Episode Transcript
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Hey there, all you true crime fans.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I'm Amanda, and I am still Kori.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: And welcome back for part three of our Susan Powell series.
So before we jump into this case again, I just wanted to kind of take a little pause, because everything that we've talked about so far, Susan's disappearance, the evidence, the unanswered questions, it all leads here.
This part of the story is not about a mystery.
It's about two little boys who were seen as a risk, but they weren't protected as such.
And, Corey, like, we just talked about this, but this is the part of the case that still feels unbearable, even though we know what's coming.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: I agree. It's the sad, scary part. It's terrible. We always talk about people's lives and everything like that, but you never really expect, like, things to go so horribly wrong.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: And it did.
Let's go ahead and jump into it.
So Charlie and Braden Powell, they weren't evidence.
They were children. They were just little boys, and they were caught in the middle of something that they couldn't understand and that they.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Really shouldn't have had to. They were children, right?
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Right. And in the end, they were pawns.
Charlie was this curious, verbal little boy who was very intelligent, and he was also old enough to understand that something had happened to his mom.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: And when it happened, Braden was just a toddler. I mean, he was 2.
So he was too young to explain anything, but he was old enough to feel that fear and that instability.
Charlie, Susan's oldest son, he actually made statements that concerned investigators.
I feel like this needs kind of a little disclaimer also, because Charlie was five when his mom disappeared.
So when he said what he said, he wasn't giving testimony.
He wasn't making accusations.
He was trying in the only way that he knew how to describe something that he experienced.
So after Susan disappeared, Charlie made comments to adults and professionals about the night that his mom went missing.
He talked about his dad taking him and his brother camping late at night.
He talked about how his mom stayed back at the campsite.
And he also talked about how his dad came back without her. And one of those statements that raised concerns was Charlie saying that his mom went camping, too, but didn't come back.
And that was huge. I mean, this was really important because from what Josh claimed, Josh claimed that Susan did not go camping with them.
He claimed that she stayed home. He got home, and she was gone.
And investigators and child welfare professionals were careful here, and that's important. You know, they didn't want to treat Charlie's words as a literal account of a crime.
You know, instead they just treated it as developmentally filtered, emotionally influenced, but potentially revealing because children at that age, they often use familiar words to describe an unfamiliar or frightening thing. They also, they repeat phrases that they've heard, and they struggle to separate memory from. From explanation.
So when Charlie talked about camping, authorities believed he may have been repeating language that Josh had used rather than independently describing these events.
But even with those limitations, his statement suggested one thing very clearly.
Charlie believed that his father was the last person with his mother.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: It's hard to know because he was, he was still a small child.
So I mean, to be fair, she probably, she probably did go camping with them. Like, what mother would not go with their five and two year old in.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: The middle of the night?
[00:04:42] Speaker B: But also, was she conscious? Was she. I mean, he wouldn't know any of those things. She could have just been in the front seat passed out.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Right?
[00:04:51] Speaker B: And she went with them.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: You can't see me when I was doing that, but I did air quotes.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: And, you know, that's actually, that's why Charlie's words mattered, because they did align with Josh's timeline. They reinforced that Susan didn't leave on her own, and they suggested that the boys were present during key moments surrounding her disappearance.
And they raised concerns about emotional exposure.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Whether or not Charlie understood what happened, professionals were actually worried that he had been present during something traumatic. And that continued exposure to Josh could harm, you know, could cause harm, whether, you know, it might have not been physical harm, but, like emotional harm to be around the person that even if you don't understand what happened, you have that yucky, icky, scared feeling.
And now you have to be around that with. Without a buffer, it's just you and your little brother, right.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Who doesn't know anything.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Right.
And so, you know, professionals were concerned.
And this wasn't about, like, criminal proof.
It was, though, about child safety and authorities. They didn't act because Charlie told this dramatic story.
You know, they acted because his statements fit within an already troubling timeline.
