Dave Cawley: Fifteen years have passed since the last time anyone saw Susan Cox Powell. The Facebook groups that once buzzed with tens of thousands of members, all clamoring for answers, are pretty quiet these days. Every once in awhile, someone new to Susan’s story will join and post a question, asking if this-or-that place has ever been searched. The comments will inevitably turn into a discussion of abandoned mines, caves, or “crystals.”
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): There was flowers and crystals that was colorful.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): That was what?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): That was colorful.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Colorful?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah?
Dave Cawley: I understand why many people think crystals are the clue that will lead us to the discovery of Susan’s remains. It goes back to what Susan’s son Charlie said during this police interview, the day after Susan came up missing.
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): My mom stayed where a crystals are.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Where what are?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Where a crystals are.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): The crissals, crystals?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah, yeah.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Is that what you’re saying, crystals?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah.
Dave Cawley: I’ve seen people take this way too literally, assuming Charlie at four years old, had encyclopedic knowledge of places with crystal in their name, or picturing underground caverns with walls sparkling with gemstones. I think the truth of what Charlie was trying to say is much more simple.
Maybe it’s been awhile since you listened to Susan’s story. Let me refresh your memory about the basics. Susan’s husband, Josh Powell, took the couple’s two sons, Charlie and Braden, “camping” in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, in the middle of a snowstorm, on the night Susan was last seen.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): And we did a little campfire.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): So you have the campfire. What do you do with the campfire?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Just hung out for a few minutes, have a marshmallow or two and that’s about it.
Dave Cawley: Josh said he’d mixed the days up in his head, thinking it was a Saturday night into Sunday, instead of a Sunday night into Monday. When the boys didn’t show up for daycare on Monday morning, the daycare provider sounded the alarm. At the same time Josh was telling this story to police in West Valley City, Utah, Charlie was corroborating it.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Well, what did you do last night?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Go camping.
Dave Cawley: Charlie said camping is where you make s’mores.
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): You hold a marshmallows over a fire with a stick.
Dave Cawley: The detective wanted to know if Charlie’s mom, Susan, was there when they roasted these marshmallows.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Who were you camping with?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): My dad and my mom and my, my little brother.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Dad, your mom and your brother?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah.
Dave Cawley: She asked who came home, and that’s when Charlie said Susan stayed behind, with the crystals.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Your mom stayed where the crystals are?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Is that what you said?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah.
Dave Cawley: Josh didn’t know Charlie was being interviewed, not until the lead detective on the case, Ellis Maxwell, confronted Josh with what Charlie’d said.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): One of our detectives just interviewed your children. And your children are telling our detectives that mom went with you guys last night. And that she didn’t come back.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): She did not go with us.
Dave Cawley: Two conflicting stories. Someone wasn’t telling the truth. It’s easy to assume Charlie’s story is the accurate one, because why would he lie? But the problem with cherry-picking pieces out of Charlie’s interview is it ignores the other things he said that didn’t make any sense. Like when he said he’d gone on an airplane to go camping, or to the beach on the way home.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): You went to an airplane yesterday?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah. And our airplane bring us to Dinosaur National Park.
Dave Cawley: Josh did not take his sons on an airplane the night he likely murdered Susan. And the family lived in landlocked Utah, hundreds of miles from the ocean. So what “beach” could Charlie’ve been thinking of? I’ve uncovered clues deep within a trove of Powell family photos and home videos that could help solve that riddle.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Charlie, where’s mommy?
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Mommy’s gone.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): She went over there, huh. Say, “Bye bye mommy.”
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Bye bye mommy.
Dave Cawley: This is a special bonus episode of Cold season 1: Beaches and Airplanes. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.
Getting reliable information out of preschool-age kids is tricky, especially when they’ve experienced abuse or witnessed traumatic events.
Brianna Martinez: It’s a scary situation for kids. Maybe they have only talked to one other person about this or they’re not ready to talk about it and someone just found out. And now they’re being brought here to talk to a stranger about everything that’s happened, right?
Dave Cawley: That’s Brianna Martinez. She’s a forensic interviewer with the Weber-Morgan Children’s Justice Center in northern Utah. Children’s Justice Centers, or CJCs for short, are kid-friendly spaces where specially trained interviewers, like Brianna, can assist with investigations into crimes like child abuse or domestic violence. They’re also called Children’s Advocacy Centers in other parts of the country.
