TOOELE COUNTY, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Chuck Cox spent the week in Utah listening to intense debriefings by West Valley police detectives on progress in the case of his missing daughter, Susan Cox Powell.
Before returning to his home in Puyallup, Washington, he made the two hour journey to Simpson Springs in remote Tooele County.
December 6th, 2009, Josh Powell said he took his two small boys to Simpson Springs. That was the last night anyone saw his wife, Susan.
Chuck Cox said he had to see the place for himself.
As he drove off the pavement and onto the dirt road for the last 20-30 miles to the campground, he noted there were no lights or markings. It would have been a difficult drive at night -- especially with blowing snow. Cox observed, "My daughter never would have let him out of the house with the kids that night to go camping and I certainly don't believe he would head out in a snow storm."
At Five Mile Pass, he looked out on the winding road and reiterated, "If you're talking two feet (of snow) forget it. No guardrails." It would be a treacherous pass for a vehicle with high clearance and four wheel drive. Josh Powell was driving the family's front wheel drive minivan.
Once Cox arrived at the Simpson Springs campground, he met a Boy Scout troop from Riverton. It just so happens the troop was camping at Simpson Springs that same weekend in early December. "I have never been in a camp that cold," said scout leader Jeremy Sorenson. They packed up and left before Josh would have gotten there.
Chuck Cox spent a half hour walking by himself among the fire pits and sagebrush. To finally see the place was something of a revelation -- not that he every really believed Josh's account of that night, but driving the roads and seeing it with his own eyes put the problems with the story into sharp relief.
He now firmly believes that whatever happened that night did not happen at Simpson Springs. "It confirms it," he said. "The only hard thing is thinking she could be out there somewhere ... in another place like this."
Chuck Cox feels Simpson Springs does not hold the answer to his daughter's fate.
