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Police cordon off the front of a house that was destroyed by a gas explosion in Graham, Wash., Feb. 5. The house explosion killed Josh Powell and his sons.
The house Josh Powell blew up earlier this month – a cozy residential house near Puyallup, Wash. – was a front, the Tacoma News-Tribune reported.
"He set it up like a rental place, with pictures of the family," Sgt. Denny Wood of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said, according to the News-Tribune. "I think it was staged so when CPS (Child Protective Services) came, it would look like a loving family."
Police say that Powell rented it in 2011 but neighbors said they never saw anyone there. When Powell learned he could not keep his children, he rigged the house, turning it into a bomb, authorities have said. On Feb. 5, when his sons, Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, came to visit, he slammed the door in a social worker’s face, slashed the boys with a hatchet and lit a match to a can of gasoline.
The house exploded within moments, killing all three. The social worker was uninjured.
Powell had been in the media spotlight because he was the only person of interest in his wife’s disappearance. In December 2009, Susan Powell, 28, went missing in Utah, where the family lived. At the time, Powell told police that she had run away from their family during a midnight camping trip.
On Monday, Wood detailed what police believe occurred on that fateful Sunday: "The little boys come in. He takes them to the back and hits them with the hatchet. Josh Powell scatters gas. He walks around the house, tossing it on the walls and floor. He puts the five-gallon gas can by the front door. He sits with the other can between his knees."
Josh Powell took the lives of his two sons in a house fire. Powell was a 'person of interest' in his wife's 2009 disappearance. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.
Since the house explosion, police have found new evidence relating to Susan Powell’s disappearance. According to The Associated Press, authorities found a blood-stained comforter in a storage unit Josh Powell had rented. The West Valley City police in Utah have also been fielding new tips.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
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I'm no authority on these things but my understanding of a supervised visit had been that the parent would meet the kids in a neutral place such as a counselor's office or something similar. Regardless, events like that are very rare and hindsight is always 20-20.
Washington State's DSHS does not have a very good record at protecting kids or battered women.
The problem as I see it is Utah's incompetent police and the entire investigation from the beginning. Josh Powell told them his wife went missing in the night, during a snow storm without ever calling or contacting her parents and leaving her 2 boys behind??
Add to the mix his pervert father!
What exactly did Josh Powell do for a living??? ... supporting 2 boys, renting storage facilities, renting a house in another state and paying attorneys/ legal fees.
Was he that wealthy that maybe everyone turned a blind eye to his mental state?
Good post. Been wondering myself what he did for a living. He never seemed to work...always had $. These cops should stick to writing speeding tickets. Poor investigative work allowed these little boys to be slaughtered. The system failed them.
It referred to an employer in news articles of people he said good-bye to. He had worked in web design, I think. He also got rent money from his Utah home because he owned it. His attorney was pro bono. I recall early on that it said Steve Powell supported all the children still living at home to include Josh and the two boys.
Follow the money folks. Ever go into your county courtrooms? Some of them have become magnificent high tech castles. Too much focus is spent extracting money from the citizens who speed, don't come to full stop at a sign, make an illegal left turn, etc.. The police are are used to make money, serve legal papers, etc. That's why they bungle criminal investigations, they don't have the time to do a real CSI investigation, if a suspect can hold it together during the initial interrogations (24 hrs) or has the good sense to lawyer up they will probably get away with their crimes.
More evidence found and it only took him killing his sons. Nice work. The kids are already dead and so is he...so just drop the investigation because it's TOO LATE!!
For the mom's family it would be nice to be able to bury your child.
With all the pre-planning he did, I sure hope they are absolutely sure it was he who died in the fire, not some homeless person he placed in that position while he slipped out the back door.
Evil scum - good riddance. May the poor children rest in peace!
When I was 21, I married a doctor. He was an abuser, a wife beater and I took quite a few beating before being rescued by family and friends. When I went through the process of getting a restraining order, the police and the whole legal system shut doors in my face as soon as I mentioned my husband was a doctor. The paper work went missing and phone calls were never returned.
Not a whole lot has changed in 30 years and I can't help wondering if Susan Powell reached out for help.
We can hope for change only if people come forward and admit their mistakes. The whole tragic story began somewhere and ended in much more tragedy, especially for her parents.
I do wonder whether Josh Powell was given a pass by the Utah police investigating the disappearance of the wife. Mr. Powell was white, married, male and a parent. That is they type of individual that conservative Utah holds in high regard. Police officers are often white, male, married and parents and respect others that share the same values. My concern is that if Powell's storage unit held a comforter with blood on it, why did the police department fail to search it. If Josh Powell was a "person of interest" I don't see why a search warrant couldn't have been issued for the storage unit. My thought is that the cops handled Josh Powell with kid gloves and didn't perform a thorough investigation regarding the missing wife.
I sincerely hope the judge who mandated the child visitation can sleep at night.
Ok-- what I think is that this never would have happened if the police would have looked further into the murder of his wife. They said that the police found a bloodstained comforter in a storage unit that belonged to this crazy man. Why was the unit never searched before this tragedy?? Seems like the police department was lacking before any other systems involved.
