Kiirsi Hellewell, Susan Powell’s best friend in West Valley City, said she screamed out in grief after confirming the boys were killed. She now wonders if there will ever be answers to the fate of her missing friend.

"I’m so furious with Josh for so many reasons," Hellewell said. "If he’s going to take such a cowardly and selfish way out of this, I wish he would have left a note to explain what happened. Now we still don’t know, and now he’s gone and we don’t have any way of getting answers ... Not only that, he murdered two little innocent boys. If he wanted to kill himself, he should have done that, but how dare he do something so horrible, so evil?"

Hellewell called Josh Powell "the kind of person that only cares about himself. "

"He never really loved his boys. To him, they were possessions," she said. "They were something for him to own and possess and to control. Once that control was taken away [at the custody hearing last week] ... he just felt like if I can’t have them, nobody is going to."

Hellewell said she spoke to Chuck Cox, Susan’s father, moments after she heard of the fire to ask if the news was true. Cox told her he wasn’t sure and was on his way to the home. He called Hellewell back moments later and said a Washington sheriff’s deputy had just confirmed it.

"He was in a state of shock," Hellewell said. Cox told her his one consolation is that the boys are with their mother again, she said.

Like the Coxes, Hellewell has long believed that Josh Powell had something to do with Susan’s disappearance.

Hellewell said she was relieved last week when a Washington judge decided to leave the two boys with the Coxes at least through July. Still, she said there was fear Powell might be furious.

"We’ve all been very, very worried about their safety," Hellewell said of the two boys.

In a December court filing, Josh Powell asked the court to move the boys to a neutral caretaker and expressed frustration with the slow pace of efforts to reunite him with his sons. He claimed the Coxes were out to "destroy our loving relationships as a natural family unit."

He said the Coxes’ hatred of him "pervades their household, their social circles, and their public comments."

Josh Powell claimed the Coxes were turning his two sons against him.