COLD: Searching for clues about Susan Powell’s death in her son Charlie’s police interviews

WEST VALLEY CITY — Kids sometimes tell fantastical stories. But when children are victims of abuse or witnesses to crimes, separating truth from fantasy in their stories can be a major challenge for police.

When Susan Cox Powell disappeared from her home on Dec. 7, 2009, investigators turned to her four-year-old son Charlie Powell for answers. Charlie spoke to a West Valley City police detective at the Salt Lake County Children’s Justice Center the following day. The story Charlie told proved both incriminating for his father and inscrutable to investigators.

Charlie said his mommy had gone “camping” with himself, his younger brother Braden and their father, Josh Powell, on the night Susan disappeared. He said Susan stayed behind, at a place “where the crystals are.” Police believed that to be a reference to a location in Utah’s vast West Desert, and they spent years scouring the Dugway Geode Beds, the Topaz Mountain area and hundreds of abandoned mines in search of Susan’s body.

Charlie also said he’d flown on a plane to go camping, which was clearly inaccurate. He said they’d camped at “Dinosaur National Park,” and that he’d visited a “beach” on the way home. There is no evidence Josh Powell traveled to Dinosaur National Monument on the night his wife disappeared, though the family had camped there a few months prior.

These perplexing statements did not lead investigators to Susan Powell’s remains, and they remain a source of speculation 15 years later.

Child forensic interviews

The police interview of Charlie Powell occurred at a Children’s Justice Center. That facility, and others like it, were established in counties across Utah during the 1990s. That coincided with changes in Utah law that led to increased police investigations into crimes targeting children.

The centers, or CJCs, were designed to serve as a safe and comfortable place for child victims or witnesses to speak about traumatic events.

“It’s not a police department of child protective services building,” Brianna Martinez said.

Martinez works as a forensic interviewer at the Weber-Morgan Children’s Justice Center in Ogden. That CJC sits in a residential area, in an old home. It does not look like, or function like, most government buildings. Martinez said that is by design. The approach is meant to put children at ease.

“They know that they’re not in any trouble and they’re just able to talk about what’s happened to them,” Martinez said.

In the early days of Utah’s CJC program, case detectives were often the ones leading those interviews with children. That was still the case at the time of Charlie Powell’s interview in 2009. The detective who interviewed Charlie was an employee of the West Valley City police department. She had received training on how to interview children, and followed best practices at the time.

However, in the years since, many of Utah’s CJCs have shifted away from having detectives perform interviews of children. Instead, they’re more likely to have specialists, like Martinez, conduct those delicate conversations with kids.

“My job is just to be a neutral fact-finder and gather information from them,” Martinez said. “While I’m in the room with a child, the detective or child protective services or both of them are in a separate monitoring room, and they’re monitoring the interview as it’s happening.”

Forensic interview specialists undergo training beyond what most police officers receive, with an emphasis on how to build rapport with children and the best method for asking open-ended questions. The approach seeks to avoid pitfalls that can occur if investigators pepper kids with leading questions, or solicit only fragments of information.

“The research shows that you get three-to-five times more accurate information from a child when you’re (asking) open-ended questions,” Martinez said. “You want to understand what the kid wants to tell you and you don’t want the story to be from you.”

Forensic interview best practices

The field of forensic interviewing continues to evolve as new science advances understanding into how children’s minds work.

“A lot has changed,” Martinez said. “We have our guidelines that we follow, but every kid’s different.”

The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, or APSAC, published guidelines for forensic interviews of children in 2023. The document emphasizes the importance of prioritizing the best interests of the child, and of taking a research-informed approach to interviewing. It states having a single interviewer in the room with a child is the best practice, because children may be influenced by or concerned about the reactions of others.

In the past, the preferred approach was to conduct one, and only one, interview. Because forensic interviews are audio and video recorded, those recordings may be used as evidence in criminal prosecutions rather than forcing a child to testify in open court. The APSAC still encourages minimizing “unnecessary” follow-up interviews, while recognizing that multiple interviews are sometimes required.

Brianna Martinez said in the case of repeat interviews, it’s beneficial to have the same person speak to the child.

“The reason is, I’ve already built rapport,” Martinez said. “Those second interviews are usually pretty close together.”

A gap in time between a set of interviews can also reveal telling changes in behavior, and reveal possible meddling on the part of others.

“Especially if their disclosure from their first interview to the second interview is completely different,” Martinez said.

Charlie Powell’s second interview

In the Susan Powell case, West Valley City police decided to attempt a second forensic interview with Charlie Powell in march of 2010. That was complicated though by Josh Powell’s abrupt move from Utah to Washington less than two weeks after his wife vanished.

West Valley detectives worked with Pierce County Sheriff’s Office in Washington to obtain a warrant that authorized deputies to temporarily seize Charlie and Braden away from Josh, for the purposes of conducting a second interview. They executed that warrant on March 10, 2010, and attempted a second interview with Charlie at a Children’s Advocacy Center in Tacoma, Washington.

KSL’s COLD podcast obtained a video recording of Charlie Powell’s interview. It shows the same detective who’d first spoken to Charlie three months earlier attempting to re-engage him on the topic of camping.

“We can’t talk about Susan or camping,” Charlie said. “I always keep things as secrets.”

The detective asked Charlie who told him to keep those things secret. Charlie stuttered before answering.

“My, my brain told me,” Charlie said. “My brain won’t tell me to say that.”

Charlie referring to his mom as “Susan,” and his attempts to change the subject away from camping, suggested he had likely been coached by his father or other family members not to talk to police.

Charlie repeatedly said his uncle John, one of Josh Powell’s two brothers, knew where Susan was.

“John knows,” Charlie said. “He went were Susan went.”

Investigators believed it was unlikely John Powell had knowledge of Susan’s whereabouts, due to mental health concerns.

It is possible Charlie might have confused his uncle John with another uncle, Michael Powell. At the time of Charlie’s second interview, Josh, John and Michael Powell were all living together in the same house. West Valley City police later came to suspect Michael Powell might have been an accomplice or accessory in Susan’s presumed murder.

“John didn’t tell me where [Susan] got lost at,” Charlie said. “He’s one of the uncles that lives with my family.”

Michael Powell died by suicide in 2013.

Legacy of the Susan Powell case

Josh Powell lost custody of his sons in September of 2011, after police raided the home where the Powell family lived with a search warrant. That search uncovered evidence that Josh’s father, Steve Powell, had filmed voyeur videos of underage neighbor girls.

Steve Powell was subsequently arrested, and Charlie and Braden were taken into Washington state protective custody. A family court judge granted Josh visitation with the boys at a home Josh rented in the community of Graham, Wash.

During one of those visits on Feb. 5, 2012, Josh locked a visitation supervisor out of the house, bludgeoned his sons and set fire to the house. Josh, Charlie and Braden Powell all died. Charlie’s death at the hands of his father forever silenced him.

Susan’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox, have spent the years since advocating for better protection for children in situations where one of their parents is suspected of, but not charged with, the murder of the other parent. They won a roughly $100 million lawsuit against Washington’s state child welfare agency, after accusing agency leadership and staff of negligence.

In 2024, the Utah Legislature passed HB 272, commonly called Om’s Law, to reform the state’s family court system. The law now requires courts to consider evidence of domestic violence and other forms of abuse when making child custody decisions. The law is named for Om Ghandi, a 16-year-old boy who was killed by his father in 2023 following a protracted child custody dispute.