The disappearance of 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and her 7-year-old brother JJ Vallow gripped the nation. Their mother, Lori Vallow, and her new husband Chad Daybell refused to tell anyone where the children were. Months after vanishing, their bodies were found buried in Daybell's backyard outside of Rexburg, Idaho. Daybell and Vallow are charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of the children. They have pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.
The Daybell Children Speak Out
After a year of public silence, Daybell's five adult children - convinced their father is innocent - spoke out together for the first time to "48 Hours."
Emma Murray: "My father needs someone to be a voice for him," Emma Murray tells "48 Hours" contributor Jonathan Vigliotti. They want to tell his story, how they believe JJ and Tylee's remains ended up in their father's backyard and why they believe he did not do it.
Up until that terrible day when authorities swarmed their father's property looking for two missing kids, the five Daybell children say they were just an ordinary Mormon family living outside Rexburg, Idaho. But that has changed.
Emma Murray: People are acting like we've done horrible crimes. