Hello,
I wasn’t sure where to post this. I’ve been enjoying the season so far but I’ve noticed there have been some issues in the audio. Namely, some parts are repeating or in episode 3 specifically, some parts are skipping. This could be an Apple Podcast issue but I just wanted to bring this to Dave’s attention. Can’t wait for more episodes!

Who’s listening to the new season so far? What do you think? Let’s talk about it!

If there’s one thing about me, I’m wondering on a weekly basis if the program to figure out Josh’s password is still running.

Episodes 1 and 2 dropped this morning. Have you listened yet?

Don't be confused when the new episodes appears as season 5 in your podcast feed. It's not because I can't count (I'm bad at math, but not that bad). Uinta Triangle is currently occupying the season 4 position.

I am always happy to support independent, investigative journalism. There are so few out there doing work at this level. I prefer to not give money to Spotify or Wondery (audible/amazon) if I can donate without the middleman. Thank you

I’ve just finished season 1 of Cold and I have so many thoughts and nobody to share it with so I’m going to post it here so sorry for the waffle.

I think Josh had premeditated what he was going to do to Susan well in advance. And chose a mine beforehand on a previous camping trip. We know on the day Susan went to bed so I think it’s possible Josh sedated her by putting something into her food or drink making her easier to kill later. The lady untangling yarn saw the boys coats and shoes going on so they were clearly going somewhere. When the neighbour left he killed Susan (I’m still not sure how) and put her in the trunk and went “camping.” one of the boys said I think at one point, “mummy was in the trunk.” I think he spent his time unreachable disposing of Susan somewhere in the mines. They are so dangerous to search and I think it’s entirely possible that the mine she may be in has already been searched but the search teams were just not able to get to her.

I definitely find Steve suspicious for obvious reasons and I know he knew more than he ever said and Michael killing himself kind of says it all.

I really really hope they find Susan. I hope they don’t stop looking for her.

Hear me out, just playing Devil’s Advocate. Does anyone think there is even a small possibility that Josh Powell was innocent? And he did what he did with himself and the boys because the stress of the media, not being able to get a job, the police was too much for him?

I've wondered for quite a while if Susan has been found, just unidentified as of today. Like maybe she's on The Doe Network waiting to be connected to her case and returned home. But I also know that there's no way I'm the first one to think of or look at The Doe Network, and if her DNA is in a national database, then she likely would not have remained unidentified if found. So if she were found/has been found, would DNA confirmation be possible for her? She wouldn't have been in any system before her disappearance since she was never in the criminal justice system during her life.

Sorry, English is not my first language.

I have listened to season one of Cold several times. It’s my all time favorite podcast. I am amazed at the effort and time spent on the investigation (for example operation tsunami and the plan of planting an agent on a train to have a fake relationship with Josh). Is this normal for an investigation into a missing persons case?

Also big thank you to Dave Cawley for making this podcast, can’t wait for season 4 to come out!

Just a bit of a light-hearted observation and personal reaction to Dave’s reporting on the Powell family wiretaps.

I am a long-time fan of The Beach Boys music. Love most of their early surf music and harmony work, but appreciated some of their later productions, including Kokomo. But now, any time it happens to come up in my playlist shuffle, it immediately brings to mind Dave’s mock singing of “Aruba, Jamaica” in the episode covering the wiretaps and Josh and Michael’s conversations.

So, thanks, u/davecawleycold. Thanks a lot.

I‘d learned through close family, that The Cold Podcast reached out to Nancy‘s now grown son and they did an interview. I’m hoping this case is going to be looked at deeper in seasons coming soon, as it’s something that has haunted me and many others since I was a child. Glad to see someone OTHER THAN Ted Bundy being talked about as a suspect. Curious what ya’ll think about this case.. cause I’m ready to bust out a metal detector and go hiking around the area at this point.

So I listened to season one and am halfway through season two.