Brianna Martinez: It’s just a safe place for kids to come to kind of talk about what has happened to them. It’s not a police department or child protective services building. Just a safe place for them to talk.
Dave Cawley: Brianna was not personally involved with the interview of Charlie Powell 15 years ago, but I wanted to get her perspective to help us understand what goes on behind the scenes with that kind of investigation. Here’s my interview with Brianna.
Dave Cawley (from interview recording): So why not bring a kid who has been through, let’s say abuse, to a police station? I think most people would imagine you, as an investigator, say a detective, you bring the person in, you sit them down in the cold, sterile interview room. Ask them questions. Why does that not work so well with kids?
Brianna Martinez: It’s intimidating, first off. And a lot of kids have trauma, they’ve been through a lot of things. Some kids may have had trauma with police officers in the past or child protective services in the past and that can bring up some previous trauma for them that could be scary. I mean, some kids even think they might be going to jail because they’re going to the police station. So this is just like a neutral place for them to come, where they know that they’re not in any trouble and they’re just able to kind of talk about what’s happened to them.
Dave Cawley: Building rapport. You sit down with a kid, I imagine you’re meeting them for the first time, pretty much every time—
Brianna Martinez: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: —and you need to establish that they’re safe, that anything that they tell you is not going to come back to harm them. How do you go about building that rapport with somebody you’re interviewing?
Brianna Martinez: So, when they get here I’ll go out to the waiting room and I’ll introduce them. I’ll let them know that my job is to talk to kids. Then we go in the room and we’ll go over some of the rules for the interview. We’ll tell them, ‘If I ask you a question and you know the answer, then tell me. If you don’t know the answer, don’t guess or make things up. If there’s something that you don’t want to talk about, tell me that you don’t want to talk about it.’ Then we’ll ask them to promise to tell the truth. And then we move on to our rapport-building section, where we just spend some time getting to know the kid. Talk to them about things that they like to do, things that make them happy, something that’s made them sad. And let them know, ‘You can talk about good things and bad things that have happened to you.’ And in that portion of the interview, you’re kind of gauging where this kid is at in terms of talking to you, right? You can kind of see, like, ‘This kid’s pretty standoffish, they seem pretty reluctant. So I’m going to spend more time talking about the things that they like to do. Make ‘em more comfortable.’ After that portion, we’ll go through an episodic memory practice. They kind of refer to that as like the dress rehearsal of an interview, where we’ll talk to them about a really good day that they’ve had recently. For example, Christmas. ‘Tell me everything that happened on Christmas.’ And you’ll kind of work through that event. Like, ‘Ok, so you opened presents. Tell me everything about opening presents.’ And then you’ll move on throughout the day. And then that’s when we’ll transition over to the disclosure portion of the interview.
Dave Cawley: When you say “episodic memory,” I think I can understand what you mean by that but you’re basically asking about one specific episode. Something that’s happened, right?
Brianna Martinez: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: And I imagine older kids, teenagers, preteens, they’re probably pretty good at that. Younger kids, do you find that they struggle with times, places, stuff like that when you ask about episodic things?
Brianna Martinez: Specifics, yeah. They’ll struggle with a time something happened, or a specific date. But the details of the episode, they can give you. So they can tell you where it happened, what happened, who was there. And they can walk you through that whole episode but if I say, “What day did that happen on?,” it’s, “Mmm, Tuesday, Thursday, last week, yesterday.” So they struggle with time like that. But they’re able to tell you about the episode of Christmas, although they may not know what day of the month Christmas is on.
Dave Cawley: Understood. Part of the reason I ask that is I’m thinking about, y’know, an investigator, you’re probably very focused on some of those kinds of details and the way a child’s mind works, that just may not be there, right?
Brianna Martinez: Mmhmm.
Dave Cawley: So you really have to kind of think about how you approach those conversation and I think what you’re describing with episodic memory makes sense. You’re asking the child to describe it in their language, in the way that they understand it.
Brianna Martinez: Yeah. Yeah, and there are other ways to get that day and time specifically. And sometimes kids will say it, they just say it in their own way. For example, they’ll say, “Well it happened, we had just gotten the brand new blue couch.” So, that’s not a day or a time, but you can go and talk to other people and say, “What day did you get that blue couch?” Right? So you’re able to find out the day in another way. The kid is just not able to tell you that specific day that it happened.