They were consistent over time, and they came from a little boy who had just lost his mom. And in these child welfare cases, consistency and context matter more than precision.
And Charlie's words were consistent enough to raise alarm.
You know, that's, that's what makes this whole.
This whole thing so sad. Is.
Is it. It wasn't.
It wasn't that, you know, mommy and daddy had this horrible relationship where they fought all the time. And, you know, once mommy was Gone, things were better.
You know, these boys continued to suffer, and they had to live with the person who everybody believed killed their mom. And that is just so awful to me.
And because of what Charlie said, combined with Josh's weird behavior and the condition of the home when Susan disappeared, and obviously investigators beliefs that Susan was murdered, Child protective services stepped in. And it wasn't, it wasn't to punish Josh.
You know, they got involved because they wanted to protect Charlie and Braden.
And for a time, those little boys were safe.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: It probably would have been safer in Utah and not Washington.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah, but Charlie was just trying to like, make sense of what happened.
Right. And why his mom never came home.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Didn'T come home with them.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: And by the time that custody decisions were being made, authorities knew a lot.
They knew that Susan was believed to be the victim of homicide.
Josh was a primary suspect.
Charlie made concerning statements that corroborated with Josh's timeline.
Josh refused to cooperate.
He never showed any urgency in finding Susan.
And then you have that all with his digital and physical behavior, you know, and professionals became really concerned about Josh's emotional stability and fixation. Right.
And none of this was hidden. It was well documented.
But yet guess who still retained their parental rights because legally, Susan hadn't been declared dead.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Josh hadn't been charged. And family court doesn't operate on suspicion.
The standard wasn't what police believe it was what can be proven in court.
And that gap between belief and proof is where every single thing unraveled.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Okay. So earlier we talked about how Josh moved Charlie and Brayden to Washington to live with his friends, father, Steve Powell. What we haven't talked about yet, though, and what's critically important here, right, is why Josh ultimately lost custody of the boys while they were living there. Because it wasn't just based on suspicion alone. It was based on what authorities found inside that home.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: So buckle up, buttercups, because this is where, this is where the story gets worse.
So while Josh and the boys were living with Steve in Washington, Child Protective services and law enforcement began raising serious concerns about the environments that the kids were in. This wasn't just about Josh anymore. It was about the household.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: And specifically the digital evidence that was found inside side.
During an investigation, authorities examined computers that belonged to Steven Powell that were accessible inside the home where Charlie and Braden were living.
What they found was deeply disturbing.
Police discovered thousands of images of young women and girls, images that were covertly taken, images taken without consent.
And it included images that focused on children.
And these weren't downloaded stock images.
These were literal photographs that Steve Powell had taken himself.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: And you have two little boys living there, not to mention the creepy locked filing cabinet for full of the pictures of Susan that she's unaware of.
I want to say, oh, I wish I knew. I think there was like a lock of hair found, toenail clippings from Susan. Like, you want to talk about, like a murderer treasure trove.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Like this was a drawer full of trophies.
And I'm not saying Steve Powell murdered Susan Powell because I don't think that that's what happened.
But you're still holding onto this stuff that belonged to her that you took from her. She didn't just give you a bag of toenail clippings.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: And you know, this discovery, it immediately changed how authorities viewed the boy's living situation.
These images were stored on computers inside of the home, and the boys lived in that environment, flying time.
And the content demonstrated, you know, boundary violations and predatory behavior.
And this wasn't some theoretical risk.
It was present in the home that these two little boys lived in.
And later Steve. Steve Powell was arrested and convicted for voyeurism related crimes.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: But what matters is by the time custody decisions were being made, authorities already knew the environment was unsafe.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: And Josh could no longer, at this point, he could no longer claim ignorance or distance.
You know, he moved the children from Utah to Washington to live with his father.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: He chose to house his children in that home. And he refused to acknowledge that there was a risk.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: And he didn't separate himself from Steve. He defended him.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Of course he would defend him. It's his father. I mean, why wouldn't he?
