Dr. Insanity - Dad Realizes His Daughter Is Actually The Killer

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

However, he could never have expected that it was his daughter that was responsible. Subscribe for more crime content like this... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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She's in the ground till there's... Who is it? My mom! This man has just been told that his wife has been murdered. However, he never could have expected that it was his daughter that was responsible. What happened? The wife and daughter got into a argument? She's going to jail forever.

Wife's dead. I lost two. On March 3, 2020, Ohio police responded to a 911 call at an address in Akron and found Brenda Powell on the floor of her kitchen with 30 stab wounds in her neck. Her daughter, Sidney, was in the house at the time and told police this was a home invasion turned brutal murder. But even though Sydney was injured as well, there were still questions left unanswered. Things weren't adding up for the cops. Brenda was on the phone with one of Sydney's college professors at the time she was attacked, and during that call, she suddenly started

screaming before the phone went dead. When he called back, the voice on the other end of the phone claimed to be Brenda, but the college professor knew this was a lie and suspected Sidney was pretending to be her mother. Fearing the worst, he called 911 and the first responders arrived in no time. This scream, combined with being called to the location is enough probable cause for the police to forcefully enter the home, and this is what was waiting for him when he walked inside the house. Hacker, police! Hacker police!

Hacker police! No! There's so much of life! No! She's on to grab! And there's... Where's your mom at? No! No! There's so much of life! No! Please!

Man! She left her! Take her! No! No! Stop! Stop! We gotta figure out what's going on.

Did you sit out? R9. Get that 32 rolling here quick. We got a female down, blood all over the place. Start it some more, you've got to cry. She's... Take her outside. You got it.

She's... She's broke her out. Secure the scene. She looks like a 22. 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 like that, and there's a huge pool of blood.

blood. No, I think she just walked in. There's a broken window in the back, so if you can just put up some crying some tape, as soon as AFD gets here, they're going to pronounce her, I'm sure. It turns out, Brenda at the Nissan All In Clear Out. There's nothing more chill than financing

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You have zero reasons to wait. Conditions apply. See your local Nissan dealer today. Hasn't just been stabbed. She's also been hit over the head with an iron skillet, and her injuries are so devastating that her life hangs in the balance. No. Stop, stop. Hold on, we got to figure out what's going on.

Is she going to be okay? Come on. I don't. Come on, come on. You just need to cooperate with me, all right? I love my dad. Huh? What happened?

What's going on? What's going on? It was... We heard a bang. We heard a bang. She told me to get out. And then I heard screaming. So I came back and she was on the ground.

Okay, you heard a bang. There was a big who was broken. What is your name? Sidney. Are you cut? I don't think so. Yeah, you're cut somewhere. I don't think so.

Yeah, your hand. No, I was helping her. I grabbed her. All right, stop. I grabbed the knife. Yeah. What's going on? I don't know.

I just got that. I'm the dad. Sidney. I don't know. Okay. Sidney appears to have been injured as well, is suffering from shock, and struggling to hold herself together. Even the arrival of her father, Steve Powell, doesn't calm Sidney down. Police need to lock down the crime scene and try to figure out exactly what's happened.

The back window is broken in. So you're going to have to... Daddy! Is she okay? I don't know. She was there with so much of one. Okay. She's got minor cuts.

Inside the house, there's a broken window and the knife used to stab Brenda. But something isn't quite right. As the broken window had blood dripped on the outside of it, leading police to conclude it could have only been broken after Brenda had been stabbed. However, Sidney claimed that the intruder used the window to enter and was broken before the attack, leading to the first... Get no frills, delivered.

Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for $2.50 a month. Learn more at p.c.express.ca. Of many inaccuracies in her story. Interesting. Okay, do we know who? Where, which way? I bet it's the younger guy.

I'm looking through here, and I can see pictures. And there's a whole basement setup for a little... Yep, I'll talk you right back. Bye. All right, let me go report that. Well, see if we can find out who else lives here. With such a serious case with so many unanswered questions, the cops spend some time talking with homeowners nearby.

They have to try and collect as much information as possible. But right now, the only person making any sense is Sidney's father. Okay. Do you live with her, sir? Yeah. That's my wife and there is my daughter. How old is your daughter? She'll be 20 in March.

She's 19. Is she coming out? Yeah. No, I guess so just kind of hang out. Sidney, can you tell me what happened? Huh? Sidney. Sidney.

Yeah, it's on his way? Yeah, it's coming. Yeah, that's them right here. I'll get him. Snap up Ancestry DNA's lowest price ever in our incredible cyber sale, With 50% off Ancestry DNA kits, it's the perfect time to help a loved one unwrap the past. And with their latest update, they'll discover their family origins like never before.

With even more precise regions and new and exclusive features, their best gift, our lowest price. 50% off Ancestry DNA only until December 2nd. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. What's up? While trying to piece this puzzle together, police speak to Steve Powell and one of Sidney's friends down at the station in the hopes that they may be able to help them shed some light on exactly what happened.

But unfortunately for Steve, he has absolutely no idea Sidney is the attacker, or even worse, that his wife is in critical condition at the hospital, and likely won't survive, something detectives will have to break to him sooner than later. Who did you get a call from? Where did you call from me? Oh, okay. He said it was a call, went out of a distress call from the university.

My junior where my daughter was going and said, female in distress. I said, well, that's funny because Brenda's there, my wife. So I called Brenda. And it rings and rings and rings on the cell phone. No answer. I called Sidney back, rings and rings and rings. no answer I called right in the back

you ring and ring no answer I'm pacing around I call G back and I'm on the phone with him telling me there's no answer

my doctor called me back and said oh mom's on the phone with the with mom's on the union I said

what cops are on the lady and she went there was just gonna break in and there's she just started going off she said

well she said there's been somebody broke into the house his blood everywhere she was hysterical and he cried So at first, when you talked to her, she said,

your wife was on the phone. Yes. And as soon as I said, cops are on the way, the hysterics started. Is she still a teddy? Well, as far as we do, up until today, yes. But apparently not for the last, I don't know, maybe a couple weeks. What Sidney hadn't told her parents was that she'd been kicked out of college weeks before this happened and had been lying to them ever since.

But she did tell her friends, including Lauren, who lived in the same dorm. Now, will you understand that Sydney was your roommate at Mount Union? Yes, she was for last year, and then this year until she left. And so you've been friends ever since your soft freshman year at St. Bee? Mm-hmm. Go over each other's houses, everything, everything like that. Yep. Well, she started off an exercise science freshman year, her first semester.

But then she didn't like the classes, so she switched over to psychologists. and sociology. But then she didn't really like that. So this year she switched to education, and then she didn't like that either, and that's one of the reasons she left is because she really couldn't find what she left. I think she struggled in her classes.

I don't think the grades were the best, but she didn't really tell me that because I wasn't really struggling. I think she kept a lot of stuff hidden, because when we were just talking or with our friends, she always seemed happy. Like, she seemed okay like I did. I couldn't tell.

tell until the end where she was kind of just like struggling and she kind of was sad and just like born I don't know what to do. I think she felt like everybody around her kind of had figuring out what they wanted to do and she had it. Establishing Sidney's state of mind leading up to the incident will help detectives find out if she simply snapped or if this was premeditated. The issue is Sydney is going to claim that she actually has no idea what happened throughout this entire case. In fact, she's going to base her entire defense on the fact that she blacked out and even claim insanity using this. This means the cops still have no solid proof that Sydney is the guilty party,

but they're starting to discover she was hiding secrets from just about everyone. Well, I know she's had anxiety for a while, but I don't think, I think those last, like this last semester that's starting coming back in January, is when it really started that she was kind of more, like, upset because she really didn't know what she wanted to do with. My friends and I were worried for her because we were just, We didn't know what was going on, because she didn't tell us, and then... Lauren knew something was wrong and tried to help. At first, she had no reason to doubt her,

and was as supportive as any friend could have been at a time like this. But even Lauren grew suspicious of Sydney's evasive behavior. I couldn't tell she was getting more upset, like, more sad. And I told her, I was like, I'm here. Like, you can tell me, I'm here for you, that you need anything, I'm here. But she never really opened up until she was leaving and saying that she was shirving. school and that she was kind of trying to figure out what was going on and that's when I started to try to help her. Let's talk about this. You know, you're her best friend and, you know, this is

difficult, but to tell us about her relationship with her parents. Her and her parents have really good relationship. Like, her mom and her were best friends. Probably, like, they did everything together. Like, one of the reasons she went home was to be with her mom. They were always close. She never said anything bad about her mom. She never ever talked about having an 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 mom. Or when she goes home for weekends, she's like, oh, my mom wants me to come home, so I'm going to hang out and watch movies. And she loved, like, she loved being home. By this point, Sydney is becoming wrapped up in a lie that she's going to struggle to escape from.

But instead of owning up, she decided to make out as if college just wasn't working out for her and tried to convince her parents that they could save a lot of money on college bills if she left to pursue other things. What's going on? Are you not going to school? She was, I'm overwhelmed in 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, 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 figure it out. But that's not what she told her friends. When she's talking to you about, you know, the problem she's having at school, Did she mention that she tried talking to her parents? Yeah, I know she definitely, especially when she left, she talked to her mom about leaving, and they kind of made that decision together to leave them out.

