00:00:00
What is she? She's in the ground. So there is Who is it? My mom. This man has just been told that his
00:00:06
wife has been murdered. However, he never could have expected that it was his daughter that was responsible.
00:00:13
What happened? Your wife and daughter got into an argument. He's in jail forever. Wife's dead.
00:00:20
I was too. On March 3rd, 2020, Ohio police responded to a 911 call at an address in Akran and found Brenda Powell
00:00:28
on the floor of her kitchen with 30 stab wounds in her neck. Her daughter Sydney
00:00:33
was in the house at the time and told police this was a home invasion turned brutal murder. But even though Sydney
00:00:39
was injured as well, there were still questions left unanswered. Things weren't adding up for the cops. Brenda
00:00:45
was on the phone with one of Sydney's college professors at the time she was attacked. And during that call, she
00:00:50
suddenly started screaming before the phone went dead. When he called back, the voice on the other end of the phone
00:00:56
claimed to be Brenda. But the college professor knew this was a lie and suspected Sydney was pretending to be
00:01:02
her mother. Fearing the worst, he called 911 and the first responders arrived in
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no time. This scream combined with being called to the location is enough probable cause
00:01:26
for the police to forcefully enter the home. And this is what was waiting for him when he walked inside the house.
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Echer police. and she's on the ground. Where's your mom at? Okay. No. No. There. THERE'S SO MUCH BLOOD. NO
00:01:54
WAY. [laughter] MAN, [screaming] NOW STOP. [laughter] STOP. We got to figure out what's going on.
00:02:05
Car 9, get that 32 rolling here quick. We got a female down. Blood all over the place. Started some more years. We got a
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crime scene. Take her outside. She's got blood all over. Secure the scene. She looks like a 22.
00:02:19
She looks like she's been down for a while. There's blood all over the place. There's a knife by her head and stuff
00:02:23
like that. And there's a huge pool of blood. No, I think she just walked in on it.
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There's a broken window in the back. So, if you can just put up some crime scene
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tape. Soon as AFD gets here, they're going to pronounce her. I'm sure. It turns out Brenda hasn't just been
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stabbed. She's also been hit over the head with an iron skillet, and her injuries are so devastating that her
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life hangs in the balance. Stop. Stop. Hold on. We got to figure out what's going on.
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Come on. Is she going to be okay? Come on. Come on. Come on. You just need to cooperate with me. All
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right. I love my dad. Huh? I love my dad. WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT'S going on?
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We heard a bang. We heard a bang and she told me to get out and then I heard screaming. So I
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came back and she was on the ground. Okay. You heard a bang. Back. There was a big broken.
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What is your name? Sydney. Are you cut? I don't think so. Yeah, you're cut somewhere.
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I don't think so. Yeah, your hand. No, I was helping her. I grabbed her. All right, stop.
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I grabbed the knife before the street. Yeah. What's going on? I don't know. We just got the dad.
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I don't know. I don't know. Cydney appears to have been injured as well. Is suffering from shock and
00:03:57
struggling to hold herself together. Even the arrival of her father, Steve Powell, doesn't calm Sydney down. Police
00:04:04
need to lock down the crime scene and try to figure out exactly what's happened.
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The back WINDOW [crying] IS BROKEN IN. SO, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO INSIDE THERE. SO,
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I DON'T [screaming and crying] KNOW. SHE WAS THERE WITH THE HOUSE. OKAY. She's got minor crunch.
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Inside the house, there's a broken window and the knife used to stab Brenda. But something isn't quite right.
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as the broken window had blood dripped on the outside of it, leading police to conclude it could have only been broken
00:04:34
after Brenda had been stabbed. However, Sydney claimed that the intruder used the window to enter and was broken
00:04:40
before the attack, leading to the first of many inaccuracies in her story. Interesting.
