Josh Powell killed himself and his two sons in a massive explosion.
After Susan Cox Powell disappeared in 2009, her husband Josh Powell was the first and most notable suspect in her disappearance. In fact, he was the only suspect, though the case against him was mostly circumstantial evidence. Still, that didn’t prevent Ms. Powell’s parents from suing for, and gaining custody of, the couple’s two small children, 5-year-old Braden and 7-year-old Charlie. Josh Powell had supervised visitation with his two boys. It is this visitation that led to their deaths. Josh Powell got the children away from their court-appointed supervisor, locked them inside the home he shared with brother Stephen Powell in Graham, Washington, then blew all three of them up via a gas leak.
“Let’s not refer to this please in public as a tragedy. This was not a tragedy. This was a horrible murder of two little kids. Let’s not dress it up, let’s not sanitize it. Let’s call it what it is, which is something deeply wrong, which is not a tragedy, which is something evil,” said Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor. “This is going to hurt everybody’s heart who’s been involved. This is a horrible, heart-breaking situation.”
Powell, who was attempting to get custody back of his children, was being forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and polygraph test to make sure he would not be a danger to the children. As it turned out, tragically, that he was a danger to himself and his two boys. Now all three of them are dead, and a family is devastated. Shortly before the explosion, the court supervisor smelled leaking gas within the house.
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