Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors and Other True Cases by Ann Rule
Susan and Josh on his birthday in 2001. He looks about fifteen, and he had always lived at home with his father until a few weeks before he met Susan. She thought of him as an “older man” with an independent life. Far from it. He depended on his father, Steven Craig Powell, to help him make decisions. (Cox family)
The bride and groom: Susan and Josh Powell, holding one another under a Japanese cherry tree outside their reception. Judy, her other daughters, her sister-in-law Pam, and many friends catered the reception. Steve Powell paid for the rehearsal dinner but complained about the price. (Cox family)
Susan in her wedding gown. The photograph is damaged because it went through a terrible fire in February 2012. Miraculously, this and most of the other pictures in this section survived the fire, although they remain singed on the edges. (Cox family)
Josh Powell puts a lacy garter on his bride Susan’s leg just before their wedding at an LDS temple near Portland, Oregon. The future lay ahead of the young couple. (Cox family)
Susan and Josh and their attendants at their wedding reception. It was a wonderful affair. Josh’s mother asked if she could take the leftover food, flowers, and decorations home to Spokane, where she planned another reception. Surprised, Judy Cox demurred and shared those things with her family. (Cox family)
Susan laughing as she dances with her dad at her wedding reception. He had warned her, “You don’t marry a ‘project,’” but stood by her when she could not be dissuaded from marrying Josh. Through the years ahead, Chuck and Judy often bailed Josh out financially. (Cox family)
Susan and Josh Powell celebrate their first Christmas as a married couple. They both seemed to be very much in love. (Cox family)
Susan Cox attacks a giant slice of pizza in March 2001, a month before her wedding. (Cox family)
Susan Cox Powell on a visit to the west desert country in Utah. These photos are eerie because many investigators and her family and friends believe that she may lie at the bottom of one of the thousands of abandoned mine shafts in the west desert. (Cox family)
Susan and Josh Powell had two precious sons. Braden is on the left, and Charlie is on the right. They loved animals of all kinds. And they worried about them. Charlie was an excellent artist, talented beyond his years. (Cox family)
January 2002. Susan in the Temple Square in Salt Lake City. She was a faithful member of the Latter-day Saints (Mormon) Church. This was only eight months after she and Josh Powell were married. (Cox family)
Susan in October 2002. She believed that her marriage to Josh would be forever, and she was happy to be with him, even though she was a little concerned that he changed jobs so often. (Cox family)
Susan in an impish mood. One of her husband’s male relatives believed that she was secretly in love with him. He was totally besotted with her, and she was afraid of being alone with him. (Cox family)
Susan right after Christmas 2001. It was her first Christmas married to Josh Powell. Even though many people didn’t care for him, she believed he was only shy and that she could make him happy. (Cox family)
Steven Powell, left, and Josh at a trade show. Steve was never without a camera or two. After Josh and Susan were married, Josh talked to his father on the phone almost every day—for hours. That was one bone of contention between the newlyweds. Susan felt Steve interfered too much.
Susan plays cards and visits with members of Josh’s family. At first she enjoyed being with all of them, but later on she wanted to leave Washington State and move to Utah so she and Josh could concentrate on their own family.
Susan and her dad, Chuck Cox, are tired at the end of a western hoedown party. Chuck and his wife, Judy, did their best to look out for their four daughters, but the girls made their own choices. (Cox family)
A holiday dinner at Chuck Cox’s parents’ home. Chuck sits at one end of the table, and his father at the other. Anne Cox, Chuck’s mother, is in the kitchen cooking. The elder Coxes lived in a log cabin house. (Cox family)
The Powell and Cox families pose in Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Susan’s parents are to her left—Judy Cox, with Chuck behind her. Josh’s family are to his right. As bonded as they look here, the two extended families rarely saw each other. (Cox family)
Author Ann Rule in Salt Lake City doing research on the Powell case. Standing in the same spot where the Coxes and Powells stood in happier days.
