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The Blue Minivan: The Unsolved Murder of Susan Cox Powell
Paperback
21st Century United States HistoryTrue Crime
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Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Dec 4 2025
Pages: 342
Weight: 1.01
Height: 0.71 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Midnight, a blue van, and a desert that keeps its silence. On December 6-7, 2009, Susan Cox Powell disappeared from West Valley City. Inside her home: fans blowing over a wet carpet, her purse and car untouched. Inside the family minivan: her phone, powered off, SIM removed. Her husband said he took their boys camping at Simpson Springs-in subfreezing cold. The timeline cracked. The questions multiplied.
This is a work of true crime that stays with the record and the people inside it. Mercer guides you through the critical 48 hours-the daycare alarm, the first interview, the search warrant work-then into the larger arc of a cold case that refuses to fade. You'll follow the evidence through living room fibers and last clean moments; past a blue Chrysler that returned home but not clean; and into a desert whose distances test memory and resolve.
Why the fans? Why the midnight drive? Why was Susan's phone in the van without its trail? The book holds to what can be proven and labels what can't-balancing forensic evidence with the intimate portrait of a young mother navigating domestic violence and control. This book contains no images-only cinematic narrative written in the style of a detective-investigator.
As the investigation moves from West Valley City to Washington state, you'll track what the record shows and, just as tellingly, what it doesn't. Was the midnight alibi about camping-or concealment? What does a child's phrase-where the crystals are-add to the map?
Reader Promise: You will walk the timeline step by step; understand why last seen at 5:00 p.m. matters; see how small absences-a receipt, a ping, a call-become anchors; and feel the human cost carried by families, searchers, and a community still asking the only question that matters.
This Book Is For Readers Who...
- want a grounded narrative that respects victims while pursuing answers.
- gravitate to missing persons investigations built from documents and interviews.
- study the choices that shape a police investigation in a no-body case.
- analyze desert searches, odometers, and the limits of forensic evidence.
- read intimate portraits of domestic violence that avoid sensationalism.
- follow cases rooted in place-West Valley City to Simpson Springs-and consequence.
Perfect For Fans Of...
- If I Can't Have You by Gregg Olsen & Rebecca Morris
- COLD (the podcast) by Dave Cawley
- ABC 20/20's Susan Powell documentaries
- Dateline NBC's longform true-crime storytelling
A mother, a minivan, a winter desert-facts that refuse to move. Open the file and decide what the silence is saying.
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