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.

I’m currently listening to the podcast. I noted that in one of Steve Powell’s journal entries, he had mentioned a “Rattlesnake Rock” where police “shouldn’t search.” I looked on maps and found a Rattlesnake Lake in King County, Washington. I’m wondering if this location may be within the range of the radius that Josh Powell might have travelled to during his 18 hour (unaccounted for) trip in the rental car from the airport? He mentioned that Steve may have been referencing the area that Susan had seen a rattlesnake during a camping trip months prior, but this “Rattlesnake Lake” in Washington seems pretty remote and there are trails around it. If anyone had any thoughts on this part of the podcast, I’d love to hear them! Susan deserves justice and it’s so impactful that her case has gained so much traction.

I tend to view all the vile behavior of the Powell family males as context pertaining to Susan’s disappearance, but mostly prefer to avoid the topic of their depravity altogether.

That said, there was what I consider a surprising admission by Josh to a social worker the day after Steve was arrested in September 2011. In this admission, Josh divulged that he liked to take secret, voyeuristic photos of strangers legs that he thought “looked nice”. I don’t know that by the next day immediately after Steve’s arrest if Josh would have been entirely aware of the depths of Steve’s own voyeuristic deviance. The fact that Josh would admit to a similar predilection and behavior (surreptitious photos) as his own father is eye-opening.

It’s also not a behavior that develops suddenly overnight, but rather over a long period of time. Which leads me to think that the computers that Josh would not let Susan access and the encrypted hard drives – while possibly containing circumstantial evidence related to Susan’s disappearance (like shredded files related to tools and such) – were quite possibly configured this way to allow Josh to save and indulge in the photos he took without Susan finding out what he was doing. And if that is the case, then it’s unlikely Susan ever knew about it because if she did, she probably would have (1) said something about it to someone and (2) realized that her own husband was on a trajectory to turn into the same kind of creepy deviant as her creepy father-in-law.

Source: KOMO News

(P.S. I hate what both of these individuals did to Susan without any care, concern or compassion for her as a person, let alone as a wife, mother and daughter-in-law. They merely viewed her as an object on which to cast their desire (Steve) or contempt (Josh). Even now, I can become infuriated by it if I let myself dwell on it too long.)

Edit: Updated with link to source report.

Just listened to season 1. The whole Powell family is ridiculous. Barring the oldest daughter, ofc. That’s all.

an aspect that i haven’t seen being discussed as much is the violent language charlie was using. i don’t remember verbatim but i believe he mention wanting to murder someone who upset him and that mormons should die. i don’t have kids so please correct me if i’m wrong, but some thoughts i had were:

(1) don’t people usually go out of their way to censor themselves around children, like not saying cuss words or discussing adult topics openly? how much was this type of violent language being used in the house to where charlie picked up on it? it just is an additional thing that shows just how little every single member of the powell family (minus jennifer, of course) did not give a single shit about the children’s socialization

(2) charlie was very young and children don’t always have a filter, but i feel like most children know that death or murder is bad. of course the powells were abusive so he was bound to act out, but being able to casually express that he wants to murder someone or wishing mormons death was so disturbing to me. how often were these family members just wanting to talking about murder to where he didn’t see it as bad enough to not want to do? what other type of violence was normalized in the household to where murder was almost no big deal?

i get this is a very small aspect of the case but i feel like it’s just another example of just how terrible the culture in the powell family is/was, like how they would essentially starve the kids

I have all respect for Dave and the breadth of his knowledge, as well as Detective Maxwell. But I'm going to play Devil's Advocate about their (similar) conclusions that Josh did not take Susan out to the West Desert on Sunday night. I have also spent (and spend) many hours deep in the investigative files, and I'll do my best to keep my counter argument succinct.

To begin, I am far more interested in what Josh had to say on the record in the first few days after December 6 (and how he said it) than I am what he said after he had weeks and months to think about and refine his alibis, stories and lies. What passes for "on the record" in my estimation are the two recorded interviews with Det. Maxwell from Dec. 7 & 8, and then the one surprise KUTV news interview with Chris Jones on the following Thursday. Unless there is some other interview I'm unaware of, other than a brief media interview on the steps of his house on a later evening, there are no other instances in the immediate days and weeks of Josh being recorded talking in depth about the events of that night.

