E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Al Hartmann / The Salt Lake Tribune file
Michael Powell, facing camera, locks a gate after becoming concerned about Michael Peterson, a former friend of Joshua and Susan Powell who showed up at the West Valley City home on Jan. 6, 2010, to collect a playgound set he gave the Powell children to use.
The brother of Josh Powell, the Utah man who killed his two young sons and himself in an intentionally set house fire about a year ago, has committed suicide, according to police.
Michael Powell, 30, jumped from a seven-story parking ramp near his home in downtown Minneapolis around 2:25 p.m. on Monday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. He died on impact.
Four people apparently witnessed the fall, a police report said, and the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Powell’s death.
Michael Powell was a doctoral degree candidate in cognitive science at the University of Minnesota, the Tribune reported.
He was a fervent defender of his brother, Josh, who murdered his sons, Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, with a hatchet and then lit a match to a can of gasoline in a rented house near Puyallup, Wash., on Feb. 5, 2012. The house exploded within moments, killing all three.
Days before the explosion, Powell had been denied custody of the children and ordered to undergo a psychosexual evaluation after police discovered hundreds of images of disturbing cartoon sex and graphic depictions of incest on his home computer.
At the time, 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. Powell had told police that she had run away from their family during a midnight camping trip.
Powell had also been in a legal battle in U.S. District Court for Western Washington with Susan’s parents Chuck and Judy Cox over $1.5 million in insurance policies issued to the family.
Several months before his death, Powell changed his insurance policy to list Michael as the primary beneficiary rather than Susan. Michael was to receive a 93 percent share, and if Michael died, the insurance payout would be split evenly between his sister and father. Powell also made Michael the second beneficiary on his sons' insurance policies.
Michael Powell also fiercely defended their father, Steve Powell, who was convicted in May 2012 of 14 counts of voyeurism for surreptitious photographs he took of two girls who lived near his home in Puyallup. Powell said he believed the charges against his father, is scheduled to be released in May, had been fabricated.
Leave a Comment:
"The truth will set you free." Some people can't handle freedom.
RIP.
Throwing a chain around a gate to keep a man out who simply wanted to pick up a playground set he had loaned the family seems more than a little ridiculous. Perhaps it was this rabid defensiveness and non-appreciation of others that left him all alone.
Something genetic.
I concur, culheath. Pity they don't have DNA from Josh, Michael, and the old man. There is something seriously wrong with their chromosomes.
Ummm.... it is the Minneapolis Star Tribune if it happened in my beloved state. It makes MSNBC look like Fox.
Interesting though that he was a doctoral candidate in Cognitive Science.
I get the feeling he was trying to figure out why his family was so messed up.
While publically denying that his family was messed up.
Seriously, it's amazing how we can go so far in life, fooling so many people...
makes you look around and wonder who the nut is amongst your group of peers.
odds are, more than just one...
Basketful of crappy genes among all the males in that family: incest, stalking, child porn (if not also pedophilia by dad), murder and a whole lot of life insurance shenanigans. Seems as if the only sane one was Susan; hope her body is one day found so that her parents can at least bury their daughter. Never can tell what kind of family you marry into.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - AU
James Holmes, the Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter, was a doctoral candidate in cognitive science too.
Susan was family by marriage. No DNA shared.
"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable." ---Mark Twain (maybe)
Some people can't handle misery.
that there is a... Screwed Up...bunch of folks...
pjam09,
I certainly could be mistaken but when I saw the picture I thought he was removing the chain from the gate to allow the other guy to retrieve the play set. Even though the caption says otherwise, that's not how the picture looks.
Dirty family secrets and the only one left is the monster that committed them! Are we sure he should be released? I'll give him a year before he kills a child and I feel that is a stretch. Find a way to keep him behind bars or find a way to keep him away from children!
Hey Stone Pipe, it's the Salt Lake Tribune. The action in this Powell saga began in Salt Lake City.
They need to do an intensive brain and chromosomal study of this guy (if his brain is intact after the jump), there is definitely something amiss here. Dad should never go free (confussed is right) and when criminal time has been served he needs to go directly to a mental hospital for in-depth evaluation.
