There is still hope that Susan Cox Powell can be found alive. Doubt me? Remember Elizabeth Smart.
Lately, Josh Powell and those immediately around him (namely his father and at least one brother) seem to be implying that Susan is alive ... and that she ran off. They said as much in a recent article in People magazine.
Even before that, it was eluded to on the anonymous website, susanpowell.org. Writing directly to her as if in a personal ad in the Sunday newspaper, "We hope you like the pictures, and are thinking about us as much as we are thinking about you." What? Do they imagine she's just browsing the internet and says, "Gee, I wonder what the old family is up to?"
Then in a more recent post, "Everyone hopes she will walk back through the door soon." And which door would that be? If she were to return to the last home she knew on Sarah Circle in West Valley, she would not find her husband and kids.
Josh left and rented out the place. Come back today and Susan Powell would likely find the locks changed to that door.
To others, the implication that Susan abandoned her family -- especially her two young boys -- is at once hollow and infuriating. Her best friend Kiirsi Hellewell said, "Anyone who loves and knows Susan -- including Josh -- would know that she would never do that. She would never leave her boys. If she decided to leave him, she would have picked up her boys, put them in the car and driven to be with her parents in Washington." Kiirsi adds such a move had been considered.
Josh's own sister, Jenny Graves said, "The website is rather offensive to me in light of what's happened... (they're writing) 'I love you Susan. We miss you Susan... But we didn't want to stay in our house and we wanted to leave on vacation two weeks after you're gone.' It doesn't make any sense to me."
In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Jenny is no longer welcome in her father's house in Puyallup, Washington.
What happened? She dared to ask the obvious. During a visit in late January, Jenny says she was fed up with what she believes is stonewalling by Josh. She got him alone and started asking hard questions -- stuff like, "This is me, Josh. I have to know. What do you know?"
And Josh's response? The Graves say it wasn't pain or grief or even indignation. Jenny says he just "deflected all my questions" and at one point apparently said something to the effect that his lawyer said he shouldn't talk about it.
He said that to his sister.
When Dad came home and found out about the game of "20 questions" Jenny had played with Josh, she says he threw her out using a long string of words best not repeated in polite company.
Jenny has only two regrets from that confrontation that I can discern: 1) She has been cutoff from seeing Charlie and Braden -- Susan's little boys and 2) she still hasn't gotten the answer she so desperately wants -- an answer she believes Josh is keeping to himself...
Six months and counting.
