“We can keep him away from the boys,” a Washington state police detective says, explaining why Crime Stoppers is buying the cemetery plots beside two murdered brothers so the father who killed them can’t be buried there.
The volunteer anti-crime organization is using its website to raise money for the plots on either side of Charlie and Braden Powell to block their father Josh’s family from burying Josh near them.
“We might not be able to keep Josh Powell from being buried in the cemetery, but we can keep him away from the boys,” Pierce County Sheriff’s Det. Ed Troyer told the Los Angeles Times.
“Bottom line is, it's not fair for murder victims to have the murder suspect laid to rest next to them. It's hurtful to the community and dishonours the boys.”
Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, were buried Monday in Woodbine Cemetery, just over a week after Powell slammed the door on a social worker and blew up his rented house in Graham, Wash., with himself and his sons inside.
He had first attacked the boys with a hachet, police said. Audio tapes captured the social worker’s frantic called to her supervisors as she was barred from the house, then saw the building explode into flames.
The boys’ mother, Susan, is still missing. She hasn’t been seen since Powell said he took the boys on a midnight camping trip from the family house in Utah in December 2009.
“For him to be buried near those kids is just unthinkable,” Seattle attorney Anne Bremner told the Associated Press.
She represents Charles and Judith Cox of Puyallup, Wash., Susan’s parents.
After the boys’ deaths, their grandfather Charles Cox had related a conversation he had with them about the camping trip. Charlie and Braden went to live with the Coxes after their father lost custody.
Asked “who’s in the car?” Braden had said, “That’s Daddy, that’s Charlie, that’s me.” Then he said, “Well, mommy’s in the trunk.”
“Then, he said we stopped somewhere and mommy and daddy got out and mommy didn’t come back,” Cox said.
The family can have the option to bury Susan next to her boys if she is found, Troyer said.
Josh Powell had moved in with his father Steve in Washington state shortly after Susan disappeared. He lost custody of his sons after Steve Powell was arrested last fall on child pornography and voyeurism charges.
Powell’s family had selected a burial plot just up the hill from where the boys are buried, though they haven’t paid for it yet.
Troyer, who is also director of the non-profit Crime Stoppers, said he and Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor placed a down payment on the plots surrounding the boys' grave.
The Crime Stoppers website home page is asking for donations to help pay for the plots, which are expected to cost about $5,000.
