So Dave Colley's on with us now and Dave before we talk about the podcast give us your background
Exactly. What is it that you do out West? Yeah, I'm a radio journalist. I've been working in the field since
2003 my entire career has been in the Salt Lake City market
Started at a clear channel station back before they became I heart. I started working with KSL news radio in 2012
I was an afternoon news producer there for about six years and then started this podcast project
Kind of while doing my day job juggling that until it became so unwieldy that they had to put me on this full-time
So we're seeing this more and more now
Radio folks deciding either to take their on-air content and turn it into a podcast or or even go off and create some new content
Why do you think that's happening in the radio industry? I mean, I think we're chasing our listeners, right?
For me as a radio producer at a heritage radio station
We knew we had a strong local audience that connected with our on-air
personalities we had a great field of reporters, but we also had opportunities to tell stories and
We just couldn't do that in the constraints of our on-air shows
So as we're looking at the rise of podcasting people adopting kind of these long-form stories
You know, I looked at
This particular story that became the focus of my podcast and thought if there's a way to take our existing radio audience and draw
Them into the podcasting space to engage them with a story that they might already know a little bit about but to get much
Deeper with this topic. It just seemed to go hand-in-hand with what we are already doing
So instead of being you know a move away from radio to podcasting
I view it as very much all of the above strategy
So why did you decide that that was something that you wanted to do?
I mean being on the radio is a great thing
It could also it could be you know a comfortable thing when you know exactly what you're gonna do all the time
Why did you decide that you wanted to be one of the folks that kind of veered off into the podcast space?
I still I still have a little hesitation about it to be honest with you because I did give up
Being on air daily, which I loved to do this
You know it really came down to my personal engagement with the story. I covered this as a journalist. I always had
Questions that were unanswered through my own coverage and so there was personal curiosity that came into play
I wanted to be able to spend the time myself to dig in for these answers to go long form with
The people who are involved with this story and really put them on the spot to answer questions and I figured if it's something I'm passionate
Passionate about if I can translate that passion
Into the podcast in a way that other people who feel the same way will join with me then that just makes sense
So why do you believe the true crime?
Category has become so popular it I believe it could be you know one of the most popular categories for listeners now
in podcasting
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of hard when you look at the the landscape and you think oh we're going to end up
And you think oh, we're going to add another true crime podcast of it to the next year, right?
But for me it really came down to
You know yes, this is a genre that we know people connect with there is this element of I think mystery and I
Don't want to say voyeurism, but there's definitely kind of a peek behind the curtain
Kind of appeal to these kinds of stories that you don't get from maybe traditional
You know daily news coverage that peaks that interest a little bit. I also think for podcasting
When you when you're talking about true crime a lot of times you're talking about personalities you're getting to know
suspects victims investigators and
Presenting them as full well-rounded people is something that is just so difficult to do in a 30-second soundbite
But if I can spend 30 minutes or 60 minutes engaging you week after week with you know
These people's own stories their own lives. I think it connects a little more strongly
In a sense that you start to see elements of these people's struggles and their experiences in in your own life
So give us to give us the background on this story that you decided to turn into a podcast
I believe it dates back to 1999 is that correct no 2009 okay, so we're actually
We're about nine years out from this case and just to set the scene for you
What happened was this mother of two boys Susan Powell disappeared on December 7th of 2009?
In the podcast we do go back into the late 90s
Okay, to kind of to kind of get into so I think that's probably what you're getting at the the background of the suspect here
We spend a couple episodes
Really diving back to his childhood to see the family dynamics of his of his father who was a
Let's just say not a very nice person and how that kind of influenced his treatment of his wife
When Susan disappeared the circumstances were questionable to say the least
Josh Powell claimed that he had been out on a camping trip in the desert in the middle of a snowstorm in
Subfreezing temperatures with his sons who at the time were four years old and two years old so very
atypical parenting decision there
Take your kids out in that situation and
the criminal investigation basically followed Josh from that point until
February of 2012 after he moved to Washington State he under pressure from
investigators killed himself and his boys and
Basically took any chance of finding out what he had done to the grave with him and to this day
Susan's body has never been found and nobody ever faced criminal charges for what we presumed was her murder
so
How do you start your research? Do you I know you had covered it?
But do you go back to old tapes at the radio station?
Do you go back to old newspapers and then do you set out an outline of how you want to lay this podcast out?
What's what's the research like when you first decide? Okay?