All of us "normal" (whatever that really is) people out here can be thankful they weren't born into this screwed-up family.
This family should reimburse the city for using up more than their share of common taxpayer-funded resources.
I do not know if it is only the facts of this story or the horrible way it was written that has me wanting to commence projectile vomiting... I think it is both(========
Seriously MSN you really are reaching, just look at the headline of this story. This is what the media has resorted to today, report on Murder, suicide, rape, Obama and guns. Pound out the same drama trying to whip people into their impression of what they should be and glamorize every story for a reaction. Sickening... Anything for a buck
Life is just one big, continual Greek tragedy!
The kids had life insurance policies. Looking back, it was not a good sign.
No sh_t! Yup, that usually happens when you dont know how to land properly.
Next, please. Enough of this no-story.
Even the "nicest families" and "pilars of the community" have their own dirty little secrets when abuse reigns in their homes. You never know what happens behind closed doors. No one is exempt.
Too perfect families are just that: too perfect. Appearances mean everything to the most secretive of abusive families. It could involve physical and or verbal/mental abuse. It could involve all the children or just one.
One thing is for certain: they will fight to the death to avoid the light of day to shine, to avoid the truth about them becoming known. We need to recognize this and call it out more in our society.
I'd like to throw out one other possibility here and that is that maybe he was pushed off the garage. If no one witnessed him actually jumping off the building then this is a possibility to consider.
He was left a large amount of money after the deaths of his brother and the kids and there are many other reasons why someone might push someone off a building, especially these days it seems.
I'm not trying to mess with anyone by saying this but if the news article was better written I wouldn't be saying these things. People get into fights everyday as we see by reading the news and it is within reason that he had a problem with someone in the parking garage and they threw him off the building for whatever the reason would be. Since I have not heard of any suicide letter or note being left behind I believe this is now a possibility. Hopefully I am wrong but now I am curious to say the least as weirder things have happened in the news many times before and why should this be any different?
RIP.
Is it just me, or do a lot of psych majors seem to be a bit "off"? Not all, of course, but perhaps they are trying to figure out what went wrong. I'm not one to point fingers, I learned a lot in my abnormal psych class.
So gathering from the comments I read, the males of that family had screwed up DNA:
Everyone should feel rather relieved then that the two boys are no longer among us. While it is sad that two children died in such a horrific manner, on the other hand, it should come as a relief to everyone that two more of these disturbed individuals are not going to be released upon society. Don't like that comment? Think it through before you make your indignant cries about how they were "just babies."
How much tragedy can one family endure?
Ummm.... it is the Minneapolis Star Tribune if it happened in my beloved state. It makes MSNBC look like Fox.
click on the blue letters and it takes you to the web site of the paper they say it was in which was a Utah paper
Josh and Michael Powell had at least one sister who is estranged from her father/brothers. I do believe she thought her brother Josh had indeed done away with his wife Susan and thinks her father is a sick s.o.b. Perhaps she is the only normal one in the picture? It sounds like the father passed his sick sexual behaviors onto his sons- or at least Josh. Michael didn't want to accept the reality about his brother and father evidently. Too bad for him. Or perhaps he had come to the realization that they were indeed sick individuals and couldn't live with the reality. I hope the father is sitting in prison with the knowledge he created a monster in Josh and probably had a big effect on why Michael took his own life. I hope he never has a peaceful day for the rest of his life as a result of what he perpetrated.
And Robert in Oregon- I feel no sympathy for the Powell family except perhaps the daughter who seems to believe her brother (and father) were guilty. I feel for Susan Powell's family as they have lost their daughter and grandchildren at the hands of Josh Powell. For them I have great sympathy, but not for the males in the Powell family
Mormonism destroys another life.
hs 321, I like that. Sweet American Shakespeare - the Powells present a horrible degradation.
A long time ago I went for cognitive-behavioral counseling and enrolled in a university course called psychology of adjustment. The professor reputedly had been married 5 times. He might have been an over-adjuster and over-achiever. Maybe he married women who could not adjust to his annoying habits.
But the therapy and the class helped me to become a survivor, nature and nurture.
Ybluepanda...religion had nothing to do with this. Go crawl back into your bigoted hole and stay there. Moron.
