Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Mommy goes missing, cracking hubby's secret computer code wide open

Episode Date: November 13, 2017

Susan Cox Powell's family hopes efforts to peer into an encrypted computer hard drive will give them answers about what happened to the Utah mother who disappeared in 2009. The computer belonged to her husband Josh Powell who later killed their two sons and himself. Susan's sister Denise Ernst, Cox family lawyer Anne Bremner and Cox family investigator Rose Winquist discuss the latest the case with Nancy Grace in this episode. Forensic tech expert Ben Levitan explains how the hard drive could be unlocked. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. Susan Cox Powell vanished from her West Valley City home in December 2009. Her husband, Josh, was suspected in her disappearance. He killed himself and their children in 2012. Susan has never been found. This case is still being actively investigated. A private investigator working for Susan Cox Powell's family tells me they've made significant

progress in cracking a computer owned by Josh Powell. If they can get into it, they think this could be a big breakthrough in the missing persons case. No one, especially in 2009, would put that kind of encryption on their computer unless they were trying to hide something. What we really like to find on that hard drive is any kind of information that leads us to a body. This is the most hopeful lead we've had yet in the process of trying to find Susan. As long as I live, I will never forget when Susan Cox Powell disappeared. As long as I live, this beautiful young, I think she was a stockbroker and investment banker. But what always sticks out in my mind is that she was devoutly religious and a mother of two beautiful baby boys.

Beautiful. I've listened over and over and over to her friends and neighbors that said she had such a happy marriage to her husband, Josh. Well, I didn't see that at all when I first heard that Susan was missing and that the day she goes missing, she had a lady over at the house. And I've listened to what the lady has to say. He was working on a quilt or some project for the church that afternoon until about 530. And Susan was tired and she took a nap. And so the woman was there until 530.

Everything was fine. Then we learn that night at about midnight, her husband, Josh Powell, decides to take the boys camping. Repeat, camping. I think they were two and four at that age or four and six. And it was sub freezing weather. It's like 14 degrees out. And he gets in the car and takes the boys camping at midnight on a Sunday night with a work day the next morning. That's when I knew something was horribly wrong. I'm talking about the disappearance of Susan Cox Powell. And to this day, I swore it then and I swear it now. I'm not letting go of this case until we know the truth. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. I want to go straight

out to a very special guest. With me is Rose Winquist, the Susan Cox family private investigator, high profile lawyer, the Cox family lawyer, Ann Bremner, my personal friend, my friend Ben Levitin, telecommunications expert, tech expert, and boy, do we need him today. And Denise Cox Ernst. This is Susan's sister that I think a great deal of. Denise, it's wonderful to hear your voice again. And I only wish I knew you under other circumstances. That's what I wish. Denise, before I get to what I perceive a big development in the case, and that is Rose Winquist possibly being able to crack a highly encrypted computer belonging to the husband, Josh,

can you tell us, set the scene for this discussion, the day that Susan goes missing, Denise? I had talked to her about a week before. She was planning to come out to Washington a little early to spend some time with my children. And we were planning on, you know, her favorite show was Friends, and we were planning on doing a friend day, and she likes to do my kids' hair. And, you know, everything was fine when we got off the phone. Wait, you were going to watch Friends all day? Yeah.

Is that what you're going to? Okay, because I'm planning a Harry Potter weekend as soon as the children get out of school. We're going to just lay around and watch Harry Potter and Narnia. That's we're just going to watch it and watch it and watch it until we just can't watch it anymore. She likes the show Friends. That was our favorite. You know what?

I like hearing this about her. So she loved Friends. So y'all are going to binge on Friends and do here. Right. Sounds fun. Well, we also had a game and we always had a contest to see who knew more about the show. You know, her and I and the game was a lot of fun. But, you know, we got off the phone, and she had to go, of course.

And, you know, a week later, my dad called me, and I was at work, and he asked me to invite her. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Denise. Yeah. Everybody don't get mad at me for interrupting. You said she had to go, of course. Yes. Now, I know what that means, but could you tell everybody else what you mean by that?

When I was in an abusive marriage at the time, and from talking to her, I know it seemed like she had the perfect marriage to everybody. She put up a good front. But with our conversations, I knew better. And we both had to sneak our conversations with each other. And when we did it with our husband's home, we both had listening ears and we had to be careful what we said. And when I got to talk to her, it was barely for about 20 minutes, know 25 minutes you know when our husbands were listening and then he you know one of them would encourage us to get off the phone because you know there

are tensions not on them and I could always hear Josh in the background saying in other words when Josh was around you couldn't talk to Susan not really got it so she had to get off the phone then what happened um a week later she just i got a phone call from my dad asking if i'd heard from her and i knew where she was and you know obviously from that week before i that was the last time i had heard from her thinking then you know at first I thought nothing of it because she had, you know, I thought maybe she went to a friend's or, you know, she was busy doing something for work. But when it went, you know, three days not hearing from her, I got alarmed then because I would have heard from her if there was something going on. We were pretty close. Then what happened?

Search parties. A lot of anxiety. Wondering where she is. Waiting by the phone. Look, you know, just waiting. It's a waiting game. As it's a waiting game now on wondering what happened to her. Well, wait a minute. Didn't you ask Josh? Didn't you ask Josh where, where Susan,

why she not picking up? He wouldn't answer my phone call. I tried calling her phone and of course she didn't answer. And you know, when I talked to, my dad had tried to find out from Josh where she was, and I tried asking him. He didn't want to talk to our family at all. He didn't like our family at all, but he didn't talk to me very much, and he knew how I felt about him. So he wasn't forthcoming on any information. He dodged the family. I'm just having a hard time even getting my mind around that because if I couldn't find David, I mean, and then somebody wouldn't, his family or his friends or the people at his building where he works wouldn't answer me.

I mean, I'd go set the place on fire for Pete's sake. I don't understand why he wouldn't even speak to you or answer your calls. To me, that's a very bad sign. Okay, what we know happened after that is based on a relative there in town, the police go to the house. They get to the home. It's locked up tight. Nobody answers.

Very significant fact, Ann Bmner cox family lawyer is that when that morning when she didn't show up to work remember the camping trip in the middle of the snow with two little tots was on a sunday night the next morning monday she she susan cox powell did not show up to work that was a problem and so the police go to the house. The house is sealed up tight. A relative goes, yes, open the window, break in. The police break a window. They get in or the door. They find a wet, a big wet spot on the carpet in front of the love seat, which I guess is in the living room or den with two giant fans facing it, blowing on it. The house was left like that.

They also significant, significant, see her purse, her ID, her car keys, her credit cards, her driver's license, everything is in the home. So what did she do? Leave on foot? Her car's not missing? What, did she leave on foot in the snow that night? When Josh was, Josh Powell was asked later, and I've watched him, I've watched his face when he answers, where, why didn't she go with you camping that night? He just simply says she didn't want to.

It would have been a cold day, and H-E-double-L, Ann Bremner, high-profile Seattle lawyer and Cox family lawyer, that I would let David Lynch take John David and Lucy out on a Sunday night in sub-freezing temperatures to go camping. Uh-uh. N-O. Ann? Absolutely, Nancy. And that should have been probable cause alone for the police in West Valley City, the jurisdiction where this happened. And Josh had her phone. And then he took the SIM card out. And then he acted like he was calling her at work.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Ann, Ann, it's like drinking from a fire hydrant. Okay, it's just too much at once. So Josh Powell, and I do the same thing. I've studied it so much, I just rattle off these facts. Let me take in what you just said. So the husband, Josh Powell, has her cell phone. Okay.

Again, it would be a cold day in H-E-L-L, but I'm going to part with my cell phone. That's how I stay in touch with the children's school and David and my mom and everybody else. All right. So he has her cell phone. Then he takes the SIM card out. What? Okay, stop. Hold on.

Ben Levitan, what does it mean to take a SIM card, S-I-M as in mother, out of a cell phone? What does that mean? Nancy, the SIM card is everything that identifies your phone as yours. If you take that out, it's essentially like throwing the phone away. The phone will not send out any information. You could not trace the phone very easily once that SIM card's out, Nancy. Now, what do you have to do to get the SIM card out, Ben Levitan? Everybody, Ben Levitan, a longtime friend and colleague, joining me out of Raleigh, is a telecommunications and tech expert. So what do you have to do to get a SIM card out of a phone, and why would you do that? Well, Nancy, there's two types of cell phones.

There's the ones where you go to the store, and they program all your information into that phone. It becomes your phone. So when someone calls you, boom, calls automatically go to you. You can easily make calls. So those types of phones, that would be Verizon and Sprint have that technology. The other technology, which we call GSM, you can go get any phone in the world and all that programming information about your phone is on a little SIM card, like a little memory card. You can stick that little memory card into any phone that's compatible and all of a

sudden you can use your phone. If you take that little memory card out of the phone, we can't find the phone. And it's very easy to do. It's intended to come out in and out of phones very easily because we anticipated back early in the days that people would want to have, you know, one type of phone for work and then want to have a different type of phone when you went out at night and you want to have a different type of phone when you went out at night and you want to have a little phone you put in your pocketbook. So we made these little cards that you could easily encourage people to buy lots of phones and just move the SIM card around.

But once that SIM card comes out, Nancy... Well, I don't know who has the money. I don't know who has the money to buy three different phones, but you're living in a different world from me, Ben Levitan. So let me ask you, does an iPhone have a SIM card in it? The phones that are for, yes, they do. They don't easily come out. It depends on the type of phone, Nancy. Some phones, the SIM card comes in and out very easily. It's almost like an ATM card, where once you put the ATM card into a ATM machine,

that machine's yours. You know, it's programmed for you. So on some phones, it's very easy to do. Let me ask you, this is how I compare it. I compare it to a car without the engine. It looks like a car. The doors open and shut. You can stick the key in the ignition, but without the SIM card, the phone won't work. Without the engine, the car won won't work and you can't see that on the outside so he cracks open the phone according to ann bremner and removes the sim card that's something i didn't know so what else are you telling me ann bremner he takes a sim card and what else um and then he calls acting like he's just checking on her at work and he's very invasive he gives a police statement that is very bizarre as do the kids can i back up so that we already know that she's not

at work so her car is not at work so why they they know she's not at work why would he call her at work pretending she's there what did he say say on those messages? Just checking in. I can't remember if he said something about giving her a ride, but he clearly was trying to cover his tracks after the fact. And he knew she was gone. I mean, and it was very apparent from his behavior. I want to pause very briefly and thank our partners making our program possible. It's LegalZoom. As business owners out there, you know how important it is. You've got to keep moving forward. But so often, things come up to take your time and focus away from growing your business.

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Call pound 250 keyword grace to speak with our IRA team. That's pound 250 and say keyword grace. Pound 250 keyword grace. We're ready to help. With me, the sister of Susan Cox, Denise Cox Ernst, and the Cox family private investigator, Rose Winquist. It's very significant, I believe, to the two of you, and I'll start with Rose. What the children, the two little boys, said about what happened that night and the pictures that they drew. Rose, what have Susan's children, the two little boys said, happened that night? Well, to start, I think when Chuck and Judy Cox essentially got custody of the children, they began to disclose information. Having been now at the ages of five and seven,

they started to remember some things or be more verbal about things. And they started to disclose different things that they remembered about that night. They so-called went camping in the middle of the night. I think Josh left probably around 12 or 1230. And they only had one car, by the way. So they knew when they went over to Susan's house that morning that the kids didn't show up for daycare, that no one had been there because there was no tire tracks. There was snow on the driveway and there was no tracks. So they knew something was amiss. Now, just to back up for a moment, if you don't mind, Josh actually in his interview with the police removed his own SIM card as well out of his phone because he had a sense

that the police were going to confiscate his phone, which they should have, and then got in a search warrant for it, but they didn't. And so when they took his phone to look at it, the SIM card had been removed from his phone as well. So that was a pretty glaring... Rose, hold on. I'm just sick right now. That's a fact, and I've studied this so much, I did not know this. You know, I'm a big fan of law enforcement because I have been part of law enforcement my whole legal career

but I don't understand this why in the world would they not confiscate his phone and sim card and hers too immediately that is the million dollar question I wish I knew they should have have you asked them why do you think they didn't pursue him as a person of interest immediately? You know, I haven't personally asked them. I don't know if that question has been asked directly to the lead detective that was assigned to the case. Ann may have asked it during deposition, but I'm not sure about that. Let's find out. Ann Bremner, I mean, I don't understand it because I firmly believe if Josh Powell had been arrested immediately, the two little boys would be alive today. The boys are dead.

OK, and I firmly believe if he had been prosecuted immediately, this would not have happened. I agree, Nancy, and you've been such a friend to the family and throughout this, you know, tragic ordeal that involved the deaths of the boys and potentially Susan, although she's still missing. I tried to get the records. I went to Utah three different times trying to get records or three different hearings procedures. And, you know, they they were slow to look at him as a suspect. And they kept calling him a person of interest when actually search warrants eventually did issue in the case but they had a sealed investigation it was very hard to get information about the specifics of what if anything they were doing all right just tell me ann too many words are they all tangled up in the mormon church together is that what it is you know i don't know they were just they kept saying they couldn't prosecute without a body kind of the that's not true oh i know i mean he was with her that night and he goes on

this big fake camping trip at 12 30 at night out in sub sub freezing temperatures with two little boys my question was back to rose winchrist she She's the Cox family private investigator who has actually got a little crack in the case right now. But what the children said, they said, the two boys said, mommy went looking for crystals in the mines. She went in to the mine. daddy came back and mommy didn't. They had the children draw pictures of the night. She goes missing that mommy disappears off the face of the earth. And they have the picture of mommy in the car that night, but in the trunk of the car. Right then he should have been arrested. What? Does nobody know children can

be witnesses? Denise Cox Ernst, this is Susan's sister. Why wasn't he arrested? I think he should have been arrested when he came back with no SIM cards in the phone. I think he should have been arrested, you know, when he said she went camping. He had no proof, couldn't give a straight answer of where he was. I believe he should have been arrested, you know, two days after she went missing and still hadn't returned. The majority, I mean, the rule is, the majority you look towards the spouse when there's someone missing.

That's who they usually first investigate. And I don't know why they didn't do that in this case. It's very frustrating. Well, I mean, come on. She's missing. He says that she just didn't want to go camping. And the children draw this picture. And I've used this technique a million times when I was prosecuting a case where there was a child victim or witness.

You get them to draw. If they cannot articulate or verbalize what happened, they can draw it. Sometimes they simply can't say the words. Sometimes it hurts to say the words. Sometimes they don't want to want to say the words. So they'll draw you a picture. Those pictures can be shown to a jury. What is so not true? It just makes me sick. I'm just sick. When we were younger, we were really big, you know, because my dad was Boy Scouts in the church. And my sister and I went igloo camping. So to hear that she didn't want to go camping, nor would she ever allow Josh to take him camping that night without her with him. We went igloo camping. We were hiking. We were a very outdoorsy person.

This is not, my sister was not a stay-at-home,. We were a very outdoorsy person. This is not, Susan was not a stay-at-home, do your hair and nails kind of person. She was out there and a very active person. She didn't get to drive a family vehicle to work most of the time. She rode her bike. So when he says that she didn't want to go, that makes absolutely no sense to me. I know her better than that. Well, wait a minute.

It's midnight. It's midnight and it's 14 degrees. Of course, she doesn't want to go camping for Pete's sake. But I don't see her letting the children go camping either. It's ridiculous. And interesting, nobody called the daycare to say the boys weren't coming that day. So here's what we see. We know that they had been camping many times before and the children said mom said mom went to go look for crystals in a mine and she never came out all right

Sunday night 14 degrees outside daddy never arrested they say daddy took mommy out. Mommy didn't come back and daddy did. Okay. He was never arrested. Nothing ever moved forward in this case. Then out of the blue, Ann Bremner, Cox family lawyer, Josh Powell picks up and leaves town and moves to where? He moves to Pierce County. And the other thing, Nancy, is that he'd stopped payment on a payment to the daycare on a check that was due. And he did that before she went missing. So I thought, and the other thing is he took out life insurance policies on her, $3.5 million when he was essentially broke. She was the breadwinner. But, yeah, he came out here, left everything behind, didn't go look for her, no search parties, no nothing. He just moved with the boys out to Pierce County here in Washington State.

And her 401k. So he moves to a different state in with his father, who is a whole nother can of worms. Susan Cox's father-in-law was then arrested on child pornography. It turned out that he allegedly had almost 5,000 pictures taken of unsuspecting women dressing and undressing, including Powell, start smearing Susan's name by saying she was sexually aggressive on her own father-in-law, which could not have been further from the truth because Denise Cox, Susan's sister, she told people she was very uncomfortable around the father-in-law

and actually made the family move away from him because he kept making unwanted sex advances on her. Denise? Yes, yes, she did. She told me about that actually quite often before they actually moved that he would peek under. They lived in his living room or dining room in his house and they had a blanket like curtain surrounding her dressing area.

