Ten days after his wife, Susan, went missing, Joshua Powell knocked on a friend's door in tears. For the next hour, he sat on Wayne Hamberg's living room sofa, sobbing, but saying nothing about Susan's mysterious disappearance on Dec. 6.
"He was so distressed, so despondent, so overwhelmed," says Powell's friend Wayne Hamberg, who met the 29-year-old Web site programmer about a year ago at a Salt Lake City computer club gathering.
"The reason he's not talking to police is he's just shut down," Hamberg, 49, a software engineer says about Joshua. "He's so emotionally drained and everybody's attacking him, making him out to be a Mark Hacking or a Scott Peterson. The Josh I know is not some kind of evil guy. I don't believe that's he's suicidal or anything like that, but right now, I don't think he's capable of doing much more than tying his own shoelaces."
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Family Against Him"I told him Tuesday night, when he came to see me, not to say anything to me about the circumstances, only to talk to his attorney," says Hamberg. "I want to be his friend, not somebody snooping around for a scoop. I'm there to support him and I'd like to think that he's innocent. I'd like to think that of all of my friends."
Hamberg noticed that Powell was thin and pale, as though he hadn't eaten in days. "I offered to make him dinner, but he refused, saying he just had no appetite for food – that it was tasteless," Hamberg says. "I gave him a hug, then he just sat on the couch and cried. He said the only thing keeping him going right now was his two boys. He's latched on to them as his sole mental support because even some of his own family members have turned on him now."
