Month: November 2018

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Josh Powell had gone for an unexpected winter camping trip.

West Valley City, Utah police detective Ellis Maxwell was getting tired of waiting.

When Josh Powell returned home with his two sons on the afternoon of Monday, Dec. 7, 2009, he found the detective waiting for him.

“He clearly can’t get into his driveway with all the cop cars and everything,” Ellis Maxwell said. “I approach the passenger side of the vehicle and he rolls down the window and I ask him, ‘where the hell have you been?’”

Josh told Ellis he’d gone out to Utah’s West Desert with the boys, ages 2 and 4, even as a significant snowstorm was sweeping across the region. Josh expressed surprise over hearing his wife, Susan was nowhere to be found.

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The Disappearance of Susan Cox Powell

Debbie Caldwell, the Powell family’s daycare provider, had sounded the alarm that morning when the boys, Charlie and Braden, failed to arrive at her home as scheduled.

Police learned neither Josh nor Susan Powell had showed up for their shifts at work. Calls to both of their cell phones had gone straight to voicemail.

Officers feared the whole family might have been overcome by carbon monoxide gas. They’d broken a window to gain access to their home.

The house, on a quiet cul-de-sac called Sarah Circle, had been empty.

Officers found no sign of a struggle. They noticed family’s minivan was missing from the garage. When Ellis walked through the house, he found Susan Cox Powell’s purse sitting on the bedroom dresser.

“Her wallet’s in there, her ID’s in there, her keys are in there,” Ellis said. “You could tell there’s no credit cards missing or anything like that. No cash is missing. She had jewelry in the bathroom and the bedroom. None of that appeared to be missing.”

In the living room, Ellis noticed two box fans blowing air at a damp spot on the couch. It appeared as though the couch had recently been cleaned.

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Josh Powell Camping Trip Alibi

Josh Powell’s return with the boys should have come as a relief. There was a problem though. Susan Powell was still missing. Josh said he had no idea where she was.

Detective Ellis Maxwell asked Josh to accompany him to the West Valley City police department’s west side substation for an interview that evening.

Ellis pressed Josh for details about the camping trip. Josh said he’d left his home between 1:30 and 2 a.m. that morning, driving his minivan down the Pony Express Trail.

“How far down the Pony Express did you go?” Ellis asked.

“Not very far. Maybe 20 miles. I don’t know,” Josh said.

Josh said he’d pulled off to the south side of the dirt road and made camp at about 4 a.m. He’d slept until about 7 a.m., then woke up and started a fire to make s’mores with Charlie and Braden.

That’s when he said he’d realized it was Monday, not Sunday, and that he’d missed work. Instead of rushing home to beg forgiveness, he’d wandered “all over the place” with the boys.

“We drove further out the Pony Express to that campground and we turned around. When it got old, we drove back,” Josh said.

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Recreating the Josh Powell Camping Trip

Josh Powell’s story seemed a poor alibi. After all, what father takes his 2 and 4-year-old children out of bed at 2 a.m., to go camping in subfreezing cold? Surely, Susan Powell would have protested.

In order to test the timeline provided by Josh, I attempted to recreate his trip in early December, 2017.

I departed from Sarah Circle at around 2 a.m., just as Josh said he’d done. I drove north on 5600 West until I reached I-80, then headed west on the freeway. At Lake Point, I exited the freeway and headed south through the Tooele and Rush Valleys.

A cold wind howled as I turned off Utah State Route 36 onto the dusty, washboarded Pony Express Road. I drove about 20 miles down the dark trail, with only the lights from the nearby Dugway Proving Ground, an Army base, on the horizon.

About a mile or so shy of Simpson Springs, I left the Pony Express Trail on a rocky two-track path and parked near a well-used campfire ring. The 85-mile trek took just shy of two hours.

Like Josh, I went to sleep in the back of my car at about 4 a.m. I awoke about three hours later, bleary-eyed.

The trip proved that Josh’s timeline did work.

