storage locker where police said
they found a quilt with blood on it,
and the bank where, in the surveillance photo,
he has the look of a man unglued.
- And nobody knew what was going on.
He took more than three or four substantial steps
to get ready for his death.
- We'll hear investigators try to fathom the unfathomable.
- What's the motive for him killing his kids?
Is it that they started knowing a little too much?
- And in his last interview,
we'll hear from Josh Powell himself,
who offered, like the negative of a film,
a bizarre reversal of the truth.
- I love my sons more than anything.
I put them first. I put my family first.
- On February 5, 2012,
while the rest of the country was settling down
to watch the Super Bowl,
Josh Powell was setting a trap for his own young sons.
- What happened in there was really only
the last chapter of a very long, sad story,
of fathers and sons, and husbands and wives,
sexual delusions, murder, suicide,
and secrets.
Some of those secrets, no doubt,
were burned up in the fire,
but some things, we do know,
and they go to the darkest recesses
of the human heart.
Our story begins years ago,
when a cheerful young woman named Susan Cox fell for Josh.
Chuck and Judy Cox are Susan's parents.
As they spoke to us,
they confessed they were still in a kind of shock
after the disaster that claimed their two young grandsons,
and they recalled so clearly
their early fears about their daughter's beau.
- I had a very bad feeling
every time I saw him.
I even asked my daughter, "Why are you marrying him?"
- Josh's sister, Jennifer Graves,
told us that as a child, she was wary of him, too.
- When Josh was a boy,
he was troubled in some ways, wasn't he?
- There were some issues, yeah.
- Jennifer said much of the problems
stemmed from her father, Josh's father.
She was estranged from him when we spoke to her.
Their mother divorced him years ago,
and in court papers alleged he was abusive.
- I was about 14 when I kind of woke up
and realized my dad is wacko.
He's just on a different-- different trajectory,
and not a good one.
- She is talking about Steven Powell.
You're gonna learn much more about him later.
- What was it about his trajectory
that bothered you or disturbed you?
- He just had a really negative outlook on life.
He was down on, you know, just everything.
- An outlook he seemed to have passed on to Josh,
which, paradoxically, seemed to attract Susan.
- I think she felt sorry for him.
Uh, he didn't have many friends. - Mm-hmm.
- And, I think she felt she could make him happy
and that he would change.
- They married in the Mormon church
and certainly looked happy in those early photos.
But later, the couple moved to Utah,
moved in temporarily with Jennifer and her husband Kirk.
- What was their relationship like then,
as far as you could tell? - It was a little rough.
She would kind of order him around a little bit,
and-and he wanted to, uh, control her
and not let her go to some activities with me.
- Josh worked, sometimes, in real estate
and as a web designer.
When Susan went into labor with their first child,
say Susan's parents, Josh, working right there at home,
said he was too busy to drive her to the hospital.
They did, and when he finally arrived...
- He sits in the back of the room
workin' on his computer. - While she's in labor?
- Yeah. It was a really odd experience.
- They named the baby Charlie.
Braden followed two years later.
But having kids only seemed to increase the friction
between Susan and Josh.
- She would be wanting to put them to bed.
She would even go so far as to get them in bed,
and then he would get mad
and tell them to get out of bed and not tell--
not do what Mom told them to do.
- Where'd Josh get these parenting ideas?
- I'm sure from my dad.
- More and more influence from Dad, said Jennifer.
- Josh started talking on the phone with my dad a lot.
He would spend multiple hours
multiple times a week on the phone with him,
and Susan would complain to me
about how Josh would just
become unbearable to live with.
It was really obvious to her
that my dad was trying to drive a wedge between them.
- It seemed to be working.
Jennifer shared something with us
she has never made public before:
excerpts of emails from Susan.
Did they contain hints of what was coming?
In one of them, she describes her attempts
to rekindle romance with Josh.
- I think it's easy to say
that Josh learned from his dad how to treat women.
- And then there's another email
that suggests Susan was actually afraid of him.