Chuck’s sister, Pam, adored her great-nephews, and they felt the same about her. When they visited their maternal grandparents, the boys began to feel safe again, although they missed their mother tremendously. Left to right: Charlie, five, Braden, three, and their aunt Pam in March 2010. Susan had been missing four months when this picture was taken. (Cox family)
Charlie and Braden with their mother in a photo taken by Chuck Cox, their maternal grandfather.
Braden and Charlie all dressed up for Halloween 2011. They were growing more secure with Judy and Chuck Cox all the time. Behind them is Susan’s large photo, which the Coxes keep in front of their fireplace. (Cox family)
The Powell house, on fire.
The aftermath of the terrible fire that destroyed three lives.
Josh Powell at a court hearing. He was ordered to get a psychosexual evaluation. This was something he refused to face. (KOMO-TV, ABC Seattle)
Behind Josh are his missing wife’s parents and friends. Far left is Judy Cox, then Chuck Cox. (KOMO-TV ABC Seattle)
Steven Craig Powell, sixty-two, just arrested for fourteen charges of voyeurism and one charge of child pornography, September 2011. No one knew the strange secrets he hid inside. Was he part of a grotesque, cruel plot—or only obsessed with his son’s wife?
Detective Gary Sanders of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department was the lead investigator into the Washington State portion of some very puzzling and macabre cases. He and his team located the spot where a stalker viewed his victims through a camera lens. Sanders worked closely with detective Ellis Maxwell of the West Valley City, Utah, police department.
Pierce County Sheriff’s Department public information officer Ed Troyer had to keep explaining to the public why his department could not move forward on an arrest. He was as frustrated as all law enforcement personnel in his county. The problem? Susan Powell disappeared in Utah—not Washington State.
Pierce County sheriff Paul Pastor’s investigators, along with prosecuting attorney Mark Lindquist, kept waiting for a “go-ahead“ to serve an arrest warrant on Josh Powell. Tragically, it never happened.
Prosecuting attorney Mark Lindquist, along with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, wanted to arrest members of the Steven Powell family—but they were not the primary investigators in the beginning. It was supremely frustrating for the Washington detectives, sheriff, and prosecutors. (Mark Lindquist)
Anne Bremner, nationally acclaimed attorney, volunteered her expertise pro bono to Chuck and Judy Cox as they sought first to find their daughter Susan, and later to gain custody of their grandsons. (Anne Bremner)
TWO STRANGE DEATHS IN CORONADO
Chapter One
In the wee hours of July 13, 2011, the only sounds at the Spreckels Mansion on Ocean Boulevard were the engines of the few cars that passed by, and the soft lapping of the Pacific Ocean as waves washed over the massive beach rocks that spell out CORONADO.
The dark-haired woman was beautiful even in death, and the moonlight dappled her naked body, but it is impossible—even now—to determine just where she was when it was first discovered. She could have been moving slightly in a mild breeze beneath one of the bedrooms’ balconies, a shiny thick orange-red rope around her ankles, securing her wrists behind her back, with her lower legs several feet off the ground.
There is also the possibility that she rested on the grass and never came off the balcony above her at all. The red rope might have crushed her neck in another kind of strangling. Or someone’s strong hands could have choked the life out of her. There is even a chance that she was killed someplace else and carried t
Only one person said that he saw her as the sun rose; only he came forward to speak about discovering the horror of her death. He told Coronado, California, police detectives how she was when he first observed her, and recalled the sequence of events rather dispassionately. Shock, of course, makes different people react in different ways. One couldn’t even attempt to know how he felt on this Wednesday morning of July 13.
Her name was Rebecca, and she was the girlfriend of billionaire pharmaceutical tycoon Jonah Shacknai. She was thirty-two. He is Adam Shacknai, Jonah Shacknai’s brother. He is forty-eight.
