Ep.1 - Good Mother

In this episode we speak with Katelyn—Jennifer Powers’ middle daughter.

When Jennifer disappeared from her North Alabama home on July 12th, 2008, she left behind three children and a lifetime of unanswered questions. For Katelyn, those questions have never gone away.

In this deeply personal conversation, Katelyn shares who her mother truly was beyond the case file—the kind of person she was, the life she lived, and the struggles she faced. She also opens up about what she believes may have happened the night her mother vanished.

This is not just an investigation—it’s a daughter’s voice, a family’s story, and a search for truth that has never stopped.

If you have any information that could help bring answers to the Jennifer Powers case, please contact us at timetellsallpodcast@gmail.com
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Support the podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2608731/support

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hey y'all, my name is Monica Sweeney. Welcome to the podcast Time Tells All. Before we get into today's story, I want to be up front and tell you that I knew Jennifer. I knew her children. I had the privilege of coaching one of her children in baseball and got to see her other children play sports throughout the years. I just got a small glimpse and I was honored to see a fraction of the family that she raised. And that's what this podcast is about. She's not just another missing person. She was a mother, and I want to talk about the life that didn't just disappear, it left a hole in the people that she loved.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

This is Caitlin, Jennifer's middle daughter. Caitlin was 10 years old when her mom went missing. We wanted Caitlin to tell you about her mother's life before she disappeared. Would her mother just run away? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

My name is Caitlin, and Jennifer was my mother. I'm the middle child. Um, I have a little brother, and I had an older sister. Um my mother was a good mother. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything but she was a good mother. Yeah, you can say she's a nice person, you can say she's pretty, you can say all that, but she truly was a good mother. There's there's no way around it. I don't think anyone that has ever met her can say anything negative about how good of a mother she was. Yeah, so growing up, she was a cheerleader and on the swim team. So she was in sports as well. So she really, really enjoyed watching us play ball. Um, when I say she was like that ball mom, she was that ball mom. She was literally clenching onto the fence because she couldn't get close enough to us to cheer for us even louder. I remember one time I was backing out of the box. I just, I don't know, I was just scared and I just kept backing up. And I can remember her behind the plate, like behind the fence, she was screaming at me. And she told me if I backed out of that batter's box one more time, it would be bad. And I don't think I ever backed out ever again. Um, she was she was the biggest cheerleader, she was the loudest one, she was louder than the kids in the dugout.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Uh, over the years since Jennifer's went missing, uh, unfortunately, sadly, you've lost a sibling, Miss Brittany. Yeah, I knew her as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

If you want to tell me anything about it, so Brittany was literally Mama's twin. Um, Brittany was also a cheerleader. She was not that big in ball playing. She tried, she tried softball, but she liked the cheerleading. Um, she was the preppy side of mama, where me and Dylan were the sporty side of mama. Brittany became mama when mama went missing. Britney had to take on that role. So me and Britney did not have a sister relationship. She was my mom. So after losing her, it was like losing two moms back to back. Losing Britney was was rough. That was really bad. And and then all these, you know, there's a bunch of people saying, Well, you gotta have hope, you know, mama still might be alive. For her not to be at her daughter's funeral, that tells me something happened. Yeah, something happened, because there's no way on this world that she would ever miss her daughter's funeral, her other daughter's wedding, the the birth of her of her two, you know, grandbabies. There's there's nothing in the world that would ever stop her from seeing those things. So that just lets me know that something did happen to her, and it's not about finding a missing person anymore, it's about recovering, you know, a body and figuring out what happened to her and who did it. She always was doing crazy things. She was a very good swimmer, so she would always get in the pool with us, and she was just always playing games, and she was just goofy. She was so goofy. And I think that that's one thing that I have of hers is her goofiness. Um, I am the goofy one out of out of the kiddos, and I do think that I got that from mama because she was goofy. Um, she would chase us around, you know. She would she was just so fun. She was so, so fun. Um, she had three kids before she was 21 years old. So she was raising three kids while raising herself as well, you know. So I feel like that that's why we were so close to her. But yeah, she was so goofy, she was she was smart, she's an A on RO student, um, very athletic. So she was just an all-around all-american girl. When you think of an all-American girl, you you you think of my mom. She was just a pretty redhead with brains and and you know, talent, and she was a great mother. So, all around, she was just a good person. She was the only time I ever really seen her like get mad, it was over her kids. She was protecting her kids. No matter if it was just or something random, and she saw another kid push my brother down. She's gonna go to that parent and she's gonna be like, get your kid, you know, don't touch my kid, don't hurt my kid. And wherever she was, her three kids were there. No matter where it was, no matter what time of the night, what time of the day, wherever mama went, her three kids were right behind her. There were times we were places where we probably shouldn't have been, but we were there because mama was there. If mama's there, we're gonna be there, no matter what. Mama got pregnant with Britney when she was 15 years old. They literally grew up together, they shared clothes because they were the same size. I mean, they would it would be like watching two sisters fight over a t-shirt, but it instead it was mama and Britney. After mama disappeared, you know, Britney she really did step up. She stepped up in the biggest way possible, but she was a kid too. We all had to grow up really, really, really fast, and we all seen things that a lot of grown folks have never seen. But Brittany, she held it together, she was so strong. Um, she she went through a lot, she went through a lot her 17 years of living. She got into writing and she got into drawing, and I have poems that she's you know written about with you know about mama, and they're just they'll just make you break down in tears because they're so good. Brittany, she got to express herself through her writing. She was still a teenager and she was still a teenage girl without a mom, and that that affects you in in such a big way.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Can you walk me through the day your mom went missing? You know, just as you remember it, maybe you know, take us back to those days leading up to, and then the day of yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

