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Susan Powell, who had told friends that she might seek a divorce from her controlling husband, had allegedly created a secret bank account for money to use when she left Josh and had even made plans on where she would live after she took their sons and fled her marriage. Even though she disappeared almost two months ago, few believe that she actually got the chance to run, instead believing she likely met with foul play, probably at the hands of Josh.

It was on a snowy, bitterly cold Sunday night in December that Josh would later tell police that he decided to go camping with his family, even though both parents were scheduled to work the following day. Josh indicated Susan was ill and decided to stay home, so sometime around 12:30 AM he packed their two sons, ages 4 and 2, into the family van and headed out into the black of night and into the jaws of a snowstorm to camp at some remote location outside of Salt Lake City.

It would be friends and family and not Josh that would report Susan as missing, this when both adults failed to show up for work and the boys were not dropped off for day care. Police were called to the Powell residence and in the course of trying to determine the well-being of anyone in the house found the home vacant, but they did find Susan’s purse, cell phone and keys. Josh would return later that day to deny any knowledge of Susan’s whereabouts, suggesting he was unable to recall the exact location where he and his sons had spent the previous frigid night. Josh has since “lawyered up,” been fired from his job, and moved out of state and is allegedly attempting to rent or sell their family home. Law enforcement, for their part, have seized and released the Powell family van for the second time, this pursuant to a search warrant, as they continue their quest to find the missing woman.

Susan Powell’s family and friends, denied knowledge of any exact location to actively search for the absent young mother, have instead turned to the Internet and Facebook to keep the facts and the story of their friend before as many people as possible. The “friends and family of Susan Powell” Facebook page, with over 45,000 followers, has, unfortunately, been plagued by one or more “Internet trolls,” in this case someone who intentionally posts negative or inflammatory messages in an attempt to provoke or bait others into an emotional response. While the old phrase “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” is true, words can still, in and of themselves, be very hurtful. Such words can also provide the emotional catalyst for people to respond, even in their own defense, in equally inflammatory ways.

Internet trolls are usually cowardly, immature individuals who, like the person who keys the side of your car in a dark parking lot, does his or her damage from the shadows, in this case with the anonymity conveyed by the Internet. One such troll posted sexual explicit comments about the missing woman while another assumed the young mother’s identity, posting comments as if written by the absent woman herself. It is people like this for whom the song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away,” must have been written. Just like wild animals, the best way to handle an Internet Troll is “PDFT,” i.e., “please don’t feed the trolls” by allowing them to engage you in some sort of flaming rhetoric. If you ignore them, they will eventually tire and move on to another site.

Meanwhile law enforcement continues their hunt for Susan Powell, knowing full well that their search could end up like that for missing Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington. Twenty-year-old Harrington had been missing since she was last seen at a Metallica Concert at the University of Virginia on October 17, 2009. Her remains were found last week in a farmer’s field some 10 miles from the concert location and her killer(s) have yet to be identified.

In the case of Powell, she either somehow fled from her husband and, more importantly, left her two young sons of her own volition (not likely at all), or she was kidnapped from her residence the night she went missing (again not likely), or the lone person of interest in this case, Josh Powell, is responsible for her disappearance. Some believe that Josh Powell murdered his wife and invented the story of the midnight camping trip to cover his trip to somehow dispose of her body that night. In this theory, a fight could have transpired between the two, Susan was killed, and Josh, needing to separate himself from his victim, drove into the teeth of the driving, freezing snow to bury her body in some unknown remote place. This appears to be similar to how the killer(s) of Morgan Harrington disposed of her body, and it was just by chance that the local farmer found her remains in that remote field. It could be with the melting of the Utah snow and the similar luck of some hunter or camper that Susan Powell’s remains could also be found, should, of course, she too have been the victim of a violent crime.

Meanwhile police in Bolingbrook, IL, continue to search for Stacy Peterson, the young missing wife of former police sergeant Drew Peterson and Chicago area authorities have yet to find missing Lisa Stebic, whose controlling husband Craig, again the only person of interest, also suggested his wife just up and disappeared from their residence almost three years ago.

While many seated on the court of public opinion have already convicted Josh Powell, Drew Peterson and Craig Stebic for the suspected murder of their missing spouses, without a body (the so-called “corpus delicti”), as was initially the case with convicted wife killer Scott Peterson, murder becomes a difficult crime to prosecute. In the meantime the children of Susan, Stacy, Lisa, and the many other missing mothers say their prayers every night for their moms to return to them. Unfortunately, in the vast number of these cases those prayers will not be answered with the return of the person these children held most dear to them, and the one person who knows the true story usually isn’t talking.

For information on matters of personal and family safety, to include a free copy of our DVD “Protecting Children from Predators,” see www.LiveSecure.org.