[00:12:48] Speaker A: So because of these findings, Josh lost custody of Charlie and Brayden. The boys were then placed with Susan's parents, and Josh's access was restricted to supervised visits only.
And the Cox family actually had the boys for.
For a little bit of time. And the boys were kind of starting to integrate back into society.
They were kind of feral when the Cox family received them.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: And I'm sure they were.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And her parents were building a room for them.
But then, you know, they're aging. They kind of realized, wow, this is a little bit more than what we can take on.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: And we'll talk about her later on.
But Josh's sister actually is set to take custody of the boys.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: That's probably a good idea.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Well, it's Josh's sister, though.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Oh, I. Sorry. Yeah, that's. Which sister? Doesn't he have a couple of them?
[00:13:58] Speaker A: He does.
So Josh is actually one of five.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: He has two brothers and two sisters. And we have yet to talk about his family dynamic.
But his parents marriage is very reminiscent to his marriage.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: In fact, Josh's parents end up getting a divorce because Stephen Powell tells his wife at the time that if they're going to continue to be Mormons, he should take on an extra wife. He wants to practice plural marriage.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: What?
[00:14:36] Speaker A: And his wife is like, whoa, I'm not that kind of a Mormon.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: And he just became very belligerent, very belittling about her beliefs.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: And one of the sisters stays close to the mom while the other four siblings sort of takes Steve Powell's side.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Okay.
Why? Why, like why though? Why would you take. He. He was found with child porn images. Like, I don't understand how that's Right. Like that's not a kicker for you.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Right? That, that's not a red flag.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: It really isn't for. For anyone right now. So never mind.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: So this isn't anything that the family should be surprised about. And it sounds to me like they accepted it.
So we'll talk about Josh's sister later on. But authorities essentially concluded that Josh could not provide a safe environment for the boys.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: And that he could not prioritize his children's well being over his loyalty to his father.
And that risk was too high and he lost custody.
This is kind of a pivotal moment in the case because it shows that the system did intervene and that the danger that was Josh Powell was recognized. And for a time, a very short time, Charlie and Braden were removed from harm.
But what happened later wasn't because no one saw the risk.
It was because the risk was reintroduced.
Josh didn't lose custody of his sons because of a theory.
He lost custody because authorities found evidence that the home he chose for his sons was dangerous. And he continued to refuse to protect them.
So going to hop back to Steve Powell for, I hope it's the last second, because good God.
But Steve's behavior was like, no longer subtle, right? Like he was completely fixated on Susan. He had violated boundaries and I mean, he was already. He'd already demonstrated disturbing behavior.
Not to mention when he inserted himself into the investigation when Susan initially went missing.
But yet the boys were tied to that environment.
So as time went on, Josh became more volatile. He lost his job, he isolated himself further, he blamed others for his situation, and he fixated on control.
Professionals involved in the case later acknowledged that there were warning signs, concerns were raised, and a serious risk was recognized.
But that recognition didn't lead to prevention.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Because the child welfare system is thoroughly overworked.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's completely flawed.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: They shouldn't have. I mean, to be fair, they shouldn't have had the visits at his house. They should have been at a controlled visiting center. They were supposed to be supervised.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Right, well, we'll get into that.
So it was only after Josh moved out of his father's house that he was allowed supervised visits from the courts. They were short visits, they were monitored visits, they were structured visits.
On paper, this was meant to protect Charlie and Brayden. Right.
But here's the reality of the situation.
Supervision only works if warning signs are acted on, if risk is reassessed continuously, and if emotional danger is taken seriously. And that didn't happen.
Josh was described by professionals as rigid, controlling, angry, and increasingly isolated.
Still.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: And they're still like, here you go.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah, they still continue.
So before we talk about what actually happened to Charlie and Braden, we need to talk about why it happened, where it did.
Because the visits were actually supposed to take place at a court appointed visitation center.