So she went missing July 12th of 08, July 11th of 08. Um, it was you know a normal day. My sister's dad, so Brittany's dad, um, me and Britney had different dads, and Dylan had the same mom and dad. So um Brittany's dad was over there, he was over there all the time, you know. They had a very close relationship. So we saw we saw him a lot, and we were very close to him. Um today I consider him more of a dad than my own dad. Like we were very close. Um, but mama and and him, they got in a little bit of an argument, and Kevin, when when things get like that, he just he just walks away, you know. He he knows better. So he did he literally did. He just started walking down the road, and he was just he was like, Okay, we're fighting, so let me just leave. So normally when that stuff happens, I always called Mimaw. That was my thing. So I called Mimaw and I was like, Hey, they're fighting. Can you come get us? So, what did Nima do? Nima came and got us. Um, and when she came and got us, she she asked mama, you know, hey, do you want to come too? And Mama called Jason, my dad, and was like, Hey, Nima is taking the kids. And Jason said that Jason told Nimaw that just go ahead and take the kids. Me and Jennifer are gonna go out to eat tonight. We're gonna settle things because Brittany's dad, Kevin, shouldn't be over at the house. Like, we just need to sort through things, we need to figure things out. So we did. We we went with Mimaw, and the last thing I remember, and the last memory I have of my mother, was we were pulling out of the driveway, and mama was walking up to the front door, and I said, Nima, we can't leave mama. Why can't Mama come with us? And I remember Mima stopping the car and she turned around and she said, Do you want to stay here with her or do you want to go with me? And I chose to go with Nima instead of staying back, and that is my last memory of my mom was her walking into the front door and me deciding if I wanted to stay home or if I wanted to go to Nima's, and I decided to go to Nima's that night. The next day on the 12th, um, Neemaw brings us back, and we all go inside. And what is the first thing we do? We're going to find mama. Um, we go inside. There are no lights on in the house, like it's quiet. Um, we're thinking, okay, maybe they're napping, maybe they're asleep. So we go in there, and Jason, my dad, is sitting up in the bed, and we're like, where's mama? You know, like, where is she? And all he said was, she wasn't here when I woke up. And me and Britney are like, excuse me, you know. So we take a phone and we go to our next door neighbor's house, um, Miss Wilson's house, and we got their house phone and we started calling people. The first person we called was Britney's dad, because Britney was like, I need to call my dad, you know, I need to see what's going on. He he didn't know, he didn't see anything, and we literally just went down the book and we was just calling everyone. Um, we made sure Dylan, you know, stayed back. We gave him a job to do, you know. We was like, hey, go feed the ducks, you know, go do this. You know, we distracted them. And me and Brittany was just calling everyone. We called Nima. Nima did turn back around. Um, but we was just calling everyone. We didn't know what to do. All we wanted was mama, so that's what we did. Jason was still in bed. When did you first realize something wasn't right? Um, I knew something wasn't right when mama wasn't there. Um, because like I said, anywhere mama went, we went. And there's no way that she would just get up and leave because my mom was a cigarette smoker. So you're telling me she left her pack of cigarettes here? She was a woman. You're gonna tell me she left her purse at home. No, you don't oh, so she left, but she didn't take nothing with her? That don't make no sense. Okay, you can't use the excuse, oh, she went to the store to get cigarettes. Her license are here, though. How can she get cigarettes? So it just did not add up that everything she owned, everything that she had, was at the house. My mom, she she did, she she used drugs. So why would she leave her drugs at home? Yes, my mom did drugs, but most importantly, she was a good mother, she was a better mother than some of the sober mothers out here. You can't you can't determine my mother's disappearance or my mother's personality or who my mother was just because she did drugs, because I've been around drug addicts my whole entire life, and I can tell you right now that my mother was the most compassionate, most giving, and most caring drug addict I ever met. Yeah, she was a drug addict, but she was also a good mother and she cared about everyone that she encountered, no matter what. I don't believe that for one second that she just ran off on some drug binge because you're telling me she she hasn't done it, she has not done it not once. When I say we've been to places that we should have never been, we would literally go with her when she would pick up drugs. We would go with her everywhere she went. So why would this time be any different? My mom, everywhere she went, she she never once forgot her purse, she never once forgot anything. So it just did not make sense. If she