Do people murder their own children in other countries as often as it happens in the USA?
Yes.
Yes, especially ones that don't think girl babies are as valuable as boys.
Or those that think children can be demons and have Christian witches point them out so that they kill them by beating or fire.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2012/08/britains-action-plan-to-stop-witchcraft-related-child-abuse.html
Happens all the time. Like FitzsWife said or other places where they get stoned to death because the brought shame or whatever on their "father".
CommonSense, of course, children are being raised to be suicide bombers everyday!
You're not very aware of the world around us, are you Common Sense? What a shockingly out-of-touch question.
Our first ammendment allows you to be more aware of whats going on around you.....It seems like more because its probably reported more....
The Government of China does it for you.
and don't forget Pretoria~
krell, while i do not disagree, do you really think that americans in general are in touch with the world? we have no clue, for example, how washington has made us so much poorer, less educated, less accomplished, less productive, less healthy, less well fed, less cared-for, less intellectually curious, less cultured and less creative than people in other industrialized countries -- even though we were formerly at the top of the mountain in each of these categories and that this process has been going on for more than twelve years. I am surprised that you are shocked by an american who doesn't know much about the world around him/her.
More often actually. Personally...I believe if you murder your child...then you should die as well. The EXACT same way you did it to them!
Mormonism killed Susan Powell, then her sons, their father, and now this man. The "church" teaches the father is God in his house...God is never wrong...God cannot be questioned or judged....Religion and Faith are weapons of mass destruction...
I was happy to hear today that Drew Peterson, the cop, got 38 years for the murder of his 3rd wife. His 4th wife, Stacy, is still missing.
I think Powell killed Susan, and I think Peterson killed Stacy.
Well that is a sad story if I ever heard one. RIP, all of them.
so did he "fall" or did he "jump" I hate when articles do that.
Next paragraph
Either way this whole thing was extremely sad.
He jumped, and then he fell. They may not have witnessed the initial jump, but they did see the falling action. At least, that's how I'm interpreting this.
You are correct Heather - the writing is not confusing at all. 1SGFitzsWife4ID are you a distant relative of the Powell's?
Jump or fall, it doesn't really matter. The cause of death is the sudden stop.
RIP
This is why I discontinued my path to becoming a teacher (English - high school level)
Clearly, even adults cant figure out how to read an article and use their reasoning skills to figure out what the heck those tricky words mean.
Seriously Fitz...let's work this one through.
Once he jumped from the building, what was his next action?
Jumping some more?
Flying?
Driving?
or Falling?
Choose carefully.
Greatest freaking post ever. I love this. Jessica, people really are just that retarded right?
that's some funny $h!t. im surprised you didnt put 'gravity' somewhere in between
Since jumping starts out as an upward movement it proceeds the fall . They are different sections of the same movement......Suicide isn't accidental, so I hope this helps....
1SGFitzsWife4ID
That wasn't even the worst one. In one sentence they say he murdered his kids with a hatchet and then the very next sentence- "The house exploded within moments, killing all three." Killing the boys who had already been murdered??
Nezlee (& Jessica-1170252)
So when people jump out of a plane should we instead say they fell out because they certainly aren't "starting out in an upward motion". Can you see how that would change the context of the action?
To jump is an intentional act, to fall is not. This is the difference between the two. Did you guys really need that explained to you?? Perhaps you discontinued your education a bit prematurely Jessica.
Jessica lmfao... that is seriously funny... That being said Backcountry has a point these writers don't step back from the forrest to see the trees. They assume you understand what they mean. None of it is worth reading on MSN anyway.
He accidentally jumped before he deliberately fell.
After leaving the state of equilibrium provided by the building he accelerated at 9.8 m/s2. About 70 mph at impact. To bad his brother didn't do this instead, before he killed his sons
Well Miss Jessica...in the context of how the article was written...there is confusion. But...since you gave up your lessons in English...I'll assume you are just too stuck on yourself to understand that part!
WSU Coug...indeed! Now...if they would just give the dad a rope or a razor blade, and we could wipe out the entire family tree! (Well...almost...there is the sister...)
Heather- after what you said, I can see it that way now. Thanks.