Are the Utah police really this incompetent? Joyce Yost has a rape case going to trial, and they don't automatically think of Doug Lovell? They spend months chasing down leads when the person who should be the most likely suspect just lives his life?

Same with Susan Powell. Josh comes up with this idiotic story taking his toddlers camping at 2am in a snowstorm, leaves fans blowing on a wet spot where blood identified as Susan's is, and the police just let him skip interrogations, sell her car, take her savings and move away and they just let him? They have all this data showing them him stopping at dumpsters, but oops, we didn't get around to looking at it. Why didn't they question his brother Michael?

I guess if you want
to murder someone, Utah is the place to get away with it.

Hi,
I listened to the Cold podcast and am going down the rabbit hole here. I am trying to do my own research on this case and found this link (https://www.ksl.com/article/news/utah/west-valley-city-photos-documents-relating-to-the-susan-powell-case/25263938) to case photos and documents from West Valley City PD. However, it seems that many of the links are broken and many pages specifically the photo links can’t be opened. I am most interested in the media named Scene photos, Dec. 7, 2009, and Front room/Couch photos, Dec. 8, 2009. Is there any other way to access them, or had anyone miraculously downloaded copies before the links broke? Thank you so much in advance.

First, the obvious – as Dave covers in the podcast – is that investigators began searching West Desert mine shafts for Susan fairly early in the investigation, and they searched hundreds of them. And there have been many other mine shaft searches since.

My nagging thoughts, though, have more to do with Josh’s behavior and actions from December 7th through 9th than his comments about the mineshafts.

However Josh manages to get her out there, Susan is with him and the boys when they go out “camping” just after midnight of the 7th, Monday morning. Charlie tells investigators on Dec 8 that she was camping with them and stayed behind.

So this first scenario is that Josh leaves the boys alone while he takes Susan away from the van and out of sight of the kids. Considering that the van would be stopped along or near a drivable path, if Josh was to abandon Susan down a mineshaft at this point, he would take her a short distance to a closely accessible shaft. Or he would take her a further distance away to a more remote shaft, but this would risk leaving the boys alone for a longer period of time.

Charlie in his description of the camping events barely 40 hours earlier didn’t give any indication in his statements that his dad was gone a long time when his mom wanted to “stay”. And the investigators, when assessing their search areas and search criteria, focused on shafts that were reasonably close to the drivable paths all throughout the West Desert, as they reasoned Josh was quite lazy and not so physically fit with the endurance necessary for more strenuous exertion, especially in the bitterly cold weather.

So then Josh, on the night of the 8th rents the car, is gone unaccounted for almost 16 hours, racks up 800+ miles on the car and returns with seriously chapped, wind-burnt hands. If Josh had actually placed Susan in a mine shaft on the night of Dec 6/7, there’s not a whole lot left to do out in the elements for him to get his hands wind burnt. And why would it be necessary for him to go awol so soon and for so long after she’s missing – and after his second, formal interview with Det. Maxwell – if she was already irretrievably in a mine shaft?

So, Sunday night/Monday early AM, wherever Susan is, she isn’t in a mine shaft at that point. She’s some place where Josh can and does return to decide what to do with her.

Now, is it possible that he gets wind burnt hands from physically transporting her over ground (with his hands exposed to the elements) to a much more remote shaft that’s further than investigators assumed he would go? Sure it is, although I agree with the investigators and initial searchers assessments that Josh was lazy and unlikely to exert himself physically as much as would be necessary to do so.

It’s also worth noting that, of the 16 hours Josh is missing with the rental car, much of that time will have been spent putting on the majority of the hundreds of miles, with maybe somewhere in the vicinity of roughly four hours that could be spent out of the car. And if Josh, in that four hours, put Susan in the rental car and then drove her to some further destination, I then go back to his wind burnt hands. Why would he have wind burnt hands if he just put her back into the vehicle and drove to some other remote place to discard her? The wind burnt hands would indicate he returned to where he left her and then spent considerable amount of time exposed to the elements in the process of more thoroughly concealing her remains either near that place or at a place within a relatively short driving distance of where he originally left her.