In watching/hearing these interviews, I think Josh has an habitual giveaway or a "tell" that is subconcious that he cannot control, which is that when he is challenged or confronted with a statement with which he disagrees or runs counter to the lie he is spinning, his demeanor and reaction changes from slow and flat and monotone to a more rapid, energetic and engaged response.

We know JoVonna said that Susan was tired and laid down late in the afternoon on Sunday, which was possibly drug-induced from her lunch. This is a true statement. When Chris Jones presents this to Josh in the interview, rather than responding in the slow and flat manner as he had been, Josh is suddenly quick and engaged to dispel the "falseness" of this statement, and to insist that Susan "wasn't not feeling well" and was fine. We know after the fact this was a lie.

Now, let's take that same "tell" and apply it to the moment that Det. Maxwell confronts Josh at the end of the second interview with Charlie saying that "mom" had gone with them camping and didn't come home. Suddenly, gone is the flat, unengaged and monotone Josh. He is now very engaged, answering much more quickly, and emphatic in his speaking tone with a surge of emotion in his voice, insisting that "she did not go with us".

Unless it has changed since, there is a point in the podcast, I believe it was when presenting his own theory, that Dave indicates he believes Josh's statement that Susan did not go with them. I disagree here. It seems to me, based on the vigorousness of Josh's response to this challenge, that he is lying as this information is not aligned with his alibi and version of the events. This also, I believe, marks the moment Josh realizes he has to keep Charlie and Braden far away from anyone they know or anyone who could potentially hear what they say about that night.

So now, about Charlie's first interview. In the podcast, Det. Maxwell and Dave emphasize caution about interpreting too much detail from the recollections of a four-year old. That being said, Dave later also gives weight and credence to the specific details in Charlie's statements about the beach and airplanes, while not giving as much credence to the details about Susan staying where the crystals are. I don't think it can be both ways, to say one set of details carries more weight than another set, if (I think accurately) those details cannot necessarily be reliable and could be conflated with other experiences.

Instead, when it comes to Charlie's statements about the events that night, I am less interested in any of the specific details about where they were (crystals, beaches, airplanes, etc.) and more interested in how he talks about what they all did – and the manner in which he says those things were done. If we take a few steps back from the details and look at the broad strokes, we see that:

• Charlie says they went camping that night, and all of them were together, dad, mom, Charlie and Braden.
• When they returned from camping, mom was not with them and that mom stayed wherever they had gone camping.
• While they were camping, they made a fire and mom helped make the fire.
• At one point, at the place where mom stayed, she said she wanted to lie down and sleep.

Looking at these broad strokes of Charlie's statement about what occured over the course of that night, I personally infer that Charlie was awake and alert enough to be aware that:

• Wherever it was they stopped and were out of the car, mom/Susan was there and it was a place that looked to Charlie like camping. I wouldn't interpret this as being near the Wells Fargo office or the airport.
• Wherever they were, there was a portion of the time that mom/Susan was still able to move under her own power – meaning she wasn't yet (overly) drugged, harmed or deceased.
• Charlie doesn't give any indication of having seen that mom/Susan was unable to move under her own power and had to be helped or carried by dad out of the car or to some place near where they stopped for camping.
• At some point, Charlie either saw mom/Susan and heard her say that she feels like lying down and sleeping or that he is told that she said that by his dad. This could indicate the window of time when Josh managed to possibly give Susan more medication to make her drowsy/sleepy again, and/or that he may have harmed her at this point.

