Fifteen years have passed since the last time anyone saw Susan Cox Powell. Little doubt remains that Susan’s husband, Josh Powell, was responsible for her death but Susan’s remains have still not been located.
In the early days of the West Valley City, Utah police investigation into Susan’s disappearance on Dec. 6, 2009, detectives served a search warrant on Josh and Susan Powell’s minivan. In the van, they located a garbage bag containing a chunk of charred metal.
Evidence suggested Josh Powell used an oxyacetylene torch to destroy an unidentified object, in the garage of the family home, on the night immediately following Susan’s disappearance. Investigators hypothesized the object might have been a hard drive, GPS unit or cell phone.
However, additional investigation and experimentation by Cold has disproved that hypothesis, and provided another.
This special bonus episode explores the origins of Josh Powell’s mystery metal object, and reveals it might have been a cordless power tool.
Josh Powell’s visit to AirGas
On the afternoon before Thanksgiving in 2009, Josh Powell visited an industrial supply business called AirGas in South Salt Lake. Airgas is a supplier of tools and materials for welding and torch cutting, along with various gasses.
Two Airgas employees were in the retail storefront when Josh came through the door at about 3:45 p.m. One of them, Andrew Robinson, approached Josh to see if he could be of assistance. Josh reportedly told Andrew he was simply browsing. About 15 minutes later, Andrew once again asked Josh if he needed any help.
“He said that he was interested in welding equipment, what we had in the way of that. I asked what it was in particular that he was wanting to weld. He said that he was interested in making jewelry,” Andrew said.
Andrew found Josh’s demeanor to be somewhat vague, but he tried to help as best he could. Andrew pointed Josh in the direction of a small oxyacetylene torch kit suitable for making light welds. But Josh spent the next hour debating what to purchase, asking Andrew and another AirGas employee questions about welding torches and the gasses that fuel them.
“I did get the impression from Josh that he didn’t have a great deal knowledge regarding the use of the equipment,” Andrew said.
It was after 5, when AirGas would typically close, before Josh settled on what he wanted to buy.
“Josh ended up purchasing a cutting kit, which is a bit more involved. It does allow you to do light welding,” Andrew said. “It also allows you to cut material with, obviously, the acetylene.”
The kit Josh purchased was a Radnor-brand medium-duty cutting and welding outfit. The torch supplied with that kit came with a tip for cutting, which would’ve been capable of cutting through steel half-an-inch thick.
“A little bit of overkill to be involved in the making of jewelry,” Andrew said. “That struck me as odd.”
Andrew and his coworker had supplied Josh with smaller tanks of oxygen and acetylene based on his original statement that he wanted to perform light welding for jewelry making. They did not up-size to larger tanks suitable for the Radnor cutting torch before ringing up Josh’s purchase.
The following Monday, on Nov. 30, 2009, Josh returned to AirGas. He complained to staff that the setup they’d sold him did not work. The hose fittings for the torch did not properly mate to the gas cylinders.
“So he’s provided with quite considerably larger cylinders to accommodate the gas cutting equipment,” Andrew said.
A week-and-a-half later, Andrew saw Josh on the news. Word was spreading about the disappearance of Josh’s wife, Susan Powell, from her home in West Valley City. In the news clip, a reporter attempted to question Josh about where he’d been the night Susan vanished.
“His demeanor, the way that he interacted with the journalists was very similar to how he interacted with myself and my coworker,” Andrew said. “He didn’t interact in a positive way, just very in an evasive way.”
Andrew called West Valley police and informed them of the suspicious timing and behavior involved with Josh’s purchase of the oxyacetylene cutting torch.
Discovery of the mystery metal
West Valley City police detective Ellis Maxwell served a search warrant on Josh Powell’s minivan on the afternoon of Dec. 8, 2009, the day after Susan Powell was first reported missing. That’s when Ellis located a plastic garbage bag hidden in a floorboard compartment.
Inside the bag were the mystery metal item, a few lengths of charred copper wire, some screws and a Phillips head screwdriver bit, and several pieces of badly burned drywall. Police sent the metal item to an FBI lab in Quantico for metallurgical analysis. The FBI was not able to identify the item, labeled “Q2” in an official report, but wrote “the Q2 fragments are predominantly steel. Calcium and strontium are present in significant amounts on many pieces.”
Strontium is an element often found in electric motors, like those used in handheld cordless power tools.
In regard to the wire segments, the FBI lab wrote “they are segments of multi-strand copper wire. The overall conductor gauge of each segment is 10 to 12 AWG (American Wire Gage), with a consistent strand gauge of 30 AWG.”
A wire of 10 to 12 AWG would be the proper gage to connect a battery to a small electric motor.
The torch and toolbag in Josh Powell’s garage
Powell family financial records collected by West Valley City police during their investigation showed Josh Powell went on a shopping spree in November of 2007, two years before Susan Powell disappeared. Josh had opened a Home Depot credit card in Susan’s name, as he was going through bankruptcy at the time.
Josh spent hundreds of dollars purchasing a number of Ridgid tools, including several large items like a band saw, table saw and miter saw. Included in Josh’s purchases was an 18-volt cordless tool kit, consisting of several smaller battery-powered tools: a hammer drill, a reciprocating saw, a flashlight and so forth.
A 2006-era Ridgid catalog showed this 18-volt kit came in two varieties. The primary difference between the two was that one kit included an impact driver. It is not clear from Josh and Susan’s financial records which variant of the 18-volt kit Josh owned.
All pieces of that Ridgid 18-volt kit can be accounted for in police photos, or Josh Powell’s personal photos, after the time of Susan’s disappearance. There is no appearance in those photos of a Ridgid impact driver.
Police photos taken inside the garage of Josh and Susan’s home on the night of Dec. 7, 2009, the day of Susan’s disappearance, showed Josh’s Ridgid tool bag atop a chest freezer, next to the door leading from the garage into the house.
When West Valley police returned to the house on Dec. 8, 2009 to serve a search warrant, the Ridgid tool bag was on the concrete floor of the garage next to Josh’s oxyacetylene torch, a plastic gas can and a fire extinguisher.
Taken together, this suggested Josh Powell had moved the tool bag to the torch during the overnight hours of Dec. 7 into Dec. 8, and that Josh used the torch to destroy the mystery metal object at that time.
Hear the story of the impact driver experiment in a bonus episode of Cold: Mystery Metal
Episode credits
Research, writing and hosting: Dave Cawley
Audio production: Andrea Smardon
Audio mixing and mastering: Ben Kuebrich
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
KSL executive producer: Sheryl Worsley
Workhouse Media executive producers: Paul Anderson
KSL companion story: https://ksltv.com/712579/cold-new-experiment-aims-to-identify-mystery-metal-evidence-in-susan-powell-cold-case/
Episode transcript: https://thecoldpodcast.com/season-1-transcript/mystery-metal-transcript/