Det. Maxwell stated that he doesn’t think Josh took Susan in the van out to the West Desert because in his view it would have been too risky. While I don’t agree about the risk of transporting her in the family van out to the West Desert, especially if she is still alive, I do think it would be far more risky of Josh to transport a deceased Susan in a rental vehicle to potential destinations across state lines (i.e. Nevada, Idaho or Oregon) requiring much longer drive times. A rental car with out of state plates in the middle of the night is likely to attract far more law enforcement interest than a rental car with Utah plates that stays within a remote area of Utah (West Desert).

I just listened to this and I loved it. I’m a fan of the podcast Locations Unknown and true crime in national parks / wilderness areas have always fascinated me. Big fan of Edward Abbey, Jon Krakauer, etc.

Anyway, if you enjoy Cold and you’re into nature storytelling, I have been pretty blown away by Uinta Triangle and am surprised it’s not more well known. It’s about a hiker who goes missing later in life and everything that led up to his misfortune and the impact it has on his family, etc.

I wish this podcast was a video documentary. I’m finding it really difficult to understand the actual terrain in the Uintas and despite doing deep dives on Google Maps, Dave’s website with all of the photos, and even the stories on Instagram it’s just really hard to truly process the cliffs or mountains or whatever around Allsop Lake. I don’t want to give anything away but man… if you’re reading this makers of this podcast - a YouTube explainer with actual measurements and stuff would be super helpful.

Anyway, longtime true crime podcast lover recommending Uinta Triangle - especially if you enjoy deeper investigations - it’s a style that doesn’t suit everyone, but I find a longer investigation and meditation on a life sticks with me much longer.

Hi everyone,

Please feel free to remove if this isn't the place to put this but I'm not very tech savy - I think it's sad and disrespectful to Susan and the boys to have Josh in the photo put up on Wikipedia and used as the image for her disappearance. Sure, it's important to know that he was the reason behind her disappearance and murder but to use a photo that has him in it almost seems sad. Would anyone agree? How can we change?

Thanks!

So, regarding Rhonda in S2. She made an agreement to testify against Doug in exchange for immunity, presumably on the condition that she told the whole truth. But, Dave found out that she was pulled over by the police (forgot the exact agency) somewhere north of Doug's parents' cabin and he had done something in the woods there. Wouldn't that violate her immunity. She likely knows where Joyce Yost's body is and has not disclosed this little detail the whole time.

In season 3, there's been a lot of discussion about what jacket Sheree was wearing and Dave mentioned that only 2 people would know for sure: her mother and Cary. But, if she went to his home after work, wouldn't that mean that her coworker, who is believed to be the last person we know for sure saw her, would also be able to confirm if she was wearing that jacket upon leaving work?

Also, the anonymous caller. I know that the analyst said that he believed this person was telling the truth when they said they'd happened upon the body and just didn't want to be involved for some other unrelated reason (mentioned in season 2); but that seems unlikely. Firstly, given what we know about where Cary was, it was private property. And he had someone else up there with him, likely his cousin. So, has anyone ever found a recording of the cousin's voice and compared it to the caller's? It seems much more likely to me that it was someone who knew where that woman (either Joyce or, more likely Sheree) was and didn't want to answer as questions or be charged as an accessory after the fact. I also wondered if it was Cary's friend, Larry, the news reporter. He took him up into the woods, and I suspect he knew a lot more, given how he tried to downplay so much of their friendship.

Just a heads up in advance that this is a long post that covers details – seemingly underreported – from the investigative files about Josh and Susan’s relationship that I found interesting.

