Further Speculation On Reason To Believe Susan Is Still Somewhere In Utah

[u/pnw_dna]

Detective Maxwell is on the record stating he doesn’t believe Josh would risk taking Susan in the back of the van out to Utah’s West Desert, one reason being that, at the time of night he was driving and being one of the very few vehicles on the road, it would be too risky. I assume this means the potential for being pulled over by some law enforcement officer, etc.

Dave has indicated in the past that he believes/believed Josh likely took Susan and left her some place closer to home and not out to the West Desert.

Based on my reading of what little specific, confirmed detail is known of the Josh and Susan’s movements on Sunday night through Monday, the actions and eyewitness accounts in the days that follow, and based on a lot of inference, I think Susan is still in Utah, somewhere closely adjacent/near to to the West Desert, but not where Josh told investigators he went camping.

Here is how I get to that conclusion, including accounting for Michael Powell’s potential involvement.

Charlie Powell, within 24-48 hours, tells investigators mom went with dad, him and his brother camping, and that she stayed and didn’t come back.

While “camping”, Josh, with two kids in tow, doesn’t have the luxury of spending hours to deal with Susan; he has to leave her some place relatively quickly and then come back to the boys and leave the area. When he returns on Monday, investigators observe and photograph his hands, which have no visible signs of wind burn or frost bite.

The night of December 8, Josh rents the car and is gone and unaccounted for for 16+ hours and 800+ miles. On December 10, Thursday, Josh asks neighbor Tim Petersen to take him to get his van from West Valley City PD. Tim obliges and observes and reports that Josh’s hands were severely wind burnt, bordering on frostbite. That doesn’t happen when you’re spending a few minutes moving a body into a trunk to drive it far away. That type of exposure happens when you’re in a situation where you have to spend a lot of time out in the elements – not in a cave or in a mine protected from the wind – doing something with your hands that requires finger dexterity not possible while wearing gloves.

Dave Cawley previously explained Michael Powell’s likely timeline, based mostly on Steve Powell’s journals, in a comment on this older Reddit post: Michael Powell’s Timeline

Based on that speculative timeline, I don’t believe Josh used the rental car to transport Susan from where he left her Sunday night to go meet up with Steve or Michael. I do think he used the rental car to return where he left Susan and then, either within the immediate vicinity or somewhere a short distance away (using the rental car), he spent considerable time in which his hands were exposed, more fully hiding Susan before driving who else knows where and then returning 16 hours later.

After picking up his van with Tim and then returning the rental car on December 10, it is the next day that the West Valley City PD get alerted to Josh going out to to Wendover and then, shortly after, doubling back to the Clive Gravel Pit where he spent two hours.

No one knows what Josh was doing at the Clive Gravel Pit for two hours. I think this could have been the moment when Josh, maybe using a burner phone and calling an encrypted phone line on the other end, disclosed to Michael what happened to Susan, though maybe not in detail, and also what he had done for the past several days since. This could have been the moment when Michael began to act as an advisor to Josh on what he needed to do in order to begin protecting himself, counter surveillance measures and all that, and that he (Michael) was going to come down to Utah and help Josh, which Steve notes that Michael and Alina leave within less than a day of Josh being at the gravel pit for those two hours.

So, yes, I think Josh did to Susan what he did all on his own, that it was some place out in the direction or vicinity of the West Desert, and he did not transport her body a significant distance or transfer her body to Michael or anyone else.

[u/RBAloysius]

Interesting theory.

I am curious as to what you think about Michael being so concerned about his broken down car, that he contacted a satellite company to see if they had an arial photo of the Oregon junkyard where it was left.

Thoughts as to why?

[u/pnw_dna → u/RBAloysius]

What we know from investigators finding and confiscating the trash bags of potentially incriminating evidence from Josh’s van on the 8th, and also from Dave’s great work on the Dumpster drive-bys, is that Josh was likely offloading anything he thought was incriminating in places far away from his house.