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Josh Powell’s Carwash

Josh Powell told detective Ellis Maxwell that he’d stopped to wash his minivan at a carwash on the north side of Main Street in Lehi on the way home from the camping trip. Only one carwash matches his description. It sits at the corner of Main Street and 100 East.

Josh Powell stopping to clean his minivan in Lehi, 30 miles south of his home in West Valley City, didn’t make much sense at that time. Slush, salt and grime were still covering the roads thanks to that morning’s snowstorm. However, it would have been a wise move if he’d feared mud splattered on the wheel wells and body panels might give away exactly where he’d stopped in the West Desert.

At the conclusion of their interview, detective Ellis Maxwell asked Josh if he could search his minivan. Josh agreed.

The minivan was packed with supplies. Those included a shovel, rake, broom, electrical circular saw, folding hand saw, box cutter, gas-powered generator, plastic gas can, space heaters, humidifier, tarps, sled, fire extinguisher and more.

In particular, Ellis noticed a plastic tote containing camping supplies.

“Just ridiculous amounts of unopened camping equipment that you would find in Kmart or Walmart,” Ellis said. “This guy has all kinds of stuff back there.”

The most interesting discovery, though, came from the center console.

Ellis Maxwell’s partner found a pink Motorola cell phone buried deep in the storage area between the driver and front passenger seats.

“Then I say to him, I’m like, ‘Josh, why do you have Susan’s cell phone?’” Ellis asked. 

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Hear how Josh Powell responded in Episode 4 of Cold: Find Susan

Episode credits
Research, writing, hosting and production: Dave Cawley
Production assistance: Danielle Prager, Adam Mason
Additional voices: Kristen Sorensen (as Susan Powell), Eric Openshaw (as Josh Powell), Ken Fall (as Steve Powell)
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
Cold main score mixing: Dan Blanck
Supplemental music: Dave Cawley
KSL executive producers: Sheryl Worsley, Keira Farrimond
Episode transcript: https://thecoldpodcast.com/season-1-transcript/find-susan-cox-powell-full-transcript
KSL companion story: https://www.ksl.com/article/46440552/cold-lead-detective-on-susan-powell-investigation-speaks

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Susan Cox Powell loved to talk.

In her early 20s, Susan learned how to chat with strangers while studying and practicing cosmetology. As she grew older and experienced deepening dissatisfaction with her marriage, the topics of her conversations often became much more personal.

“She was very open, she was like an open book,” Susan Powell’s coworker Linda Bagley said. “It felt like she really liked me because she would tell me things that you would think that you would only tell someone that you’re close friends [with].”

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Seeds of Susan Powell’s Discontent

Susan and her husband, Josh Powell, were both active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they met in October of 2000. They’d married in one of the church’s temples the following April, making vows “for time and all eternity.”

Josh Powell didn’t stick with the religion for long. Within a few years of their marriage, he quit attending Sunday services and pressured Susan to do the same.

She remained committed, both to her faith and to her marriage vows. Susan believed Josh was her eternal companion.

Josh took advantage of his wife’s devotion by exerting tight-fisted control over the family’s finances. He became furious any time Susan spent more than he thought she should on necessities, including food for herself or their two young sons.

She dealt with it by growing a garden.

Josh would not even spend on gifts for Susan. He gave her a cheap whiteboard calendar for her birthday in October of 2008. When she unwrapped the gift, she noticed it was damaged.

“The lining was white discolored to yellow in parts, plastic. Which he immediately noticed and said he would fix,” Susan Powell wrote in an Oct. 18, 2008 Facebook message. “I’m wondering if I should do tit for tat and give him a white board ‘to do list’ or something lame like that for Christmas.”

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Susan Powell Domestic Abuse

Susan Powell saw a counselor and encouraged Josh Powell to join her, an offer he most often refused.

On one occasion, Susan’s father Chuck Cox attended a session. The counselor observed that Susan was being abused. Chuck told his daughter he agreed.

Susan’s parents bought her a cell phone, in case she ever needed to make a quick escape. They paid the monthly bill, to prevent Josh from seeing who she called or texted.

Susan Powell opened up to neighbors, relatives and even the occasional stranger about her troubles. She vented about her husband, how poorly he treated her and how much she yearned for him to act more like the man she’d married.