I'm ditching the radio mic and I'm gonna really get into this
Yeah, it was nuts in 2013. The police department basically declared the case cold
they said we've run out of leads and they took a
Somewhat unusual step in they released their entire case file now certain pieces of it were redacted
But I mean we obtained
gigabytes and gigabytes of reports witness interview transcripts
warrants photos of the case
Crime scenes all this kind of stuff and so for me it became a process of at first
Categorizing all this information. What do we have and then in reviewing tens of thousands of pages looking for?
Any references to existing audio visual materials?
So we noticed that our suspect in this case Josh Powell had recorded
Audio journals that the police had seized using a search warrant and those had never been made
Public so we used public record laws in the state of Utah to go back to the police and say
Hey, you already gave us this case file, but we want more give us this give us that and so
Some of the stuff had actually been sent up to Washington State since that's where part of our story played out
I physically traveled to Washington
But you know really to the heart of your question a lot of it was
I would go home after producing the after the police report
I would sit down with pdfs and I would spend two or three hours
reviewing taking notes and then basically outlining the timeline of the case and figuring out
Where do we have audio that will help?
carry an episode through and
Where are those breaks in the story where you can maybe stop and say, okay. Well, you know
This is a natural story that's self-contained in the story
It's part of a larger narrative, but it's a good place to to stop and so that's essentially what we did
We outlined our our basic approach to
The larger story the back end of it is a little fuzzy just because we're still
Getting new information as we're producing our episodes, but uh that was kind of the task of organizing the whole thing. So
How did you decide or where did you decide when you sat down and said, okay?
Here's what we're going to do. We're going to do a little bit of a
Little bit of a
Little bit more of a
Little bit of a
Little bit more about how we're going to do it or how we're going to do it
And then we had a little bit more of an in-depth analysis of what happened
So what did you decide or where did you decide when you sat down and said, okay
Here's where we're going to start this this at point in time, you know this this
Take us through that
It came it came together very late. What happened was I had identified
last name and had never spoken publicly. And I thought if I could find this woman, she
certainly must have a story to tell. So we released our first episode on November 14th.
I did not find this woman until late summer of 2018. So it was just a few months before.
And I basically had already written out where the story was going to start. It was going
to be Josh and Susan Powell's early marriage. And then all of a sudden, I managed to identify
this woman and she agreed to do an interview. Interview was amazing. The stuff that she
shared just kind of blew my mind. And I realized I have to start over in a sense and really
start the narrative with her. So quickly shuffled what we had and refocused my first episode
to kind of tell her story and draw in a lot of the background elements about who Josh
Powell was, his troubled upbringing and allow Katherine, this ex-girlfriend to fill in the
rest of that story. And it just worked out so well because then after she leaves the
scene and you get Josh and Susan together, there are parallels between those two relationships
that really speak to who Josh was, how he treated women, the way he controlled romantic
interests. And so it was a pretty late ad to get that into our story.
So do you determine how many episodes there are going to be? I know you have several in
the can now and the story is ongoing. How many do you think you're going to produce
or do you just figure, okay, we're going to keep doing this and keep doing this until
I achieve my goal with this?
Yeah, the story definitely has a beginning and an end point. But of course, it continues
on with the work that we're doing. So I have an idea. My manager is reluctant to let me
say what that is. Suffice it to say it will be longer than I think a lot of these true
crime series are. And if we continue to develop new leads or new information through our investigation,
we're leaving it open ended. So we have a game plan. It's not small and it could go
even longer.
How helpful have investigators been to you?
Good and bad. We sat down with the primary police department in this case very early
on and explained to them what our approach was, what our goal was. And of course, everybody
wants to compare it to, oh, you're trying to do serial. And so in a certain sense, I
think they had an idea of where we were going, but maybe not specifically the breadth or
depth of what we hoped to do. There are some materials that we sought through public records
laws that they refused to offer or provide. And attorneys got involved. And so long story
short, we don't see eye to eye on a few things that we would hope to have that we still can't
get our hands on. But they've been responsive. They've been respectful. And I will say that
the lead detective in our case, who is now retired, has been incredibly helpful. He and
I have sat down and talked about this case at length on several occasions. And his insight
has been very, very valuable.
Why would there be anybody on the investigative side that wouldn't want to cooperate?
I think there is, I don't know, it's tough to speak for law enforcement in this case.
They got a lot of heavy criticism, understandably so, because this is a case where you had two
innocent victims additional to your first victim who died, right? These two young boys
who were killed in a case where publicly most people looked at it from the outside and thought,
why in the world did our suspect ever have access to those boys in the first place? So
there is, I think, some reluctance there and just that they've already taken some punches.
