"No Touch With Reality": Teen Diagnosed With Schizophrenia After Killing Mom with Skillet

Sydney Powell and her mother, Brenda, were described as the best of friends, with a close, loving relationship.

“It was almost like sisters, that they just really got along,” said Steven Powell, Sydney’s father and Brenda’s husband, on Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen. “Sydney was the mini-me of Brenda. I mean, they had the same personalities.”

But that all came to a brutal and bloody end on March 3, 2020 in the Powells' Akron, Ohio home, as Brenda was on the phone with deans from the University of Mount Union, where 19-year-old Sydney attended. Sydney viciously attacked her mother with a skillet from their kitchen and stabbed her mother with a kitchen knife — an act that shocked everyone.

“You just look into her eyes, like, that’s not her,” Hannah Lidderdale, Sydney’s friend, said on Snapped. “She’s not there. Seeing the body-cam footage was I think harder than I thought it was going to be. The Sydney Powell I knew wouldn’t ever do something like that.”

A closer look at Sydney’s time at the university uncovered she had been kicked out and was lying about it to her family. Although doctors and family later believed Sydney was having a psychotic break at the time of the murder and was unaware of her actions, police and prosecutors disagreed.

“It’s in that moment when she makes that decision that she’s going to stop her mom from having a conversation with the dean, and that split second when she realized her lie was going to be uncovered,” prosecutor Elliot Kolkovich said on Snapped. “She snapped.”

Sydney and Brenda Powell were a tight-knit mother-and-daughter pair, even as Sydney started at the University of Mount Union in the fall of 2018, after receiving an academic presidential scholarship.

“I remember she and her mom were always texting,” Lidderdale said. “I think Sydney really looked up to her mom — wanted to be how Brenda was. Be there to help people. Always put others first.”

Sydney Powell. Photo: Oxygen

Although Sydney made friends and even joined a sorority, by fall 2019, her grades began slipping. Sydney’s GPA fell from 3.8 down to low enough to be on academic probation within just two semesters. The university unenrolled her as a student for the spring 2020 semester, but she went back to campus in January 2020 anyway.

“Sydney went home for Christmas break, and she just couldn’t tell her parents that she had been expelled or suspended from school,” said Don Malarcik, Sydney’s defense attorney, on Snapped.

Her friends and roommates reported troubling behavior from Sydney, including lying about being a student.

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“She was still going to classes, even though she wasn’t in them,” Lidderdale said. “She was trying to figure out ways of getting in the door and building.”

A week before her mother’s murder, Sydney was forced to move out of her dorm, and was staying at hotels.

“Sydney was really trying to keep up this façade that everything in her world was OK when it was all completely crumbling,” Malarcik said.

Sydney’s father, Steve, discovered in the hours before the murder than his daughter was unenrolled from college when he was unable to pay her tuition bill. He let his wife know about the situation, and Brenda decided to meet Sydney at their home to talk about it, as she was expected home for spring break.

Deans from the University of Mount Union were on the phone with Brenda Powell when the conversation abruptly ended.

“They reported [to 911] that they heard a bunch of strange noises they described as a couple loud thuds, screams, and then just some other unusual sounds and then the phone went dead,” said David Whiddon, Akron police detective’s lieutenant, on Snapped. “They tried to call back, and they didn’t get an answer. They were concerned that something had happened to Brenda.”

After getting no answer several times, the phone was finally picked up by a woman.

“In what they described as a calm voice, ‘This is Brenda,’” Whiddon said. “And … having known Sydney as a student, they knew right away that was Sydney. They asked, ‘Sydney, is that you?’ And then the phone went dead again. She never said anything about an intruder.”

But when officers arrived at the Powell house, that’s exactly what Sydney claimed happened: a break-in.

“Sydney’s just hysterical,” Whiddon said. “She’s preventing the officers from going down the hallway. She mentions something about an intruder. Someone broke in. So, they really don’t know what they’re dealing with.”

A rear window of the house was broken, and the patio door was unlocked. Brenda was found on the bedroom floor, surrounded by blood, with an iron skillet and a kitchen knife also near her body.

“I’ve never seen anything as brutal before,” Whiddon said. “Brenda had severe head trauma. And she had multiple stab wounds … it’s going through our minds that what could happen to cause that much rage.”

Sydney was also acting strangely.

“She just was laying there shaking and clawing the street,” Steven Powell, Sydney’s father, said. “Wasn’t mumbling. Wasn’t saying anything.”

But bloody footprints in the home matched those of Sydney. She had blood and cuts on her hands, and police believed she broke the window of the home herself to make it look like an intruder. She was arrested the same day for her mother’s murder.

Sydney Powell was held at a psychiatric hospital in the months after her mother’s murder and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia — a disease that typically manifests when a person is in their late teens and early 20s. She was treated with medication and became stabile enough to stay with her family while awaiting a trial delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Her lawyers had three different physicians evaluate her.

“What all three of these doctors said was that she was experiencing long periods of lucid thoughts. But they were interrupted by serious and significant psychotic episodes,” Malarcik said. “I mean it just doesn’t make sense that the reason she killed her mom was because she got kicked out of school. Killing Brenda doesn’t solve that problem. That kind of attack, that kind of brutality, is completely out of character for Sydney and it screams insanity.”

The Powell family asked that she be declared unfit for trial, and that the criminal charges be dropped. But the state of Ohio pursued a criminal trial, and Sydney’s lawyers pleaded an insanity defense.

Prosecutors argued Sydney’s academic troubles were the reason for Brenda’s murder.

“The school has made it pretty clear she’s not allowed to stay on campus anymore,” Kolkovich said. “But she also knows she can’t go home without letting her parents know what’s been going on, so she doesn’t want to choose that either. She’s running out of money. She’s running out of options.”

Prosecutors also argued she was lucid during the murder.

“While she may have had some mental health issues at the time, her actions around the crime are clearly consistent with someone who knew exactly what they were doing and then tried to cover it up,” Kolkovich said.

Going against the family’s wishes, a jury agreed with prosecutors, and found Sydney Powell guilty of her mother Brenda’s murder. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years, and will be eligible in 2038, when she’s 38 years old.

“We understand that this was not Sydney,” Steve Powell said. “This was a very small, little, snippet in time that something went horribly wrong.”

Watch all-new episodes of Snapped on Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen and the next day on Peacock.