- Why wouldn't he... just...
get a divorce? Leave?
- Well, um-- - Because she had an income.
She was the mom.
There was a very strong argument
that the boys would have gone with her.
- And so they believe
Josh found another solution to his problem.
- And I sat on this feeling,
this gut-sinking,
terrible feeling,
that he has done something to her.
- December 7, 2009,
gone gray and cold in Salt Late City, a Monday.
Josh and Susan were both expected at work.
- And neither one of them had shown up,
and neither one of them had called,
and they were supposed to have dropped off their kids.
- Dropped them off at daycare, she means.
So the daycare center people
called their emergency contact, Jennifer.
She went to Josh and Susan's house.
It was empty.
- The feeling hit me really strongly
that Josh had done something to her.
- Hindsight, perhaps?
Or the insight of someone who had grown up with Josh Powell?
I said, "You know, hon, don't worry about this.
"This is just a couple and their kids.
"They're off. They're adults. They'll be fine."
- Then in the late afternoon,
Josh suddenly showed up with the boys,
without Susan. - And I remember the feeling
I had at that time. - Which was what?
- Which was Josh has done something.
- Josh told a story no one could believe,
that the previous night, Sunday,
he decided to take the boys camping,
left around midnight, he said, blew off work,
drove almost 100 miles, slept in the family van
in temperatures well below freezing,
then drove back home to find Susan gone.
He said he had no idea what happened to her.
- When he came up with that story about going camping,
I said, "No."
I got a really sick feeling that, no, this is-is not good.
* Silent night *
- And yet they did what they felt they should do.
They rallied around Josh.
They pleaded for Susan's safe return.
- We want to find her,
return her to her husband and children.
- Within ten days,
police declared Josh a person of interest
in Susan's disappearance.
He stopped talking to police and then left town,
packed up his possessions and his precious sons,
left Utah to go live in Washington
with his father, Steven.
When we spoke to him in 2011,
he told us he interrogated his son.
- Josh, you know, the most abusive thing
that a-that a father could ever do
is, um, murder his wife.
You know, things like that. I wanted to--
- You were testing him. - I was testing him.
I wanted to see his reaction to this kind of stuff.
- And? - It was good.
I was totally satisfied with it.
I mean, to me, he passed with flying colors.
- As for Susan, he said,
she had just run off with another man most likely.
- Susan was very open
and, I would say, very aggressive
in, uh, male/female relationships,
and she called the shots.
- How did he know that?
Steven claims Susan had developed
a long-standing crush on him.
- Susan would come into my office
after she waxed her legs, and she would sit there
and she would say, "You know, feel my legs.
"They're pretty smooth," and so-- yeah, I know.
- Josh wasn't concerned about this?
- You know, I didn't talk to Josh about it.
I mean, you know, I just enjoyed the moment.
- Steven enjoyed quite a few moments with Susan, he said.
Like when he'd hand her the baby.
- She'd come up and press herself against my hands,
and then I'd have to, you know,
pull my hands out from between her and-and Braden.
Just, you know-- just to slip-slip away.
You know, that kind of a thing.
- He said his only regret
was not going a little further with her.
- I mean, it's not like I didn't enjoy
that kind of a little thing.
- It was so easy for him to tell stories.
Susan could not defend herself.
- What he says is not based in reality.
- Josh's sister, Jennifer Graves,
was a confidant of Susan, and of course,
as his daughter, she already knew all about Steven.
- He might have felt these things for her.
He might have been sexually attracted to her,
but she did not reciprocate.
- For a very few uncomfortable months,
she said, early in their marriage,
Susan and Josh lived with Steven.
- They were set up in the dining room,
so they had put up sheets to-- for the privacy,
and she had caught my dad spying on her.
- Did she say how it made her feel?
- Oh, she definitely was creeped out by it.
He definitely made her uncomfortable.
There was one incident where they were in a car.
He said, "Would you be willing to share?
"Josh and I can just share you."
- And now, Susan was missing.
Josh was still a person of interest.
