TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A court commissioner in Washington state has issued an order that the husband and father of a Utah woman missing for two years keep 500 feet away from each other.
Joshua Powell, the husband of Susan Powell, had alleged in a petition for a restraining order that his father-in-law Chuck Cox of Puyallup, Wash., had threatened him and stalked him and his sons at a home improvement store. The commissioner said nothing in Powell’s petition rose to the level of domestic violence but said she was issuing an anti-harassment order “to keep the peace.”
In court Tuesday, Cox’s lawyer said his client had never threatened Powell and had only tried to hug his grandchildren. Cox’s lawyer also said his client had never maligned Powell or publicly suggested that Powell was responsible for Susan’s disappearance.
The dispute comes after authorities recently searched a network of abandoned mines outside Ely, Nev., but didn’t reveal any new evidence.
