COLD: New experiment aims to identify mystery metal evidence in Susan Powell cold case

WEST VALLEY CITY — An experiment by KSL’s COLD Podcast has revealed the likely source of a key piece of evidence in the death of Susan Cox Powell, 15 years after she disappeared.

The evidence is a chunk of melted metal, along with a few charred wire scraps. Police located them during a search of the Powell family’s minivan on Dec. 8, 2009, the day after Susan Powell was first reported missing.

Investigators suspected Susan Powell’s husband, Josh Powell, might have melted the object using an oxyacetylene torch he purchased less than two weeks before his wife disappeared. They theorized the melted metal might have been a cell phone, GPS unit or hard drive. COLD previously put that theory to the test, and disproved it.

Further research of the Susan Powell case files by COLD suggested the metal object might instead have been a small handheld power tool. In an effort to test that hypothesis, COLD obtained a Ridgid impact driver and subjected it to high heat from an oxyacetylene cutting torch.

The result bore a strong resemblance to police photos of the melted metal object located in Josh Powell’s minivan.

The disappearance of Susan Powell

Susan Powell was last seen on the afternoon of Sunday, Dec. 6, 2009 at her home in West Valley City. Josh Powell had prepared a late lunch of pancakes for Susan and a neighbor, JoVanna Owings. A short time later, Susan told Owings she felt tired and went to rest.

Owings left the Powell family home on Sarah Circle at about 5:30 p.m. She was the last person other than Josh Powell to see Susan Powell.

The following morning, Josh and Susan Powell both failed to show up for work. Their children, four-year-old Charlie and two-year-old Braden, also did not arrive at daycare. The family’s daycare provider, Debbie Caldwell, became concerned and notified the Powell family’s emergency contact, Josh’s sister Jennifer Graves.

Graves and her mother, Terrica Powell, headed to Josh and Susan Powell’s house, while also calling 911 to notify police the family was missing. Police officers forced entry into the home by breaking a window. They feared the missing family might be unconscious inside, due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

However, the officers discovered there was no one in the house. Susan’s wallet, purse and keys were in the master bedroom, but the family’s minivan was not in the garage. Police also noticed the living room couch was damp, having been recently cleaned, and a pair of box fans were pointed at the wet spots on the couch.

Josh Powell’s camping trip

Josh and Susan Powell’s cell phones were both off or out of service during the day on Dec. 7, 2009. The first contact with Josh Powell occurred at 3:02 p.m., when he answered a phone call from JoVanna Owing’s son. Owings informed Josh that Susan had not gone to work and police were at the Sarah Circle house.

Cell tower records later revealed Josh Powell was in West Valley City at the time he received that phone call. He then drove about 30 miles south to Lehi, where he called Susan Powell’s phone and left a voicemail, stating he was on his way home from a camping trip.

Josh Powell was unaccounted for over the next two hours. His next contact occurred at about 5:30 p.m., when he again called Susan’s phone and left another message. Josh said he was waiting for Susan outside her office, as if he planned to pick her up and take her home.

Josh Powell didn’t return to the Sarah Circle house for another hour. A detective, Ellis Maxwell, confronted Josh in the driveway. In a subsequent interview, Josh told Maxwell he’d taken his sons out after midnight to camp along the Pony Express Trail in Utah’s West Desert. He insisted Susan knew about the trip, was okay with it and remained at home.

Josh Powell busy in the garage

Police suspected Josh Powell had murdered Susan, but believed they lacked probable cause to obtain an arrest warrant. They turned the Sarah Circle house over to Josh, after he promised to meet detectives for a follow-up interview.

A neighbor on Sarah Circle later reported that at about 11 p.m., Josh Powell pulled his minivan partway out of the garage. In a written statement, the neighbor said Josh spent “10-15 minutes walking around the van, going in and out of the house, and opening all the different doors of the van.”

The following morning, Josh missed his interview appointment with detective Maxwell. Powell’s sister, Jennifer Graves, arrived at the Sarah Circle house and found her brother cleaning.

In a written statement provided to police, Graves said Josh was in the garage and there was “a lot of water on the floor and it looked like there was some sawdust mixed in with the water.”

Josh Powell arrived at West Valley City police headquarters after 12:30 p.m., more than three hours late. At the same time, Jennifer Graves took Charlie and Braden Powell to the Salt Lake County Children’s Justice Center.

Charlie Powell told a detective Susan had gone camping with the family, but remained behind “where the crystals are.” Detective Maxwell confronted Josh with Charlie’s statement, which Josh denied.