When Adam talked with investigators about “Becky’s” death, they were puzzled by what dark force loomed over Jonah’s home. The discovery of the exquisite woman’s corpse was a second shock. Becky Zahau had been vibrantly alive only hours before. Her death was an unfathomable blow to two already grieving families. It made no sense.
It made just as little sense as when Jonah’s small son fell from an upper-story landing of the mansion, apparently clinging to a huge cut-glass chandelier for seconds before he crashed down to the foyer, unconscious and terribly hurt, only two days before Becky’s death. Jonah’s son’s full name was Maxfield Shacknai but his family usually called him Max or Maxie, and he was only six.
At the time of Becky’s death, Maxie, the youngest of Jonah’s three children, was still alive—but in extremely critical condition in a drug-induced coma. Doctors warned Jonah and his ex-wife Dina—who was Maxie’s mom—that it was unlikely their son would survive.
And now Becky was dead.
* * *
The very wealthy are not immune to scandal, tragedy, and police investigations. Consider the Kennedy family and their trials for alleged crimes behind the walls of luxurious estates in Florida and Connecticut. Or the 1966 murder of Illinois senator Charles Percy’s daughter Valerie in the Percy family’s estate in a suburb of Chicago as her twin slept nearby, unaware.
Being rich doesn’t assure safety—not at all; sometimes it attracts aberrant minds. And sometimes it seems that those who have too many wordly goods pay for it with terrible losses that they could not foresee.
Jonah Shacknai owned what was known as the Spreckels Mansion. Jonah, fifty, was rumored to be a billionaire, an entrepreneur much like the Spreckels sugar barons generations earlier. He and Becky and Jonah’s extended family used the mansion as a summer place, arriving from Scottsdale, Arizona, on Memorial Day and returning to Shacknai’s even more lavish desert home around Labor Day.
For the very wealthy, the Coronado mansion was the equivalent of a summer cottage. It was a little worn around the edges, and some rooms hadn’t been redecorated since the mid-twentieth century. But it was as cozy as such a huge property could be, and the breeze off the ocean across the street was a welcome change from baking Arizona in the summertime.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor stayed at the Spreckels Mansion once—probably in the 1930s or ’40s—and their bedroom suite was completely redone for the occasion. That bedroom was still in pristine condition, with especially made twin beds joined by a lavish double headboard of imported wood. The rest of the mansion is genteelly shabby, and in need of repair—or at least it was in 2011. The guesthouse was in better shape.
Jonah Shacknai’s mansion had five stories. The lowest level was the basement; the first floor/main level consisted of a foyer, living room, sunroom, dining room, sitting area, butler’s pantry, kitchen, laundry room, and a half bath. The second floor had two bedrooms (an office and guest room/office) and a bathroom. The master bedroom and en suite bath were on the third floor, along with three smaller bedrooms—one each for Jonah’s children: Max, Cameron,* and Josh.*
And the top floor was the attic.
The guesthouse was bigger than many families’ homes. It had a living room, three bedrooms, a kitchen, and three bathrooms.
The history of the Spreckels estate is well-known, with so many memories and tales of generation after generation of an impossibly rich, famous and infamous family written about in books, newspapers, and gossip columns.
With two disasters in as many days, one might wonder if the place was haunted, cursed by something that emanated eerily from events that had happened a century earlier.
It seems unlikely; what occurred in 2011 couldn’t have any connection to the original owners. Indeed, it was John Spreckels who built Jonah Shacknai’s summer place; the other Spreckels mansion, in San Francisco, was constructed to suit the taste of his brother Adolph Spreckels, who, along with his descendants, was far more involved in scandals and violence. John was the brother and uncle whose life was more circumspect.
The Spreckels family had no connection, of course, to those who lived there a century later. Nonetheless, the magnificent grounds and huge, once-luxurious rooms seemed steeped in the Spreckels’ stories, too. For more than a hundred years, the mansion has stood through storms, earthquakes, baking sun, stock market upswings, depressions, and wars. Surely the stoic walls had absorbed a sense of history.