And they did for a minute, until they didn't.
Because Josh Powell freaked out all the other people at this visitation center.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Why?
How?
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Because of exactly what the professionals had described.
He was rigid, controlling, angry, isolated.
And so they were getting so many complaints from other people who were having visits there that they decided, you know what, let's just have the visit at Josh Powell's house.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: That's crazy to me.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Yeah. So they changed this, they changed his visitation to allow these visits to happen in his home because he was making others uncomfortable.
So a supervisor was assigned to a contracted social worker, and home visits were permitted under the supervision plan.
So legally it was allowed.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: But I mean, practically it removed all layers of safety.
The whole point of this, of these visits was because Josh was not supposed to be alone with these boys. Right.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Hence supervised.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Right.
But yet he was allowed to host these visits in his own residence, where he lived, where he spent time, which there is some. Some speculation, which I, I didn't want to include a lot of speculation in this, in this episode or in any of this series, because there's a ton of speculation. But some people do believe that Josh continued to live at his house, live at the house with his dad, and he only had this house set up for the visitations.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: No.
And you know, it gave him time alone to think, to prepare, and that's exactly what he did.
Not emotionally, logistically.
Before the boys arrived that day, Josh made arrangements related to his finances.
He wrote communications that indicated finality, and he altered aspects of the home.
And police later concluded that these were deliberate preparations. They were not a spontaneous decision.
This was not a brief breaking point.
This was not a father so distraught by the loss of his wife that he couldn't continue on without her.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Or the fact that he had lost custody of his boys that he was working towards getting back. By the way, this was a plan.
So the court appointed social worker arrived at the house with Charlie and Braden for their supervised visit. And from the very start, something felt wrong. Josh was agitated. He rushed the interaction, and he immediately isolated the boys.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Of course he did.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: When the social worker tried to follow the boys into the home, Josh slammed the door and locked her out.
So here she is.
She's supposed to be supervising, and she's locked outside while the boys are trapped inside.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: So immediately, what does she do? She calls 91 1.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: And I mean, her call was frantic, but you could hear her trying to express the seriousness and the concern.
She told the dispatcher several times that the children were inside with their father, Josh Powell, who is a person of interest in the missing or in the disappearance of his wife, Susan Powell. They are not supposed to be inside with their father alone. She's locked out. She believed that they were in immediate danger. And she smelled gasoline. Mm.
She was very explicit.
She was not vague.
And despite her urgency, the response wasn't immediate.
And like, if you guys want to get yourselves fired up, this is a 911 call to listen to. And I really, really try to give Grace where grace is due. And I would never want to work dispatch.
But the way that this dispatcher handled.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: The call was a failure.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: It was atrocious. It was rude.
He acted so inconvenienced and like, well, we'll. We'll just get somebody there. Like, so nonchalant, whatever. We'll get somebody there when we can.
And that's kind of what happened.
There were delays in dispatching, There was confusion over the jurisdiction, and there was a miscommunication about the severity of the threat.
And unfortunately, by the time first responders arrived, it was too late.
Josh Powell had murdered Susan's sons and then took his own life.
So after Josh murdered Susan's sons and killed himself in a house fire, and I don't mean just like a house fire. This was like a house explosion because Josh poured gasoline throughout the house and then set it ablaze.
By the time first responders got there, there was nothing really to even put out because the structure fire had destroyed the majority of the home.
It happened so quickly, and Susan's father, Chuck Cox, was notified shortly after.
And I'm sure that, you know, there's no gentle way to receive news like that. He'd already lost his daughter, and now he lost his grandsons.
Those grandchildren that he fought to protect, the children that he believed were safe, were now gone.
And the community response was immediate and overwhelming. Vigils were held, schools mourned, neighbors gathered in silence.
And people struggled to understand how danger had been documented, warning signs had been voiced, and safeguards had still failed.
This wasn't just grief.
This was a collective reckoning.