Police then served search warrants on Powell’s minivan and the Sarah Circle house. During the search of the minivan, Maxwell located a plastic trash bag hidden in a floorboard compartment. It contained several sheets of badly burned drywall, three short wire segments that were charred, a few small screws, a screwdriver bit and the chunk of unidentifiable melted metal.

Josh Powell’s visit to AirGas

A week-and-a-half before Susan Powell’s disappearance, Josh Powell visited an AirGas store in South Salt Lake. AirGas is a distributor of gasses and equipment used in metal cutting and welding.

An AirGas employee, Andrew Robinson, assisted Josh. Robinson had not previously shared his experience publicly, and spoke exclusively with COLD.

“I approached Josh and asked if I can give some assistance in particular that he was looking for. And he spoke back saying that he was just having a look around,” Robinson said.

Robinson approached Josh again after 10 or 15 minutes and asked what it was Josh was looking to do.

“He was interested in welding equipment, what we had in the way of that. I asked what it was in particular that he wanted to weld. And he said he was interested in making jewelry,” Robinson said.

Josh asked questions that Robinson believed revealed an ignorance of oxyacetylene welding.

“I did get that impression from Josh that he didn’t have a great deal of knowledge regarding the use of the equipment,” Robinson said.

Robinson steered Josh toward a torch kit suitable for doing light welding, and provided him with small tanks of oxygen and acetylene gas to fuel the torch. Rather than purchase the recommended kit, Josh continued looking at other products. He eventually decided to purchase a larger torch more suitable for cutting steel.

“That struck me as odd,” Robinson said. “It was, let’s say, a little bit of overkill.”

Josh Powell’s torch troubles

Soon after leaving the AirGas store, Josh Powell realized the kit he’d purchased could not connect to the tanks he’d been provided. Josh went to a hardware store to attempt to purchase an adapter, but that didn’t work either.

Josh’s phone records showed he made several calls to AirGas over the next few days. He then returned to the store on Monday, November 30, 2009, one week prior to Susan Powell’s disappearance.

Andrew Robinson again saw Josh in the store.

“I could see he was a little bit irritated,” Robinson said.

AirGas staff provided Josh with much larger tanks of oxygen and acetylene gas, as well as the proper adapters and regulator to connect to the torch he’d purchased.

“The upgrade in cylinder size would not be something that you would purchase for a little home jewelry making,” Robinson said. “That would be more along the lines of either wanting to weld or cut steel.”

West Valley City police seized Josh Powell’s laptop computer after Susan Powell disappeared. A forensic search of the computer showed Josh conducted a Google search for the phrase “btu per cubic foot versus heat acetylene versus propane” on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009.

The computer forensics also revealed Josh created a text file on his laptop that same day titled Welding Instructions.txt. On Friday, Dec. 4, just two days before Susan Powell was last seen, Josh moved the Welding Instructions document to an encrypted portion of his hard drive.

Police were not able to break or bypass that encryption. It is not clear what information the “Welding Instructions” text file contained.

Josh Powell on the news

Josh Powell attempted to avoid the local news media in the days immediately following his wife Susan’s disappearance. He made brief comments to reporters at a candlelight vigil, and was confronted by KUTV reporter Chris Jones on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2009.

Andrew Robinson saw Josh Powell on the news and recognized him as the AirGas customer who’d come in a couple of weeks prior.

“I mentioned to my coworker about that and we pulled it up online and he said, ‘Yeah, that looks like him,’” Robinson said.

Robinson learned from news coverage that Josh Powell was claiming to have been camping on the Pony Express Trail the night that Susan Powell went missing. He was also aware of public speculation that Josh Powell might have killed Susan and left her body in an abandoned mine.

“A thought that entered my mind was that he was wanting to cut steel with [the torch],” Robinson said. “Maybe the grates on the mine shafts, he may have wanted to cut those open.”

Robinson decided to call West Valley City police and report his interactions with Josh Powell. Two detectives visited the AirGas store to interview Robinson. He provided them with a receipt from Josh Powell’s purchase of the torch, and showed the detectives CCTV footage to verify Powell’s presence at the store.

Josh Powell’s oxyacetylene torch

Josh Powell did not have the oxyacetylene torch with him during his “camping trip” on the Pony Express Trail on Dec. 7, 2009. Police photos show the torch was in the garage of the Sarah Circle house at that time.