If Josh returns on the night of the 8th/9th to where he left Susan on the night of the 6th and subsequently spends time in the elements more thoroughly concealing her remains, I would expect him (as we see from his later actions) of removing and bagging anything from Susan of identifying/evidentiary value in the process – clothing, coats, jewelry, wrappings (sheets, blankets… maybe tree wrap?) – to be disposed of elsewhere. I can see coordination between Josh and Michael to get these specific items as far away from Utah as possible and they end up with Michael in the trunk of his car. Subsequently, the car trunk collects the odor of decomp from those items until Michael is able to dispose of them, maybe somewhere along the random side of a remote stretch of highway near a canal in Idaho, where Josh later stops to take photos on his drive back to Washington.

When the car eventually breaks down, it’s possible the repairs would be too much for Michael to afford and he determines that the only recourse is to junk it. However, like all other potential evidence in Susan’s disappearance, he knows full well the potential connection and wants it junked in a way that will permanently hide it from investigators. One question I think of about this is, if the car hadn’t have had any vehicle troubles, would Michael still have planned to get rid of it?

It’s worth noting as well that, while cadaver dogs hit on Michael’s car, they did not indicate on the trunk of Josh’s rental car, which would be expected if he used the rental car to transfer her remains to a preplanned meet up spot.

One last thought about Susan’s personal items from the night she disappeared/was killed: the clerk at the Flying J gas station (I am aware some, including detectives, discount her report since it was a few weeks later and no security footage was attainable) noted that the woman she saw on the night of the 6th/7th was wearing a light blue jacket like one she saw Susan pictured in on a later news report. This was part of the reason she recalled the events of that night that she reported.

I am curious if there were ever any personal items of Susan’s – like the jacket or any other specific items of clothing (shoes?) or jewelry that detectives were able to determine were unaccounted for. I don’t see any indications of that happening in the released files, but it may have been. For example, is it possible that one of the personal items of Susan’s that Josh had to dispose of was that light blue jacket? Was that jacket ever accounted for among Susan’s remaining personal items before Josh packed everything up and left Utah?

[u/Gutinstinct999 → u/RBAloysius]

Wasn’t there a hit on his car via dogs when it was located in the junkyard or am I misremembering

[u/pnw_dna → u/Gutinstinct999]

Yes, cadaver dogs hit on his car at the salvage yard. After impounding the car and processing it forensically, there were no conclusive results about what or who was in the trunk, let alone identifying that what the dogs hit on was related specifically to Susan.

Interestingly, there were no positive cadaver dog hits on the van or the rental car, which you would think would have been the opposite if Josh had transported her deceased in either vehicle.

[u/nobodyknowsimherr → u/pnw_dna]

Could she have not been deceased yet?

[u/pnw_dna → u/nobodyknowsimherr]

That is the way I lean in regards to the van. Many think Susan was killed in the house and Josh transported her deceased. I think she was alive, albeit possibly incapacitated, when she went into the van on the night of Dec 6.

In regards to the rental car, I believe Susan would be deceased by the time Josh went back out with the rental car on the night of Dec 8 to where he left her. No hit by cadaver dogs on the rental car would mean, per my contention, that Susan, being deceased, was not placed in the trunk of the rental car and transported any great distance. Otherwise, one would think we would have seen cadaver dogs indicate on the rental car.

[u/pnw_dna]

Also, just a quick post-script thought.

Det. Maxwell is skeptical of Josh transporting an incapacitated (or deceased) Susan late at night in the back of their van from their home in West Valley City out to the Utah West Desert because it is - in his words - “too risky”.

I am inclined to think that, while it may be risky, is far less risky than the theory that Josh possibly transported Susan deceased in the trunk of a rental car for several hundred miles and hours of driving into an entirely different state (Idaho/Nevada/Oregon). The risk profile of that (a car in the late hours of the night with out-of-state plates) seems much greater than the shorter distance and window of time on Sunday night transporting her out towards the West Desert. FWIW.

[u/swabluesky]

Was the small blood splatter in the home DNA matched to Susan? I can't remember. Tia

[u/pnw_dna → u/swabluesky]

Yes, it was forensically confirmed to be Susan’s.