Steve Powell: Convictions, Voyeurism, and Susan’s Case

Steve Powell was the father of Josh Powell, the only person of interest in the 2009 disappearance of Susan Cox Powell, and he became a central figure in the case in his own right after investigators discovered he had kept a years-long obsessive fixation on his daughter-in-law. He was convicted of voyeurism in 2012 and of possessing child pornography in 2015, served time in Washington state prisons, and died of a heart attack in 2018 at age 67, roughly a year after his release.¹

After Susan vanished from West Valley City, Utah, on December 7, 2009, Josh moved with the couple’s two young sons to Steve’s home in Puyallup, Washington. From there, father and son publicly claimed Susan had run off with another man and characterized her as mentally unstable, clashing openly with Susan’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox.²

The Obsession With Susan

Investigators eventually recovered roughly 2,330 pages of journal entries across 17 spiral notebooks, along with secret audio and video recordings and a cache of stolen personal items belonging to Susan.³ The material documented a fixation that started years before Susan disappeared.

Steve first wrote about his feelings for Susan in January 2003, calling her his “greatest problem” and “greatest pleasure.” His journals contained sexual fantasies, confessions that he secretly recorded her and watched the footage while masturbating, and admissions that he used a handheld mirror to spy on her under a bathroom door.⁴ In a February 2003 entry, he wrote: “I am so madly in love with Susan that I would do something desperate to have her.”⁵

He also admitted to stealing Susan’s underwear from her laundry, replacing them with duplicates, and keeping the stolen items along with discarded feminine hygiene products in a locked “Susan drawer” in his bedroom closet. He stole her childhood journals to create digital copies he could read at night. He wrote 50 songs with her in mind and sold his family home to buy a larger one, hoping Susan might eventually marry him.³

In July 2003, Steve recorded a conversation while driving Susan to her parents’ home and told her directly that he had “really fallen in love” with her. Susan tried to deflect. He pressed the matter.⁵ After he made his feelings explicit again in December 2003, Susan refused to speak to him for at least five months and asked her husband to cut off contact with his father.³ Steve acknowledged in his journals that his urges might be considered “sick” and “sociopathic,” yet continued writing about her even after she vanished, noting: “I am still so in love with her I can barely function.”

One journal entry stands out. Dated December 8, 2009, the day after Susan was reported missing, it shows Steve writing that he felt Josh “did a truly stupid thing, and probably disposed of her body in a truly grotesque way,” and speculating that Josh had cremated her on abandoned industrial land west of West Valley City.⁶

The 2011 Search of His Home

None of this was public in the years immediately after Susan’s disappearance. That changed in August 2011, when the West Valley City Police Department launched “Operation Tsunami,” a multi-state effort intended to pressure suspects and provoke incriminating reactions. A judge authorized wiretaps on Josh’s cell phone, Steve’s cell phone, and the landline at Steve’s home, with monitoring beginning August 16, 2011.⁷

On August 25, 2011, investigators served a search warrant at Steve’s South Hill home. They lured him away by inviting him to a business lunch in Kennewick, Washington. Officers seized computer towers, digital media, and Susan’s childhood diaries.⁸ What they found reached well beyond Susan’s case. Computer disks contained more than 2,000 images of girls and women, including photographs of two young neighbor girls taken through a bathroom window while they bathed and undressed.⁹

Wiretaps captured other unsettling material. Investigators recorded Josh coaching his young sons to use foul language and disparage Susan’s parents, and recorded no family members expressing regret, remorse, or sympathy about Susan’s disappearance.¹⁰

Voyeurism Conviction

On September 22, 2011, Pierce County detectives arrested Steve and charged him with 14 counts of voyeurism and one count of possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.⁸ The voyeurism charges involved photographs taken between 2006 and 2007 of two neighbor girls, ages eight and ten at the time, through a bathroom window.

The trial took place in Pierce County Superior Court before Judge Ronald Culpepper. The two victims, by then teenagers, testified they had no idea they were being photographed. Their mother testified she had never given permission for any recordings.¹¹ Deputy Prosecutor Bryce Nelson handled the case for the state. Defense attorney Mark Quigley challenged the evidence and suggested other adult men in the household, including Josh, could have taken the images.¹²

Before trial, Judge Culpepper dismissed the child pornography charge, ruling the images did not meet the legal definition of “sexually explicit conduct.” He also restricted the use of Steve’s journals about Susan, admitting only a single September 2010 entry in which Steve wrote about his lack of sexual self-control and his fixation on her.¹³

In May 2012, the jury convicted him on 14 counts of voyeurism after about six and a half hours of deliberation. Two counts were later dismissed. On June 15, 2012, Judge Culpepper sentenced him to 30 months in prison, an exceptional sentence above the standard range of zero to 12 months. Prosecutors had asked for 10 years.¹⁴

