The Powell Explosion

[MUSIC PLAYING] Every murder tells two stories. One is written in crime scenes and evidence. The other lives in the mind where resentment grows. And one moment can change everything. I'm Kelsey Koffee. And this is the Powell Explosion, the Powell Family tragedy, before we begin a content warning. This episode contains discussions of intimate partner homicide, missing persons, child homicide, domestic abuse, coercive control, and suicide. There are also references to stalking like behaviors, voyeurism, and the possession of child sexual abuse material. Listen to discretion is strongly advised. On a cold Sunday afternoon in early February 2012, the state contracted social worker pulled up outside a single story rental home on a cul-de-sac near Graham, Washington, with two little boys in her car. Seven-year-old Charlie Powell and five-year-old Raiden Powell, these supervised visits with their father, Josh Powell, had become a painful compromise after months of legal wrangling over custody, background checks, and disturbing discoveries in the Powell Extended Family. Charlie and Raiden walked ahead toward the front door, small backpacks bouncing. While the social worker followed just a few steps behind, paperwork in hand prepared to do what she had done many times before. Observe, document, and then return the boys to the safety of their maternal grandparents home. Josh opened the door, ushered his sons inside, and then in a move that would later haunt investigators, he slammed the door shut and locked it before the social worker could enter. On the porch, she could hear the boys inside, and she immediately sensed something was very wrong. She pounded on the door, called her supervisor, and dialed 911. Trying to explain that this was not just a parent being difficult, it was apparent with a documented connection to an unresolved missing person's case. And a long trail of right flags, within minutes, the smell of gasoline filled the air, and a massive explosion ripped through the home sending flames into breeze skyward. As neighbors called 911 and first responders rushed toward a scene that they would soon describe as one of the most horrifying in their careers. The man in that house was not just a father in a custody dispute. He was also the primary person of interest in the 2009 disappearance of this wife, Susan Cox Powell, a 28-year-old mother from West Valley City, Utah, who vanished on a snow-weight December night and has never been found. This is the Powell family case. Two. The disappearance of Susan, the murder for children, Charlie and Braden, and this murder suicide carried out by their father, Josh, at its core. The mystery that still haunts investigators in Susan's family is not only what exactly happened to Susan on or around December 6th through the 7th of 2009. But how so many warning signs could be documented in files and courtrooms and yet fail to keep two little boys safe in the Powell family case, we're dealing with a story that spans multiple states, years of escalating control and conflict, and a justice system that always seemed to be one step behind a man determined to keep control at all costs. How did a seemingly ordinary family living in a Utah suburb? Susan, Josh, and their two sons move from financial stress, a marital tension into a spiral of coercive control isolation disappearance, and ultimately a triple homicide. In order to find out, we'll trace Josh's behavior patterns, Susan's documented fears and attempts to protect herself, the role of Josh's father, Steve Powell, and the decisions made by law enforcement, child welfare, and the courts. We'll look at the forensic and digital breadcrumbs, the custody hearings, and the psychosexual evaluation that was ordered just days before the explosion. And most of all, we'll keep returning to Susan, Charlie and Braden, their lives, their relationships, and the systemic gaps that failed to keep them safe. To understand the Powell family tragedy, you must start with Susan Cox, born Susan Marie Cox, a young woman described by friends and family as outgoing, nurturing, and deeply rooted to her face as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By the time she was 19, Susan was working, attending church activities, and starting a life that blended family, faith, and hope for stability, the kind of stability that stood in contrast to some of the chaotic dynamics she would later face after marrying Josh Powell. She loved crafts, cooking, and spending time with her two sons, Charlie and Braden. And those who knew her say she was devoted to being a present engaged mother who poured her energy into their daily routines. In photos and videos shared by relatives and news outlets, Susan appears smiling and playful with her two boys, the kind of mom who seemed to find joy in ordinary moments like trips to the park and church events. By late 2009, the Powell's were living in West Valley City, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, in a modest home that reflected both the strain and hope of a young family trying