And she caught him multiple times spying on her and he actually told her that he wanted to run away with her and that he loved her and that josh would share another thing that he also we became aware of he was accused of stealing her pantyhose and he would replace her pantyhose with the same brand new and then take her used pantyhose okay whoa so between the father and the son i really don't know which way to turn but i'm focused on the little boys ben levitan joining me telecommunications expert is there any way to track by the car or the cell phone where he went that night? This is so long after the facts that the records just aren't kept. And that's that's the big problem. There still could

be records of where the phones were. But it's likely this far off the investigation that did not do a forensic on that phone and not get the phone records immediately, just unforgivable. You know, it really is. Ann Bremner, high-profile Seattle lawyer representing Susan's family, did he remove his and her SIM card from their phones before the so-called camping trip or after? After. At least that's what we know. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, Ben Levitan, you're right. If they had gotten those pings,

we would know where he put her body right now. But that's not how it unfolded. It's not how it unfolded. Rose Winquist, the Cox family private investigator, Susan's family, her parents, got custody of the children. They wrestled it away from the dad. And he had visitation of the two little boys, right? Which, you know, to me was unforgivable for him to have visitation rights with these boys.

Given all the red flags, absolutely. So let me go to Denise Cox, Susan's sister, Denise Cox Ernst. Denise, if you can bring yourself to do it, please explain what happened the last time two little boys had visitation with their dad, Josh Powell. This is long after mommy disappeared into the mines looking for crystals one night. The night before his visitation, I took them into, and they played the game of hugs and kisses to Charlie, then hugs and kisses to Brayden, and it went back and forth. And after all those games, they were tucked in. It was Charlie's birthday on the 19th of January, and we had planned after his visitation, he made me promise to him that I would take him to go get his fish for the fish tank that we bought for his birthday, which is what he had

asked me for. They didn't want to go to see their dad. They wanted to actually have me pick them up in the morning and take them to go get the fish and set up the fish tank. Those boys, they went from when they first came to my parents scared, hiding, and yelling at us to lovable boys, you know, just coming through the door. They grab your legs and give you a bunch of hugs and they had totally did a big change from when they were their dad they were finally feeling safe they were feeling loved finally and you know it breaks my heart because I was so looking forward to spending the time with him the next day

and had been shopping for a maid of honor dress. And after that happened, I had to shop for a funeral dress. And I cherish that night that I got to tuck them in one last time, not knowing what would happen the next day. It really hurts that. And Denise, what happened the next day, the day of their last visitation with their dad, Josh Powell? What I was told is after my parents go to church during their visitation, and like I said, I was shopping.

And when they were going, they didn't want to go, and my parents talked them into going, said, we'll see you later after the visitation, and they just didn't come back. It's like the boys knew. To Ann Bremner, the Cox family lawyer, what happened the day of their last visitation that we know now? Well, the boys were brought by a CPS worker to a home that was staged by Josh Powell. It wasn't where he'd been living. He'd staged it so he could look better to the case workers.

And the case worker brought the boys up to the house and Josh said, he went and put the door on, he said, I have a surprise for you. And they ran to him and he slammed the door on the caseworker who was supposed to be part of the visit. And the next thing she knew, she smelled gasoline and then he blew up the house

and he killed the boys with the hatchet. He had a room in the back of the house that had all their toys and that's where they were running because that's where they ended up. And he killed himself and he killed both of those boys. It was unbelievably horrific. I'm just trying to understand why he had to kill the two little boys. Do you believe, Ann Bremner, that there was a pending arrest, a prosecution for the murder of Susan Cox Powell? I had been told that by the West Valley City Police,

and there had been a search warrant executed at his dad's house that led to his dad's arrest for the porn and voyeurism including of little girls that would live next door and it's very very lengthy search warrant and it it all pertained to getting those journals that um that those both steven and josh had talked about that was the purpose of the warrant and then they found all of these other things but my point is is that it looked like they were close because they listed so many items of incriminating evidence against Josh Powell. And one other thing, Josh Powell had been ordered by the court to take a psychosexual evaluation. And his reaction in court that day, he showed extreme anger. He was yelling at his lawyer and a lot of angst. And that was right before he killed himself in the boat. Now, what would that entail? And Bremner, you're the Cox family lawyer.