00:04:47
Somewhere that's not okay. Do we know who? Where? Which way? That is the younger guy. I'm looking through here
00:04:53
and I can see pictures and there's a whole basement set up for Yep. Hey, sorry. I'll call you I'll call
00:04:59
you right back. Bye. All right, let me go report that. Well, I'll see if we can find out who
00:05:09
who else lives here. With such a serious case with so many unanswered questions, the cops spend
00:05:15
some time talking with homeowners nearby. They have to try and collect as much information as possible. But right
00:05:21
now, the only person making any sense is Sydney's father. Okay. Do you live here, sir?
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Yeah. Okay. That's my wife and there's my daughter. I I How old is your daughter?
00:05:31
She'll be 20 in March. She's 19. Is she coming out? Not No, not yet. So, just can't.
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Sydney, can you tell me what happened? Huh? Sydney. Sydney on his way. Yeah, it's coming from where?
00:05:58
Yeah, that's him right there. I can hear him. What's up? I have a female. While trying to piece this puzzle
00:06:16
together, police speak to Steve Powell and one of Sydney's friends down at the station in the hopes that they may be
00:06:22
able to help them shed some light on exactly what happened. But unfortunately for Steve, he has absolutely no idea
00:06:30
Sydney is the attacker, or even worse, that his wife is in critical condition at the hospital and likely won't
00:06:37
survive. Something detectives will have to break to him sooner than later. Where'd you get a call from?
00:06:42
Yeah. Call from call from me. Oh, okay. He said there was a call went out, a distress call from the University of
00:06:49
Mountain Union where my daughter was going and said, "Uh, female in distress." I said, "Well, that's funny
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cuz Brenda's there, my wife." So, I called Brenda and it rings and rings on her cell phone. No answer. I call Sydney
00:07:03
back. Rings and rings and rings. No answer. I call Brenda back. Ring ring ring. No answer. I'm pacing around. I
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call Jeep back and I'm on the phone with him telling him there's no answer. My doctor
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calls me back. I said, "Oh, mom's on the phone with me with uh mom union." I said, "Well, cops are on the way." And
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she went, "There's going to breakin and there's" and she just started going off.
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She said, "What?" She said that was there's been somebody broke into the house. There's blood everywhere. She was
00:07:33
hysterical and crying. So, at first when you talked to her, she said, "Your wife
00:07:39
is on the phone about you." Yes. And as soon as I said cops are on the way, the hysteric started.
00:07:47
Is she still a teddy? Well, as far as we knew up until today, yes, but apparently not for the last, I
00:07:55
don't know, maybe couple weeks. What Sydney hadn't told her parents was that she'd been kicked out of college
00:08:00
weeks before this happened and had been lying to them ever since. But she did tell her friends, including Lauren, who
00:08:07
lived in the same dorm. Now, we understand that that Sydney was your roommate at Mount Union.
00:08:12
Yes, she was for last year and then this year until she left. And so, you've been friends ever since
00:08:18
your s freshman year at CB. Mhm. Go over each other's houses, everything, everything like that.
00:08:24
Yep. Well, she started off in exercise science freshman year, her first semester, but then she didn't like the
00:08:32
classes, so she switched over to psychology and sociology, but then she didn't really like that. So this year
00:08:39
she switched to education and then she didn't like that either and that's one of the reasons she left is cuz she
00:08:45
really couldn't find what she liked. I think she struggled in her classes. I don't think her grades were the best but
00:08:51
she didn't really tell me that cuz um I wasn't really struggling. I think she kept a lot of stuff hidden because when
00:08:58
we were just talking with our friends, she always seemed happy. Like she seemed okay. Like I said, I couldn't tell until
00:09:04
the end where she was kind of just like struggling and she kind of was sad and just like bored, I don't know what to
00:09:11
do. I think she felt like everybody around her kind of had figured out what they wanted to do and she had it.