was someone that often went places by herself or often did this, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have thought anything twice about it. But she has never once, not once ever done anything like that. For the reaction that we got when we got home, it was a very uneasy feeling. Me and Brittany looked at each other and we we knew it. It's like as soon as you walk in that that house, it was just like a an uneasy feeling. It was just, it was like something was gone, and it was. I mean, mama was gone. Mama literally was the only, I mean, she's what she was what held the family together. Because after mama, the whole family fell apart. I mean, Brittany and she passed away. Um, I have no contact with Jason and me and my brother, yeah, we talk, but we're all in our we all went our separate ways. As soon as what happened with mama, our family just just fell apart. There's no trusting people after that. And there's no like I'm one of those now that unless I know for sure, I don't believe it. I'm I'm a little naive when it comes to that. It's kind of made me a little naive. Um, I it's got to be proven before I believe it. I don't, I don't trust easy um at all. I have I have cut a lot of people out of my life because I can't trust them. And I have viewed my view on life is a lot different. After Britney, I had to become mama to Dylan. You know, I had to look after him. There have been many a times that he would call me for advice instead of going across the hallway to his dad. I never got to have a childhood at all. I I did not get a childhood. Um, I'm not gonna say my childhood was easy because my childhood was rough. It was it was rough. Um, but after everything happened with mama, I had to grow up. I mean, I there was no more I could be a little girl and let my mama handle it because there was no mama there to handle it. We had to handle it. We didn't have money. I mean, we didn't have food. There'd be times we would have to secretly call Mima just for her to bring us food. It it got so bad. So after everything happened, is when I I saw I saw who Jason was as a person. Um come to find out he was doing drugs too. He just hit it well because he had a job. But then when mama was out of the picture, it was all fo you know, everyone looked at him. We looked at him. He was supposed to be the Dow. But he was doing drugs too, and it just got worse from there. And we would have to, yeah, we would get, we would get to where we wouldn't have no food in the house. We would go to our next door neighbor's house and sneak in and just to steal some bread. Because we had nothing, and Jason wasn't doing anything, Jason wasn't getting a job, Jason was doing nothing. He would go out to, I remember one night a cop came to the door um because he had questions about mama's case. And where was Jason? At a bar, and we were there by ourselves. Um, it was life with mama was rough. It was. I mean, the drugs, it was rough. Life after mama was even worse because at least she no matter what, we had food. After her, we it was like we lost both of our parents. It was like we lost mama and and Jason because we had to do everything for ourselves. We had to send for ourselves, we had to learn how to cook. We had to, we had to do, we had to do any and everything that we could to stay alive. Um, mama spoiled us. Mama dressed me and did my hair for me up until the day she went missing. So after that, I had to learn how to brush my hair. I had to learn how to dress myself. So now Britney's having to brush my hair and get me dressed on top of getting her dressed and my brother dressed. It it was a big adjustment. There was the adjustment was out of this world. I get told by a lot of people that I look like my mother. I don't see it. I did um kind of go back to our natural hair, which is is on the red side. So I I see it a little bit now. Um, but uh meanwhile, Papa, her parents, um, tell me that I have her walk. Um, I have her her attitude, her person I have her personality, her goofiness. Um, and I kind of see that. I kind of see that a little bit. Um, but Papa, God bless his heart. Um, he he sees my mama in me a lot. He'll tell me, man, you're walking just like your mama. He'll he'll mistake me, you know, he'll call me Jennifer from time to time. But yeah, I think I got her personality. Britney got her looks, Britney got her, you know, her body shape. Britney was like the spitting image of her. All the only difference was Britney had dark brown hair, not red hair. The same freckles, I mean everything the same. Yeah, the older I get, I think I see more of my mama in me. The older I get, when I was younger, I I looked like my dad. But I think the older I get, I do feel like I'm looking more like my mom. I think she would be proud for me. Um I think she'd be proud for me stepping up and everything that I did. Um getting out of the situation that I got out of. You know, I I I walked out the summer after my fifth grade year, I just I walked out of that house. And Mima and Papa were on vacation, and I slept on their front porch a night by myself because I wasn't going back to that house because it wasn't good for me. And I knew if I didn't get out, then I might end