Just weeks after Susan’s disappearance on Dec. 7, 2009, Steve sent an email to West Valley City police detective Gavin Cook. The message included footer text that read “Hear the music at www.stevechantrey.com.”
Steve also shared his songs with his sons.
“I recently dusted off my song ‘The Stars are Twinkling Down in Provo’ and when I played it for Josh and Michael, they said it sounded like it was also about Susan,” Steve wrote in his journal on April 6, 2010. “They like the line ‘You departed in a hustle, you flipped me off and showed your muscle.’ Since wrote the song years ago, Michael called me Nostradamus, a prophet. I told him I prefer to be called Nostra-God-damn-us.”
Josh Powell, who was then living with his father in South Hill, Wash. and under intense scrutiny from detectives investigating his wife’s disappearance, worried how the public would react if they discovered Steve’s songs about Susan.