00:09:16
Establishing Sydney's state of mind leading up to the incident will help detectives find out if she simply
00:09:22
snapped or if this was premeditated. The issue is Sydney is going to claim that she actually has no idea what happened
00:09:28
throughout this entire case. In fact, she's going to base her entire defense on the fact that she blacked out and
00:09:35
even claim insanity using this. This means the cops still have no solid proof that Sydney is the guilty party, but
00:09:41
they're starting to discover she was hiding secrets from just about everyone. Well, I know she's had anxiety for a
00:09:47
while, but I don't think I think it was last like this last semester like starting coming back in January is when
00:09:54
it really started that she was kind of more like upset because she really didn't know what she wanted to do. My
00:10:00
friends and I were worried for her because we were just we didn't know what was going on. She didn't tell us. And
00:10:06
Lauren knew something was wrong and tried to help. At first, she had no reason to doubt her and was as
00:10:12
supportive as any friend could have been at a time like this. But even Lauren grew suspicious of Sydney's evasive
00:10:18
behavior. I could tell she was getting more upset, like more sad. And I told her, I was
00:10:23
like, "I'm here. Like, you can tell me. I'm here for you. If you need anything, I'm here." But she never really opened
00:10:30
up until she was leaving and saying that she was struggling with school and that
00:10:34
she wanted she was kind of trying to figure out what was going on. And that's when I started to try to help her.
00:10:39
Let's talk about this. Um, you know, you're her best friend and I know this is difficult, but to tell us about her
00:10:46
relationship with her parents. Her and her parents had really good relationship. Like her mom and her were
00:10:53
best friends probably. Like they did everything together. Like one of the reasons she went home was to be with her
00:10:59
mom. They were always close. She never said anything bad about her mom. She never ever talked about having an
00:11:06
argument with her mom. Like I can't recall every time she'd be going home, she's like, "I can't wait to see my
00:11:12
mom." Or when she goes home for weekends, she'd be like, "Oh, my mom wants me to come home so we can hang out
00:11:17
and like watch movies." And she loved like she loved being home. By this point, Sydney is becoming wrapped up in
00:11:24
a lie that she's going to struggle to escape from. But instead of owning up, she decided to make out as if college
00:11:30
just wasn't working out for her. And tried to convince her parents that they could save a lot of money on college
00:11:34
bills if she left to pursue other things. What's going on? Are you not going to school? She goes, I'm overwhelmed in
00:11:40
school and I don't really like what I'm doing and it seems like it's a waste of my time and your money. I said, well,
00:11:46
but that's all part of it. Nobody's going to tell you you need to do what you're doing when you're 20. you need to
00:11:50
figure it out. But that's not what she told her friends. So, when she's talking to you about um
00:11:56
you know, the problem she's having at school, uh did she mentioned that she tried talking to her parents?
00:12:02
Yeah, I know. She definitely, especially when she left, she talked to her mom about leaving. They kind of made that
00:12:08
decision together to leave Mount Lauren's suspicions were proved to be right. And Sydney was lying to her
00:12:16
friends. But at the same time, she was also lying to her parents who knew nothing of her problems at college until
00:12:22
they received a phone call from Sydney's professor. So Steve and Brenda began crisis talks to find out exactly what
00:12:28
was going on with their daughter. So I went back. I called my wife and found my daughter's phone. She picks up.
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She was working down Children's and she goes, "What's wrong?" And I basically told her, I said, "You know, I mean,
00:12:38
Sydney, I I think the reason we can't get on is because she's unenrolled. She hasn't been going to school." Sydney
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became wrapped up in two sets of lies. The story she told her friends and the story she told her parents. Failing
00:12:50
grades aren't the end of the world, and any parent would support their child through such difficult times. But it
00:12:55
seems she thought her parents would be mad and couldn't bring herself to tell them she'd been asked to leave the
00:13:00
college. Yeah, we asked what she was doing and she said she was good. Like she acted
00:13:05
like what we would see as normal. Like she was laughing, she was having fun. She said she got jobs cuz she worked at
00:13:11
the Akan Rubber Ducks. She's worked there for a couple seasons. So, she was going to go back there. And then she
00:13:16
also said she was looking for another job and like everything was good and she was trying to figure out like next year
00:13:22
and all this stuff and she was going to talk to her parents about housing, trying to come back to Mount
00:13:27
once she got to my union or anytime. Ashley, did uh did Sydney ever drink alcohol at all or she did?
