Disappearance of Susan Powell

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Discretion, is it by him?
Immediate murder. Slumped in the corner of

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an interrogation room, Josh Powell provides
little information about the possible whereabouts of his

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wife and the mother of his children, reported missing twenty four hours prior.

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By Josh's account, he'd taken their
boys camping at midnight in the sub zero

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Utah temperatures to make s'mores, leaving
Susan behind. What Josh didn't know was

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that his four year old son,
with a detective across town, was telling

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a different story. After listening the
family members who had gone on camping,

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counting mom, dad, and brother, Charlie, Powell changed the roll call

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when he asked who came back,
quote Mommy stayed where the crystals are.

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Josh Powell and Susan Cox first met
at an LDS church singles mixer when she

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was nineteen and he was twenty four. According to friends, Josh was a

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smug, loudmouth, but Susan fell
hard for him. She liked the way

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he took charge of the conversation and
was unusually charmed by Josh's devotion to his

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pet bird, a parrot named Trilly
that he took everywhere as kids Susan and

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her sister lovingly mothered a pair of
bonded parakeets. Smitten, they married only

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a few months later, and by
day I mean Josh and Susan, not

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the parakeets. After a two year
stay at Josh's father's house in Washington to

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save cash, the newly weds moved
to Utah and picked up steady work in

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stocks and it. Susan's warmth quickly
made her a neighborhood favorite, and friends

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learned to tolerate Josh. After a
party one night, Susan confessed to a

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buddy she dreamed about being pregnant with
a boy. Maybe Josh could be a

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good dad, the friend thought,
ironically. The next morning, two pink

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lines confirmed a child was on the
way. While others softened to Josh,

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Susan's father, Chuck Cox, was
not buying it. The day his daughter

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went into labor, Chuck remembers Josh
waving him off as he played on one

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of his souped up computers, refusing
to drive his wife to the hospital.

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Susan, on the other hand,
spent her childhood fantasizing about becoming a mom,

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and was later thrilled to add a
second son Braden to their growing family.

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The devoted mom dreaded her work day, but felt lucky to leave them

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in a daycare run by a close
friend named Debbie. On the snowy morning

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of December seventh, Debbie Caldwell felt
a pit of dread in her stomach when

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six thirty am came and went with
no sign of the Powell boys. After

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all, Susan was the most punctual
mom. Chalking it up to a slow

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commute on the heels of the blizzard, she dismissed her fears. By nine

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she'd learned that neither Powell had reported
for work that day. She called Josh's

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sister and rushed to the house.
Debbie and Jennifer Graves arrived to find the

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home locked and eerily quiet, no
tire or boot tracks in the snow,

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no movement within. Remembering that Susan
had discussed repairing their broken furnace herself,

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the women called nine one one in
a panic, Fearing carbon monoxide poisoning.

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Officers smashed a window and entered to
find the house empty, no sign of

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forced entry, no theft of Josh's
expensive electronics, no bodies. The only

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movement came from two box fans the
living room, directed at a wet spot

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on the rug and a couch that
showed signs of being freshly cleaned. Josh's

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sister checked the bedroom and discovered Susan's
purse abandoned on the dresser, her keys

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and wallets still inside. With more
questions than answers, words spread fast.

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Friends and officers flooded the home.
Nine hours after one call, Josh pulled

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their blue minivan into the now packed
driveway with Charlie and Braden in the back

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seat. He casually reported that the
boys wanted to go camping, so he'd

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taken into the desert west of Salt
Lake City. He called Susan on his

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way back in and offered to pick
her up from work, but she had

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not answered. Detectives escorted Josh and
the boys to the precinct for an interview,

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begot little more than shrugs and complaints
about the broken window. For investigators

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on site of the family home,
however, a more sinister picture was developing.

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Microscopic drops of blood were discovered on
the floor by the couch and box

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fans. An examination of the minivan
uncovered Susan's pink cell phone buried deep in

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the center console and missing its simcart. Josh's multiple hard drives were encrypted to

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the point no expert could crack them. With no susan and no leads,

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friends began piecing it all together,
small fragments of her reluctant confessions to them

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Josh was controlling. He changed the
pin number to their joint account. Weekly,

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he'd hand over a spreadsheet of items
on sale at different stores and a

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ten dollar bill to feed the kids
for the week. He'd insisted that she

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knit her own socks and forced her
to ride her bike to work every day.

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Meanwhile, Josh bought bags of junk
food, electric cars, computer equipment,

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and inexplicably several hundred pounds of wheat. Nine days into the investigation,

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with little to show, police made
the controversial decision to declare Josh a person

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of interest. Shortly after, he
packed up the kids and fled to his

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father's home in Washington, and it
wasn't long before the media latched onto the

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mysterious tale of a beautiful missing mother
and her silent husband. Josh hid from

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cameras as her friends and family begged
for her safe return, until one day

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Josh came forward with a confession no
one expected. Susan was troubled, he

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claimed, secretly promiscuous, broken by
an angry mother and an abusive father.

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He built a find Susan website and
filled it with family photos and salacious accusations,

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namely that she'd fled to Brazil with
a secret lover. Horrified, the

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Cox family hosted a televised press conference
in detailed the emotional and physical abuse Susan

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suffered at Josh's hands. Callers flooded
the tip lines. Most explosive was a

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call from got Hardman, an acquaintance
who relayed a troubling conversation he'd had with

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Josh at a Christmas party. The
secret to hiding a body, Josh insisted,

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was to dump it down a vertical
mind shaft in the Utah desert,

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so unstable, virtually unsearchable, fool
proof. Over the last decade, cops,

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cadaver dogs, and citizen detectives have
dedicated tens of thousands of hours scouring

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Utah. Based on that one tip, Josh's morbid holiday proclamation may have been

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rights. No signs of Susan have
ever been found, with no body and

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no breaks in the case, cops
made a desperate move, hoping Josh would

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snap. With animosity between Josh and
his father in law worsening by the minute,

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police encouraged Chuck to host a hawk
and wave. Sure Enough, as

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cameras rolled and Chuck held a sign
with remember me emblazoned above Susan's photo,

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Josh and his father drove into the
frame. A verbal altercation ensued, ending

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with Stephen Powell boasting that he has
proof of his daughter in law's instability at

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home in the form of her journals. That was just the slip police hoped

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for. They conducted a raid on
Stephen's home and recovered boxes of personal diaries.

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Far more interesting, however, were
the journals of Stephen himself. Pages

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and pages detailed how frequently he masturbated
thinking about his daughter in law, how

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he worshiped her. A search of
his closet revealed ziplock baggies labeled with dates

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and stuffed with her underwear, used
cotton swabs, tampons, thousands of photos,

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and many surveillance style were mixed in
with seductive magazine shots featuring Susan's head

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pasted on the model's body. Stephen
couldn't be arrested for obsession, but the

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videos he'd recently taken of the underaged
neighbor girls bathing and using the toilet were

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a different story. Taken in on
charges of child pornography and voyeurism, cops

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were sure he'd turn on his son. Stephen did not fold, but it

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gave the Cox family the ammo they
needed to challenge Josh's custody of their grandchildren.

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A vicious court battle followed, hinging
on disturbing details about Josh's violent childhood

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and the bombshell revelation that one of
his PCs contained graphic pornography featuring popular cartoon

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characters and incest fantasies. Pending results
from a psycho sexual evaluation, the judge

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limited Josh to supervised visitation. Days
later, the boys raced into his home

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with their assigned social worker following behind. Josh stopped to make eye contact and

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smirked at the supervisor before slamming the
door in her face, shouting to the

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boys about a surprise for them as
he locked her out. The next sound

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was a child's scream. During the
gut wrenching nine call that followed, the

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dispatcher dismissed the social workers, pleased
for help. As she listed off the

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address, gave Powell's estimated height,
panicked as the smell of gas hit the

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air. Before hanging up, the
operator told her deputies have to respond to

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emergency, life threatening situations first.
Moments later, the home exploded, igniting

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an inferno that would push firefighters back
for hours. While Josh could count on

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the silence of his father, the
strength of his hard drive encryption, and

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the vast mysteries of the Utah Desert, there were two liabilities he'd lost control

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of. He bashed Charlie and Braden
repeatedly with the butt of an axe,

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drenched the house in gasoline, sat
on the can and lit the match.

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Josh burned alongside what could have become
the most damning evidence of his crimes,

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his sons. That is ten Minute
Murder for today brief and bingeable true crime.

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My name is Joe, I'm the
host, and thank you for listening.

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If this is your first time listening
to Ten Minute Murder, please subscribe

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now so that you can catch up
on all the back episodes and never miss

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any of the new ones. Connect
on social media see the visuals of what

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we're talking about here in the podcast, and if you like this episode,

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please leave a rating and review on
Apple or any place that's possible. Your

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positive feedback is very much appreciated.
All things related to ten Minute Murder you

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can go to ten minute Murder dot
com. And I don't know if you

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could tell, but about halfway through
that episode, I took a sip of

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water, and one moment before I'm
young and free and live in LaVita Loca,

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and the next my body forgets how
to be a person. I nearly

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drowned myself, and thank god it
was just tap water from a glass and

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not from a bottle. As you
know how the local news would have tried

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00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:07.080
to make it cute, like death
by Dasani, which is embarrassing because then

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people would think that I drink Dasani. All right, and our quick question

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for today comes from Mark and Michigan. And by the way, one are

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these questions almost never about true crime. I mean, I'm not complaining,

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but it's kind of weird. Okay, Hey, Joe, what gives you

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the ick? And I'll tell you
Mark, It's it's pretty simple being called

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n I can deal with honey,
sugar, sweetie, but not hon.

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I don't know what it is about
Houn. That bothers me so much.

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Especially being in the South. People
are overly nice to you and affectionate.

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They'll give you those sappy nicknames,
like if you order some food through a

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drive through and they hand it back
to you. Here you go, hun

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No, just don't do that.
All right. That's gonna do it for

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today. Thank you so much for
listening to ten minute Murder