to find their footing in a tough economy. The neighborhood was a typical suburban mix of families. Many of them connected through local LDS wards with kids playing outside, carpools to church and school, and a culture that emphasized community and mutual support for Susan that community mattered. She attended church regularly with Charlie and Braden, and she tried to build a faith-centered home even as financial pressures and marital conflict with Josh intensified. Her extended family, the coxes, lived in Washington state, but remained closely involved, visiting-- visiting, talking often, and becoming a safety net. She increasingly turned to when tensions at home grew. Susan met Josh in the early 2000s in Washington state, and their relationship moved quickly toward marriage in 2001. The decision that at the time seemed aligned with the expectations in their religious and social circles, friends and relatives have since described early glimpses of controlling tendencies in Josh, concerns about finances decision-making, and his need to be in charge that would later come into full focus, but at the time, those comments lived mostly in private conversations and in personal writing. Susan did what many young spouses do. She tried to make it work. She tried to build a life with Josh, and the places his job and preferences took them. And tried to reconcile the person she thought she had married, with the man he increasingly revealed himself to be. By 2007 and 2008, with Charlie and then Braden Bourne, Susan's identity as a mother became central to her daily life and sense of purpose. She worked outside the home at times, including in customer service roles. But she also shouldered the bulk of child care and household responsibilities, often budgeting carefully to make ends meet. Friends later told reporters that Susan was the one clipping coupons, managing meals, and trying to keep the family afloat while Josh made financial decisions that sometimes increased their debt, including risky spending and unstable employment. Through it all, Susan's social media posts and personal writings reflected a woman who loved her children deeply and was trying to hold on to her sense of self in a marriage that felt increasingly lopsided. In June 2008, Susan took a step that reveals just how aware she was of the potential dangers she faced. She wrote a letter later described by investigators and the media warning that if she were to die, it might not be an accident. In that letter, she, that letter which she kept in a safety deposit box, only she could access. She referenced threats from Josh and said he told her he could destroy her if she pursued the horse, a chilling articulation of a dynamic that advocates now recognize as classic coerce of control. This was not a dramatic flourish or a journal entry written in a moment of passing anger. It was a deliberate, documented act of self-protection. A record she hoped would speak for her if she could not speak for herself around that same time. Settle but significant fault lines in the powel marriage were becoming more visible to those around them. Disputes about money, religion, and Josh's reluctance to fully participate in the LDS faith that was so important to Susan. There were concerns about Josh's temper, about his tendency to isolate Susan, and about the influence of his father, Steve, whose own obsession with Susan and later criminal charges for voyeurism and child pornography, which shock even seasoned investigators. Yet despite those red flags, Susan remained committed to her children and trying to create a loving home. Walking that tightrope, so many victims of course, of control walk when trying to keep the peace, while quietly documenting the danger. As we move forward that tension between the life Susan was building and the controlled Josh with determined to maintain, will become the fault line on which everything else breaks. When you zoom in on the relationship between Susan and Josh, what emerges is a pattern of financial control, emotional manipulation, and escalating conflict that is striking both innate specificity. And in how familiar it looks to those who study domestic abuse. Josh had a history of unstable employment. and significant debt, including a prior bankruptcy before the marriage. And during the marriage, he often resisted Susan's efforts to rein-inspending and pursue more conservative financial choices. That imbalance meant Susan was often the one scrambling over the basic expenses, including groceries and the mortgage. While Josh made big decisions without meaningful contribution, financial stress can strain any relationship. But in the Powell's home and the Powell's home, it became one more tool in a larger pattern of control. Spirituality, the couple was increasingly out of sync. Susan was active in the LDS Church, attended services, and wanted a faith-centered home for Charlie and Braden. While Josh, who had been raised in a conflicted religious environment, drifted away from the church involvement, and sometimes clashed with Susan over religious