up, I might end up like like what happened to her. So I did. I stayed, I slept on my grandparents' porch, and when they came home, they let me in and I never left. They saved my life. They my grandparents saved my life, and I think that's something mama would be so proud of. She'd be so proud of her parents, so proud of her parents. Her parents, she had the best parents ever. Um, at this point, it's not about justice for me. Um, yeah, whoever did this, I would like to see them, you know, get justice. You know, I'd like to see them behind bars. But they're gonna get the biggest punishment when they when when their time comes, they're gonna have the biggest punishment. So at this point, I just want to find her. Um, because God will take care of whoever did it. You know, there will be there will be punishment there, so I don't have to do the punishment, but I would like to just find her. Um, even if it's just a random note, even if it's just a random text, even if it's anonymous, and you know, I I I don't care how I find out. I don't care. I honestly don't care who did it. I don't care at this point. I just want to find her, I just want to put her to rest. Just, I mean, can you imagine a 10 year old little girl coming home to an empty house and their mama never Being fouled. Had to learn everything by themselves because they they couldn't go ask mama. I had to experience everything a woman has to go through by myself. Yeah, I have my grandma. But it's not like having your mother. Um, and me now, now that I'm 28 years old, I don't have any kids. But now that I'm grown, I know more now that she would have never left us. I have I have two nephews, and those are not even my children, but I could never think about leaving them. Ever. Never. I live in a different state as them, yeah, and that was hard enough. But I could never imagine leaving those two little boys. So I know my mom did not leave me and my siblings, I know that for a fact. So something happened to her, yeah. So that means there's someone else involved. That means that someone besides my mother knows what happened to her. I just ask them if they if they ever listen to this, I just want them to know that they are a coward. They are a coward. Yeah, they are the reason that me and my brother don't get to lay their mother to rest, finally. They're the reason that my grandparents don't get to lay their daughter to rest. Yeah, they're the reason that my sister had to pass away not knowing where her mom was. Um, and they can they can change it. They're the only ones who can change this, they're the only ones that just come forward and just tell us where she's at. It's it's harder because you want to keep that hope. You always have that hope. Like, what if? What if something crazy, I mean, like one in a million chance happened and she is still alive, you know? And that hurts so bad because when the time comes that we actually find her, it's gonna be even even more you know heartbreaking because I haven't had the years I haven't had since 08 to grieve her. I'm still gonna grieve her after we find her body. It's gonna just start over, it's just gonna start like like day one grieving her. Because, yes, I have, you know, in my heart, I do think something happened to her, and I do think we're just trying to search a body right now. Yeah, but until you get that confirmation, you can't start your grieving process at all. It's like you're just in limbo until you get that confirmation, so you can finally start grieving. We have a we have a headstone I can go sit at, and I do, but I know there's nothing in there, there's nothing there, so it's just hard because she's somewhere out there right now, and we can't put her to peace. Like we can't we can't let her rest. She probably went through things that no one should ever go through. She probably had to go through the worst time of her life, the end of her life, and yet I can't put her to rest because some a coward or cowards did something to her. When they when when their time comes, they're gonna have the biggest punishment. So at this point, I just want to find her. Um, because God will take care of whoever did it, you know. There will be there will be punishment there, so I don't have to do the punishment, but I would like to just find her. Um, even if it's just a random note, even if it's just a random text, even if it's anonymous, and you know, I I don't care how I find out. I don't care. I honestly don't care who did it. I don't care at this point. I just want to find her, I just want to put her to rest. Just, I mean, can you imagine a 10-year-old little girl coming home to an empty house and their mama never being found? I want them to know that I have I forgive them. I do, I forgive them. That it was the that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Was forgive them. And but the bad thing is, is I don't even know who I'm forgiving.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

If you have any information that might lead to the resolution of the Jennifer Powers case, contact the Madison County Sheriff's Office or contact us at time tellsall podcast at gmail.com. Just so you all know someone knows something. Is it you?