As far as Idaho prosecutors are concerned, it is one down and one to go in proving who murdered two children and a woman in a string of killings. First, jurors convicted Lori Vallow Daybell, 50, Seventh District Judge Steven Boyce sentenced her to life in prison. Now, prosecutors are putting her husband, Chad Guy Daybell, 55, on trial in a Fremont County courtroom. You can watch it in the player above.
Authorities say that the couple either planned to kill — or did personally kill — Joshua Jaxon “J.J.” Vallow, 7, Vallow Daybell’s adopted son; Tylee Ashlyn Ryan, 16, her biological daughter from a prior marriage; and Tammy Daybell, 49, Chad’s previous wife, in a spate of killings that happened across September and October 2019. In Tammy’s death, Lori was charged with conspiracy, though Chad was charged with personally carrying out the act.
Chad Daybell is seen during his preliminary hearing in Fremont County on Monday, Aug. 3, 2020. Daybell is being charged with destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence and conspiracy to commit destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence, both felony charges. The remains of Lori Vallow Daybell’s two children were found on Chad Daybell’s property. (Image via John Roark/the Post-Register/Pool)
The murders followed after Lori became newly widowed when her brother Alex Cox fatally shot her prior husband, Charles Vallow, in Arizona, and she suddenly moved her kids to Idaho. Then Lori and Chad got married in a Nov. 5, 2019, ceremony in Hawaii.
The children’s whereabouts were then publicly unknown, and the authorities did not consider Tammy’s death in Salem, Idaho, to be criminal in nature, but suspicion circled Lori and Chad because they stonewalled efforts to locate J.J. and Tylee. The kids turned up dead on Chad’s Fremont County, Idaho, property in June 2020.
Joshua “JJ” Vallow, and Tylee Ryan (Images: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
Prosecutors have also implicated Lori’s now-dead brother, Alex Cox, in the many deaths, though he died of an apparent health problem in December 2019. He claimed self-defense when he killed Charles Vallow in July 2019, but a grand jury in the Grand Canyon State has since indicted Lori of murder conspiracy in her late husband’s death.
All told, authorities consider Alex as something of a henchman for his sister. For example, investigators have said that Cox tried to carry out a prior attempt on Tammy’s life. Also, Cox is believed by law enforcement to have been the gunman in a failed, October 2019 attempt in Arizona on the life of the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece. Lori has been indicted for that.
Lori Vallow Daybell (Idaho Department of Corrections)
As described in Vallow Daybell’s trial, she and Daybell met at a “doomsday cult” conference in 2018. There, they came to believe that they had been married in a past life. Other non-doctrinaire beliefs not typical of their Mormon upbringing included the idea that people emit energies that can be categorized as light and dark. Those on the darker end of the spectrum, the couple believe, are possessed by evil spirits and essentially become zombies.
By the fall of 2019, prosecutors argued, the couple came to think of J.J. Vallow, Tylee Ryan, and Tammy Daybell as zombified.
Tammy Daybell (Courtesy of East Idaho News)
An alternate juror in the Vallow Daybell triple murder trial never really doubted that the defendant was legally responsible for the murder of her children — even if she didn’t physically take part in the violence that took those two young lives.
“The money motivator,” the juror, identified only as Tiffany, told Law&Crime host Jesse Weber in an interview last year — explaining the key pieces of evidence that turned jurors against Vallow Daybell, who was also convicted of grand theft. “She made sure to transfer Tylee’s funds into her account. And just prepping for Tylee’s death. And the text messages. She was constantly asking what the death percentages were for her kids. And talking about evil spirits — that they needed to be gotten rid of. It was clearly encouraging her brother, Alex Cox, to do some harm because they had evil spirits in them.”
![Alex Cox [image via Chandler Police Department]](https://am22.mediaite.com/lc/cnt/uploads/2021/10/Alex-Cox.jpg)
Alex Cox [image via Chandler Police Department]
The alternate did say she would have wanted to deliberate longer on one lone charge: the murder conspiracy to kill Tammy Daybell. Asked to explain why that accusation might have needed more thought and discussion, she said: “It just wasn’t as solid as the other charges.”
Weber asked Tiffany if she thought Daybell was the one who killed his first wife. She said: “I think he definitely had a heavier hand in it.”
Vallow Daybell’s defense threw Daybell under the bus. The defense’s case in the wife’s trial could be summed up in two words: “Chad Daybell.” Or maybe three: “Chad did it.”
Defense lawyer Jim Archibald said that some of Chad Daybell’s religious notions included references to Stan Lee and Harry Potter — arguing that it would be hard to make sense of his brain and telling jurors that while it may not make sense to them, some people under the spell of cultism follow their “goofy” leaders no matter what.
And, Archibald said, his client had not actually lifted a finger when Vallow Daybell’s beliefs translated into a concrete plan to kill her children and, maybe, his wife.
“No one here thinks Lori actually killed anyone,” he said. “That’s why she’s being charged with conspiracy. So they want you to be convinced that she’s part of this plan — that there’s a specific plan to kill. If you find her guilty, will that bring the kids back? Nope.”
When speaking to the alternate juror Tiffany, Weber asked her what she thought about the defense’s argument that Chad Daybell was the mastermind. The juror allowed that Chad Daybell was probably behind his wife’s “bizarre” religious conversion into “believing some certain ideas” but dismissed the idea that he was the one who pushed the murders above all.
Juror No. 8, Saul Hernandez, put it like this when speaking to East Idaho News last year about Vallow Daybell: “If there is a face to evil, it was hers.”
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
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