practices and expectations. Friendslater described tension around, "tizing," "church attendance," and Susan's desire for community engagement that Josh didn't always share. That divide left Susan feeling isolated at times, and also meant she could not fully rely on shared religious values with her spouse to mediate conflict or provide a common framework for decision-making. Layered into this already fragile dynamic was the presence of Josh's father Steve Powell, whose behavior towards Susan went far beyond ordinary in-law tension. Steve developed what he himself later referred to in media interviews as an intense romantic obsession with Susan, claiming she reciprocated feelings, claims that Susan's family and investigators adamantly rejected. In 2011, Washington authorities searching Steve's home seized explicit images, voyeuristic recordings, and other evidence that led to charges of voyeurism and possession of child pornography, including material involving neighborhood children. The discovery of that material did not just lead to Steve's arrest. It triggered a re-examination of the environment in which Charlie and Braden were being raised, and fed into the child welfare case that would later move them to the maternal grandparents' home, from the outside some of the early warning signs appeared in fleeting comments from Charlie. In Susan's letter and journal entries, and in the concerns her friends tried to raise, after Susan's disappearance one account detailed by investigators described young Charlie mentioning that mommy was in the mine, and that she had gone on a camping trip, but hadn't come back. Statements difficult to interpret from a small child. But yet deeply unsettling in context, meanwhile Susan's June 2008 letter and her remarks to coworkers and friends painted a picture of a woman who feared that Josh might do something to her if she tried to leave, including explicit references to threats to ruin her or maker disappear. These pieces scattered across different people and systems formed a mosaic of risk that would not, that would only be fully appreciated in hindsight. Modives in the Powell case cannot be reduced to a single line, but legal filings and investigator reporting point to a combination of financial strain, fear of losing control in the marriage, and Josh's deeply entrenched need to dominate his environment. In the months before Susan vanished, there were discussions about divorce of changes to the life insurance policy, and a Susan asserting more independence, including considering leaving the marriage if Josh didn't change. When you layer that onto an already controlling dynamic, you get a classic high-risk period. The time when a partner begins to separate or threatens to separate is statistically one of the most dangerous times in an abusive relationship. Josh's actions after Susan's disappearance abruptly moving from Utah to Washington with the boys, refusing to cooperate with police, beyond minimal questioning, and tightly managing the narrative around Susan. Fit a pattern of someone more focused on self-protection than on finding a missing spouse. After the next over the next two years as the investigation into Susan's disappearance continued and Washington authorities uncovered Steve Powell's crimes, the pressure on Josh mounted. He lost his father's home as a base, lost full custody of his sons, and faced a court-ordered psychosexual evaluation. Instead of engaging in those processes, Josh would orchestrate a final act of control that weaponized not just his own life, but the lives of Charlie and Braden. As leverage against a world he felt was closing in to trace how this case exploded, literally and figuratively, literally and figuratively, you have to step back to December 6th and 7th 2009 in West Valley City, Utah. On Sunday, December 6th, Susan attended church with Charlie and Braden at their local LDS ward and then- *blast sound* House where Susan was reportedly tired and not feeling well. That evening according to Josh's later statements, he decided to take the boys on a late-night camping trip in the middle of a snowstorm, leaving Susan allegedly asleep at home. This account struck investigators and family as implausible from the beginning, who takes two very young children camping after midnight in freezing conditions, with no clear destination and limited supplies. On the morning of Monday, December 7th, concerned co-workers reported that Susan had not shown up for work and that her children were absent from daycare. West Valley City Police went to the Powell Home and found no one was answering the door, eventually and eventually forced entry, discovering Susan's purse, wallet and keys inside, along with two fans blowing on a wet couch where a dark spot suggested recently cleaned fabric. There was no sign of Susan and nothing indicated she had left voluntarily. Her car was in the driveway and there were no known plans for travel or a break from work and childcare duties. Later that day, Josh returned home with the boys and was quickly taken to the police station for