“She did want to make it work,” coworker Linda Bagley said. “Her first part of the married life she said was nice and good and they worked together and he was different. But he started changing and being more strict and just being harder to live with.”

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Susan Powell Last Will and Testament

On Friday, June 27, 2008, Susan Powell asked her close friend and neighbor, Kiirsi Hellewell, to come over to the Powell family’s home. Susan handed Kiirsi a stenographer’s notepad. Kiirsi knew how to write quickly using a form of shorthand.

Susan then began to recount the worst argument of her marriage to date. She and Josh Powell had just gone through a shouting match over faith and finances. 

“She was just pacing up and down, and really angry,” Hellewell said. “So angry she couldn’t sit still.” 

Susan said the argument rocked her so deeply, she felt she needed to document it as evidence. 

The next day, Susan drafted a handwritten will while at work. In it, she spelled out a fear for her life. 

“If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one,” she wrote. “Take care of my boys.”

Susan’s messages to her friends soon displayed hints of that same fear.

Josh had purchased a million-dollar term life insurance policy for her. Susan recognized the purchase made little sense, unless he expected something horrible to happen.

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Susan Powell Divorce Deadline

Susan Cox Powell resolved to make a change.

She began diverting part of her paycheck into a personal account. Against Josh’s wishes, she paid tithing to her church. She bought her own computer, because he wouldn’t let her use his. Susan insisted on spending time with her female friends. Many of those friends encouraged her to leave Josh.

To Susan, it seemed a risky move.

Coworker Amber Hardman offered to help her escape with the couple’s two boys, Charlie and Braden Powell.

“She was so worried he would track her down no matter what she did,” Hardman said. “It was like she had no way out and I was like ‘He doesn’t know where we live. What if you came to our house and we found somewhere for you to go in another state? He would not know.’ She was like ‘No, he will figure it out. He will find me.’”

Money is control and I’m his asset to be controlled and abused and I’m not allowing that any longer.

Susan Powell

Susan’s emerging independence set her on a collision course with Josh.

“I’m just letting him decide if he’s going to deal with me or not,” Susan wrote in a Sept. 20, 2008 Facebook message to a brother-in-law. “Money is control and I’m his asset to be controlled and abused and I’m not allowing that any longer.”

As 2009 drew to a close, Susan told friends she had set a date. If Josh refused to get back into church and into marriage counseling by the time of their wedding anniversary in April, 2010, she would move forward with divorce.

Then, Susan disappeared.

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Paper Trail

Police in West Valley City, Utah used a series of search warrants and subpoenas to obtain copies of Susan’s emails and Facebook messages in the weeks following her December 2009 disappearance. The correspondence provided investigators valuable insight into her state of mind.

Police included redacted versions of those messages when they publicly released their case file in 2013.

The thousands of pages of messages revealed just how isolated, frustrated and trapped Susan felt in the years leading up to her disappearance.

In the time since, many of Susan’s friends came to see lessons in the conversations they once shared with her.

“As much as we all tried to help her get out and talk to her, keep pushing. Keep doing more,” Hardman said. “If you know someone that’s in a bad situation, use Susan as an example. Bad things can happen. You don’t want this to happen to anybody.”

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Hear why Susan Powell decided against divorce in Episode 3 of Cold: Faith and Finances

Episode credits
Research, writing, hosting and production: Dave Cawley
Production assistance: Danielle Prager, Adam Mason
Additional voices: Kristen Sorensen (as Susan Powell), Eric Openshaw (as Josh Powell), Ken Fall (as Steve Powell)
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
Cold main score mixing: Dan Blanck
Supplemental music: Dave Cawley
KSL executive producers: Sheryl Worsley, Keira Farrimond
Episode transcript: https://thecoldpodcast.com/season-1-transcript/susan-powell-faith-and-finances-full-transcript/
KSL companion story: https://www.ksl.com/article/46436332/cold-susan-powells-secret-writings-reveal-fear-suspicion-months-before-her-disappearance

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Pressure was building. It was the summer of 2003 and Steve Powell felt a crushing need to make a love confession to his own daughter-in-law, Susan Cox Powell. Her response would alter the course of the rest of his life.

