Susan Powell's Blood Found at Josh Powell's Utah Home - East Idaho News
National

Susan Powell’s Blood Found at Josh Powell’s Utah Home

  Published at

020212 JoshPowell KOMO?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1333205351419KOMO/ABC News(SEATTLE, Wash.) — The blood of Susan Powell, the Utah mother of two who went missing in December 2009, was found on a floor tile near a sofa in her family home, court documents unsealed Friday revealed.

The documents also revealed the existence of a letter Powell wrote and placed in a safe-deposit box in which she said that Josh Powell, her husband, had “threatened to destroy her if they get divorced” and that if she were to die, “it may not be accident, even if it looks like one,” reported ABC News Seattle affiliate KOMO.

The new evidence, tied to a criminal case involving Steve Powell, Josh Powell’s father, raised questions as to why Josh Powell was never charged in the disappearance of his wife.

According to KOMO, after Susan Powell disappeared, her husband emptied her IRA accounts.

“There is direct evidence. There is circumstantial evidence. There is motive,” Pierce County prosecutor Mark Lindquist said on Friday, according to KOMO. “There is everything but the body.”

Jurisdiction for the case against Steven Powell falls within Pierce County. Had the Susan Powell case happened in his jurisdiction, Lindquist said, he would have charged her husband with murder.

In February of this year, Josh Powell set off an explosion in his Graham, Wash., rental home moments after a Child Protective Services worker had dropped off his sons, Braden, 5, and Charles, 7, for a supervised visit. He had moved to Washington initially to live with his father.

The explosion, seconds after Powell pulled the boys inside the house and locked out the social worker, killed him and his boys.

The documents opened Friday pertained to a case against Steven Powell, who last September was arrested and charged with using a telephoto lens to take photos of two young girls in the bathroom of a neighboring house. There reportedly were thousands of photos, and Powell was charged with 14 counts of voyeurism and one count of child pornography.

According to the new documents, Steve Powell had taken photos of Susan Powell in secret, some in which she was fully clothed, others in which she wore only her underwear, one in which her legs were “slightly open, exposing her underwear.”

His apparent attraction to his daughter-in-law has been raised before. In a 2011 interview with “Good Morning America,” he said he had a flirtatious relationship with her that went “a little beyond the pale.”

He described the relationship as “father-in-law-daughter-in-law flirting with each other, maybe some sexual touching or whatever.”

“There’s no question in my mind that the feelings were mutual,” he said.

Josh Powell has long been a suspect in his wife’s disappearance, beginning with the police’s initial search of the West Valley City, Utah, home the two shared with their boys. There, investigators found two fans drying a wet area on the rug where a red stain had been removed.

Josh Powell said that his wife had been cleaning the rug before she disappeared. He also told authorities that he had decided to take an impromptu midnight camping trip with the boys in the midst of a blizzard, the night his wife vanished. Powell said he returned home to find his wife gone.

Later, he would blame his wife’s mental state — “extremely unstable” — for her disappearance, while his father maintained she had skipped town with a man who disappeared from a Christmas party the night she vanished.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION