Dave Cawley: As a kid growing up on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington, Josh Powell dreamed of becoming a self-made millionaire. But achieving that goal proved more difficult than young Josh expected.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 13, 2000 audio journal recording): At the moment, I’ve only got a thousand bucks in savings.
Dave Cawley: His first attempt to make it big was a woodworking “business,” he started in high school. He bragged to his friends about spending thousands of dollars on tools. He didn’t have clients enough to justify the expense, but that hardly mattered.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 13, 2000 audio journal recording): If I spend $400 on tools, it makes me frustrated in my own budgeting and I feel like, “What the heck, I might as well spend another $400 on something else that I want.”
Dave Cawley: Josh never made his million dollars. But he did take out a million-dollar life insurance policy on his wife, Susan Cox Powell. Then, on December 6th, 2009, Susan vanished. That was 15 years ago. And she has still not been found.
There’s a single piece of evidence in Susan’s case that’s confounded me for years. It’s a hunk of twisted metal police found in the back of Josh’s minivan, the day after Susan turned up missing. The lead detective on the case, Ellis Maxwell, told me the metal object ended up with the FBI.
Ellis Maxwell: It was forensically tested and nobody could identify what that object was.
Dave Cawley: But now, I’m pretty sure I can. This is a special bonus episode of Cold season 1: Mystery Metal. From KSL Podcasts, I’m Dave Cawley.
If it’s been awhile since you listened to Susan Powell’s story, the details of the case might be bit fuzzy in your memory. That’s ok. We’re going to revisit some of the events that preceded Susan’s disappearance, as well as what happened in the first couple days of the investigation. And I think where I’d like to begin, is on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 25th, 2009. It was the day before Thanksgiving. And a guy named Andrew Robinson was at work, at a business called Airgas.
Andrew Robinson: Airgas is a company that manufactures and produces gasses: oxygen, nitrogen, acetylene.
Dave Cawley: I mentioned Josh’s trip to Airgas in episode 3. That account was drawn from police case files. I hadn’t talked to Andrew about it myself when that episode first came out, six years ago. In fact, Andrew’s never before spoken publicly about his experience meeting Josh on that day, just a week-and-a-half before Susan disappeared.
Andrew Robinson: I do recall that day Josh came in and his demeanor.
Dave Cawley: Andrew’s Australian, if you can’t tell. He was living in Utah at the time, but moved back to Sydney a short time later.
Andrew Robinson: And I guess I lost touch with the story.
Dave Cawley: Andrew discovered this podcast about a year ago, and listened to Susan’s story.
Andrew Robinson: Listened to that with fascination. Learned a lot more about how the story had progressed.
Dave Cawley: He reached out to me, because he had some unanswered questions. I sent him copies of the case files where he’s mentioned, and Andrew said some of the detail in those police reports was wrong.
Our conversation got me thinking again about that melted hunk of mystery metal. Andrew’s story is key in understanding where it came from and what it might be. So I asked him to take us back to the start and share the story from his perspective.
Dave Cawley (from interview recording): What was your interaction with Josh when he came in?
Andrew Robinson: Just a regular business day. … It was extremely quiet. … Roundabout, 3:45, a gentleman came into the store. … I approached Josh and asked if I can give some assistance in particular that he was looking for. And he spoke back saying that he was just having a look around. … After 10 or 15 minutes, he hadn’t approached the counter, still looking around the aisles. I approached him again and asked him what it was, he said he was interested in welding equipment, what we had in the way of that. I asked what it was in particular that he wanted to weld. And he said he was interested in making jewelry. … So I guided him to the product that would be most suitable, a kit that we had for soldering and light welding.
Dave Cawley: And was that the kit that he ended up purchasing or did he want something else?
Andrew Robinson: Josh ended up purchasing a cutting kit, which is a little bit more involved. It does allow you to do light welding. It also allows you to cut material with oxyacetylene.
Dave Cawley: To you, I guess in retrospect, does that choice to upgrade seem at all strange given what he said he wanted to do with it?
Andrew Robinson: Yeah, that struck me as being odd. It was a little bit of overkill for some cutting equipment to be involved in the making of jewelry.
Dave Cawley: From what I understood talking to you before and reading through the reports, he hung around awhile.
Andrew Robinson: That’s correct. He entered the store 3:30, 3:45. It wasn’t until after 5 p.m. when we would be regularly closing that he left with the kit in hand and also some cylinders as well to allow him to use that equipment.
Dave Cawley: When you say cylinders, I mean, fuel. We’re talking about the oxygen and the acetylene gas that he needs to run the torch, is that right?
Andrew Robinson: That’s correct. It was a small bottle of acetylene and oxygen to go with it. But these cylinders weren’t actually correct in being able to hook up to the torch. The cylinders that were provided to him were more in line with what you would use for making jewelry.
Dave Cawley: So let me restate that and just make sure I understand correctly. When he’s in there on that Wednesday before Thanksgiving and he says he wants to do jewelry stuff, you and the other employee, you’re trying to accommodate what he tells you he’s wanting to do. So it’s a, maybe a smaller tank with a different fitting. He upgrades to this bigger setup that can do steel cutting, but he still has these other tanks and at some point after he leaves the store he must’ve realized that something isn’t what he wants for this larger setup that he ended up buying. Am I understanding that correctly?
Andrew Robinson: That’s correct, yes. Josh did return the next week after the holiday weekend to exchange those cylinders to ones more suitable.
Dave Cawley: Ok. So he’s back in the store and what ends up happening from there?
Andrew Robinson: He came back in. I didn’t deal directly with Josh at the time but reading the body language I could see he was a little bit irritated. People were scurrying around trying to satisfy his requirements.
Dave Cawley: Do you recall, I guess at that point, was there anything that, in your memory you thought, “Huh, that was weird?”
Andrew Robinson: Not at the time, no. No. I just thought that everybody is an individual, has their own mannerisms. Was not thinking of anything particularly sinister.
Dave Cawley: A day or so later, Josh created a new text file on his work laptop, and titled “Welding Instructions.” He ran a Google search for the exact phrase “btu per cubic foot versus heat acetylene versus propane.” BTU is an acronym for “British thermal unit.” It’s a measure of heat. Josh’s browser history showed he visited two websites with information about acetylene gas.
Andrew Robinson: I did get that impression from Josh that he didn’t have a great deal of knowledge regarding the use of the equipment.
Dave Cawley: On Friday, December 4th, Josh moved the “Welding Instructions” document to an encrypted portion of his hard drive. That encryption was never broken or bypassed, so I can’t tell you what the Welding Instructions file contained. All I can say is that by the following Monday, Susan was gone.
On the morning of Monday, December 7th, 2009, Josh and Susan both failed to show up for work. Their sons, four-year-old Charlie and two-year-old Braden, didn’t arrive at daycare. Police in West Valley City, Utah forced entry at Josh and Susan’s house, on a cul-de-sac called Sarah Circle. Detective Ellis Maxwell swept the house, noticing Susan’s wallet and keys in the master bedroom. But the family, and their minivan, were gone.
Josh reappeared with the boys in the minivan later that afternoon. Susan wasn’t with him. Ellis confronted Josh on the driveway outside of the house. He told Josh they needed to go to a nearby police substation, to talk.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 7, 2009 police interview recording): Has she ever tried to leave or ever wanted to get out of this relationship at all with you?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 7, 2009 police interview recording): Uh, no. I don’t, I mean, it’s come up.
Dave Cawley: Josh said he’d taken his sons out on an impromptu camping trip the night before, in the middle of a snowstorm. He said Susan stayed home.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 7, 2009 police interview recording): Do you think she’s in danger right now, do you think she’s hurt?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 7, 2009 police interview recording): I don’t know.
Dave Cawley: Ellis suspected Josh’d done something to Susan, but he didn’t have a body or a confession. So at the end of the interview, he escorted Josh back to the Sarah Circle house. Josh reversed the minivan into the cluttered garage. Then, Ellis left. Josh had the house to himself. Exactly what he did in the hours that followed remains unclear.
Ellis Maxwell: Neighbors told us he had the van backed up to the garage.
Dave Cawley: Those neighbors lived a few doors down, on the corner. They described seeing Josh pull the minivan partway out of the garage at about 11 p.m. on Monday night. But they couldn’t tell what he was doing. I suspect he was making space to set up the oxyacetylene torch. And I think he intended to use it to destroy any physical evidence linking him to Susan’s death.
Detective Ellis Maxwell interviewed Josh a second time on the afternoon Tuesday, December 8th, the day after Susan was reported missing.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Ok. I have a whole lot of questions still. Alright? We need to find your wife.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): I’ve already told you everything.
Dave Cawley: Rather than rehash this whole interview, let’s jump to the climax, when Ellis told Josh detectives were headed to the Sarah Circle house with a search warrant.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): We have your house. You’re not going to be able to go back to your house. Ok?
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): What do you mean?
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Your house is ours, for right now. We’re not going to let you back into that house.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Ok.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Your car is ours. We’re not going to let you have your car.
Dave Cawley: The first thing the detectives did upon returning to Josh and Susan’s house was photograph everything. Those pictures are really important. What makes them valuable, is that Ellis had also photographed the house on Monday, before Josh was able to disturb anything. So by comparing the two sets of pictures, we can see what changed.
Ellis’ pictures from Monday show the oxyacetylene torch sitting on a cart in the garage. This tells us Josh didn’t take it with him on his “camping trip.” If I zoom in real close, I can see the tip of the torch, where the flame comes out, looks clean and shiny. But on Tuesday, that tip is covered in black soot. That’s proof Josh used the torch on that Monday night.
Meanwhile, you might remember Ellis’s search of the minivan on Tuesday turned up a melted metal object, some charred wire scraps and a few sheets of badly burned sheetrock, all contained in a plastic garbage bag, hidden in a floorboard compartment. This was presumably the remnant of whatever it was Josh burned.
Let’s go back to my conversation with Andrew, the guy from the Airgas store where Josh bought the torch. He happened to see Josh’s face on the TV news a couple days later.
Andrew Robinson: Yeah, that was the next time that I saw Josh was on the news the following week. … Being interviewed about his wife that’s gone missing. … Then I thought to myself, “Was that the guy that came into the store?” I went into my work the following day and I just wanted to verify that so I mentioned to my coworker and we pulled it up online. And he said, “Yeah, yeah. That looks like him.” And the way that he interacted with the journalist was very similar to how he interacted with myself and a coworker, very, I wouldn’t say as much as evasive but just very, almost vague.
Dave Cawley: So once you confirm that, “Hey, that’s the same person who was in here,” was there a question of, “What do I do?”
Andrew Robinson: Well, I just felt that it was something that needed to be brought to the attention to law enforcement.
Dave Cawley: So, as I understand, you end being the person to make the phone call to the West Valley City Police Department. Is that right?
Andrew Robinson: That’s correct, yes. The officer took my details and two officers came. They just wanted to know the interaction, whether we could provide evidence of the purchase in the way of a receipt and CCTV footage. And we had that arranged.
Dave Cawley: A police report about this interview says, quote, “Andrew said that he heard Joshua state on news interviews that he had been cutting open mine shafts on the Pony Express Trail.” Andrew told me that’s not accurate. He never heard Josh say that, because Josh didn’t say it. It is what Andrew suspected Josh might’ve wanted a steel cutting torch for at the time, and that’s what he said to the detectives.
Andrew Robinson: A thought that did come to my mind was what was his actual intent on the equipment that he purchased? … The upgrade in cylinder size would not be something that you would purchase for a little home jewelry making.
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Dave Cawley: A little earlier, I mentioned the police photos of Josh and Susan’s house, taken on Monday and Tuesday. They showed where the oxyacetylene torch was in the garage. But there’s another important difference between the two sets of images.
On Monday, there’s an orange and black tool bag sitting on top of a chest freezer, next to the door leading from the garage into the house. But on Tuesday, that tool bag’s moved to a spot on the concrete floor, next to the torch. I think it’s likely the metal object Josh melted was in that bag. So let’s talk about where that bag came from, and what it likely contained.