But to understand what brought Steve to that point, it’s helpful to know a little bit about Steve Powell’s proclivities. He lived much of his life with a camcorder in front of his face. He was prolific, filling boxes with VHS and Hi8 video cassettes. Many of the recordings were mundane, documenting birthday parties, family trips or conversations with relatives.

Others were outright disturbing. Steve’s lens often followed strangers in parking lots. He would record from the cover of his minivan with its tinted windows. His camera would zoom in on the bodies of women and girls, without their knowledge.

Susan Cox Powell, his daughter-in-law, was one of Steve’s favorite subjects to film. 

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Steve Powell’s Obsession

Steve Powell’s oldest son, Josh Powell, married Susan Cox in April of 2001. Steve attended wedding events in both Oregon and Washington, documenting the union with his camcorder. Much of the footage, obtained by the Cold podcast, focused entirely on Susan.

“When Josh first brought her home I didn’t think much of her,” Steve Powell later wrote in his journal. “I didn’t think she was that pretty or anything. Now I can’t take my eyes off her.”

In 2002, Josh and Susan Powell were kicked out of the apartment they’d rented in Tacoma. They moved into Steve Powell’s home in South Hill, Washington. The close proximity inflamed Steve’s infatuation with Susan, stoking the embers into outright obsession.

Steve began following Susan around the house, camera in hand.

When Josh Powell graduated from the University of Washington Tacoma business school that year, Steve filmed the entire convocation. Once again, his focused seemed to dwell most often on his young daughter-in-law, Susan Powell.

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Steve Powell journals

Steve Powell’s journals revealed even more troubling behaviors. He stole Susan Cox Powell’s soiled underwear from her laundry basket, replacing the pilfered pieces with duplicates.

“Evidently she took note and began noting the arrangement in her laundry hamper and found that it had been gone through. I learned that she was noting these things from Josh,” Steve wrote in a Jan. 11, 2003 journal entry. “He called and said it appeared that someone was going through her laundry and ‘she didn’t like that.’ So she wanted me to keep her hamper out of sight of the other boys. The fox is in the henhouse, as they say.”

Steve even used a small mirror to spy on Susan when she used the bathroom.

Steve collected Susan’s soiled hygiene products from the trash, placing them in plastic baggies that he marked with the date. His journals revealed he recognized this behavior as aberrant.

“What I’ve written about Susan represents the first time I’ve mentioned fetishes and what might be considered sociopathic. I mean, who looks under the bathroom door with a mirror? I tend to think a lot of guys do,” Steve wrote on Jan. 11, 2003.

The conduct continued even after Josh and Susan Powell moved out again into their own apartment. During visits, Steve swiped Susan’s childhood journals and took them home to create digital copies.

He dared to read her adult journal on a number of occasions, but was discouraged to learn Susan did not write about him.

“I am almost a footnote,” Steve Powell wrote in one journal entry. “And with all the other negative comments about me she doesn’t mention a word about my sexual proclivities, which include taking video clips of her from head to foot.”

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Steve Powell’s Filthy Fantasies

In his journals, Steve Powell expressed a desire to have Susan Cox Powell for himself. He recounted explicit daydreams focused on his son’s wife.

I am so madly in love with Susan that I would do something desperate to have her.

Steve Powell

Steve frequently wrote about the contentious nature of Josh and Susan Powell’s marriage. He yearned for them to divorce.

“It’s very problematic to be madly in love with your son’s wife,” Steve wrote on Feb. 24, 2003. “I am so madly in love with Susan that I would do something desperate to have her.”

Steve offered to give Susan a massage during a visit to Josh and Susan’s apartment in Yakima that same month. He rubbed her legs, arms and shoulders. Later that night, he placed his camcorder on a tripod in his hotel room and recounted the experience as he undressed.

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Steve Powell Love Confession

Steve Powell learned in July of 2003 that Josh and Susan Powell were considering taking a new job in Greeley, Colorado. Steve’s journal entries showed the news imparted him with a sense of desperation.