Police photos taken over the next two days reveal changes to the torch. Most notable among those is blackening on the cutting tip. That is proof the torch was used between the time when Josh Powell returned home from the Pony Express Trail, and when he met with detectives the following day.

Whatever Josh Powell intended to use his oxyacetylene torch for, the evidence suggests he employed it to destroy a metal object in the garage of the Sarah Circle house. He then concealed the object in the minivan, likely with the intent of disposing of it away from the house.

West Valley City police found the melted metal object before that could happen. They submitted it to the FBI for forensic analysis in 2010. The FBI was unable to identify the object, but in a report stated it was “predominantly steel” with calcium and strontium also present.

Strontium is an element commonly used in the construction of small electric motors. This, combined with the presence of the charred wire segments in the trash bag with the melted metal object, suggested to COLD that the item Josh Powell likely destroyed could have been a power tool.

This theory was further supported by Josh Powell’s financial records, and by police photos from the garage of the Sarah Circle house.

The case for a Ridgid impact driver

Josh Powell filed for bankruptcy in 2007. Financial records later gathered by police after Susan Powell disappeared showed that Josh opened a new Home Depot credit card in Susan’s name while he was still seeking to discharge his debts.

Josh Powell made several large purchases using “Susan’s” Home Depot card in November of 2007. These included a number of Ridgid-brand tools. The financial records are not itemized to show what specific tools Josh purchased, but Powell family photos obtained exclusively by COLD suggest an 18-volt cordless tool kit was among them.

Ridgid’s product catalog at the time included two 18-volt kits. The primary difference between them was one included an impact driver, while the other did not. It is not clear from the financial records, or the Powell family photos, which of the two kits Josh purchased.

Police photos from the garage of the Sarah Circle house on Dec. 7, 2009 showed a Ridgid tool bag sitting on a chest freezer next to the door leading from the garage into the house. Police photos taken on Dec. 8 and 9, after Josh Powell’s return, revealed the Ridgid tool bag had moved to a spot on the garage floor, next to the oxyacetylene torch, a plastic gas can and a fire extinguisher.

All of the Ridgid tools that would’ve been included with an 18-volt cordless tool kit from 2007 can be accounted for in either police photos or Josh Powell’s personal picture library from after the date of Susan Powell’s disappearance. The lone exception to that is an impact driver.

Based on this evidence, COLD theorized the melted metal object might have been a Ridgid impact driver.

The drill melt experiment

In order to test the theory, COLD obtained a 2007-era Ridgid impact driver and staged an experiment to closely mimic Josh Powell’s suspected actions on the night after his wife Susan disappeared.

The experiment involved stacking several panels of fireproof sheetrock, then placing the impact driver on top of them. An oxyacetylene torch applied high heat to the tool.

The torch quickly melted the plastic casing of the impact driver, leaving a heavy coating of soot on the torch tip. The destruction of the casing revealed the steel body of the motor, as well as the wires connecting the motor to the switch and battery terminals. Plastic shielding on the wires also easily melted.

Application of high heat to the motor over the course of approximately 45 minutes caused the steel to become soft and malleable. Portions of the motor became disfigured, or fragmented off the body of the tool.

Police had speculated Josh Powell used gasoline as an accelerant when burning his unidentified metal object. COLD replicated this, dousing the severely damaged impact driver with gasoline and igniting it. Agitating the impact driver and drywall as they burned caused particles of gypsum from the drywall to become embedded in the metal.

COLD completed the experiment by dousing the impact driver with water.

Drill melt experiment conclusions

Andrew Robinson, the AirGas employee who interacted with Josh Powell, reviewed a video recording of COLD’s impact driver melt experiment. He believed the damaged impact driver resembled Josh Powell’s melted metal object.

“I believe there was a very close similarity,” Robinson said. “The power tool is fairly light material, all in all, and that torch certainly would be capable of reducing that to a molten clump of different materials.”

Robinson wondered, though, why Josh Powell would expend the time and effort to melt a power tool only hours after learning his wife was missing, and soon after police left the Sarah Circle house.

“Why would you destroy something like that,” Robinson said. “It’s quite feasible that the destruction of that … was involved somehow in Susan’s demise.”

Robinson did not personally believe Josh Powell purchased the oxyacetylene torch for the purpose of destroying a power tool, but the evidence and circumstances seemed to suggest Josh’s melted metal object might have been a murder weapon.

“Whether [Josh] premeditated it— ‘I’ll go to AirGas, I’ll buy this equipment because I’m going to do this and then I’ll melt the weapon,’—I don’t believe that to be the case,” Robinson said.