Another article on Fox News talks about the recent disappearance of Susan Powell, 28, who “was last seen on Dec. 7, when her husband says he left their suburban home in West Valley City at about 12:30 a.m. to take their two boys, ages 2 and 4, camping in freezing conditions.”

Going camping in below freezing weather with two boys under 5 years old? According to the Weather Channel history for Salt Lake City, Utah, the temperature Sunday the 7th was 25 degrees as the high (-3.9 degrees Celsius) and 17 degrees as the low (-8.3 degrees Celsius). And at 12:30 a.m., right after midnight, the temperature was probably close to that 17 degree (-8.3 degree Celsius) range.

Catfish. I’m definitely smelling something along the lines of catfish around here.

The story about the missing Salt Lake City, Utah woman and the way things like this usually end up are not what I’m looking at. I’m looking at another glaring tactical error. Two, in fact.

Susan Powell’s husband, Joshua Powell, decided he needed to bust out in a rental car just under 48 hours after his wife disappeared. He drove hundreds of miles in a rental vehicle he got for a 24 hour period to head… who knows where.

Error #1 : There was no GPS in the rental vehicle. In this day and age, Joshua Powell got a rental vehicle from one of the last companies to implement GPS devices in their rental fleet. He could have driven to Canada or Mexico and the company would’ve never known what happened to their vehicle. What rental company doesn’t have a GPS in their rental vehicles?

Error #2 :The police had him pegged as a person of interest, and even had his minivan in their CSI room, but didn’t notice he was gone from the city for 48 hours? No drive by his home? No knock-knock on his door for a sweet Andy Griffith style “hey, hope you’re doing OK” checkup? No judicial order not to leave the city limits?

Since that little trip to nowhere, “His minivan has since been returned to him by police and he has not been named a suspect in his wife Susan’s disappearance.”

I still smell catfish.

It would be nice if when someone is named as a “person of interest” in any criminal proceeding, there’s an automatic judicial order for them not to leave the city limits for 72 hours without notifying the detective and/or police department doing the investigating. How hard would this be to make into a law on a state by state basis?

And hopefully the police are checking wireless phone records, ATM receipts, and gas stations along the freeways. But that’s a very tiny needle in a very big haystack at this point.

Here’s the link to the Fox News article on Susan Powell’s disappearance (iPhone format)