Dave Cawley: Hmm. What are some of the considerations, concerns specific to kids versus any other kind of interview?
Brianna Martinez: So, when talking to kids just in a general day-to-day conversation, it’s a lot different than the way that you talk to kids in a forensic interview. For example, when you’re talking to a kid just about their day, you say, “How was school? Did you go to school? Did you do math?” Those are not the types of questions that we always ask in forensic interviews. So you’re focusing more on those open-ended questions. “Tell me everything that happened. Oh, you said you went to math. Tell me everything that happened in math.” And talking to kids obviously is a little bit different than talking to adults because they’re not on the development area that we’re at as adults, right? They haven’t gotten there yet. And so you kind of have to talk the way that they talk. Y’know, you have to use the words that they use. And you just have to kind of match their level when you’re talking to them.
Dave Cawley: You mentioned open-ended questions. I want to get a little more into that. So if I sat down with a kid and I wanted to know specifically about an event and I need a very—say I’m a detective and I have a very specific question about evidence I want to ask them and I drill on that, and the kid goes [I don’t know]—versus, like you’re saying, you kind of invite them to tell a story, it sounds like. From your experience, how are the differences in responses from kids based on those two different approaches?
Brianna Martinez: Well, the research shows that you get three to five times more accurate information from a child when you’re asking those open-ended questions than when you’re not. And with a kid saying, “I don’t know,” that’s their answer and that’s kind of what you have to take when you’re in a forensic interview with a kid. So what you want to do is ask those open-ended questions or just like, “Tell me everything that happened. Ok, you said this, then what happened? What’s the very next thing that happened, the very next thing?” And when you walk them through that episode of the event that they’re talking about, most of the time they’re able to give you the information that you’re looking for as a detective, right? When you go in and you say, “Did this happen, did this happen, did this happen,” you’re not getting that full story, as you say. You’re getting those bits and pieces of information that the child is giving you because of the way that you’re asking those questions. Whereas, when you say, “Tell me everything that happened from this point to this point,” they’re going to go through and narrate that whole entire event for you.
Dave Cawley: Is there a risk if you ask those really direct questions of, especially I’m thinking like a younger child, that they tell you what they think you want to hear?
Brianna Martinez: Yeah so, I mean there’s a difference between direct questions and leading questions. So for example, a direct question is, “What shoes are you wearing? What color is the car?” A leading question is, “You’re wearing a brown shirt, right?” So when you ask those leading questions, kids are going to be like, “Is that what you want me to say? Yes or no?” Like, “Oh yeah, I’m wearing a brown shirt.” Whereas, you say, “Tell me everything about the clothes that you’re wearing.” “Well, I have a brown shirt on. I have brown shoes on.” Things like that. When you ask those leading questions, it’s hard later on because it’s like, “Is that kid saying that because that’s actually what happened or are they saying that because I said that and I implied that that was something that was happening?” So you want to avoid those leading questions and instead open it up and say, “Tell me everything about your clothes.”
Dave Cawley: You have to be really careful doing what you do.
Brianna Martinez: Yeah, you have to be really careful.
Dave Cawley: Do you ever find that, and especially with the younger kids, I’m thinking about the way even with my own relatives—nieces, nephews—you talk to them and it’s like, “What are they talking about?” They’re using, whatever they’re picturing in their mind and they’re telling you, you’re thinking, “That doesn’t make any sense.” Like, does that happen a lot in these kinds of interviews where they’re describing something that on the surface you don’t follow?
Brianna Martinez: Yeah, there are times where they’ll say things that you’re like, “I’m not understanding.” And so that’s why you ask those follow-up questions and try to get more information from them. But, you do the best that you can and the child is doing the best that they can so you really just have to accept where they’re at developmentally. And they just may not be able to put it into words. And so you try to do those follow-up questions and you try to get more information from them but at the end of the day, whatever they can tell you is whatever they can tell you. And as a forensic interviewer sometimes you have to just accept what they tell you.
Dave Cawley: That’s what it is.