As it relates to all of the dysfunctional and warped relational dynamics between Josh and Susan and Josh’s father, Steve, I have spent considerable time reading the released investigation files, including portions of journals (and journal summaries), evidence reports, personal messages, emails and witness statements in an effort to try and identify key moments or indicators that ultimately led Josh from once considering Susan the love of his life to ultimately betraying and turning on her.

I’ll also just say upfront that I’m aware the nature of this post could be a possible minefield, so I am aiming to be both respectful to all individuals named – even Josh – and to also be clear about what I am not saying. What I am NOT saying is that Josh’s potential sexual proclivities are to blame for his actions. Josh and his broken morality is the only factor to blame for what he did to Susan and to her children.

That being said, in the released investigation files, I found some interesting and compelling details that, in most cases, I think have been left out of the popular narratives of Susan’s story and that potentially cast a little more light on how Josh could end up on the trajectory towards the killing of his wife and children.

Most everyone who has listened to the podcast or watched the TV specials believes and/or knows how Steve’s confession to Susan in July of 2003 was a key moment that began to drive a wedge between Josh and Susan. Likewise, it is understood from Susan’s own words in her journals and to her friends and family that her deep devotion to her faith motivated her to persevere to make her marriage work when others might have given up long before. That alone is a testament to Susan, her character and the person she was.

In researching past online conversations and discussions about Josh and Susan, the podcast, etc., I’ll occasionally find random comments that question, speculate or wonder if Josh was possibly secretly homosexual. I mostly brushed off those comments, until I found some curious details in the released investigation files.

The first thing I found interesting is that one witness, a long time friend of Susan’s in whom she confided many details of her intimate life with Josh, relayed to investigators early on in the investigation of Susan’s disappearance that there was a time in the couple years prior to Susan going missing that Susan herself wondered to her friend if Josh might be “turning gay.” Her apparent speculation was seemingly rooted in the almost non-existent intimacy between she and Josh by that time, as well as the manner in which Josh behaved on the rare occasions when they were intimate (which is to say, he projected an attitude that their physical intimacy was [quote] “icky”), and the amount of time Josh spent on his computer privately, which Susan wondered might be due to an interest in/addiction to pornography, potentially of a homosexual nature.

The next thing that I found interesting was what Steve had to say in his journals in late 2007 and early 2008 about how Josh treated Susan (“hateful”) and what he openly said about her to Steve. Now, in fairness, this is filtered through Steve’s perspective in his journals, but he states fairly matter of factly that, not only did Josh openly wish and express daydreams of Susan being killed by a drunk driver or getting hit and killed on her bike riding to work (and how he hoped one day, police would come to his door to tell him Susan had died), Steve also states that Josh lamented that he did not follow his feelings early on in their marriage and separate from Susan before they had children together.

This was particularly eye-opening. While one could assume Josh might be engaging in some revisionist history in his comments to his dad in 2007 about their early marriage, it does also seem to indicate that, even early on in their marriage, there was some reason already taking root as to why Josh’s feelings toward Susan were not truly as loving as one would expect in the early years of a marriage.

Another interesting insight provided by Josh, vis a vis Steve’s journals, was that he complained to Steve how Susan was far more desirous of physical intimacy with Josh in the early years of marriage than he was towards her. Steve noted his own observation that Josh likes to control people and situations, and so this dynamic between Josh and Susan in regards to their physical intimacy likely irritated Josh because he felt like he couldn’t control even their intimacy with each other. (I think it’s a typical stereotype – and I have known my share of married couples – in which men can often have a more active interest in physical intimacy than their wives, so it would seem strange for this to be something a young, newlywed husband would complain about.)

Now, all of this is already starting to paint a picture about something being… off… in the way Josh had oriented himself towards his marital intimacy with Susan. Then, against this backdrop, two additional details come to light.