During the second interview, Ellis asked Josh about his financial situation.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Give me a list of your checking accounts, credit cards that you guys have.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Well, she has, seems like she has a couple of accounts at Wells Fargo.
Ellis Maxwell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Ok.
Josh Powell (from Dec. 8, 2009 police interview recording): Oh, and Home Depot. Yeah, she’s got a Home Depot card.
Dave Cawley: Susan’s Home Depot card was really Josh’s Home Depot card. He’d gone through bankruptcy in 2007, but rather than stop buying tools, he opened that credit card in Susan’s name and went on a Black Friday spending spree. One of the items he bought was a Ridgid-brand 18-volt cordless tool kit. And it came in a black and orange bag. That tool bag appears in a video Susan made a year-and-a-half before she disappeared, documenting the family’s assets, along with a bunch of other Ridgid tools.
Susan Powell (from July 29, 2008 home video recording): A Ridgid drill, some type of Ridgid sander and a Ridgid saw.
Dave Cawley: I found an old Ridgid catalog from that same time. It shows this 18-volt kit came in two variants. Both included a hammer drill, reciprocating saw, circular saw, flashlight and battery charger. The difference between the two was one kit included an impact driver. That’s like a smaller version of a drill good for turning screws or bolts. Josh bought one of these two kits, but it’s not clear which.
Susan Powell (from July 29, 2008 home video recording): All expensive stuff that we bought. A lot of it got bankrupted, a lot of it got added afterwards.
Dave Cawley: I can account for every one of those tools in police photos from after Susan’s disappearance. The only one I can’t find is an impact driver. So it’s possible the melted metal object could’ve been a Ridgid impact driver.
In the bonus episode “Project Sunlight,” I described discovering a file among Josh’s computer records from 2009. It was a transfer log, showing the names of documents Josh kept on an encrypted hard drive. There’s an entire folder labeled “Ridgid Tools,” with entries for warranty documents, a spreadsheet with the serial numbers, even photos. Unfortunately, I don’t have the documents and photos themselves, because again, they’re encrypted.
But what’s curious is when West Valley City police later seized Josh’s computers a second time in 2011, they held a copy of this same Ridgid Tools folder. The spreadsheet and photos aren’t in it. It appears Josh deleted them. For what purpose? We can only assume.
West Valley police turned the melted metal object over to the FBI in 2010. The bureau performed a metallurgical analysis. It showed the mystery metal was mostly steel, with lesser amounts of calcium and strontium. That last element, strontium, is a component in small electric motors, like the kind used in power drills and impact drivers. And remember, Ellis also found three short wire segments in the trash bag along with the mystery metal. Those wires were the right gage and length to connect a battery to a small electric motor, like inside an impact driver.
All this is to say, a lot of circumstantial evidence points to the mystery metal being the remains of a power tool. But I needed to test this theory. So I bought an old Ridgid impact driver secondhand and enlisted the help of a friend with an oxyacetylene torch to melt it.
(Sound of oxyacetylene cutting torch)
Dave Cawley: The orange plastic shell turned into a bubbling pool of black goo.
Dave Cawley (from video of impact driver experiment): I mean, that rear casing’s pretty well gone. I can see the, I can see the housing on the front. Look how sooty you are though.
Dave Cawley: It put off a thick smoke that coated the tip of the torch in soot.
Andrew Robinson: Plastic would cause that blackening. … Blackening can also occur from too much fuel in the flame, too much acetylene.
Dave Cawley: As the silvery steel body of the motor heated up, it glowed white. The metal softened. Some of it liquified.
Dave Cawley (from video of impact driver experiment): So right where you’re at should be kind of the joint between the motor and the transmission—
Peter D. (from video of impact driver experiment): I think you’re right.
Dave Cawley (from video of impact driver experiment): —if it cuts clean through there, that would probably actually be good.
Dave Cawley: The motor broke into pieces. It took more than an hour and quite a lot of fuel to reduce the whole thing to an unrecognizable chunk of slag. We doused it with water, then compared the result to police photographs of Josh’s melted metal object. It looks almost identical to my eyes. You can see the pictures yourself on our website, thecoldpodcast.com.