questioning. He told officers he had gone camping at Simpson Springs in Utah's West Desert, leaving around midnight and returning late in the afternoon claiming he had forgotten all about the workday and childcare schedules. Investigators found his explanations about the timing, the weather and Susan's supposed sleep at home to be inconsistent with common sense and with what they knew about Susan's habits and responsibilities. Early theories considered possibilities ranging from an accident to voluntary disappearance, but suspicion quickly turned to foul play, centered on Josh. As the days turned into weeks West Valley Police pursued multiple leads, they searched the Simpson Springs area, tracked Josh's movements through cell phone records and vehicle JPS and canvas neighbors for anything unusual around the time Susan went missing. They also learned of Susan's 2008 morning letter and her statements about fear of Josh, adding a chilling context to her disappearance. Despite intensive effort, no physical remains or definitive crime seen linked to Susan were recovered, leaving investigators with a strongly suspected victim. And a likely suspect, but nobody and no formal charges. In 2010 and 2011, as the missing person's case remained open, the Powell family's geographic center shifted from Utah to Washington. Josh moved with Charlie and Braden to Washington, living first with his father Steve, whose home would later become the focus of us, whose home would later become the focus of a separate criminal case when authorities executed a search warrant related to Susan's case and uncovered voyeuristic and child pornography materials. This search and Steve's subsequent arrest in September 2011 triggered child welfare concerns about the environment in which Charlie and Braden were being raised, resulting in the boys being placed with Susan's parents, Chuck and Judy Cox. While Josh was granted supervised visitation, in early February 2012, the stage was set for a tragic convergence of long-running investigations and immediate child welfare decisions. A Washington judge had recently ordered Josh to undergo a psychosexual evaluation, including a polygraph as part of the custody case and child welfare officials were seeking more information about materials linked to the Powell home. Josh knew his access to Charlie and Braden was under scrutiny and that the court could move to further restrict his contact if the evaluation or new evidence suggested additional risk. On February 5, 2012, during what should have been a routine supervised visit near Graham Washington, those accumulated tensions erupted into an explosion that not only killed Josh and his sons, but forced the entire system to confront the unsettling question of how warning signs have been interpreted and missed two law enforcement jurisdictions anchor this story. A St. Valley City Police Department in Utah, which investigated Susan's December 2009 disappearance, and the authorities in Washington state, including the Pierce County Sheriff's Department and local agencies, which responded to the 2012 explosion and oversaw related child welfare inquiries. From the outset, St. Valley detectives treated the Powell home as a potential crime. crime scene, seizing computers, reviewing cell phone records, and noting anomalies like the wet couch and missing bedsheets. Search warrants extended two vehicles and electronic devices, allowing investigators to reconstruct some of Josh's movements and communications in the hours and days surrounding Susan's disappearance. Digital friends played a significant role, particularly in Utah where cell phone tower pings and call logs helped investigators evaluate Josh's story about his late night camping trip and his whereabouts when Susan was last seen. The data did not provide a full blueprint of his movements, but it raised questions about the plausibility of his claimed timeline and highlighted gaps that he did not credibly explain in interviews. In later years, law enforcement also pursued searches in remote areas of Utah and Nevada, including mine shafts near Eli, based on potential leads and theories about where Susan's body might have been concealed. But these efforts did not locate her remains. Back in Washington, the August 2011 search of Steve Powell's home executed in connection with the Utah investigation opened an unexpected window into the Powell family's hidden life. Those siege journals, computer hard drives, and digital media uncovering voyeuristic materials and child sexual abuse images that led to Steve's arrest on multiple counts of voyeurism and possession of child pornography. Although those charges were legally separate from Susan's disappearance, they confirmed that Charlie and Braden had been living in a highly unsafe environment and directly influenced Washington's decision to remove the boys from Josh's custody and place them with their maternal grandparents. The forensic picture of the February 2012 explosion came together quickly. Investigators determined that Josh had brought in at least two five gallon gasoline