Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors Read Online Free

Josh, she was impressed that he had a job, his own apartment, and his own car. She either didn’t know that he’d lived with his father, Steven Powell, until he was twenty-six—just before they started dating—or it didn’t seem important.
    To her, Josh seemed stable and ready to settle down.
    “Josh wasn’t stable,” Chuck Cox says. “After ten minutes, anyone could see there was something wrong with him. He talked all the time.”
    And it was mostly about himself. He was a braggart, and Susan’s parents didn’t agree with her that all he needed was love. And then he proposed to her.
    “I tried to tell her that you don’t marry a ‘project.’ ”
    Judy Cox and Susan’s friends threw a bridal shower for her. There weren’t many there—only her friends Rachel, Terry, Jody, and Josh’s sisters Alina and Jennifer. All of a sudden, another person walked into the room. They were all shocked to see that it was Josh. He was wearing a skirt, and lots of makeup, all dressed up as a female.
    “He wanted to attend the girls’ bridal shower, and be in the spotlight,” Judy recalls. “It was really odd and embarrassing, and we told him he had to leave.
    “When he did, I said to Susan, ‘You’re not going to marry him, are you?’ And Susan was upset.”
    Judy remembers seeing “blackness” as the wedding approached and having a “very bad feeling.”
    Susan married Josh Powell on April 6, 2001. She chose the Portland LDS temple, in Clackamas County, Oregon. She looked lovely and was thrilled with her beautiful wedding gown. It was white satin with a deep round neckline, fitted bodice, and full skirt. Josh wore a tuxedo and had a white rose in his lapel. Both of them looked very happy.
    Outside the temple, plum and cherry trees were in full bloom. A sudden wind scattered the white petals over the grassy lawn as Susan posed in her wedding dress.
    Susan’s and Josh’s families hadn’t met each other before the wedding rehearsal. While Chuck and Judy Cox were picking up the wedding expenses at a cost of several thousand dollars, they were shocked to hear Josh’s father, Steve Powell, grousing over the cost of the wedding party’s post-rehearsal meal at the Old Country Buffet, something just over a hundred dollars.
    Although Steve and Josh’s mother, Terry, were divorced, they attended the wedding and the wedding reception. Judy and her family had provided the flowers, decorations, wedding cake, and a lavish spread of food. The wedding guests ate heartily, but the cake was only half-gone and there was quite a lot of food left over, too. Even so, Judy Cox was shocked when her daughter’s new mother-in-law asked if she could pack everything in her car to take back to Spokane for the wedding reception she planned for Josh and Susan on the east side of Washington.
    “I couldn’t believe it,” Judy recalled. “She wanted it all—from the cake to the decorations to the flowers. I told her no. And she couldn’t understand why!”
    The couple had a short honeymoon—one night in the Columbia Gorge Hotel.
    Like so many women before her who believe marriage will change a man, Susan felt sure that she could make Josh happy, and that her family would see in Josh what she did.
    Josh had held a job for several years. He worked for his father. Steve Powell’s titular employer was the Washington State Department of Corrections, but he actually had nothing to do with the prisoners themselves. He was an “account executive” for the company that sold the furniture that convicts built under the Correctional Industries (CI) program. Their consumers were schools from kindergarten to twelfth grade and nonprofit companies.
    Josh was an installer, which meant, basically, that he put legs on school chairs, tables, and desks. He chose the hours that he wanted to work, had complete control of his own time, and worked when he wanted to.
    “Two weeks after their wedding,” Chuck Cox remembers, “Josh came to me, wanting to