Posted on 02/15/2012 10:32:55 AM PST by ColdOne
Authorities said Josh Powell was not living at the house he rigged as a bomb and blew up, killing himself and his two young sons, the Tacoma News Tribune reported Tuesday.
Pierce County sheriff's detectives told citizens at a community meeting on Monday that the house Powell showed to authorities was a sham -- intended to look like a loving home where his two sons could visit, according to the newspaper.
Detectives said they believe Powell passed the abandoned home off as his so that he could be granted supervised visits with his sons, Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5.
"He set it up like a rental place, with pictures of the family," Sgt. Denny Wood said at the meeting, the newspaper reports.
"I think it was staged so when CPS (Child Protective Services) came, it would look like a loving family," he said.
Powell, long a suspect in his wife's disappearance, killed his sons as well as himself when he blew up the home Feb 5, shortly after a social worker arrived with the children for a court-ordered visit.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Does anyone know what this monster did for a living? I can’t seem to find out.
CPS didn’t establish that this guy was renting this house? They didn’t ask for proof? How could they have just taken his word for it? I don’t get it?
I have seen situations with my own eyes where CPS have been involved and they dropped the ball. There is a family in my neighborhood that has already been reported at least 4 times and nothing has been done about the neglect that still goes on to this day. They have 4 kids that they do not care for and CPS knows it yet does nothing about it. They allow children as young as 2 to be outside unsupervised. They now have a dog that gets loose and the kids run after it. This includes the 2 year old that will run right into the street. People speed on this road. Something tragic is going to happen.
In all fairness, how often will social workers run across a complete and utter psycho like this guy. He may take the prize for a long time to come.
He had this so well planned and was so bent on murder he would have needed to be in a Hannibal Lechter getup to prevent this. Those kids were as good as dead when the decision was made to let him see them.
maybe they were as good as dead so long as he was alive and free. the investigators made the point in the article that had the court awarded custody to the grandparents, there would have been dead grandparents as well as dead little boys. the guy was determined.
Saw this case profiled on Dateline last weekend. CPS blew it big time, and so did the police dispatcher. The CPS worker was supposed to be doing SUPERVISED visits with dad, but let him take the kids into the house and lock her out. While (unbeknownst to the social worker) he was chopping the little boys with an axe inside, the 9ll dispatcher kept the SW on the phone for about 8 minutes without even attempting to send out a patrol car.
“Those kids were as good as dead when the decision was made to let him see them.”
Exactly. CPS should NEVER have allowed visits with this man. That’s the problem with CPS. Where I live the law MANDATES that children be reunited with parents to the best of the ability of the department. All too often this results in further abuse, neglect or even death for the children.
The priority for CPS needs to be SAFETY for the children. Period.
Thanks, CO!!!
The CPS worker was supposed to be doing SUPERVISED visits with dad, but let him take the kids into the house and lock her out.
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Really? The CPS worker “let” Josh do that? You’re sure on that one?
Certainly, I’ve never seen any kids who, in their excitement to do something, run in front of the adults to get somewhere faster.
Can we not just lay the blame squarely on the one person who is truly responsible for this situation: namely Josh Powell?
I’d like to know where this guy was getting his money.
And since he was a suspect in the disappearance of his wife you’d think the cops would keep an eye on him.
Finally, the guy who rented this house SHOULD have known who this guy was and should have called the police. Unless he was living under a rock for the past year.
You’re right in saying that these poor kids would have been toast anyway. But to not establish that this house was indeed his was very sloppy on CPS’s part. They can’t afford to be sloppy like that. Especially when it involves the safety of children.
If not that day in that way, then another day in a different way.
I totally agree. There are times when children should not be around their parents. There is nothing morally wrong with keeping them away from their parents for their own protection. They need to stay focused on the children’s safety and not so much on reuniting them when the situation is volatile.
No. The law is the law. CPS can't ignore it. Yes, the "reuinite the family" thing is a piss poor mandate but the worker can't change that. The judge gave the father visits, not CPS. I can't stand it that every time something goes wrong people constantly blame CPS who was following the rules they were given. Monday morning quarterbacking isn't going to change the law, the judge's stupid decision to allow visits in the house, or that the father was determined to end it all. The world is lucky that the grandparents, the social worker, police or neighbors weren't also killed.
this arrogant animal could very well have set the whole scenario up...he did take $7000 out of the bank the day before....
let me guess....their not Christian home schoolers, because they would have been hauled off long ago...
The timeline I read showed that the call took five minutes before it was transferred to the radio dispatcher. Part of the delay was because the social worker didn't know the address where the deputies were to be sent. It then took another three minutes to get two deputies dispatched. The point here is that the man who took the 911 call was not the radio dispatcher, and could not have dispatched the deputies even if he wanted to.
Once the radio dispatcher sent the deputies it took the first deputy 14 minutes to arrive on scene. Even if the 911 operator miraculously shaved 3 minutes off the call before transferring it, and even if the radio dispatcher shaved another two minutes off the call, it still would have taken the deputy 14 minutes to get on scene. It still adds up to 17 minutes before the first deputy arrived. All of this would still have given enough time Powell to attack the kids, pour gasoline around the house and light the match. The only thing that could have saved those kids was for the social worker not to take them to the house in the first place.
The timeline:
1. Call received at 12:08.
2. Call transferred to radio dispatch at 12:13.
3. Deputies dispatched at 12:16.
4. First Deputy on scene at 12:30.
"The Pierce County Sheriff's office says the first call came in at 12:08 on Sunday. Five minutes later, at 12:13, information from that call was transferred to the radio dispatcher. At 12:16, two deputies were sent to the scene. The first unit arrived at 12:30. By then, the house was a raging inferno."
911 operator: 'I wish I recognized the urgency' at Powell house
Sure there is a GREAT moral hazard in your emotional reaction allowing a general permit for enabling children to be taken from their parents. Who is making the decision of what the kids need to be protected from?
That you have deluded yourself is clear from what you said that preceded that foolish general permit you would grant to take children from out of the arms of their parents.
You said this "There are times when children should not be around their parents."
Such times are very rare. Very very rare. They are exceptionally extraordinary. It is a falsehood to suggest otherwise. And your statement in that way is false.
It is like a person selling desert land says "There are times when in rains," which implies a fairly common occurrence of rain. It may be that it rains no more than a few minutes a year! Deceptive. Please do not deceive yourself.
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