He wanted to confess his feelings.

“I was (and had been all day) going over what to say to Susan. ‘If things don’t work out with Josh would you consider marrying me?,’” Steve wrote on July 8, 2003. “When the possibility of a ‘no’ comes to mind my subconscious mind put a gun in my hand and I shot myself.”

About a week later, on July 13, 2003, Josh and Susan traveled to a trucking firm in Kent, Washington. Josh, interested in obtaining a commercial driver’s license, was receiving instruction from the company.

Steve drove to the trucking company as well, bringing his camcorder.

At one point, as Josh practiced driving a semi, Steve offered to give Susan a ride to her parents’ house in South Hill. She agreed and sat down in the passenger seat of his minivan.

I don’t know where you’re going with this.

Susan Powell

Steve placed his camcorder in a bag but failed to stop the recording. He drove south on Washington State Route 167. The picture on the tape was black, but the microphone captured the conversation.

Susan talked about the motivations for the possible move out of Washington.

Steve couldn’t take it. He fumbled to express his feelings.

“Just having you go away is really, really hard for me because it just seems like, anyway, I’m probably wrong but I’ve really fallen in love with you,” Steve said.

Silence hung, thick in the air. Susan, who was 21-years-old to Steve’s 53, was trapped in the minivan. She tried to change the topic. Steve wouldn’t allow it.

“Maybe I’ve got the wrong impression from you because, well I guess what I was wanting to really know, because I am going crazy and you’re leaving just, I can’t think of anything else other than you,” Steve said.

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Susan said.

Steve Powell was about to make his unwelcome intentions perfectly clear, placing Susan in a dangerous situation.

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Listen to the rest of the Steve Powell love confession in Episode 2 of Cold: Wake Up Little Susie

Episode credits
Research, writing, hosting and production: Dave Cawley
Production assistance: Danielle Prager, Adam Mason
Additional voices: Kristen Sorensen (as Susan Powell), Eric Openshaw (as Josh Powell), Ken Fall (as Steve Powell)
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
Cold main score mixing: Dan Blanck
Supplemental music: Dave Cawley
KSL executive producers: Sheryl Worsley, Keira Farrimond
Episode transcript: https://thecoldpodcast.com/season-1-transcript/wake-up-little-susie-susan-cox-powell-full-transcript
KSL companion story: https://www.ksl.com/article/46431783/cold-secret-audio-video-recordings-of-josh-and-steven-powell-revealed

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The Josh Powell audio journals reveal he struggled to connect with girls.

Josh chased a lot of romantic interests as a young man. He daydreamed of relationships but met with repeated rejection, in part because he had a habit of unnerving the women he pursued.

In fact, Josh had only two serious relationships in his adult life: his marriage to Susan Cox in 2001 and his relationship with a young woman named Catherine Terry in 1998.

Josh Powell would become famous in 2009 when his wife Susan Cox Powell disappeared. Yet little has been known about Catherine’s story before now. The Cold podcast has obtained exclusive details from Josh Powell’s own journals.

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Josh Powell’s Pattern of Behavior

Those two relationships, to Catherine Terry and Susan Cox, bore some striking similarities. Catherine and Susan were each 19 when they started dating Josh Powell. Both were active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and met Josh at church-related events.

Both soon found themselves trapped by a partner who controlled their personal lives, drained their bank accounts and seemed repulsed by physical affection.

Catherine Terry’s relationship with Josh Powell differed from Susan Cox’s in one critical way: she escaped.

Imagine Catherine’s surprise, then, when she saw her ex-boyfriend’s face on the TV news 10 years later, in December of 2009, after Susan Powell vanished.

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Josh Powell’s Forgotten Ex

I first became aware of Catherine while reading a report prepared by Dr. James Manley, a forensic psychiatrist from Tacoma, Wash. He interviewed Josh Powell in late 2011, as part of an evaluation of Josh’s parenting capacity.

At the time, Josh was the sole suspect in the presumed murder of his wife, Susan Cox Powell.