Brianna Martinez: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: In the case of Charlie Powell’s interview, he’d told the story to the best of his ability. It wasn’t his fault that that didn’t lead police to Susan. But what Charlie said the next time he met police definitely raised suspicion Josh Powell had something to hide.
[Ad break]
Dave Cawley: Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I believe Josh Powell was being honest when he said Susan didn’t go with him on the camping trip the night of her disappearance.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): She was not with us. And if my kids said that—
Tony Martell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): So your kids lie, then? Do your kids lie?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Sometimes they do.
Dave Cawley: It’s likely whatever happened to Susan occurred before Josh took Charlie and Braden out to the desert.
Police weren’t able to arrest Josh in December of 2009 because they didn’t have hard evidence to prove Susan was dead. You might recall Josh packed his boys into his minivan a little over a week later and moved to Washington state.
West Valley police wanted another crack at interviewing Charlie though, so they worked with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office in Washington to get a warrant. It authorized deputies to seize Charlie and Braden away from Josh, so they could be interviewed at a Children’s Advocacy Center in Tacoma. The same detective who’d first interviewed Charlie in Utah also conducted the second interview three months later, in March of 2010. But the result was less than ideal.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Charlie, has anybody talked to you about your mom?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Mmnm.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): No?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): I not know where she is. She got lost in somewhere.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): She got lost somewhere? Tell me about your mom getting lost.
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): I not know where she got lost. I didn’t saw where she got lost.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): You didn’t see where she got lost?
Dave Cawley: Charlie squirms in a video recording. He tries to change the subject. The detective keeps turning back to the topic of camping and Susan’s disappearance. Charlie becomes agitated.
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): We, we can’t talk about Susan or camping. I, I, I always keep these as secrets.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Did somebody tell you to keep a secret?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): No, only my brain did.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Your brain did? What else did your brain tell you about the secret?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): My, my brain, my brain won’t tell me to say that.
Dave Cawley: It seemed likely Josh’d coached Charlie during those three months, to keep him from saying anything incriminating. Let’s go back to my conversation with Brianna.
Dave Cawley (from interview recording): What about when somebody you’re interviewing maybe seems evasive? Like either they don’t want to talk or they don’t want to talk about the thing that you’re there to talk to them about. How do you handle that?
Brianna Martinez: In my experience I’ve dealt with reluctance a lot. But we just remind them, my job is to talk to kids about things that have happened to them. I talk to lots of kids about things that have happened to them. And we kind of dive into that reluctance a little bit more when I can sense that it’s happening, or when they straight-up tell me, “I’m not comfortable talking about this.” Y’know, “Tell me more about not feeling comfortable. Tell me what you think will happen if you talk about what’s happened. Is there anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable?” And there have been time where kids are like, “Nope. Not ready. Nope, don’t want to talk about it.” And you go through that reluctance with them and sometimes they’re just not ready. And when that’s happened in my experience and kids are just not ready, I let them know, “If there’s a time that you do feel comfortable and you do want to talk to me again, tell someone you trust and we can talk again.” So I leave that door open for them. And I have had kids come back that said, “I’m ready to talk about what’s happened.” So.
Dave Cawley: I’ve read though that second interviews are generally not the recommended approach. Is that right?
Brianna Martinez: Yeah, it depends. In situations like that where we haven’t gotten a disclosure from the child and they’re telling me straight up, “I’m not ready to talk about this right now,” we haven’t talked about anything. And so it doesn’t matter if they come back again because there’s nothing that’s happened. It’s like we’re starting fresh again. But yeah, there are instances where we will get a disclosure from a child and the detective or CPS will want more information and so we really have to think about it and work through it and see like, “What information is it that you’re looking [for] from this child and can we get it somewhere else?” Because they’ve come in and they’ve told me everything that they can think of. Is it really worth going through a whole ‘nother interview just to get that one little piece of information. Another example though is kids will come in, make a disclosure, tell me that they’ve told everything, go home, live their life and then they’re like, “Oh wait.” Like, “I forgot to tell this lady something. I want to go back and talk to her.” So if that’s the case, and that does happen and we’ve talked about it and we decide that a second interview will be beneficial for the child, I’ll bring them in, I’ll talk to them about the information they want to give me, and then I’ll ask them about it. “What made you want to tell me about this now? What kept you from telling me about it last time we talked?” And we’ll just work through those things.