They don't want to get beat up unnecessarily beyond that. You know, and we have to be critical
of the police department and the investigators and the social workers who are involved in
this case just because of the nature of what happened. Now, that's not to say we're out
to get anybody, but I certainly think there is maybe sometimes that reluctance. Once we
started, I think, spelling out what we were going to do and the way we were going to approach
the story, it brought down some of that reluctance. And I also have the advantage of working for
a radio station at KSL that has strong respect in our local community. And I think that also
helped them maybe get over some of that reluctance as well.
Yeah, absolutely. Has Susan's family members, any family members been helpful or involved
or they interested?
Yeah, yeah. Susan's dad, Chuck Cox, he and I have spoken several times. I've visited
him in Washington state multiple times, traveling up from Utah. You know, for I think the rest
of the family, it gets hard, right? Because they've dealt with reporters and producers
from the very beginning on this thing. And, you know, nine years later to still be doing
interviews has to be exhausting for them. It just has to draw up very difficult emotions
and memories. And so they've been helpful, but I've also tried to use a very light touch
in not hounding them unnecessarily and hopefully being respectful of the privacy of their family.
You know, there are certain considerations that came into play with this story regarding
Susan's journals from her teenage years, which her husband and father-in-law attempted to
publish in this case very crudely. And some of that material did end up in my hands. And
I made the decision that we were not going to disclose any of that information because
I consider it to be her private information. So I think as long as we were having those
conversations with the family to express that we were being respectful of Susan and her
privacy in this case, they were willing to work with us.
Now you also have some audio of the husband, correct? I mean, it sounds like it sounded
creepy. I don't know. Is that real audio from him?
Yeah, it is. So we did a couple of interesting things with this because we had these tapes
of him from basically his young adult life through his romancing and early relationship
with Susan. It provided a lot of insight about how he thought about her, how he treated her,
the way he maybe used religion to manipulate her. And it was just incredible to be able
to sit back and allow him to tell the story for us. Likewise, his dad, who had a very
inappropriate physical attraction to his daughter-in-law, he recorded video tapes where he would sit
for an hour and describe all the ways in which he was trying to get close to her. And there
again, we were careful about the pieces of tape that we used so that we weren't unnecessarily
re-victimizing Susan in this case. But there is power in my mind in hearing her father-in-law
tell her that he loves her and then hearing the way she responded to that. So that tape,
when we got our hands on that, there was no way not to use that. In some other cases,
we have had to use voiceover actors to read journal entries. And so I do the best job
I can to explicitly call out when we're using real audio and when we are actually using
a voice actor.
Now, Dave, in becoming a storyteller like this and keeping the audience engaged, how
are you setting it up where you're writing the script and you want to make sure you're
not reading 12 minutes of script before a cut and then you're playing some music? How
are you putting that all together to keep the audience engaged and involved in the entire
podcast?
That's a great question. It's something that I still struggle with. The more I have produced
on these episodes, the more I'm realizing I don't want to be the voice telling you the
story. If I can find an interview clip, if I can find a piece of tape, I would much prefer
to play that and then stand back and allow the listener to hear that. So it's been a
lot of work. We've done more than 20, at this point, more than 25 interviews. Many of these
were very long form, two, three hours sit down interviews with the newsmakers. All of
that gets transcribed and indexed so that I can draw out pieces in telling the story.
We're bouncing a lot of different voices, so it can be difficult to track who's speaking.
And a lot of my job in telling the story is basically to set up who this person is, what
they are here to tell you, let that sound play, and then just only pop in to provide
a little bit of narrative or context where necessary.
Are you doing the editing yourself? And are you using the radio stations facilities to
be able to edit it down to the point where you're happy with it?
Yeah, 100%. What a great advantage. A lot of people who are jumping into this kind of
podcasting are coming from a print journalism background. They're not radio professionals.
I thankfully have been working with my own audio for 15 years and I'm very comfortable
with the software, recording our own interviews on radio professional gear, sitting down with
a professional multi-track, being able to use a well-set up studio space to record my
VO. All of this has been helpful, being a radio guy coming out at using the facilities
here at KSL. I imagine if you were doing this from your own home in the closet, it would
be a lot tougher job.
Are you happy with the final product when you hear it?
Yes.
Okay. Hesitation.
You're always your own worst critic. There's not an episode that I put out where I don't
go back and listen to it and go, ah man, I wish I had done this, I wish I had done that.
But of course, we're working on a deadline. Now that we're in our release window and I'm
still writing and producing episodes, time is very tight and you reach a point where
you have to say, you know what, if we don't track this today, it's not going to make release
and so you do the best job that you can.