But, of course, the walls said nothing. The old trees had grown above the roofline and the lush foliage sheltered the mansion more every decade. It seemed to be an estate that anyone might envy.
Chapter Two
When I first heard about double tragedies in the wealthiest enclave of posh Coronado, California, I found them both appalling and intriguing. I still do.
I’ve been to Coronado a few times, although I never got to stay at the fabulous Hotel del Coronado, which is located close by the Spreckels Mansion. I’ve only driven through the circular driveway to view it close up. It is a luxurious and expensive place to stay—and on the book tours that took me to Coronado I was housed farther down the road, at more mundane hotels.
A few miles south of those and closer to Mexico, the odor of sewage drifts up from Tijuana. I had little choice but to keep my windows closed and air conditioners on.
But the Hotel del Coronado has remained majestic and sacrosanct. It has been featured in any number of movies—many of them horror based. An historic edifice, the hotel is said to have its share of ghosts.
Coronado itself is rife with millionaires’ estates. And along Ocean Boulevard, the real estate is prime. Huge homes rise in stately profusion with wide and deep velvet green lawns, fragrant night-blooming jasmine, bougainvillea, camellias, hibiscus, bottlebrush, and other exotic trees bursting with blooms. Most of the mansions are built of stucco with tile roofs; there are many outbuildings that sprawl across the large lots: separate guesthouses, servants’ quarters, pool houses, and, of course, aquamarine pools. Many of the properties are protected by delicately filigreed iron gates with sturdy locks, closed off from the traffic along Ocean Boulevard and keggers on the beach.
Just beyond the busy street, the Pacific Ocean pushes against the shore, later to ebb as the moon’s cycle changes.
John D. Spreckels, born in 1853, created the Coronado mansion where Maxfield Shacknai and Becky Zahau were to die mysteriously. He was at first a newspaperman and millionaire sugar baron, and he branched out into many other fields.
The Spreckels clan have lived in luxury to this day, and yet some of their ancestors exhibited bizarre, almost psychotic tendencies. Some wonder if a black cloud might have remained in their grand houses long after they died off.
The more shocking scandals appear to have trickled down through Adolph’s line. In 1884, Adolph shot Michael de Young, the cofounder of the San Francisco Chronicle, because he was furious about an article suggesting that Western Sugar Refiners, the family corporation, had defrauded their shareholders. Charged with attempted murder, Adolph pleaded temporary insanity and was quickly acquitted due to his “mental incapacity.”
Adolph and Alma had three children—two daughters and a son. Adolph Jr. was a disappointment, said to have a mean streak, often acting out with violence. That may have been because most of his family called him “Little Adolph.” A daredevil, Adolph Jr. was piloting a hydroplane on Gre
Adolph Jr.’s seduction of women wasn’t hampered by his scars. He had half a dozen or more short-lived marriages, and many affairs with beautiful actresses. His sixth wife was movie star Kay Williams, who left him after an unfortunate vacation on Balboa Island, where she complained that he’d beaten her. The story made headlines all over America.
Kay Williams Spreckels had two children with Adolph Jr.—Joan and Adolph III, known as “Bunker.” Bunker was born in 1949 and he was five years old when his mother divorced Adolph Jr. He admired his mother’s new husband, movie star Clark Gable, who was kind to him and taught him about guns, hunting, and women.
Bunker lived a life most teenagers wanted to emulate. The handsome youth was a champion surfer. He went steady with Miss Teen California. He expected no inheritance because his father, Adolph Jr., was spending millions at an alarming rate. Bunker was sure it would all be gone before his father died. But Adolph Jr. passed away unexpectedly before he could spend all his money; at twenty-one, Bunker Spreckels rented an armored car and went to the bank where he had $51 million waiting for him. He demanded it in cash and took it to a secret location he called his “Bat Cave,” where he kept treasures he didn’t want anyone to see.