Andrew, the Aussie from the Airgas store also watched a video recording of the experiment. I asked his opinion about it, since he has much more experience with oxyacetylene than I do.
Andrew Robinson: I’ve been involved in the automotive industry so oxygen, acetylene for heating components, cutting components, welding components.
Dave Cawley: That torch, do you think, would’ve been capable of reducing, like a power tool to that kind of a shape?
Andrew Robinson: Definitely, yes. … The power tool is fairly light material, all in all, and that torch certainly would be capable of reducing that to a molten clump of different materials.
Dave Cawley: Did it seem plausible to you, based on the experiment, that that’s what that object could be?
Andrew Robinson: I believe there was a very close similarity. … To come across that, I think there was some motive it that. … Something involved was destroyed by Josh.
Dave Cawley: I can’t prove beyond a doubt Josh’s melted metal object was a Ridgid impact driver. But this experiment left me convinced the mystery metal was absolutely a power tool.
Andrew Robinson: Why would you destroy a, something like that? Unless for some reason he just wanted to see how long it would take to melt a cordless drill. But why? … Y’know, if he’d had the oxyacetylene torch for six months and he was playing around with it and he thought, “Oh, I wonder how long it takes to melt this thing,” and it’d been sitting there, but it only happened within a week. Maybe two weeks, max.
Dave Cawley: The only reason I can conceive why Josh would’ve taken the time and effort to destroy such a tool, the moment the eyes of police were off him, was if it somehow linked him to Susan’s murder.
Andrew Robinson: Whether he premeditated it—I’ll go to Airgas, I’ll buy this equipment because I’m going to do this, I’ll melt the, the weapon—I don’t believe that to be the case. But … it’s quite feasible that the destruction of that, believed cordless drill was involved somehow in Susan’s demise.
Dave Cawley: While searching through Josh and Susan’s photos and home videos, I found a clip from August of 2006, about three years before Susan disappeared. Josh and Susan’s first son, Charlie, was a year-and-a-half old.
Susan Powell (from August 31, 2006 home video recording): Ready? See this saw? And we go vroom! Oh!
Dave Cawley: That’s Susan talking. She and Josh are showing Charlie how to use a Little Tikes-brand playset. It’s shaped like a miniature woodworking bench, complete with a toy table saw.
Josh Powell (from August 31, 2006 home video recording): Cut the wood. Oh, you did it. You did it. You cut the wood. You cut the wood, good job.
Dave Cawley: Charlie’s a little young for this playset. He doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of a table saw, and picks up a toy drill instead. He has trouble holding it steady as he pretends to drive holes into the workbench. Charlie makes drilling noises with his mouth while Josh micromanages Susan’s camerawork.
Josh Powell (from August 31, 2006 home video recording): You should get down and zoom into his face.
Dave Cawley: There’s a moment in the video where Charlie walks over to Josh. He presses the plastic drill bit against the bare skin of Josh’s foot.
Josh Powell (from August 31, 2006 home video recording): You’re drilling on my foot?
Dave Cawley: Charlie flashes a grin.
Josh Powell (from August 31, 2006 home video recording): What, you think that’s funny?
Dave Cawley: But listen to what Josh says in response.
Josh Powell (from August 31, 2006 home video recording): That could really hurt someone.
Dave Cawley: I got chills the first time I watched this, because t his could’ve been a moment when the seed of an idea was planted in Josh’s mind.
Josh Powell (from August 31, 2006 home video recording): Ow, ow, ow. Drills hurt. Ow, ow.
Dave Cawley: When he conceived the idea a power tool could be repurposed into a weapon. And Susan watched it happen.
A personal note from me as this episode comes to a close. In the years since this podcast first launched, I’ve heard from many of you about how Susan’s story has the power to reveal the sometimes subtle signs of domestic abuse. If you see those in your own relationships, please consider calling 1-800-799-SAFE to speak with someone who can help.
Even if you think you don’t know anyone who’s experiencing abuse, statistics tell us you do. To honor Susan’s memory, please look up information about domestic violence resources in your area. Educate yourself on the red flags of coercive control. Read up about the lethality assessment protocol. Be ready to help the people you care about. Together, we can save lives.