cans and used accelerant throughout the house, setting a fast-moving fire that originated near the center of the home where he and his boys' bodies were later found. Autopsies showed that Charlie and Braden died primarily from carbon monoxide poisoning, but also had significant chopping injuries to the head and neck. And a hatchet was recovered near Josh's body, leading authorities to conclude he attacked the boys before the fire overtook them. E-mail sent by Josh Torellitus, his attorney, and others shortly before the explosion detailed instructions about his assets and affairs, and included an explicit statement that he could not live without his sons, clearly indicating pre-meditation. When you compare Josh's long-standing statements about being a loving, unfairly targeted father with the physical and digital evidence from the explosion, the contradiction is stark. A man who insisted he just wanted to parent his boys safely, planned an event that required acquiring gasoline, arranging the interior of his homes sending farewell emails, and exploiting a supervised visitation to ensure he had time alone with Charlie and Braden. Doctors and prosecutors in Washington characterized the explosion and killings as clearly intentional, with one share of bluntly referring to it as the murder of two young children and likely a de facto confession to whatever happened, Susan. The investigative breakthrough in this case was not a moment that solved Susan's disappearance that remains officially unresolved. But the combination of Utah's long-term missing persons inquiry, the Washington state search of Steve Powell's home and the forensic reconstruction of the February 2012's explosion together the strands painted a coherent narrative, a controlling husband, a wife who documented her fear, an extended family environment, rife with sexual boundary violations, and a final act of murder suicide that matched the worst-case scenario advocates had warned about. At that point, attention necessarily shifted from building a prosecutable homicide case against Josh no longer possible to examining the systems that had intersected with this family, and to the civil and administrative processes that would follow. Because Susan's disappearance never resulted in criminal charges against Josh during his lifetime, the classic criminal trial arc you might expect in a homicide case never fully materialized on that front, instead courtroom proceedings centered on two parallel tracks, the Washington criminal prosecution of Steve Powell for voyeurism in child pornography, and the family court and dependency court battles over custody and safety planning for Charlie and Braden. For Susan's disappearance, West Valley City authorities publicly stated that Josh was a person of interest and that they believed they were dealing with a homicide. But no formal murder charges were filed before his death. In the Washington criminal case against Steve Powell, prosecutors charged him with multiple counts of voyeurism and possession of child pornography after investigators recovered, explicit images and recordings taken without consent, including images of neighborhood children. The prosecution's theory was straightforward. Steve had secretly recorded and collected sexualized images, demonstrating both criminal behavior and a deeply unsafe environment for any children living in his home. Defensive attorneys challenged aspects of the search and characterization of certain images, but a jury ultimately convicted Steve on several counts leading to a prison sentence that underscored the seriousness of his conduct. In the family court realm, the focus was on the best interests and safety of Charlie and Braden. Steve's arrest and the revelation of the material seized from his home, Washington's child welfare agency moved to remove the boys from Josh's care, citing concerns about their living environment and unresolved questions about Susan's disappearance. The boys were placed temporarily with their maternal grandparents, the cox's, while Josh was granted supervised visitation under strict conditions. During these dependency proceedings, one key decision point came when a judge ordered Josh to undergo a psychosexual evaluation, including a polygraph. As part of determining whether he could safely regain custody or unsupervised contact with his sons or unsupervised contact with his sons, the state's position was that given the voyeurism in child pornography evidence in the extended family and the unresolved suspicion around Susan's disappearance, such an evaluation was necessary to fully assess risk. Josh's legal team continued to argue that he was being unfairly punished for his father's crimes, and that there was no direct evidence he had harmed his children, framing the state's concerns as speculation. There was never a criminal trial for the murder of Charlie and Braden because Josh died in the same explosion that killed them, and authorities quickly classified the deaths as a murder suicide. These county officials and other Washington authorities publicly