He’d lost custody of their sons after police served a search warrant at the home he shared with his father, Steve Powell, in South Hill, Washington. The investigators had located a large cache of voyeur videos created by Steve. As a result, Washington’s child protective services agency had seized Susan Powell’s children, Charlie and Braden.

During the psychological evaluation of Josh Powell, Dr. Manley about Josh’s past relationships. Josh said he’d had only one serious girlfriend before getting married. He’d met “Catherine” at a church function in 1998. They were together for about 16 months.

Washington State released Manley’s report after Josh Powell killed himself and the two boys during a court-authorized supervised visit on Feb. 5, 2012. But Manley’s report did not include Catherine’s last name or any other identifying details.

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Josh Powell Audio Journals

The key to uncovering Catherine’s identity was hidden in Josh Powell’s journals.

Police in West Valley City, Utah had seized a large number of computers and hard drives during their investigation into Susan Cox Powell’s disappearance. Detectives and FBI agents had sifted through terabytes of information, flagging files of interest.

Those files included Josh’s journals.

In 2017, I requested copies of those journals under Utah’s public records law, the Government Records Access and Management Act. In response, West Valley City provided a DVD containing more than 3,500 files.

I reviewed each and every one.

The “journals” were not well organized. They were not in bound books. Instead, Josh appeared to have documented his days on individual scraps of paper. He’d later created digital copies of those notes using a flatbed scanner.

Other times, he’d spoken his journal entries into a handheld audio recorder, then used a computer program to covert those recordings to text.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t reach any girls anywhere, that for some reason or another they won’t give me even a chance to go out with them.

Josh Powell audio journal, Dec. 13, 2000

There were unexplained gaps in some of the written journals. Entries from 1998 and 1999 included blank lines where Josh had used correction fluid to white-out references to a specific person.

Based on the time and context, I suspected this was Catherine.

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Breadcrumbs to Catherine Terry

A couple of weeks later, Josh again mentioned bringing Catherine to the wedding in an email.

“I have been planning to come on a Greyhound,” Josh wrote. “I have been spending a lot of unbudgeted money lately on Catherine.”

The clincher though came in a brief, handwritten journal entry from the weekend before Thanksgiving, 1999.

The next day, Josh added a bit more.

Catherine Terry now had a last name.

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The Social Network

I typed “Catherine Terry” into Google. The results included references to a woman named Catherine Everett.

Turning to Facebook, I pulled up the group “Friends and Family of Susan Powell.”

Susan Cox Powell’s friend and neighbor Kiirsi Hellewell created that group in the days immediately following Susan’s disappearance in December of 2009. It quickly grew to include tens of thousands of members.

I ran a search in the group for the name Catherine Everett. The results included two posts from a woman named Catherine Terry Everett.

Switching over to Facebook Messenger, I typed out a brief message.

“I’m a reporter with KSL. For the last couple of years, I’ve been researching and writing an investigative podcast about Josh and Susan Powell. As part of that, I’ve obtained files from Josh’s computers dating back to the mid 1990s. I know you had a relationship with Josh back then. You are mentioned in some of these files,” I wrote. “Can we speak? I’m hoping you can help me understand a few things about who Josh was before he met Susan.”

About 30 minutes later, my phone rang.

It was Catherine Terry Everett, and she had quite the story to tell about Josh Powell.

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Listen to Catherine’s story in Episode 1 of Cold: To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before

Episode credits
Research, writing, hosting and production: Dave Cawley
Production assistance: Danielle Prager, Adam Mason
Additional voices: Kristen Sorensen (as Susan Powell), Eric Openshaw (as Josh Powell), Ken Fall (as Steve Powell)
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
Cold main score mixing: Dan Blanck
Supplemental music: Dave Cawley
KSL executive producers: Sheryl Worsley, Keira Farrimond
Episode transcript: https://thecoldpodcast.com/season-1-transcript/to-all-the-girls-josh-powell-full-transcript/
KSL companion story: https://www.ksl.com/article/46427056/cold-woman-who-dated-killer-josh-powell-breaks-silence-in-new-podcast