Steven was telling lewd stories,
and these men had Susan's children,
the Cox's grandchildren.
- They were being raised by the same person
who had raised Josh,
and my daughter was just 100% against them
ever having anything to do with Steve.
- And there they were in his house.
- And here they were in his house,
because Josh went there. You know, brings them there.
- But Josh's actions brought other people
to his father's house, namely the police.
In August, 2011, they arrived with a search warrant.
- We've got probable cause to believe
that there are some items of evidentiary value
inside the home of the Powells.
- They found plenty.
Evidence that might eventually
help turn the mystery into an incomprehensible tragedy,
but back then, there was no way to know that.
Even as we sat down for an extraordinary conversation
with the person of interest,
Josh Powell himself,
no way to know then that this conversation
would be the last one.
- They're just trying to rattle your cage.
- It would seem.
- Are you rattled? - I'm pretty pissed off.
- Josh Powell in his final television interview.
Were there hints of what was to come?
- It was August, 2011, still warm.
The night Josh Powell came to see us
to break his long silence.
- You know everything.
- An extraordinary conversation at the time,
even more so in hindsight.
As we spoke, the police were searching for evidence
at his father's house in Puyallup, Washington.
Josh seemed quite confident they wouldn't find anything.
- Well, according to my attorney,
the less they have on a person,
the more they basically harass a person.
- So what you're suggesting is they're just trying
to rattle your cage. - It would seem.
- Are you rattled? - I'm pretty pissed off.
- Josh claimed he knew things about Susan's childhood
that her parents were hiding.
Susan's adult behavior,
or at least Steven's lewd suggestions
of her behavior, claimed Josh,
were the result of childhood abuse,
an allegation the Cox's dismissed
as patently ridiculous.
- I've known about things that she's told me about
while she was growing up.
- And you think that's the reason why,
according to your father at least,
she would come onto him.
- I don't think people are characterizing that right.
She's a flirtatious person.
- I hate to tell you, Josh,
that others who have seen that, um,
interview with your father have sort of gone,
"Ooh, that's totally inappropriate."
Uh, "A", to behave that way,
and then "B", to even talk about it.
Do you ever get that sense
from hearing him describe these things?
- Well, I haven't had any real deep conversations
with him about any of that stuff.
- He hasn't told you those things-- those stories?
- I mean, I was there to see that, you know,
Susan was always proud of her legs
being cleanly waxed
and how smooth they were.
She would ask people to feel them.
I told her I thought it was pretty inappropriate.
- Josh was siding with his father,
against just about everyone else,
a fateful choice, it turned out.
And what you're telling me
is that that story-- or those stories, rather,
as told by your dad, are accurate,
and the stories told by Jennifer Graves
and Susan's friends that Susan was horrified by this
and wanted to get the heck away from it
as much as she could-- that those stories are lies?
- That's right. - So, on that night
in December, 2009,
when you went out to the desert
with the kids to go camping,
what happened to Susan?
- I think that Susan simply left.
- Simply left?
J-- I mean, just at midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning,
just-- "I've had enough. I'm out of here."
Was she angry those days? - No.
- Was she distressed? - Nope.
- Did she continue to assert that she loved you?
- Yeah.
- And God knows
she must have loved your children.
- Yeah. - And yet,
she, at midnight, or 1 o'clock,
or 2 o'clock in the morning that night in December,
got up out of her bed, and went downstairs,
and got on a bicycle or something
or walked, and simply left?
And has never, you know--
hasn't even sent you a note
to suggest she's still alive.
Is that what's happened?
- I don't know what's happened to her.
I don't know where she is.
- It's the genuine belief, obviously,
of a good many people who have been...
following this strange saga
that you killed her.
That's the allegation that a lot of people believe.
What can you say to them
to make them change their minds?
- I'd never hurt my wife.
I'd never-- never hurt her.
- And still, he claimed,
Susan's parents were out to get him,
to take his children away.
- They started to try to say
that my sons are in an emotionally--
some kind of emotional danger
from being in my custody,
and that's a completely unfair statement.