stated that the evidence, fuel cans, accelerant patterns, emails, and the locked door scenario with the social worker outside, demonstrated premeditated homicide. Without a surviving defendant, there were no charges to file, but the investigative findings functioned as a de facto public case, shaping how the community and Susan's family understood what had happened. On the aftermath, civil litigation also became part of the legal landscape. Susan's parents filed claims against Washington State agencies arguing that child welfare and court supervised visitation decisions had failed to adequately protect Charlie and Braden. Despite numerous warning signs, reviews and reports commissioned after the murders examined the timeline of caseworker actions, court hearings, and information sharing between agencies, critiquing delays and misoption and misopportunities to fully account for risk. Those proceedings did not bring Susan Charlie or Braden back, but they forced institutions to publicly reckon with the consequences of their decisions and consider reforms. In the years since the explosion in Graham Washington, Susan's family has to carry a triple grief. The unresolved loss of Susan, the confirmed murders of Charlie and Braden, and the knowledge that the system meant to protect them did not act in time. They have continued to speak publicly about Susan's sharing memories of her as a loving daughter, sister, and mother, and they are vocal about the boys' personalities, their playfulness, their affection. The ways they had started to slowly heal in their grandparents' home before their deaths, keeping Susan's name in the public conversation is not just about seeking formal closure in a legal sense. It is about refusing to let her story fade into the background of a case often overshadowed by Josh's final act. Memorials for Charlie and Braden have taken physical and symbolic forms. The boys were buried at Woodbine Cemetery in Washington, where Memorial for Susan sits as well, creating a shared space for remembering the family as a unit, rather than as fragments of separate tragedies, identity vigils, anniversary gatherings, and online remembrance campaigns have kept their memories visible and provided a place for collective mourning, especially around key dates like Susan's disappearance and the February 2012 explosion. These rituals serve not only the immediate family, but the broader community that followed the case and felt the shock of realizing this has happened and felt the shock, one of the most pain in the face. handful parts of the aftermath has been reviewing the record of warning signs and missed opportunities. Susan's 2008 letter, her documented fears about Josh, the escalating concerns around Steve Powell's voyeurism and child pornography, the boy's statements after her disappearance, and the long-running status of Josh as a person of interest all painted a picture of high risk that in retrospect seems unmistakable. Several reviews and reports have acknowledged delays in communicating critical information, debates over the weight of circumstantial evidence, and the challenges of acting decisively when a suspect has not been criminally charged. None of this is about assigning simple blame. It is about understanding how, in a complex system, risk signals can be recognized but still not fully integrated into life or death decisions. If you hear echoes of your own situation or someone you care about in Susan's story, you know that resources exist even when the past feels impossibly tangled. National and local domestic violence hotlines, crisis centers, and legal aid organizations can help with safety planning, housing, and navigating protective orders. Many have confidential chat and text options if calling feels unsafe. Violence co-workers and faith leaders can play a role too, not by trying to fix everything, but by believing disclosures, helping document concerns, and connecting victims with specialized support. No one case can tell you exactly what to do. But cases like this remind us that taking threats, coercion, and isolation seriously is not overreacting. It is survival work. As I sit with the story of Susan, Charlie and Braden, I keep coming back to the contrast between the ordinary and catastrophic church services, the suburban routines, the kids supervised visits, existing alongside secret letters, sealed court files, and ultimately the explosion, and ultimately an explosion that ended three lives. The Powell family case is heavy, not because of its twists, but because of how many points along the way someone tried to raise a hand and say something is wrong here. Remembering them means honoring those voices, pushing our systems to do better, and believing people the first time when they say they're afraid. What you have just heard isn't more than just a crime story. It's a glaring reminder of how quickly emotions can turn fatal, and how often warning signs go unseen. Until next time, I'm Kelsey Koffee reminding you to lock your doors, bolt your windows, and beware of the dangers hiding in plain sight.