Like, she told them that. Lawrence's suspicions were proved to be right, and Sidney was lying to her friends. But at the same time, she was also lying to her parents who knew nothing of her problems at college until they received a phone call from Sydney's professor. So Steve and Brenda began crisis talks

to find out exactly what was going. on with their daughter. So I went back, I called my wife and called my daughter's phone. She picks up, she was working down in children's. And she goes, what's wrong? And I basically told it. I said, you know, I mean, Sydney, I think the reason we can't get on is because I, she's on enrolled.

She hasn't been going to school. Sydney became wrapped up in two sets of lies. The story she told her friends and the story she told her parents. Failing grades aren't the end of the world. And any parent would support their child through such difficult times. But it seems she thought her parents would be mad and couldn't bring herself to tell them she'd been asked to leave the college. Yeah, we asked what she was doing, and she said she was good.

She acted, like, what we would see is normal. Like, she was laughing. She was having fun. She said she got jobs because she worked at the Akron River Dogs. She's worked there for a couple seasons, so she was going to go back there. And then she also said she was looking for another job, and, like, everything was good. And she was trying to figure out, like, next year and all this stuff. And she was going to talk to her parents about housing, trying to come back to now.

Once you got to my home, I mean, or any time I actually, did you ever drink alcohol or all, or she did? Just kind of describe that for us. She liked to drink. There was an incident in the fall of our freshman year where she drank too much, and she wasn't alcohol wasn't alcohol wasn't, but she did end up in the hospital. Her mom came and got her at the two in the morning. Usually after that, her and I worked together, and she did drink. I usually kind of like sobered down after her. detective suspect Sidney snapped when Brenda was on the phone to her college professor

and tried to cover up her lies by silencing her mother forever. The issue is, again, Sydney is claiming that she doesn't remember a thing, but it seems that she made some crucial and careless mistakes that let the detectives pick up the pieces. Sidney grabbed an iron skillet and beat her mother into submission before plunging a steak knife into her neck over 30 times. She then impersonated her mother on the phone and stayed. a break-in to try and cover her tracks.

We're here, we're going to house at all? I made it in far enough to see the back fit. When you go into the front door, you come around the kitchen, you go in, you can see the, there's like a past door between the kitchen and the family room. From the back of the house, I could see the right hand, there's two big sliding windows. I could see that window was clearly, it looked like it was busted. Went down the hallway, probably about two feet. Just see blood all the way down the hallway.

Sadly, Brenda didn't survive her ordeal. her ordeal and passed away in hospital. The county medical examiner came to the conclusion that Brenda had died from blunt force trauma to her head and stab wounds to her neck. They ruled her death a homicide. This left detectives to deliver the tragic news to Steve that his wife was dead. What else? You don't believe that news is your wife? Passed what? Detectives investigated Sidney's claims that an intruder was responsible, but their findings didn't seem to match her story, and the evidence was painting a different picture altogether.

This left detectives with one final devastating task to carry out, telling Steve that his own daughter killed his wife. What happened? I don't think someone broke into the house. I don't know if your wife and daughter got into an argument, Got physical? I mean, the window was broken, but there's no forced entry into the house. Did your wife from powder around?

Like, really he? No. I mean, this is not possible. Your son's outside, but he doesn't want me to go on. My son's here? Yes. Would you like one of us to just go be with your son? I don't know.

I don't know. Take your time. There's no much for me. It's simply impossible to imagine the turmoil Steve must be going through at this moment, his wife murdered and his daughter, the main suspect. Finally, Steve realizes the detectives might be right, leaving him to deliver the news to his son. Clearly, I think Sidney did this. I lost two.

She's one in jail forever. Wife's dead. You know, they're going to do everything they can to make sure they find out exactly what happened. nothing's definite as if yet they still have to do their investigating where's Andrews you just sit down there by himself or see it with? Would you go to family and their self-speople?

Well, yeah, I don't want anybody in here with me with me. I don't want anybody, I just want me and him must have that's legal, I don't care. Yeah, you don't want any of you. No, I just want I just want you to do it. To be coming ahead when you're ready to say. You're going to do it? I know me.

They don't know. They haven't told me. They're investigating. Sidney was arrested and charged for the murder of Brenda Powell. She claimed insanity at first, saying she had almost no memory of what happened, including hitting Brenda with the cast iron skillet and fatally stabbing her. The jury didn't believe Sidney, and she was found guilty on two counts of murder, one count of felonious assault, and one count of tampering with evidence. Sidney Powell was sentenced to life in prison with a chance of parole after 15 years.