Family of Missing Utah Mother Susan Powell Fights Back Against Husband's Accusations
Nov. 8, 2010— -- Harsh words from the husband of missing Utah mother Susan Powell has her family seething and adamant that she was not mentally ill when she disappeared nearly a year ago.
"It's blatantly untrue," Susan Powell's father, Chuck Cox, told "Good Morning America" today. "It's obviously a self-serving statement. It's untrue, it's all untrue."
Joshua Powell blasted his missing wife and her family in an interview this weekend with the Salt Lake Tribune. He called Susan Powell "extremely unstable" and blamed her family for keeping her in hiding and causing her to leave in the first place.
"She can't come back with them treating her this way," Joshua Powell said. "They want her to be perfect, a saint with no fallibility."
Joshua Powell's sister, Jennifer Graves, said she found her brother's claims that his wife was mentally ill to be ironic.
"In the Powell family, my family, we're the ones with the mental illness, documented," she said, noting that her and Joshua Powell's brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. "I never saw Susan display symptoms," she said.
Graves, who is estranged from her own family but was close with Susan Powell and the couple's two children, has long maintained that she believes her brother had something to do with his wife's disappearance.
Although Powell is the only person of interest in the case, he said he has been unfairly scrutinized and predicted his wife would be next when she returns.
"She knows she will be chewed up like hamburger when she comes back," he told the Salt Lake Tribune.
And he stuck by his story that his wife disappeared Dec. 6, 2009, while he was out with their young sons on a middle-of-the-night camping trip in the woods during heavy snow and freezing temperatures.
Cox said that, after nearly a year, relatives are preparing themselves for the day his daughter's body might be found, but "we have the hope that she's still alive."
Loved ones get weekly updates from investigators who tell them they are still tracking down leads.
"They tell us the case is progressing," he said.