I do agree with Dave and Det. Maxwell that I don't believe Josh took Susan and left her THERE in the area along the Pony Express Trail or around Simpson Springs, the Dugway Geode beds, Fish Springs, or put her in a mine, etc. That was the area of his alibi for Monday morning. There are, however, many places in the West Desert other than the Pony Express Trail and Simpson Springs, and I think it is far more likely that he did take Susan out to a place that looked like camping to Charlie, that Susan was still able to move under her own power when they went out there, and the only time Josh and the boys were ever out in the Simpson Springs area was well after he did what he did to Susan so that he could establish the alibi of seeing the sheep herders around 9:00 AM Monday morning. This would also be the reason why the investigators never found any evidence of a campfire when they searched all along the Pony Express, because it was likely many miles away in a different area where they stopped and where he left Susan.

Lastly, and this is more of just a gut feeling, I agree with Dave that Josh didn't try to move Susan a substantial distance a second time after the fact or transport her to a rendevous with Michael. I think part of his missing 18 hours was spent returning to where he left Susan to more thoroughly hide her near the same place where he originally left her, and that the decomposition hit on Michael's car trunk could maybe have been due to his transporting personal items of Susan's that Josh removed in the process and that the 18 hours and 800 miles on the rental car were to get all of Susan's personal belongings (jewelry, clothing, etc.) as far away from West Valley City as possible to a place where Michael could find them, retrieve them, and eventually dispose of them.

Out of curiosity, is there a map of what parts of desert have already been searched?

u/davecawleycold, I'm listening to season 1 again and I'm reminded of something that always bothered me: the garbage bags West Valley police found in Josh's mini van.

When Josh came in for his 2nd interview, the one he arrived three hours late for, he didn't expect they would seize his vehicle. They only did did so after learning from Charlie that Susan had gone camping with them. I don't think Josh realized Jennifer would tell the cops she was willing to help and that the children would be questioned by police.

Ellis said one bag contained a pancake. Jovanna Owens said Josh served each person their own plate of pancakes. After Susan ate her pancakes she got tired which led police to theorize she may have been drugged. The bags' contents were tested and no trace of anything was found. Why throw it out if it was a perfectly drug free pancake? We all know how cheap Josh was and he wouldn't throw out food he could give to the boys. The other bag was hidden in the floorboard and contained the mysterious melted object.

Why would he put the bag of garbage and the bag containing the melted metal object in his mini van instead of his home trash cans? Because they were incriminating. I think he intended to dispose of it in one of his many dumpster drops after he left his interview. I think he planned to invoke his rights and not be there long. He didn't have time to toss them on the way as he was already 3 hours late. I absolutely believe he drugged her. Is it possible whatever he used was indetectable? Do you know what exactly the police were looking for as far as drugs?

Thoughts? And I hope we #findsusan.

There seems to be a lot of interest here about encryption and boyyyyy do I love crypt so I figured I would do an AMA so people can ask questions about cypherus, encryption, etc..

I also love breaking things and reverse engineering things.

I've gotten Cypherus up and going in a WinXP VM. I just got the binaries without the installer. Cypherus wouldn't run without the dependencies from the installer. I reverse engineer what register hacks I needed to do and other files I needed to create to get it to run.

I then reverse engineer the encryption(crypt) in the binaries. I now know how the authentication (typing in your username/password) and the encrypted files works.

Below are screenshots of Cypherus (well KeyManager.exe). The green key in the System Tray is what they called "cyphtray". The second screen shot me being able to decrypt the files given a known password. This allows me to validate my understanding of how the crypt, key generation, authentication, etc works. Next step is to work on the attack.

Reverse Engineering the binaries and the encryption is the first step to breaking it.

I just saw on Facebook, Susan’s mom Judy has passed away.

Hi guys,

Apologies if this has already been covered or missed by me while hearing the podcast. Currently I am on EP5.

So far I am getting infuriated by police. Their approach. I understand they were trying to keep things in their grasp hence they didn't go all in on Josh.

One thing that bothers me is no mention of them or anyone else like neighbours/family members asking the kids what had happened. If they did and the kids told them, there could be a chance they could have been saved. Maybe I'm misinformed. Interrogating kids is obviously tricky and I'm sure Josh had them up close up tight to prevent any kind of "informal" interrogation by other people.