By Jennifer Sullivan, The Seattle Times –
SEATTLE — When social worker Elizabeth Griffin-Hall first met Josh Powell she knew he was the lead suspect in his wife’s disappearance in Utah, but she said she didn’t have a feeling of “danger, alert, murderer” when it came to his young sons.
Griffin-Hall interacted with Powell on 13 or 14 occasions during his court-ordered visitations with his sons, Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5. Powell had lost custody of the boys after his father was arrested on voyeurism charges.
But on Feb. 5, Powell whisked his two sons into his Pierce County, Wash., rental home, which he set ablaze, killing himself and the boys.
In a report released Thursday morning, the state Children’s Administration found that while social workers like Griffin-Hall demonstrated a high concern for Charlie and Braden, their awareness that Powell was a suspect in his wife’s disappearance should have prompted greater vigilance. The 12-page Child Fatality Review, compiled by a panel of lawyers, a judge, a police officer, social service providers, a psychologist and two state senators, said the Children’s Administration should have tried harder to find out more about the potential threat to the children because of the disappearance of Susan Cox Powell.
“There wasn’t anybody who had dropped the ball or someone made a mistake or an oversight that had happened,” panel member King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Richard Anderson said this week. “There are some people who do terrible things in life. The ‘Batman’ incident (the theater shootings in Colorado) is a perfect example. You can’t explain things like this. I think Mr. Powell had this in his mind and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.”
The report also offers a series of recommendations to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.
State law requires the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), which oversees Children’s Administration, to conduct a review whenever a child receiving services from the agency dies or suffers a serious injury suspected to be caused by abuse or neglect.
During three days in April and June, panelists heard from numerous witnesses, including Griffin-Hall, a state-contract social worker assigned to the Powell case. They also heard from DSHS employees, three Pierce County sheriff’s investigators assigned to the Powell case and a former assistant attorney general.
Panelists focused on DSHS’ handling of the Powell child-supervision case and talked at length about what officials in Washington state had been told by police in West Valley City, Utah, the agency investigating the disappearance of Susan Cox Powell.
DSHS allowed a Seattle Times reporter to sit in the closed-door panel discussions as long as panelists were not quoted directly. The Times also agreed not to report on the panel discussions until after the report was released.
On the afternoon of Feb. 5, after Griffin-Hall drove Charlie and Braden to Powell’s Graham home for a visitation, Powell pulled the boys inside, locked the door and attacked his children with a hatchet before setting the fire to the home. Powell was considered a person of interest in the disappearance of Susan Cox Powell, 28, who went missing in December 2009. Josh Powell told police he last saw his wife before he took his boys on a late-night camping trip in Utah’s desert in freezing temperatures.
Josh Powell and his sons moved from Utah to his father’s home in Puyallup a short time later.
Powell’s father, Steven Powell, was arrested last September after investigators searching his home for evidence in the disappearance came across computer disks with what they described as thousands of images of women and girls who seemed unaware they were being photographed. Powell was convicted in May of 14 voyeurism counts.
After Steven Powell’s arrest the boys were placed in the custody of Susan Cox Powell’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox.
Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Lindquist later surmised that Powell killed the boys because a judge had ordered him to undergo a psychosexual evaluation before he could regain custody of his children. While Griffin-Hall, the social worker, explained that she never had a bad feeling about Powell, Pierce County sheriff’s Sgt. Teresa Berg told the panel that she thought the kids “were in danger all along.”
“If we had information that the kids were going to be killed, we would have driven down there and taken the kids. Having gut feelings or ideas doesn’t get you to removing the kids (from the house). Our suspicions, gut feelings and worries don’t cut it in the world.”
Berg and two other Pierce County detectives testified at length about what police in Utah had told them. Detectives said they were unaware that Powell had been permitted to have visitations with the boys inside his home.