And that reckoning extended far beyond one family.
So in the days and the weeks that followed, investigations were launched, agencies reviewed their failures, policies were questioned, and lawsuits were filed. I had to file the lawsuit, too, Absolutely.
And the social worker was not blamed. And I want to be very explicit.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Here, it wasn't her fault.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: She did everything, everything she could to.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Protect those boys in a system that's failing.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: And that is exactly where the blame fell was on the system that allowed risk management to replace risk prevention.
Right. And Charlie and Brayden didn't die because no one cared.
They died because danger was acknowledged, but not seen, stopped.
February 5, 2012 wasn't unpredictable. It was preventable.
And that's what makes it so hard to sit with.
The community was devastated. Susan's family was shattered. And the question that followed was immediate and unavoidable. How did this happen?
How did a man believed capable of killing his wife retain access to his children?
How were warnings documented but not acted on?
How did systems designed to protect fail so completely?
[00:27:28] Speaker B: I mean, to be fair, it failed because the system doesn't work. It doesn't work.
There's too many variables and too many people in it.
I think the child welfare system is systemically flawed.
I think we give too much credit to give children back to parents who should not be parents just because you complete the classes and do what you're supposed to. Not that I'm saying that not everybody can change, but change isn't something that everybody does.
And it's not something that happens to most people. Like, most people don't change.
Most people can put up enough front to. To make it look like they've changed, but in the long run, a tiger doesn't change its stripes. And I'm not trying to be a jerk.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: No, you're exactly right.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: And I'm not trying to say that. That foster care isn't.
Foster care isn't. Something. I mean, it's hard. It's hard to foster somebody. It's hard to have children who have had years and years and years of trauma in your house for short periods of time, because not everybody's prepared for that either. You can go through all the classes and you can still be a shitty foster parent.
The. The whole roundabout system is flawed. The amount of shitty foster homes compared to the amount of good foster homes. The amount of parents who actually make a change. The amount of parents who don't make a change. And we're just fine with giving kids back to them because it's their biological parent. I did air quotes again, and nobody could see me.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: And you guys have to remember that we're not just talking hypothetically.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: It happens all the time to multiple children.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Right. And, I mean, we saw this day in and day out when we worked at the jail together.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Why do you have multiple people having more children to get them taken away and then given back to them? They're not. They're not changing. That's not. He got progressively worse and they were still like, well, he still deserves to see his children. No, he doesn't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if you're a terrible parent, and I'm sorry if this hurts your feelings, but you do not deserve your children if you are. If you do things to harm them.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: And no amount of changing that is going to change my mind. I don't. I don't care if you're going to harm your children. You don't deserve them.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: And that's not just physically harming.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: No. Mentally harming, emotional harming.
There are plenty of people who don't deserve to be parents, which is another whole soapbox that I'm not gonna get into because it's very political and I'm not doing that, so.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Right. But just because you have the ability does not mean that you need to act upon it.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Having children is such a huge commitment.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: And if we're taking away the rights of people to not have children, then this is what happens.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: And that's exactly it. Because this was not an unpredictable tragedy. It was a foreseeable one, and everybody saw it coming.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: And what could they do? Because he was legally obligated to see his children, and everybody knew there was something wrong with him.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: And when people talk about this case, they often focus on the mystery.
But there's nothing mysterious about what happened to Charlie and Brayden. It was a final consequence of believing danger must be proven before it can be prevented.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: And that's heartbreaking.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: And now there's nothing. There's nothing we know nothing more.
Her body's still missing. The children are dead. He's dead.
His family doesn't know anything. His father's a six of offender.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Like, yeah.
So when we come back for part four, that will be our final part.
We will talk about the aftermath, the investigations, the life insurance, and what Susan's family was left to carry forward.
Thank you guys so much for listening to our third episode in our Susan Powell series.
I hope you have a. A beautiful day wherever you are, and stay safe.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Have the day you deserve.
