“He did not look like a monster.”

As everyone now knows, Josh Powell incinerated himself and his two sons in response to an impending Court-ordered pychosexual evaluation and polygraph examination.

Elizabeth Griffin-Hall, the social worker overseeing his supervised visits, brought Charlie (7) and Braden (5) to their father for a scheduled visit on Sunday. When the guileless children ran inside, Josh Powell slammed the door in Griffin-Hall’s face, and attacked his boys with a hatchet and lit the ten gallons of gasoline he had splashed around the rental home he had established for the purpose of presenting a satisfactory facade for the Court.

“How this happened is that Josh Powell was really, really evil. I couldn’t have stopped him,” Griffin-Hall said.

“I did everything I was supposed to do. I did everything right and the boys are still dead,” she said. “It took just a second. When I close my eyes I see him and he was so normal. He did not look like a monster.”

He did not look like a monster. We’ve heard that over and over again. Ted Bundy did not look like a monster. John Wayne Gacy did not look like a monster.

I disagree. This is exactly what a monster looks like, which is why it is so difficult to find them before they destroy innocent lives. They hide in plain sight.

Update 2/17/2012: Josh Powell had hundreds of images of disturbing cartoon sex and graphic depictions of incest on his home computer, something Utah authorities investigating his wife’s disappearance kept private for about two years.