- And that's why he did what he did, he said,
when he and the boys encountered Chuck Cox
at a hardware store
a few months after Susan disappeared.
- He said that he wanted to hug my children.
I said, "No, you may not."
- Those are his grandchildren, just as they're your children.
I mean, shouldn't a grandfather
be able to hug his grandchildren?
- He should not be using them as pawns in the media.
I love my sons more than anything.
I put them first. I put my family first.
- Words that now ring horribly false, of course.
As do these about his missing wife
and their two young sons.
What do you tell them about her?
- I just tell them that we don't know where she's at.
- Do they understand?
How much of it do they understand?
- I think they understand...
...quite a bit.
- Indeed, it now seems they did,
and that too would play a role in what was coming.
Do you worry that somebody will charge you with a crime
that will prevent you from being with them?
- Nope.
- Don't think that's gonna happen?
- Nope. - What makes you so sure?
- Because I never did anything that someone
would be able to charge me with.
I never hurt Susan,
and I had nothing to do with her disappearance.
- Did he know how few believed him?
In the end, it hardly mattered because,
when police entered the secret places in his father's house,
they found evidence of crimes, all right.
Not the crimes they were looking for,
but enough to push Josh Powell to the brink.
- There are some videos and pictures of Susan.
Somebody was hiding
and shooting through curtains and doors.
- Family secrets emerge...
- Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin.
They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
According to family members,
Josh Powell learned how to treat women
from his father, Steven.
Now, Josh was a person of interest
in his wife Susan's disappearance.
And Steven?
Investigators were about to discover
he had dark secrets of his own.
Back to Keith Morrison with "A Family's Story."
- Charlie, there's a cave over there.
- When we met Josh Powell in Puyallup, Washington,
he and his dad Steven invited us to join them
and Charlie and Braden on a family outing.
It was summer, 2011.
- All right, come on! - And a casual observer
might never have guessed the circumstances
that brought these two strange men
and two little boys together.
The kids appeared normal, happy.
But of course by then for more than a year and a half,
they'd been missing someone very dear to them:
their mother, Susan Powell.
And Susan's parents were sure
Josh knew exactly what happened to her.
When did you first think
that Josh... killed Susan?
- Probably when he came up with his
"I went camping" routine.
- But there was not yet enough evidence to charge him.
And then, as Josh and I talked that evening
at the end of August.
The police raided his father's house,
looking for more.
And they did find evidence,
but not at all what they expected.
- Well, we discovered a lot of computers
and a lot of material.
- Ed Troyer,
of the Pierce County Sheriff's Department,
describing what was seized from Steven Powell's home.
- There was some child pornography in there.
And there was some voyeuristic pictures and videos.
- And not just filth dug up from the internet,
but rather material someone had filmed himself,
in secret.
That someone, said Troyer, was Steven Powell.
- Pictures and videos that were taken from his house
into the neighbor's house
of little girls using bathroom showers
both shot right from his own-- his own window.
- Steven was arrested, hauled off to jail,
and charged with 14 counts of voyeurism
and one count of possessing child pornography,
a felony.
- This was the same Steven Powell, remember,
who claimed his daughter in-law Susan
had a serious crush on him before she disappeared.
When he said it,
it sounded like an old fool's fantasy.
Now it turned out there was evidence
that fantasy had a very dark undercurrent,
because there was another face, a familiar one,
in Steven Powell's homemade porn stash.
Tell me about the discovery of the videos
involving Susan Powell.
- There are some videos and pictures of Susan
that were obviously taken without her consent
or her knowledge.
Somebody was hiding and taking and shooting
through curtains and doors and taking pictures of her.
- It had to have happened early in the marriage,
when Susan and Josh, strapped for cash,
moved in with Steven for a while.
- And, you know, even though he said
that she was interested in him,
we believe that's all one big fantasy,
and she absolutely despised him.
- The charges brought against Steven Powell in 2011
were ugly enough, but before long,
they set in motion something much bigger.
