Lori Vallow, the notorious “doomsday cult” mom who murdered her own children because they were “possessed” by evil spirits, was by all accounts a normal woman until she met writer Chad Daybell. That meeting would result in several deaths, including Vallow’s two children and the previous spouses of both Vallow and Daybell. Here’s the story of how that all went down, and where Vallow is currently.
Sometimes in 2015, Vallow, who was on her fourth marriage, came across a series of novels called Standing in Holy Places. Vallow, who was raised a Mormon, enjoyed its fringe warnings about the end of the world. By 2018, she was neck-deep in religious beliefs involving deities and radical views shared by former Mormons. In October of that year, she went to a religious event called “Preparing a People.” She met Daybell at that conference for the first time.
Vallow’s friend Melanie Gibb testified in court that the couple shared “an attraction from the very beginning.” Daybell was extremely flirty and Vallow was “flattered by him” and “enticed by” their banter.
“She shared with me that he told her that they had been married in another time period,” Gibb said. “She did believe that. She had already had the belief system that this ‘multiple lives,’ as they would call it — she already believed that before she physically met him.”
Daybell told Vallow that they had been married in a previous life and that they were finally “reunited again” after being “sealed together” by Jesus Christ. A religious group coalesced behind Daybell’s beliefs, which included reincarnation and a prophecy that the world would end in July 2020. Daybell also said he had 31 previous lives on several different planets.
According to the cult, people were put into categories of “light” and “dark,” and there was a scoring system that Vallow and Daybell used to “rate” people. Dark people were possessed by evil spirits and needed to be “cast” out in a ceremony performed by the cult. The cult claimed Daybell could teleport and create “dark and light” portals to travel to other realms.
Vallow herself believed she was an “exalted goddess” destined to led the 144,000 people who would survive after the world ended in July of 2020. It’s also worth mentioning that both Vallow and Daybell were married to other people when they met. Those people would soon be dead.
Vallows ex-husband Charles Vallow was killed by Vallow’s brother Alex Cox (who was also in the cult) after the estranged couple was doing a parental exchange for their son J.J. The death was initially ruled as self-defense but would be re-examined and classified a murder. Cox passed away from a heart attack before he could be tried.
Before he was killed, Vallows told her husband that she “no longer cared about him or J.J.” and that he was a “dark spirit” and a “zombie.” About eleven days before he was killed, Vallow’s ex told Daybell’s wife about the affair. He even changed his $1 million life insurance beneficiary to his sister, something Vallow didn’t find out about until later.
Along with her husband’s death, Vallow’s children Tylee Ryan, 16, and J.J. Vallow, 7, both disappeared. Tylee was last seen on Sept. 8, 2019, and J.J. was last seen on Sept. 22. On Sept. 24, Vallow called J.J.’s school and said she would be homeschooling him for the foreseeable future. In the months before the children were discovered, she continued to collect her dead husband’s social security payments in her kids’ names.
By January 2020, Vallow was in a bikini sunbathing with her new husband poolside in Hawaii after fleeing from Idaho. Police served Vallow with a document ordering her to prove her children were safe. Unfortunately, they had been brutally murdered four months earlier, so that wasn’t really a possibility. That moment of truth was caught on video and played later in court.
Gibb and another cult member named Brandon Boudreaux (who would also have an attempt on his life) testified in court that Vallow and Daybell were convinced the kids were “zombies” that would die soon. The FBI also found texts between the couple that talked about how the kids were possessed and the two had a “perfectly orchestrated plan to take the children.”
Around this time the case started getting a lot of national attention, so much so that the couple released a statement claiming that “Chad Daybell was a loving husband and he has the support of his children in this matter” and that Vallow was a “devoted mother” who “resents assertions to the contrary” and wanted to move beyond “speculation and rumor.”
Vallow was arrested but the children’s bodies weren’t found until June 9, when police found remains in unmarked graves in the place on the Daybell property where they would bury pets. When police were searching the Daybell property, Daybell called Vallow in jail and warned her that the police were exhuming the land. When they found the bodies he tried to flee but was captured and arrested on charges of concealing evidence, among other things.
Police decided to search the property after they tracked a cell phone from cult member Cole, who was at both properties the day J.J. disappeared. Daybell also texted his former wife Tammy (who would also be murdered) at the time and told her he shot a “large raccoon” in the morning and was burying it at the pet cemetery. Police found this odd as raccoons were nocturnal.
The murders themselves were especially troubling: J.J., who was 7 and autistic, was “asphyxiated with a plastic bag and duct tape over his mouth.” Tylee’s remains, for her part, were found in “bits and pieces.”
“There were pieces of bone, charred flesh, just globs of flesh that were falling apart,” police detective Ray Hermosillo said in court. Vallow’s trial was in April of 2023, and on May 12 she was found guilty of murdering her children, and she was sentenced to consecutive life sentences with no chance for parole.
Judge Steven Boyce said Daybell killed her children to remove them as obstacles and to “profit financially” in “the most evil and destructive path possible” after following “a bizarre, religious rabbit hole” to justify the murders.
Before she was sentenced, Vallow told the court that her children were “happy and extremely busy” in heaven. “Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case. Accidental deaths happen, suicides happen, fatal side effects from medications happen,” she said. Despite her life sentence, Vallow is currently in jail awaiting trial in the murder of her former husband and the attempted murder of her niece’s ex-boyfriend, Boudreaux.
Daybell was convicted of the murders as well, including that of his ex-wife Tammy. He was sentenced to death on May 30, 2024. They will both rot in prison for the rest of their lives. Well, the rest of this life at least.
Published: Aug 5, 2024 04:10 am