Dave Cawley: One of the things I read was, in a second interview it’s preferred to have the same person do the second interview. Is that right?
Brianna Martinez: Yeah, yep.
Dave Cawley: What’s the reasoning behind that?
Brianna Martinez: The reason is, is I’ve already built rapport with the kid. I’ve already talked to them. And a lot of times when second interview happen, they happen relatively close to the first interview. Not always, obviously. But most of the time they happen relatively close. So when it happens close like that, kids usually remember you. You’ve already talked to them, you’ve already built rapport with them, they remember your face, they kind of know what’s going to be happening already. So.
Dave Cawley: In a situation like that, I’m imagining in a short timeframe, let’s say it’s even in the same investigation, what about the risk of having coaching? If they go back into, let’s say a home environment where a parent or caregiver or whatever says, “What did you tell that person?” And, “Don’t say this, don’t say that.” Can you tell when they maybe come back for a second interview that, hey, something’s gone on?
Brianna Martinez: You can tell that something has, especially if their disclosure from their first interview to the second interview is completely different. Sometimes kids will say, “This and this and this happened.” And then the next time they’ll come in and it’s like talking to a brand new kid. So when that happens, you really have to dive into it and ask those follow-up questions, y’know? If this is their disclosure now, you need to go in and ask, “Tell me more about that.” Get those details and then say, “So, I’m a little bit confused. Last time we talked, you told me about this. Tell me about that.” And see their explanation of why it changed from this day to this day, right? And then talk to the law enforcement and CPS and say, “Compare those two interviews because they are different.” And then they have to continue their investigation.
Dave Cawley: It’s their job to figure out what happened.
Brianna Martinez: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: Wow, that’s tricky. The interview that I’m focused on happened in 2009—2024, 15 years. This field has changed a lot in that time. Is that fair to say?
Brianna Martinez: Yeah, yeah. It has changed a lot.
Dave Cawley: A lot of focus on learning, a scientific approach to this. And I imagine that’s still going on.
Brianna Martinez: Yeah, there’s research going on all the time. I’m constantly learning new things. But yeah, things have changed a lot. I haven’t been around that long. I don’t know what it was like back then. I have heard stories, I have listened to interviews and they are different. There was a lot more of those direct questions or leading questions back then, because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. And now we know that those open-ended questions are going to get you more accurate information from the child and so we really depend on those open-ended questions for those kids.
At the start of this episode, you heard a clip of Josh asking Charlie, “Where’s mommy?” And Charlie responding, “Mommy’s gone.” That video was recorded in April of 2008, about a year-and-a-half before Susan disappeared. Josh’d taken Charlie and Braden to visit Susan at her work on that day.
Susan Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Show me, where are the ducks? Where do we need to go? Over that way? Oh, you want us to go this way?
Dave Cawley: Susan skipped her lunch so she could spend time with her boys. They went to a large pond right outside the Wells Fargo call center where she worked. That pond is always crowded with seagulls, geese and ducks.
Susan Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Say c’mere ducks.
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): C’mere ducks.
Susan Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Is anyone brave enough to get this big piece? (Laughs)
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Good job, Charlie. You’ve attracted them.
Susan Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Stay right here with mommy.
Dave Cawley: Josh’s eyes are glued to the video camera. He shoots clips of the boys from several angles, while also criticizing Susan’s duck feeding technique.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Don’t crumble it, Susan.
Dave Cawley: There are a lot of little moments like this in Josh and Susan’s home videos, where Josh talks down to her. But it can be subtle, like in this next clip. Josh turns the camera over to Susan, so she can get a shot of Josh walking hand-in-hand with the boys over a small wooden bridge.
Susan Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Walk with daddy.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): C’mere Charlie, hold my hand and then we’ll see if we can go find a fish. C’mere.
Dave Cawley: The boys don’t cooperate. They’re tired, and not all that interested in being movie props. Susan points the camera at Braden, as he fidgets with the plastic bread bag.
Susan Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): He gives up. (Laughs) Alright—
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Get down on his level, y’know.
Susan Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): —I’ve got to go.
Dave Cawley: From the outside, you probably wouldn’t pick up on Josh’s constant, low-level nagging of Susan as anything serious. But I think it reveals a lack of respect and affection. And that’s when he knows he’s being recorded.