Why was he ordered to take a psychosexual evaluation? And how many years after Susan, quote, gone missing, had this been that the cops were still, you know, not making an arrest or doing anything? How long had passed since Susan goes missing? And what would the psychosexual evaluation entail? Well, it had been a number of years and it would entail a polygraph. It would also entail a plasmograph. And the plasmograph would show aberrant reaction or reactions to aberrant kind of interest because he also had cartoon child porn 400 images on his

computer back in Utah and then his father had all kinds of porn throughout the house multiple computers let me ask you a question are you saying that Josh Powell had sexual cartoons on his computer yes of incest cartoons it was cartoons but it was 400 images and it was of incest. Cartoons. It was cartoons, but it was 400 images, and it was clearly incest. I want to thank our partner making today's program possible, and it is Link AKC. Christmas is right around the corner with all the other holidays. Don't leave your dog out of the fun. Get the Link AKC smart collar, the new must-have gift, believe it or not. It's backed by the American Kennel Club.

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their pets, but thank you for being our sponsor today. I'm just trying to take that in. So when the court ordered him, and this is all because of a search warrant that was done on the dad's home, during which they uncovered thousands of disturbing images, including some of alleged child porn and voyeurism on women, unsuspecting women of their body parts and sex organs when they were changing clothes, including Susan. They find all this.

They also find disturbing issues with Josh Powell, Susan's husband. As a result of this extensive search, the court orders Josh Powell to undergo a psychosexual evaluation. And he goes berserk. With all this in mind, police still not acting. He still gets the visitation with the boys. The social worker brings the boys over. He says, come in, I want to show you something. And slams the door and locks it.

She immediately calls her superiors and the house blows up. We now know he also attacked the two little boys with a hatchet. The two little boys that had already been through so much. Denise Cox Ernst, this is Susan's sister. Do you remember the moment that you learned what had happened to the boys, Denise? I was told at first that they were blown up. And later on, I was told that he had, they had heard, the social worker had heard the boys scream and found out that was as the result of the hatchet and how he did it. He did not actually kill them.

They didn't die from those wounds. They died from the smoke, from the fire. And what really tore me apart was they died holding hands. I don't know if Josh positioned them that way or that's how it was, but those boys are really close. So it breaks me to know because Charlie's always been afraid of fire, that he had to die with his fear. Denise, I'm just trying to absorb everything you're saying.

And Ben Levitan, joining me out of Raleigh, telecommunications and tech expert renowned in his field, Ben, when I think back, and there's woulda coulda shoulda you know if they had done this if they had done that but Ben it's so simple if they had just not even name him a suspect but if they had just

subpoenaed the ping records when Susan went missing they would have had information about where her body was. Based on that and what the boys were saying and the pictures they were drawing and the wet carpet and everything.

These little boys would be alive. They would be living with Denise right now. Alive and well. They'd be heading to college right now for Pete's sake. Ben, it would be so easy. Tell me how easy it would have been. Well, Nancy, taking, you know, he took the SIM card out of his phone and that's an amateur theory that that's going to, you know, he did that intentionally. One, he did not want phone calls coming into the phone and he also didn't want calls going out of the phone. It disabled

the phone. But in an exigent situation like this, we can track the phone itself. You could find the phone. We could have probably found both these phones within an area of 30 to 100 feet, Nancy. We would have at least known that they were together, and if these phones were together, that's enough probable cause, I would imagine. And think about it, Ben Levitan. I mean, you and I have combed through so many criminal cases, intricate and complicated criminal cases.

