Author: Dave Cawley

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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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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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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

Susan Cox Powell was a wife, a mother, a working professional and a faithful Latter-day Saint.

She was also a victim. Of just what crime, no one can say with certainty.

Susan Cox Powell vanished on Dec. 7, 2009, on the same day her husband had their two young sons, ages 2 and 4, out for an impromptu camping trip — in a blizzard — in Utah’s West Desert.

Her body has never been located.

Police suspected Susan’s husband, Josh Powell, murdered Susan from the very first day of her disappearance. Yet they never arrested Josh. Prosecutors also never filed criminal charges against him.

Deputies, detectives and federal agents pursued Josh for more than two years, believing they had the benefit of time. Then, on Feb. 5, 2012, Josh killed himself and the boys, Charlie and Braden, by setting fire to a home he’d rented in Graham, Washington.

The deaths of the boys shocked Susan Powell’s family, friends and many other people who had followed the unfolding story in news reports.

Their deaths also triggered the public release of court documents, social worker reports and even a psychological evaluation of Josh from state agencies in Washington.

A little over a year later, in May of 2013, police in West Valley City, Utah declared the case cold.

They likewise released a redacted copy of their case file to the media. It included tens of thousands of pages of reports, interview transcripts, warrants, subpoenas, forensic evaluations, cell phone records, evidence, emails, photos and more.

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A New Investigation

The sheer volume of the case files posed a problem. People interested in the case had a hard time sifting through and digesting all of the new details.

Investigators presented many of the documents, from both Washington and Utah, without context. In the case of the police files, some referenced investigative leads that proved inconclusive or turned out to be dead-ends — but did not clearly indicate that.

In 2016, KSL launched a comprehensive review of the Susan Cox Powell case files in the hopes of providing that clarity and context.

The effort included fresh public records requests in both Utah and Washington.

KSL conducted new interviews with people associated with the case, including some who had never publicly shared their stories. It led to site visits in Utah, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada.

The results of the review are now coming to light in the form of a new, multi-part podcast series called Cold.

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The Themes of the Cold podcast

The Cold podcast revolves around three central themes.

First, Susan Cox Powell’s own writings showed she realized she was trapped in an abusive marriage. She reached out to family and friends, yet she could not escape. Understanding why might allow other women to navigate and avoid their own dangerous situations.

Second, the totality of the evidence, most all of it circumstantial, pointed to Josh Powell’s guilt. The police investigation was comprehensive, a fact backed up by police records. There were, however, missed opportunities that could have changed the outcome.

Third, the records revealed Josh’s father, Steven Powell, groomed him as a child and influenced him as an adult to act in a controlling, abusive manner to his spouse. Josh and his dad shared a complicated relationship, part of a multigenerational pattern of manipulation.

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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/prelude-full-transcript
KSL companion story: https://www.ksl.com/article/46426840/new-podcast-to-shed-light-on-susan-powell-cold-case