00:13:34
Okay. Just kind of describe that for us. She liked to drink. Um, there was an incident in the fall of our freshman
00:13:42
year where she drank too much and she wasn't alcohol buzzing, but she did end up in the hospital. Her mom came and got
00:13:49
her at like 2:00 in the morning. Usually after that, her and I were together and
00:13:53
she did drink. I usually kind of like slow her down after her limit cuz she's small. Detectives suspect Cydney snapped
00:14:01
when Brenda was on the phone to her college professor and tried to cover up her lies by silencing her mother
00:14:06
forever. The issue is again Sydney is claiming that she doesn't remember a thing, but it seems that she made some
00:14:12
crucial and careless mistakes, then let the detectives pick up the pieces. Sydney grabbed an iron skillet and beat
00:14:19
her mother into submission before plunging a steak knife into her neck over 30 times. She then impersonated her
00:14:25
mother on the phone and staged a breakin to try and cover her tracks. We were going house at all.
00:14:31
I made it in far enough to see the back fit. There's when you go into the front door, you come around the kitchen, you
00:14:36
go in, you can see the uh there's like a pass through between the kitchen and the
00:14:39
family room, the back of the house. I could see the right hand there's two big sliding windows. I could see that window
00:14:46
was clearly it looked like it was busted. Went down the hallway probably about two feet. just don't see blood all
00:14:52
the way down the hallway. Sadly, Brenda didn't survive her ordeal and passed away in hospital. The county
00:14:59
medical examiner came to the conclusion that Brenda had died from blunt force trauma to her head and stab wounds to
00:15:05
her neck. They ruled her death a homicide. This left detectives to deliver the tragic news to Steve that
00:15:11
his wife was dead. Well, really bad news. Your wife passed away. Detectives investigated Sydney's [music]
00:15:28
claims that an intruder was responsible, but their findings didn't seem to match
00:15:32
her story, and the evidence was painting a [music] different picture altogether.
00:15:36
This left detectives with one final devastating task to carry out, telling Steve that his own daughter killed his
00:15:43
wife. What happened? I don't think someone broke into the house. I don't know if
00:15:52
your wife and daughter got into an argument, got physical. I mean, the window was broken, but there's no forced
00:15:59
entry into the house. Did your wife and daughter like really eat? No arguments. No.
00:16:05
This is not possible. Your [snorts] son's outside, but he doesn't. My son's here?
00:16:12
Yes. Would you like one of us to just go be with your son? I I don't know. and take your time.
00:16:20
There's no rush for me. It's simply impossible to imagine the turmoil Steve [music] must be going
00:16:25
through at this moment. His wife murdered and his daughter the main suspect. Finally, Steve realizes the
00:16:31
detectives might be right, leaving him to deliver the news to his son. Clearly, they think Sydney did this.
00:16:42
I was, too. He's here forever. Your wife's dead. You know, they're going to do everything
00:16:50
they can to make sure they find out exactly what happened. Nothing's definite as of yet. They still have to
00:16:57
do their investigating. Where's Andrew? You just sit out there by himself or is he with you?
00:17:04
Well, yeah. I don't want anybody. I just want me and him. That's legal. I don't care.
00:17:11
Yeah. You don't want any of that? I don't want any of you. No, I just want I just want you injured.
00:17:16
You just become a headache when you're ready. Okay. They don't know. They haven't told me.
00:17:31
They're investigating. Sydney was arrested and charged for the murder of Brenda Powell. She claimed
00:17:36
insanity at first, saying she had almost no memory of what happened, including hitting Brenda with the cast iron
00:17:42
skillet and fatally stabbing her. The jury didn't believe Sydney, and she was found guilty on two counts of murder,
00:17:47
one count of felonious assault, and one count of tampering with evidence. Cydney
00:17:52
Powell was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 15 years.