A full-on battle for control of Charlie and Braden.
- We were able to take the kids out of the residence
until an investigation was done,
and the kids were placed with Susan's parents.
- Susan's parents, Chuck and Judy Cox,
in Josh and Steven's world, the enemy.
- I had Braden in the back, for preschool,
and we're driving and he says,
"Grandpa, you need to change your name."
"Why? My name's Charles Cox."
He says, "Yeah. Charles Cox is a bad person,
"so you need to change your name."
"Who says Charles Cox is a bad person?"
"Oh, my daddy."
- Josh had done everything he could
to keep Chuck and Judy away from his sons.
Now they had the upper hand.
- My clients, uh, believe it is very harmful
for these children to have been in the home of Steven Powell,
who was deeply involved with pornography.
- At this hearing that September,
Josh Powell represented himself
in family court, denied any knowledge
of his father's alleged crimes,
promised to keep the boys away from Steven,
should the elder Powell somehow make bail.
But here you could almost see Josh unraveling.
- I am a fit and qualified father.
I am the natural father. I love my sons.
And the manner in which they...
manner in which they...
were behaving leads me to believe
that the irreparable harm that is occurring to my sons
is having taken them out of the stable and happy home.
- But then a prosecutor told the judge that so far
only a small portion of the evidence had been examined,
and while Josh Powell hadn't been charged yet,
he still might be.
- Mr. Powell is a subject of that investigation.
And that's the concern that the department has.
- So Josh lost that round, and lost the ones that followed,
including the very last one.
The final defeat came when the judge ordered
that the boys could stay with the Coxes
for at least six more months.
- So you got that favorable ruling.
- Favorable ruling. A very good day,
except Josh is still not arrested.
Our daughter's still missing.
- But those facts might have changed, too.
With the second ruling from the judge that day,
she ordered Josh Powell to undergo
a psychosexual evaluation.
Why? Because according to Utah investigators,
some images had been found on a computer in his home
back in 2009, the year Susan disappeared.
- It was cartoons.
The cartoons and the animation
are of adults and kids having sex.
- And Josh's evaluation
was to include a polygraph test.
A lie detector.
- He had lost the custody of the kids,
he had to undergo a lie detector,
and what's he gonna tell 'em?
And... I-- if they ask about Susan,
with a lie detector on him. - Which they would have.
He's not gonna be able to lie.
And I just saw that as, this is going to be...
he's-- no way he's gonna get through this.
- The trap was really closing in around--
- Yeah, he's feeling really closed in.
- And if that wasn't pressure enough,
there was this, too.
Rumors that Charlie and Braden
were getting pretty comfortable with their grandparents.
That they'd started talking...
about that midnight camping trip.
- He was explaining, "Well, mother's in the trunk."
- And new information emerges about Josh's past.
- There was a warning sign, way early.
**
- Steven Powell was arrested for child pornography
in September 2011.
Josh Powell was under suspicion,
and as Autumn deepened into Winter,
Chuck and Judy Cox heard again and again
the arrest of Josh Powell was next,
could happen any day.
And so they waited, held their breath,
and took in the boys, Charlie and Braden.
How was it living with those boys,
for the months you had them?
- How about exhausting?
[chuckling] - Yeah, we went to bed
exhausted every night.
But it felt good to have the kids there.
- The Coxes were much stricter disciplinarians than Josh.
They enforced early bedtimes and regular meals
and, according to Josh's sister and brother in-law,
the kids thrived.
Right after the custody hearing
where they were finally in the Coxes' home,
we saw them that day, and they were withdrawn
and angry, and quiet, and then two months later,
they were sittin' on laps and huggin' and playin',
and listenin' while people read stories to them,
and they were acting more like little boys.
- We're also very concerned for the welfare
of our grandchildren...
- Chuck and Judy were determined to keep them,
and as they battled Josh in family court,
they began to turn up new and disturbing information
about the man who married their daughter.
They found it in the divorce papers of his father, Steven.
- Right after Steve was arrested...