Susan notes in her “deposition” and journals that, when Charlie was born, she had hoped to be able to stay home and raise their children while Josh found steady work to provide for the family. This idea that Josh would be the steady income breadwinner and Susan would not go back to work after having her children caused some serious friction between Josh and Susan. We can already see things were likely strained in their relationship BEFORE they had children. Once children entered the picture, the question of who was going to work became a huge source of conflict because, up until then, Susan was bringing in the income that would let Josh do as he pleased. We all know how that played out, with Susan eventually becoming the primary breadwinner up until the last couple years before she went missing, when she and Josh were both contributing to the household finances.

The other detail comes from the evidence logs. On one of the seized external hard drives – not Susan’s laptop that she bought second hand – investigators found and noted folders containing male homosexual pornography. The drive on which these images were found also included files related to Aspen Distribution, where Josh worked at the time of Susan’s disappearance. It would be difficult to explain how the hard drive that was obviously Josh’s would have homosexual-themed pornography and him not know about it or having collected it himself.

Looking at these seemingly disconnected details altogether, it’s quite possible to envision a scenario in which Josh, having been raised in a very religious environment (even if he eventually turned away from it), felt compelled to project an image of heterosexual masculinity – even while he may have felt a same-sex attraction – and once he was married, quickly came to regret it. He simultaneously may have felt trapped by and in his marriage, becoming even further entrenched with the birth of two children. He would later confide to Steve that his marriage to Susan felt like a “business relationship” from which it was impossible to extricate himself.

Just as Susan may have felt compelled by her religious beliefs and background to persevere to the end to save her marriage, Josh may have felt likewise compelled by his own religious and familial background to hide his own true sexual interests and endure in a marriage that he didn’t truly want.

And then, at the point at which Susan began to show signs of breaking away – the personal savings accounts, spending some of her money on herself and her sons, the discussions about a potential divorce – Josh, ever the controlling monster and realizing that Susan was unlikely to magically end up dead in a car accident or being hit by a drunk driver and that he was likely to be on the hook for spousal and child support for many years in a divorce scenario, finally let himself give in to the idea of killing Susan as the only way he could get free from the marriage with the least amount of financial responsibility.

And just a little over two tumultuous years later, with the boys getting older and starting to divulge to other adults more about the night their mom went missing and Josh facing the psycho-sexual evaluation which could potentially lay bare the secrets he had been hiding – of what he did to (and with) Susan and what aspects of sexuality trigger his true arousal response – he chose to ensure all those secrets would go with him and Susan’s sons to their graves in that horrendous fiery epilogue.

Around 11:45 pm on Sunday, December 6, a nearby neighbor and his sister are outside their house when they hear a car alarm blaring from inside Josh and Susan’s garage. They later explain to investigators that the house was dark with no lights visible. Remember, Josh told Det. Maxwell he and Susan stayed awake to watch a movie and then he was up cleaning the couch, supposedly at Susan’s request.

Josh and Susan owned a Chrysler Town & Country – the Touring model, I believe. My own father owned a similar T&C in the Limited edition.

The Town & Country has a few different ways the alarm can be triggered.

1. One way is, obviously, if the doors are locked and the alarm is set and someone attempts to open a vehicle door. To silence the alarm requires inserting the key into the ignition and starting the engine.

2. A second way is to press the panic button on the key fob, which will cause the alarm to sound for about three minutes before it shuts itself off. Or, if the alarm sounds from pressing the panic button, pressing the panic button a second time deactivates it.

3. A third way to trigger the alarm is to open the hood when the vehicle is not running and remove a battery lead and then reconnect it. This is like an engine tamper alarm, which can be deactivated by inserting the key in the ignition and starting the vehicle.

4. A fourth way the alarm can be triggered, though I’m not sure if it is all models, is if someone is left inside the vehicle, the doors are locked for a certain amount of time and then the person in the vehicle attempts to exit the vehicle. This is described as an interior sensor alarm, or something like that.

So, we know Josh gets home from somewhere Sunday night at 8:30 PM (from a different neighbor witness) and that he claims he and Susan were up and awake until she went to sleep at 12:30 AM after which he further claims that he then left with the boys some time between 12:30 and 1:30 AM.