Well Jessica I can obviously understand how physics works, now if you could point out in the article where it states they didn't see him jump, but witnessed the falling only your sarcastic reply would make sense.
BackCountry- ARGH that irritates the hell out of me! I just read another article where it stated that the man they were looking for, had killed his wife and children by slitting their throats and then blowing up the house, couple paragraphs down it states, he found out his wife was talking divorce so he shot her in the head. So which was it?
Voltaire would be pleased. So random. Despite the suicide of the Powell man, the controversy is over the reporter's grammar.
I once did a final exam in a Grammar class which was to pick out any newspaper article and describe each element of English grammar. I picked a paragraph from a fluff piece about dogs in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. What could go wrong? Under careful scrutiny, I found a nightmare of broken pieces of English that made my life hell for 8 hours. I thought I might trade out for a different paragraph. No go! No go!
Maybe SOME things should be left unknown.
Why?
@Segdirb
"who knows what Evil lurks in the mind of man"
Best we not know!
I saw that too "..doctoral degree candidate in cognitive science.."
Guessing he failed. What? Too soon?
Warren - I agree, it's best to just pretend there are no problems or trying to figure out how to prevent or solve them.
I mean, I dont want to know why some people molest their own children and that cycle continues...because lord knows, we wouldnt ever want to stop that vicious cycle...
now would we?
naw...best to just leave it alone and it let it continue as it is...
riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Jessica-1170252
How about I bring you a nice glass of warm milk .. :-)
Warren,
I think Jessica is on a roll, and we should all sit back and be both entertained and educated. It is so refreshing to see comments from someone with cognitive activity on these posts. Thanks for weighing in, Jessica. Please keep it up!
Now if only Josh Powell's dad would commit suicide, that'd be great!
Why?
Don't want him to jump in the burning fires of hell until he tells where Susan is. They never did find her!!!
Karen,
What leads you to believe that Josh's dad knows where Susan is?
And for that matter, does anyone really know where the Easter Bunny gets all those eggs from?
He pulls them out of chicken littles ass.
This is a sad story that keeps getting sadder. How awful! Condolences to the remaining members of the wife's family (Susan) and to the Powell family.
Oh Good Grief!
Can you say "dysfunctional family!"
Not all dysfunctional families are bad.
It's important to remember the FUN in dysFUNctional.
this is/was one messed up family...
Sounds like he was either in deep denial, or collaboration. Either way it seems to have gotten to him.
I can see how having your brother take the lives of his own children then burn all three of them could cause quite a bit of mental stress. Then adding a pervert for a father, I can see how things could have gotten to him. Now add the media crucifying the Powell family before all evidence was in, well enough to drive anyone crazy.
Or something else entirely unrelated to the drama surrounding the rest of his family got to him.
Well, it looks like the media might have had a point this time. No one takes a toddler and a baby out for camping in a freezing blizzard without the mom either going with them 'cause it's so much fun, or mom isn't alive to call the cops.
A tragedy all round perhaps, but will the society really miss him and his wacko relatives? Looks like all of them are just taking up space.
John Nader - you missed the point. The article states that he murdered the children with a hatchet. So the kids are dead, of hatchet wounds. Then in the next sentence it states that he lit a gas can on fire which exploded and killed all three of them. That doesn't make sense, the kids were already dead of getting chopped with a hatchet, they didn't die a second time when the gasoline exploded.
I too noticed that. Funny stuff. Best written article ever!
FWIW if you want to get technical about the cause of death:
"already dead of getting chopped with a hatchet" -- No they were not.
According to the reports about the cause of death, the hatchet injuries were enough to eventually lead to death but the gasoline explosion (carbon monoxide poisoning) was the ultimate cause of death.
At the time of the murders, komonews in Seattle reported "
Investigators now believe Josh Powell attempted to murder the children with the hatchet, but was overwhelmed by smoke before he could finish the job"
Actually bonezzzzzzzz...the coroner said that the kids were most likely NOT dead when the house blew up. Whether or not they were conscious could not be determined...but they were not believed to be dead.
Why is this news? I don't understand why this man's sucide is NEWS! Who cares?????