Although he may have looked like a dufus. This person was actually quite intelligent. He was able to kill his wife, hide the body and keep it together for almost 3 years. Only when his plan started to unravel did he take insane action. Had his father kept his mouth shut, had he not been a pedophile, etc etc then he may have gotten away with it. At least until the children started talking....
But my faith in the American Justice system still stands. I would rather have failure to catch a bad person than put innocent people in jail. I believe that more harm is done by incarcerating an innocent person than letting a bad person roam free. I know that for many of you that will be hard to understand. I believe that putting innocent people in jail hurts our moral character as a people. It makes us no better than the dictatorships and military states that we say we hate. Once you put a person in jail it is so hard to get them out, even if they are innocent. Think of the mental damage that is done to the innocent person being put in jail for something they didn't do. How do we as a society every fix that.
The more we learn abut this idiot,n the worse he looks! How can someone kill their own children is totally beyond me! He is a self-centric, subhuman piece of fecal matter! The only good thing out of this whole situation, and it is actually a very small thing is that the taxpayers won't have to support him for the rest of his life and secondly, he will not reoffend......ever! Red god bless those poor little boys and their mom! Red
How do you protect children from a prejudice system....if they had only allowed public visitations....there wouldn't have been this murder of 2 innocent lives and they might have had the murderer behind bars by now......they always say" its for the child's best interest".....well they can shove that up their arses!
...waiting for word to develop that Powell Sr. was the father of one of the children.
I am not 100percent sure but I heard that he stopped going to the safe place for visits because it was causing the other people to be uncomfortable due to his notariarity.
When I heard this it reminded me of the social worker here in KY that was killed by the mother of a child. She had brought the baby for a visit with her Mom and the woman killed the sw and took the baby on a multi state road trip till they caught her. It's time to look at "home visits." If Josh had to meet the kids at a public place he would have been less likely to try and kill them. If Dad or Mother have had kids taken away then maybe they just need to Skype.
Even if he had supervised visitation, it should have been conducted in a public place considering the circumstances of his case. There are plenty of public places they could occur without making others feel uncomfortable and If they were that disruptive; they should have been postponed. Especially since the judge ordered a psy evaluation in a a week or two. The court and social workers were not using good judgement.
Quote from the original story says why, "...[judge] Josh Powell would have to move out if he wanted the boys to be with him at his home. To that end, he rented a house on a cul-de-sac in the Graham area." Apparently was unusual to many the judge's solution and probably there was concern over housekeeping and health related issues. They didn't search is living place prior to giving him visitation, judge told him to get another place, he then had two.
A tragic end to the governments inability to keep all safe from bodily harm. I do realize they do their best, but more needs to be done. Not one peron can set there and tell me what another is thinking. We are not mind readers.
What a horrible story. This guy was no father, he was a monster. Sadly, only his murdered wife, the children, and of course, his in-laws knew.
It is easy pointing fingers now, and rubbing it in the agency faces; look at what your failure did? These agencies were not acting negligent. He was becoming more and more desperate, which lead him up to that horrific ax murder, and then explosion. I am surprised that the social worker did not get pulled into the house on that fateful day, and blown up. This guy was so severly depraved, that even his own family could not recognize it.
The only meaning out of this story, is that evil, horrible people are walking among us, and can hide their evil so well, that when it needs to be unleashed, we aren't prepared for it.
These children, and their mother are in the comfort of God. They are safe, and forever will be.
Hopefully this terrible event will cause some social workers to re-think supervised visitation. I think visits should take place in a neutral setting, such as an office or police station. Of course, a nut like this guy might take a bomb or gun with him to the neutral visitation site. It's hard to know what to do when there's a crazy involved. God bless his missing wife and two innocent boys. I hope he burns in hell.
The house Josh Powell blew up earlier this month – a cozy residential house near Puyallup, Wash. – was a front
But your story says absolutely nothing about how/why they know this or what led them to believe it. So it's pretty much a non-story that takes up space.
Police knew of his suspicious trip to the mountains during the night and in freezing temperatures when the wife disappeared, yet couldn't get cause for a warrant to search his house apparently. Then with the visitation, the lack of a warrant for search kept hidden crucial evidence for the kid's safety. With cities broke, sometimes police are out raising money with tickets.
Question for everyone did anyone know him personally????????????? No right exactly so stop judging him no one knows what was going thru that man's head he must of been really disturb it's a sad situation.
So now they find a blood stained comforter? The system let these poors boys down and the Cox family. The father should of been in jail and should of had no visitation rights. Just because those boys have his DNA, does not mean a person like he should have any rights to those kids. The day I heard his story about the camping trip, you knew he did it. Also, I am sure the police could of found something to hold him on living with the crazy father and the porn pics etc., or invterviewing neighbors and friends, there had to be something.
My heart goes out to the Cox family, and I hope the state and local governments have learned a lesson here, so this does not happen again.