Child Pornography Conviction

The dismissed child pornography charge came back. The Washington State Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal in 2014, ruling the trial court had erred in concluding the images were not sexually explicit.¹⁵ Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist refiled the charge in October 2014.¹⁶

In July 2015, a jury convicted Steve of possession of child pornography. On August 21, 2015, he was sentenced to five years in prison.¹⁷ He served two years and was released from the Monroe Correctional Complex on July 11, 2017. Upon release he was classified as a Level 2 sex offender and placed under community supervision until June 2019.¹

Separately, a civil judgment of roughly $1.8 to $2 million was awarded to the families of the two neighbor girls. In November 2013, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Vicki Hogan upheld it.¹⁸ A judge ordered the sale of his Puyallup home to satisfy the judgment, and in May 2014 the mother of the victims purchased it at a sheriff’s auction, paying effectively nothing out of pocket because the price was offset against the judgment she held.¹⁹

Steve also refused to complete court-ordered sexual deviancy treatment tied to his voyeurism sentence, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked to disclose his sexual history. Judge Culpepper ordered him to serve 40 days in jail for the refusal in November 2014. In March 2016, a three-judge panel of the Washington State Court of Appeals unanimously reversed that jail order, with Appellate Judge Linda CJ Lee writing that Steve faced “a realistic threat of self-incrimination” if forced to answer such questions without a grant of immunity.²⁰²¹

The Custody Fallout and Josh Powell’s Murder-Suicide

Steve’s arrest in September 2011 directly triggered the events that ended Josh Powell’s custody of his sons. With the household now the site of a criminal investigation, Washington authorities placed the children in protective custody, and on September 27, 2011, a judge granted temporary custody to Chuck and Judy Cox. Josh received only weekly supervised visitation and was named a subject in the same voyeurism and child pornography investigation.²²

In early February 2012, a judge denied Josh’s petition to regain custody and ordered him to undergo a psychosexual evaluation. Days later, on February 5, 2012, during a supervised visit, Josh locked a state caseworker out of his Graham, Washington, home, attacked his sons Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, with a hatchet, doused the house in gasoline, and triggered an explosion. All three died.²³

Death and Where Susan’s Case Stands

Steve Powell died on July 23, 2018, at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. He was 67. Pierce County sheriff’s detective Ed Troyer confirmed the cause of death was a heart attack after a period of heart problems. No autopsy was performed.²⁴

Susan Cox Powell’s disappearance remains officially unsolved. Her body has never been found, and the West Valley City Police Department continues to list her case as an active cold case.²⁵ With Josh, Steve, and Josh’s brother Michael all dead, the prospect of criminal charges in Susan’s disappearance has effectively closed. Retired West Valley City detective Ellis Maxwell has described Josh’s murder-suicide as “definitely an admission of guilt.”²⁶

1
KOMO News. Steven Powell Released From Prison After Serving Sentence for Child Porn
2
ABC News. Powell Family Tragedy Timeline of Events
3
The News Tribune. Steven Powell’s Journals Reveal Obsession With Susan
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NBC News. Journals Reveal Steven Powell’s Obsession With Missing Daughter-in-Law
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Cold Podcast. Wake Up Little Susie – Steve Powell Love Confession
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Oxygen. Steve Powell Journal About Daughter-in-Law
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MyNorthwest. Cold: Operation Tsunami Designed to Provoke Suspects in Susan Powell Case
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The News Tribune. Susan Powell Case Timeline
9
ABC News. Steven Powell Charged With Voyeurism and Child Pornography
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KSL NewsRadio. Exclusive: Cold Podcast Obtains Wiretap Records in Susan Powell Case
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The Herald. Defense: Steve Powell Not Expected to Testify
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CBS News. Steve Powell Voyeurism Trial: Girls Testify
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ABC News. Steven Powell Trial: Lawyers Claim in Opening
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ABC News. Steven Powell Sentenced to Years in Jail
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The News Tribune. Steven Powell Child Pornography Charge Reinstated
16
Pierce County. Steven Powell Child Pornography Charge Refiled
17
Pierce County. Steven Powell Sentenced for Child Pornography
18
Fox 13 Seattle. Judge Rules That Steven Powell Must Pay $1.8 Million Judgment
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Fox 13. Steven Powell’s House Sold at Auction
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The News Tribune. Appeals Court Rules Steven Powell Cannot Be Jailed for Refusing Sex Treatment
21
Findlaw. State v. Powell, No. 46957-0-II
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CBS News. Susan Powell’s Children to Stay With Her Parents, Not Husband
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ABC News. Josh Powell Killed Sons With Hatchet Before Fatal Explosion
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Deseret News. Steven Powell Dies of Heart Attack at Washington Hospital
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West Valley City. Missing Person – Susan Powell
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ABC News. Susan Powell Disappearance: Young Sons’ Horrific Death Haunts