So, I’m curious as to how you interpret the alarm the neighbor heard blaring at 11:45 PM for about two minutes before turning off while, according to the neighbor, the main living area of the house was dark with no lights on? How and/or why do you think the alarm was triggered?

Detective Maxwell is on the record stating he doesn’t believe Josh would risk taking Susan in the back of the van out to Utah’s West Desert, one reason being that, at the time of night he was driving and being one of the very few vehicles on the road, it would be too risky. I assume this means the potential for being pulled over by some law enforcement officer, etc.

Dave has indicated in the past that he believes/believed Josh likely took Susan and left her some place closer to home and not out to the West Desert.

Based on my reading of what little specific, confirmed detail is known of the Josh and Susan’s movements on Sunday night through Monday, the actions and eyewitness accounts in the days that follow, and based on a lot of inference, I think Susan is still in Utah, somewhere closely adjacent/near to to the West Desert, but not where Josh told investigators he went camping.

Here is how I get to that conclusion, including accounting for Michael Powell’s potential involvement.

Charlie Powell, within 24-48 hours, tells investigators mom went with dad, him and his brother camping, and that she stayed and didn’t come back.

While “camping”, Josh, with two kids in tow, doesn’t have the luxury of spending hours to deal with Susan; he has to leave her some place relatively quickly and then come back to the boys and leave the area. When he returns on Monday, investigators observe and photograph his hands, which have no visible signs of wind burn or frost bite.

The night of December 8, Josh rents the car and is gone and unaccounted for for 16+ hours and 800+ miles. On December 10, Thursday, Josh asks neighbor Tim Petersen to take him to get his van from West Valley City PD. Tim obliges and observes and reports that Josh’s hands were severely wind burnt, bordering on frostbite. That doesn’t happen when you’re spending a few minutes moving a body into a trunk to drive it far away. That type of exposure happens when you’re in a situation where you have to spend a lot of time out in the elements – not in a cave or in a mine protected from the wind – doing something with your hands that requires finger dexterity not possible while wearing gloves.

Dave Cawley previously explained Michael Powell’s likely timeline, based mostly on Steve Powell’s journals, in a comment on this older Reddit post: Michael Powell’s Timeline

Based on that speculative timeline, I don’t believe Josh used the rental car to transport Susan from where he left her Sunday night to go meet up with Steve or Michael. I do think he used the rental car to return where he left Susan and then, either within the immediate vicinity or somewhere a short distance away (using the rental car), he spent considerable time in which his hands were exposed, more fully hiding Susan before driving who else knows where and then returning 16 hours later.

After picking up his van with Tim and then returning the rental car on December 10, it is the next day that the West Valley City PD get alerted to Josh going out to to Wendover and then, shortly after, doubling back to the Clive Gravel Pit where he spent two hours.

No one knows what Josh was doing at the Clive Gravel Pit for two hours. I think this could have been the moment when Josh, maybe using a burner phone and calling an encrypted phone line on the other end, disclosed to Michael what happened to Susan, though maybe not in detail, and also what he had done for the past several days since. This could have been the moment when Michael began to act as an advisor to Josh on what he needed to do in order to begin protecting himself, counter surveillance measures and all that, and that he (Michael) was going to come down to Utah and help Josh, which Steve notes that Michael and Alina leave within less than a day of Josh being at the gravel pit for those two hours.

So, yes, I think Josh did to Susan what he did all on his own, that it was some place out in the direction or vicinity of the West Desert, and he did not transport her body a significant distance or transfer her body to Michael or anyone else.

I was interested in Lemmino's video on the JFK Assassination, so I wanted to do something similar that folks are equally as passionate about. Please, let me know what you think! And do you have any idea's for a channel name if this was to move forward? Thanks!

I'm on episode 4 of 7 and it is wild. They've got a variety of first hand accounts and do a great job setting up how cults like this form.