- Yeah. - We went over to Spokane,
and, uh, pulled up the record.
- There were disturbing allegations in there,
that Josh had attempted suicide by hanging as a teenager.
That he'd threatened his mother with a knife.
And there was this story, about Josh and Steven.
- There-there's the incident where Josh...
killed his younger sister Lena's hamster,
by smashing it against the side of the cage.
And Josh's mother was outraged, and...
Steve's response, according to the papers there,
was "She just does not understand teenage humor."
- Teenage humor? - Teenage humor.
I was like, "Huh?"
Uh, what on Earth are you talking about?
- Yeah. - And-and one of
the first things I've heard for killers is that they...
abuse animals or kill animals.
And there was a warning sign, way early.
- Of course, they believed he was a killer,
had killed their daughter,
even though he hadn't been charged.
And then, they say, the kids began to open up.
- One of 'em told me one time, I think it was Charlie,
that he hoped Mommy knew how to-- how to camp,
or something, because she was out
where she needed to know how to camp.
- And they heard about an earlier episode,
where one of the boys drew a picture at his preschool.
He drew a car, two boys, and a dad. No mom.
The teacher asked where she was.
- "Well, mother's in the trunk," you know?
And they knew who he was.
- Hello. - All the while,
even though the boys now lived with the Coxes,
they made court-ordered visits to Josh,
at the house he was renting.
A house, police now say, he didn't really live in.
- We believe that the house was staged
just for the purpose of the visitation,
and to make himself look like a good dad
with the photos on the wall, the kid stuff, uh,
the minivan in the driveway and the garage,
and, um, unfortunately, it was everything but that.
- Where did Josh actually live?
Steven's house.
And now that Josh seemed in danger of losing custody
of the kids permanently,
Chuck says he worried not about the boys so much,
but about the social worker who took them to see Josh.
- I was concerned that if she...
if she confronted Josh in any way,
that he might hurt her.
- Which brings us inexorably to that Sunday.
The first time the kids would visit Josh
after he was ordered to take the polygraph.
- I got a bad feeling about this.
And I didn't really get a bad feeling
until, like, Saturday. I was thinkin' "You know,
"maybe I should ask somebody to...
"have a little more security this time,
"or maybe we should skip this visit."
- The kids were having fun playing,
didn't want to go.
But of course, there wasn't a choice.
They had to go.
- I thought, I have to get them to go,
or I'm breaking a law.
And we'll get in trouble for it.
- And so, she jollied them into it.
- I said, "You'll do something fun."
You know, "Daddy will have a project.
"You'll get to eat with Daddy. You'll have fun."
- No idea, of course, about the careful plans
Josh had been making for that visit.
- Those plans include the unthinkable.
And an urgent plea for help is the last chance to stop him.
- You listen to that tape, and it's almost painful.
- It's excruciating.
**
- He was a person of interest in Susan Powell's disappearance.
The target of a relentless police investigation.
His contacts with his two sons had been reduced by court order
to a few hours twice a week.
Rumors of an imminent arrest swirled around him.
And Josh Powell was preparing to strike back.
Here, what police have pieced together
of his final days.
On February 4th, 2012,
Josh deposited his children's toys and clothing
at a charity drop box near his house.
At 11:32 AM, he walked into a bank,
where he withdrew $7,000 in cash
and transferred thousands more, police believe, to his sister,
who was still close to him.
At 1:30 PM, he arrived at this storage unit.
Here, police said, he spent an hour and a half
going through Susan's belongings.
Then back in his minivan,
he drove 10 miles out of town to this landfill,
where he dumped a bundle of material from the storage unit.
That evening, he walked into this department store,
purchased two five-gallon gas cans
and a pack of sterno,
the stuff you use to keep food hot.
Then he went to a gas station to fill those cans.
The next morning Sunday, Josh composed emails
to family members. Most just said,
"I'm sorry. Good bye."
At 10:30, he called his sister Alina's cell phone.
His alarmed sister called 911.
