Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors by Ann Rule

addressed to a girl, Cynthia, 1 and he heavily edited it, with whole sentences scratched out. He may never have actually sent it; “VOID” is scribbled in black ink across the first page.
Cynthia,
It’s illegal for me to be here right now. It always was. Before I wasn’t too worried because it’s unlikely that the wrong people would find out. The people who know me like me [ most of them ] and no one cares that I’m here.
If Jack* sees me and turns me in I could be arrested. Do you think I care about that? And about you?
Lynn* may think I’m ignoring her, and you may think I don’t care about her, but I have spent more time with Lynn this past couple of months than I’ve spent with anyone. If you want examples, I went to her house for several hours just the other day. Lynn and I spending quality time together—untill [sic] she invited us over to Scott’s* house. After that she hardly payed [sic] attention to me because she was talking to Scott. That doesn’t bother me. I hardly noticed it at the time.
Lynn and I are good friends and I don’t think that’ll change.
For me high school is just a place to make and see friends, and that is what it’s always been. [ crossed out ] When it comes to friends I make a special effort to see you through. People just happen to introduce me to their friends and [ crossed out ] alot of times I forget their names. Sometimes forget even having met them. Then I always try to remember them and say hi when I see them.
    Josh next mentioned a girl who “has no friends” and said he always tried to be “nice” to her, but he scratched that out so thoroughly that it is difficult to read that paragraph.
    “I like knowing alot of people,” he continued. “So if that was a problem, you should have told me without getting mad.
    “Friday night you were too busy with everyone else . . . so when I saw one of my friends I decided to go say hi. I thought I would see you third quarter . . .”
    It is poignantly clear that the teenage Josh Powell really didn’t have any friends and was probably making up the story about being “illegal” to sound more interesting.
    He found living in his car was impossible, and he didn’t have anyone he could move in with, so he returned to his father’s house. How privy he was to Steven Powell’s secrets may never be known. Certainly, no one outside the family and his ex-wife had any idea about the depth of Steven’s hidden obsessions about sex and younger women.
    When he was in his teens, Josh had made a halfhearted attempt to commit suicide, and he once actually pulled a knife on his mother. He had also killed family pets. There is no record of his getting counseling or being treated by a psychologist or psychiatrist after those incidents.
    It was almost ten years before Josh Powell met Susan Cox. He was so damaged by then that disaster loomed ahead like an oncoming train. Josh Powell would one day become one of the most hated men in America, and yet one wonders exactly what drove him to it.
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    1 The names of some individuals have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time each appears in the narrative.

Chapter Five
    In December 2009, Susan was still living with Josh and their sons in West Valley City. She had told friends that she “wouldn’t take this crap” from Josh any longer, and if things didn’t change for the better by their ninth anniversary, on April 6, 2010, she was going to leave him. Susan wasn’t a meek goody-goody, and she used words like crap when they were called for. She wanted a life. She wanted Charlie and Braden to have a life. And she was almost at the very straggly ends of her rope.
    Susan Powell wasn’t as brave as she sounded, however, she was afraid. She had hidden a letter in a safe deposit box, along with her will. She wrote that she might suffer an accidental death, and asked that someone check into it. She told no one out loud about this fear.
    She wasn’t exactly