Hey everybody welcome back to cold case murder mysteries. I'm your host Ryan Kraus back with you for part two of the Josh Powell series. Of course, in part one, there was a discussion

about the environment Josh existed within throughout the early years of his life, from

his parents marital instability to the abuse he endured at the hands

of his father.

In this installment, we'll pick up from there as Josh goes from a young boy to a young man

under some difficult circumstances and finds himself

unprepared for adult life. But he's driven to marry and start a family. That will have fatal consequences, but for now he's still just a boy,

yet the red flags were already popping up, warning signs about what lay ahead.

So let's pick up with an incident when Josh is eight years old.

At this point, his father has gone back and forth between supporting the LDS Church and literally trying to shut it down by protesting the organization

through anti-LDS publications. Despite this, he decides he's the

appropriate person to baptize his son Josh in the LDS Church.

He later said he'd secretly abandon his faith, thus the reason for that choice.

Nonetheless, I don't think it's difficult to see Steve assumed a position of religious power

without qualification for doing so because he's a narcissistic sociopath. By this time Steve is also teaching

his sons to be disrespectful to women even to the extent of telling them they

don't have to do anything their mother says. The older boys, Josh and John, begin

to bully their siblings Jennifer, Michael, and Elina. There's often no punishment for this behavior,

but when there are consequences, they come at the hands of Steve

Powell beating them with a belt.

So it only gets worse.

The boys don't respect their sisters, Jennifer and Alina, nor do they extend any courtesy to their mother.

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