Why is this "news"?
If THIS is "news", why then are the thousands or other poor people that make the mistake of taking their lives not also news?
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. (Most of the time.)
Because his brother probably killed his wife & killed his children with a hatchet & blew up their house. The creepy dad is a perv and possible murder as well. A scary family, who seem so nice that good people are shocked to know the truth about them.
What about the information reported on about the insurance beneficiary changes including Michael, the brother who just comitted suicide. They reported he was in his doctorate year. Secondary Education is very costly. Bachelor's = 4years of debt + master's = 2 more years of debt + doctorate. Maybe his death is news because it's the missing/final piece to the puzzle.....
He was a fervent defender of his brother, Josh, who murdered his sons, Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, with a hatchet and then lit a match to a can of gasoline in a rented house near Puyallup, Wash., on Feb. 5, 2012. The house exploded within moments, killing all three.
No, it only killed the father. The two boys were killed by the father with a hatchet before he set the house on fire. The writer needs to go back to journalism 101.
I was wondering if I was the only who read that. So, I guess he killed them twice?
Ahh, it's NBC at their usual best.
He was in the process of murdering them with the hatchet when the house exploded. The cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning from the gasoline explosion.
As reported at the time by Komonews in Seattle "Investigators now believe Josh Powell attempted to murder the children with the hatchet, but was overwhelmed by smoke before he could finish the job"
Do all you people camplaining about the errors in this report come here to judge the writing content or what?
Anyhow, it is a tragedy and I feel very sorry for the little boys at least and maybe their uncle was under so much grief and I can only imagine how I would feel if my brother had killed my nephews. One who commits suicide is usually suffering mental problems. It does seem to indicate that this family had inborn mental illnes. I do believe that the DNA may be interesting to study in a lab setting.
The guy killed his wife, their son was remembering, and both the grandfather and killer were/are perverts and the grandfather was in on the killing and disposable of the wife.
I still believe he knows where she is bured. Ratting out people like that can end ones life. It did hers.
To bad he could not handle the truth. Some can some can't. Makes one wonder if both sons were molested as children and took it to the grave with them. Sad anyway you slice it.
Most likely.
He was in serious denial. When he finally saw the truth he just couldn't take it.
~~~~sigh~~~~
just goes to show... all the horrible things we are seeing done by children seems to stem from horrible parenting... Maybe if we made stricter laws on parents for what their children do we can overcome such atrocities. Makes you wonder what the dad did or exposed his kids to, forget what they found on his computer and just look at his kids. One kills his two sons with a hatchet then sets himself and their bodies on fire. The other defended his brother's actions (according to the wonderful writing in this report) and then tried to fly off a parking deck. I read an article last week where a 17 year old threw a 9 year old off the top of a building because he was mad at him. People need to parent their kids, can't think of any scenario where my son would be hanging out with a 17 year old when he is 9 or for him to be out of my site at that age.
Amen about the need for parenting. Reminds me of a scene from the movie Parenthood where Keanu Reves says "you have to have a license to drive a car, hell you even have to have a license to fish, but any **** ahole can be a father". Sad for those young boys who will never get to experience life because their father chose to take that right away from them. Sounds like this entire family needed good parenting.
The whole family was perverted. Buh bye.
If I remember correctly, the children were seriously injured by his hatchet attack, but they found smoke in their lungs, meaning they were still alive during the fire. This family is full of horrendous monsters, including Josh and Michael's father who will be released soon. Hopefully, he can find a sliver of a conscience and tell the police where Susan's body is so that that poor woman's soul can be put to rest. What a nightmare that keeps on going.
Good riddance. Another POS eliminated from the gene pool.
I just hope he was a liberal.
Lovely family. They live among us.
i still remember the interviews: "they were such nice, quiet neighbors"
I guess it should make me appreciate the noisy neighbors more.
What a family of tragedy. Somewhere someone made the choice to do what was wrong/evil and to do it
repeatedly. It affected the entire family and has cost numerous lives including innocent children. How tragic! We do not live in a vacuum. The bad choices of adults will affect our children. Parents need to think before they do. This is evidence of the consequences of our wrong choices.
What a sick, sick twisted family.