“Father and Son” tells the incredible story of my father’s first; yes, you read that correctly, murder. It was not just some killing in Boston’s Back Bay. It was a vicious murder of an elder antiques dealer, Jacob Kohn. He was murdered with a claw hammer in 1947.

The killer left a set of keys. Boston went door to door looking for the domicile of the person who was there when Kohn was murdered. The keys opened my father’s apartment. But Dad was gone.

What happened next was an international manhunt for my father. He was described as handsome and debonair in the press. He was in the press every day then. And when I say he was in the press, it was in that EXTRA, EXTRA, EXTRA kind of way. Picture little boys on street corners screaming my father’s name with an add-on, the Hammer Murderer.

Father and Son, A Memoir is the story of Joshua Powell's relationship with his brilliant artist father.

Their relationship was, at times, violent. After his father died when Josh was eleven, when he was twenty six, years after his father died, he learned just how violent his father could be.

This is a story or secrets, lies and murder.

This podcast series, "Father and Son," delves into the author's tumultuous relationship with his father, Walter Dunning Powell III, an acclaimed portrait painter.

Fifteen years after his father's death, Josh Powell, at the age of twenty-six, uncovers his father's hidden past, which includes an unknown wife, a brother he never met, and two brutal homicides.

Enjoy the podcast!

Enjoy the podcast.

This is the memoir of Joshua D. Powell and his father, Walter Dunning Powell III, and their relationship. After his sudden death at age 56 in 1976, Josh learned about his father and his hidden, criminal past. A past that included two secret murders.