What were your thoughts when you saw how popular it became as soon as it was released?
Oh my gosh. Day one was insane. I've been working on this thing largely in my free time
for the past three or so years and through that time, I knew I was interested in the
story. I didn't know if anyone else would care. Thankfully, we have a great advantage
at KSL in that we are also owners of a TV station and a top rated website and a newspaper
in this market. It's a very rare occurrence to have all of that. And so KSL to its credit
put a lot of weight. We identified places where we could tell a unique story supporting
the podcast on television, how we could write a very targeted story for our website, focusing
on a piece of the story that would drive people into the podcast. All of that, I believe,
really helped with our launch. But to see it do as well as it did on day one, I can
tell you I was sitting at my desk working on another episode and trying not to get too
caught up in download numbers and things when my boss suddenly shouted from her office and
clapped her hands and I walked in and I think at that time we were like number three on
the iTunes chart. I had told her at one point that if we ever cracked the top 100, I would
consider that just a huge success. By the end of the day, we were in that number one
top spot and we stayed there for a day or so and my head started spinning and it was
all I could do to say, you know what, I can't get caught up in that because I've got to
focus on telling this story. So there's that pride in seeing that people are attaching
to it and discussing the story and engaging with us on our social media and stuff but
at the end of the day, I didn't want that to basically pump me up too much. So I set
it aside and went back to work.
So you have a history of covering the story. It happened in your market, in your market
area. You have the radio station facilities to work on it. It sounds like you have an
employer that's allowing you to do a special project. What advice do you have for somebody
that wants to go out and start a true crime podcast on their own that doesn't have all
those things?
Man, good luck to you. Here's the thing. This podcast for me has been a passion project
from day one. I never knew if I would have the ability to invest as much time in it as
I have. It ended up being a much bigger commitment than I ever expected. But if I had the choice
to go back and do it all over again, I would. Certainly, if you are coming at it from a
position where you don't have all of those advantages, don't let that stop you. If you're
passionate about a story and you believe that there is good reason for telling that story,
go out and do it. I can tell you, Ed, that after we released our first episode, I started
getting messages from people who were telling me, thank you so much for doing this podcast
because it resonates in my own personal life. Either I've had domestic abuse in my past
or I have a relative, a sibling, a parent, a friend who's gone through domestic abuse.
This idea that telling our story could have a positive impact in our community, it really
rang true. More than download numbers, more than iTunes rankings, that to me has been
the biggest takeaway from this is that telling stories of this scope and scale can positively
impact lives. It doesn't matter if you have the support of a radio station, a TV station,
or a computer because right now people are hungry for these kinds of stories. If you
can find your audience, go out and do it.
Have you been able to come to a conclusion that people that were following that story
closely like you will be surprised by?
We have learned some new things. Certainly, a case like this, the ultimate goal for investigators
was to find Susan's body and to put the person responsible for killing her in prison. We
know that the person who's responsible based on all of the available evidence can never
be held accountable because he's dead. It raises that other question, where is Susan?
I'm not going to step out and tell you that I can find Susan myself. I would hope that
doing this podcast would provide the impetus to maybe put some fresh eyes on it, to develop
some new theories, maybe generate some new leads. All of that is yet to be seen. Ultimately,
I think the goal of my podcast when we finish telling this story is going to be just exactly
what I described, to learn about these warning signs of domestic abuse, to help future victims
avoid suffering Susan's fate, and to also identify the places where the investigation
may be missed a clue or missed a step, so that future law enforcement officers who are
dealing with a case similar to this can learn from what happened here as well.
Dave, I look at you like a marathon runner who trains for however many weeks, and then
finally the race comes around and you cross the finish line, the 26 plus miles are run,
and then all of a sudden the race is over. When this is finished, what's going to happen?
What are you going to do next?
Man, here's the funny thing about doing a story like this. You dive in on episode one,
and people listen to one hour of what is going to be a much, much longer process, and they
immediately go, hey, cool podcast. What are you doing for season two? It's like, wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, let's get through the first one. We certainly, based on the
early success of season one of Cold, we have some ideas on where to go for season two.
I personally, I'm going to need a bit of a break. Living in the headspace of trying
to understand why somebody was murdered in a heinous way, how their body has never been
found, all this stuff, man, it takes a personal toll on you. I'm hoping to sit on a mountain
peak or a beach or something for at least a weekend, man, get my legs back under me,
and then maybe identify another good story and hopefully dive in and start working on
a season two sometime in the near future.
Dave, thanks so much for the interview.
Thank you. Had pleasure talking to you.