And then Josh doused the house with gasoline,
prepared the axe he would use on the boys
before he lit the match.
Around noon, the social worker brought Charlie and Braden
for their court-ordered visitation.
Josh grabbed the boys,
pulled them inside, locked her out.
At 12:08, she made her first call to 9-1-1.
And the operator kept her on the line,
answering questions for nearly seven minutes.
And finally...
Deputies were alerted by dispatch at 12:16 PM.
It was flagged as "a routine call."
And at that moment,
9-1-1 lit up with multiple reports
of an explosion and fire.
The social worker who delivered the boys to Josh
was back on the phone.
Chuck Cox heard the news from a friend
who'd seen it on Facebook.
- And when I got there, there were police cars,
fire trucks in a line, and the house was smoldering.
And I still didn't believe it.
- And with the horror and disbelief came questions.
Could this have been foreseen?
Could Josh's evil plan somehow have been derailed?
- I feel strongly that the judge did everything possible
to protect the boys. Josh did it.
And I truly believe that when someone's committed
to doing something this horrific,
there is nothing anybody can do to stop them.
He was going to do it.
- But could the children have been rescued
in those final moments? Is someone to blame?
- Oh, it was-- it was horrible.
I mean, this has been a nightmare.
- Fingers have been pointed at this man,
Dave Lovrak.
He's the 9-1-1 dispatcher
who caught the initial call that day.
- What's the address? - Just one of thousands
in his 18 years on the job.
- To hear how clumsy and faltering I sounded.
- It's almost painful, because you know
what's gonna happen when you're listening to it,
but at the time you didn't know what was gonna happen.
- That's right. - But as you listen to it now,
what does it do to you? - Oh, it's excruciating.
Um, it's-- it's painful to listen to.
I was aware of Josh Powell's story,
but I didn't associate his name,
and so his name was not resonating with me.
Realizing what we all know now,
I wish I had recognized the-- the urgency of the situation.
- You're all in a position
which was nobody could have imagined.
- Right, because you don't automatically
default to the notion that the person you're dealing with
is a psychopath.
It's difficult when one goes south on you
like this one did.
The Coxes don't blame Dave Lovrak, not at all.
And they worked hard to stay calm,
even after the loss of their grandsons,
along with Josh and whatever he may have known about Susan.
- I think he was very selfish,
and that's why he took the kids.
[sighing] Um, if he couldn't have 'em,
no one could have 'em.
- We'd appreciate it if he had left a note
telling us where Susan was, or something, you know?
- Maybe the point was... not to tell anyone.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Oh, I'm sure he wants for us to never find her.
- He's still mad at us. You know?
He's mad at us because we won't give up
on our daughter, finding our daughter.
- Investigators have not given up either.
They searched that storage unit of Josh's,
and recovered a comforter among Susan's belongings.
Preliminary tests indicated blood stains on it,
and Chuck Cox believes there is still one person
who can answer his questions.
- His dad knows something.
His dad had some part in this.
- Police have named Steven Powell
a person of interest, though he was far away
when Susan disappeared, they have questions.
Did he goad Josh into something?
Did he devise or assist the cover-up?
Did his words help cause this?
A police source say they grilled Steven relentlessly.
His response was silence.
But authorities weren't done with Steven.
In 2012, he was convicted of those voyeurism charges
and three years later found guilty
of possession of child pornography.
He was paroled in 2017,
then died of a heart attack a year later.
And the parents of this sunny girl
at the center of this mystery?
There is no end to their hurt.
And yet... - We could be mad at Josh,
and we can be mad at Steve.
It's not anger, it's sadness.
But there's hope.
We believe that they're safe in another life,
with the heavenly father who knows what happened,
and it will all be better, so, we have that hope.
- Chuck and Judy Cox won a civil suit
against the state of Washington's Department
of Social and Health Services, claiming negligence.
A jury awarded the estates of Charlie and Braden
$98.5 million.
The police in Utah halted their search for Susan,
and officially the case remains open.
- That's all for this edition of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin. Thank you for watching.