Think about it. If she were in the trunk like the little boys drew in the picture, you know he could not have dragged her body that far in the snow, which would have, if the phone had been pinged, placed the phone within, you know, 50, 100 feet of where the body was hidden. I mean, was she even dead at the time he left her? My guess is that she was, if she had been in the car trunk like the boys drew in their picture. But just by doing that one simple thing, I mean, in my mind, these detectives must wake up every morning

with the two boys' faces, you know, in their mind's eye wake up every morning with the two boys faces you know in their minds eye first thing every morning because if they had done that one simple thing these children I believe would still be alive today for some reason police kept holding off on taking action against Josh Powell I don't understand it Rose Wink was with me. Susan Cox, family, private investigator. Right now, Rose, you are undertaking something the cops have not been able to do, and that is to crack the encryption code. This is back in 2009, and Josh Powell had so heavily encrypted his computers, even the cops haven't been able to break in yet. But you've made a little headway. And this is so important, Rose, because maybe a Google search, a Google map search,

a emails, something may reveal where she is. Tell me about the encryption, Rosa Winquist? Well, to start, once Josh had killed the little boys and then committed suicide, essentially, his brother Michael subsequently jumped off a parking garage bridge in Minneapolis. Then the police, at some point after what they suspected to be the people that were complicit in her disappearance, decided to deem the case cold. Ann Bremner, the attorney that I'm working for through the Cox family, asked West Valley Police Department multiple times, since this case was cold, it should have been turned over. We wanted the case. We wanted the case. We wanted the case. We wanted to see what they had done, what they hadn't done, what leads there were. Finally, finally, after the people that they deemed responsible were dead, they turned over the case. They were supposed to turn it over unredacted. It came back

redacted in a way that it was really difficult to put together a timeline because they left things out multiple times. I request 911 calls, for example, from tipsters that are complete with phone numbers and names and what the tip is, they went as far to redact that information, which is rarely, in my view, for at least in Washington, they give you all of that. And they didn't. So fast forwarding, we then got the case file and were able to, via a timeline, put together some events and leads that the police simply didn't follow up on. Powell's sister and myself and my husband went on a road trip because we found that there was a point where Josh had another phone and it pinged somewhere in Oregon around the place where Michael's car had been towed to a salvage yard. It didn't appear to be disabled or broken in any way. It was, he apparently, or his sister called, Alina, Alina is his sister, Powell,

called a tow yard and they came and got it and gave him a hundred bucks for it or whatever. And the police found out about this, but this is in 2012. And of course, Susan disappeared in 2009. So here we are some three and a half years later, nearly. And they took cadaver dogs to this salvage yard. And lo and behold, these cadaver dogs immediately hit on the trunk of Michael's car. Well, prior to them finding out that Michael had taken this car to a salvage yard, he somehow got a hold of Google and was trying to get Google to manipulate their map so that his car wouldn't show up if it were searched by the police on the Google Maps.

And when he figured out that the police had figured out information that he didn't really want them to know, that's when he decided to commit suicide. So, boom, there's another one gone that obviously had clear information about Susan. That is overwhelming. Ben Levitan, tell me how difficult it can be to crack the code on an encryption. Well, Nancy, we have the hardest.

Think of encryption as, you know, when you read an email, you read from left to right and top to bottom. What encryption does is just scramble that completely. And you need a password, which is about 128 letters and characters long, to figure out what order you should read these letters in. So it's technically incredibly hard to do. There's formulas you can try to figure out. These things can take years and years to decrypt. But one thing that can be done and can be done right now, Nancy, when we do an investigation on a hard disk, we don't use the original hard disk because we don't want to risk changing any of the data. We make copies of it. So whoever's doing the forensic examination is doing a copy, the exam on a copy of the hard disk. There's no reason you can't make a thousand copies of this hard disk, send it out to a thousand

forensic experts, and maybe get this code cracked, you know, years sooner, Nancy. What would it mean, Denise Cox Ernst, to Susan's parents to be able to find Susan's remains and bury them with her children? It would mean a lot. We've been looking for her for almost eight years now, and the hardest part about going on is not knowing what happened and not being able to feel at peace or any sense of finality of this event. We, my parents are starting to, you know, we, we've all had to move on, but you don't go a day without wondering what happened and without thinking, you know, where is she? And it would be amazing to finally be able to, you know, visit her and have a peace of mind on knowing what happened or having some closure of some sort on this case.

Susan meant the world to us and it's really hard to go to that grave site and you're mourning the boys and you're still wondering where is Susan and it gets harder after so long. It never gets easier as time goes on. It gets harder every time. Our prayer today is for peace, for Susan's family, and for justice, as much as it can be obtained now. Denise, Ben, and Rose, thank you for being with us. Nancy Grace, Clone Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friends. This is an iHeart Podcast.