The

The On the morning of Sunday, December 6th of 2009, Susan Marie Powell took her two young sons to church service in their hometown of West Valley City, Utah.

West Valley City boasts around 140,000 residents and, by all accounts, is a fine place to raise

a family. Susan and her husband Joshua had moved there just a few years prior in order to be

closer to his family. He found a job in commercial finance while

she started working for Wells Fargo. Over the next few years, the Powell settled in and started a family.

To their friends and neighbors, they were something akin to the model nuclear family. But the

veneer of Mormon perfection hit deep running fissures,

and during the holiday season of 2009, a vexing mystery would kick off a terrifying chain of events

that would forever tarnish West Valley City's wholesome and pious reputation.

Following the church service, Susan drove her two sons back home, then later that afternoon,

she was visited by a family friend to eventually departed in the early evening.

This friend would later state that Susan seemed perfectly content,

and that she departed with no lingering concerns or suspicions.

Yet the very next morning, Joshua's mother, Tarika Powell, received a call from her grandson's

daycare center. The boys had not been dropped off and their parents weren't answering their phones.

Then, together with Joshua's sister, Jennifer, Tarika drove over to his home and knocked

on the door. They received no answer, and when they found that neither Joshua nor Susan was

picking up their phones, the two women decided to contact the local police department. Upon their

arrival, the two attending police officers became concerned that some kind of gas leak had occurred and quickly sought Tarika's permission to force their way into the home.

After smashing their way through a back door, the two police officers were initially relieved to find the house empty, as it disproved their dreaded carbon monoxide theory. But as they and Josh's relatives

performed a casual search of the home, they found something very unusual. Two large box fans

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