An explosion yesterday destroyed the home of Josh Powell, who had been under investigation in the disappearance of his wife, Susan Powell, apparently killing Powell and the couple’s two sons.
The small house near Fredrickson, Washington burst into flames mere moments after the two boys were dropped off there by a social worker.
Rescue officials says the social worker dropped off Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5, but she was kept from entering the residence. The social worker immediately called her supervisors to report the smell of gas, then the home exploded.
“She moved away from the house, a very smart move on her part, and moments to minutes later, the house exploded,” said Graham Fire and Rescue spokesman Gary Franz.
He said “credible reports” indicated that the Powell boys were inside the home at the time. Fire officials found the bodies of an adult and two children at the scene.
“Everything points to Josh Powell and his two sons,” he said. Pierce County sheriff’s officials are now treating the home as “a crime scene.”
Officials are not even referring to the incident as a “tragedy.”
“Let’s not refer to this please in public as a tragedy. This was not a tragedy. This was a horrible murder of two little kids. Let’s not dress it up, let’s not sanitize it. Let’s call it what it is, which is something deeply wrong, which is not a tragedy, which is something evil,” said Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor. “This is going to hurt everybody’s heart who’s been involved. This is a horrible, heart-breaking situation.”
An attorney for Josh Powell said he received an email from his client just moments before Powell and his two boys died in the explosion. It said, “I’m sorry, goodbye.”
Powell has long been a “person of interest” in the disappearance of his wife, who was last seen in December 2009 at the home in which the family then resided in Utah. Powell said he took his sons on a midnight camping trip, despite a snowstorm, and returned to find that she had disappeared.
Powell initially took the boys to live with him and his father in Washington, but lost custody to the parents of Susan Powell after thousands of sexually explicit images and videos of women and young girls were found on the computer of Josh Powell’s father, Steven Powell.
Josh Powell had been attempting to regain custody of his sons, but suffered a setback last week when a Washington state judge ruled that he must first undergo a psycho-sexual evaluation.
More in the video below.
Josh Powell Explosion
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