Susan’s lunch break is over. She heads back into the office, as Josh loads the kids into their carseats. He starts the engine, then points the camera at Charlie.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Charlie, where’s mommy?
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Mommy’s gone.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): She went over there, huh. Say, “Bye bye mommy.”
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Bye bye mommy.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Where’s she going?
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): She’s going to that.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): To that building?
Dave Cawley: Josh starts driving away from Susan’s office.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Is it work?
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Mmhmm.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Does mommy work in that building? What does mommy do for work?
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): She’s going up.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Upstairs?
Dave Cawley: Susan’s work sat in an office park right next to Salt Lake City International Airport. Sometimes after visiting Susan, Josh would drive over to a spot at the south end of the airport, right off the end of one of the runways.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Alright, we’re going to go see if we can look at the airplanes for a minute and then you get to go home to take a nap. Ok Charlie?
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): I don’t want to nap.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): You don’t?
(Sound of a jet airplane passing overhead)
Dave Cawley: When they reach the airport in this video clip, Josh leaves Braden unaccompanied in the minivan, so he and Charlie can go watch the airplanes.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Tell me what you think of that airplane. C’mere, look at me and tell me what you think of it. C’mon.
Charlie Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Airplane go vroom.
Josh Powell (from May 28, 2008 home video recording): Do you like this place? Are you glad that you get to come to the airport?
Dave Cawley: I presented a theory in the finale episode of Cold season 1. I suggested Josh might’ve left Susan’s body near her work on that Sunday night in 2009, before heading out on the camping trip with Charlie and Braden. This home video, and others like it, reinforce my belief Charlie associated his mom’s workplace with airplanes. During that first interview with the detective, Charlie said he’d flown on a plane both on his way to go camping, and on the return.
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): We went home in the airplane.
Kim Waelty (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Oh. What about when you went last night camping? When you were all done, what did you do?
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Umm, we went to a beach when we was all done.
Dave Cawley: To my knowledge, the only real beach Charlie’d visited before Susan disappeared was along the Puget Sound in Tacoma. And that’s obviously not where he was the night his mom vanished. Instead, I believe Charlie’s “beach” was probably the pond outside Susan’s work. And that lines up with what Josh said he did on his way home from the camping trip.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): I thought—
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Mmhmm.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): —I thought she was at work.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Mmhmm. … You went to her work, right?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Yeah.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): To pick her up. What time did you get there?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Probably 5:35.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): 5:35?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Something like that.
Dave Cawley: But there’s a two-hour gap in Josh’s timetable that afternoon, from when left this first voicemail for Susan around 3:30…
Josh Powell (from Dec. 7, 2009 voicemail recording): Anyway, hopefully you got to work ok. And, of course give me a call. We’re, I guess, planning on picking you up.
Dave Cawley: …to when he left her a second message, claiming to be in the parking lot outside her office.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 7, 2009 voicemail recording): Hello, I’m out here. So I’m—
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 7, 2009 voicemail recording): Right now.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 7, 2009 voicemail recording): —just waiting for you. So anyway I’m in front. Ok, talk to you soon. Bye.
Dave Cawley: Josh wanted to convince police he thought Susan was at work. We can safely assume that was a ruse and he knew she was dead. It was after dark by the time of that second voicemail, so I doubt Charlie would’ve been able to tell where he was from the back seat of the minivan. But maybe he saw the pond, his “beach,” earlier than Josh would like us to believe. What if Josh was there during the daylight, during those two hours between 3:30 and 5:30?
Maybe Josh went to see if anyone had yet found Susan’s body, at whatever place he’d left her the night before. Upon seeing she was undisturbed, concealed under a blanket of fresh snow, Josh decided he could still pull off his plot. But he didn’t consider Charlie, who tried to tell us the following day where his mom was.
Charlie Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): And at night my mom stayed, sleep where a flowers and a crystals grow.
Dave Cawley: Whatever Charlie might’ve known about Susan’s death, he never developed the ability or opportunity to share it better than this. As we know, Josh killed his sons, and himself, on February 5th, 2012. Charlie would be 19 going on 20 if he were alive today. I sometimes wonder what kind of young man he would’ve become, whether he’d have escaped his father’s poisonous influence and found the words to truly tell us where the flowers and the crystals grow.
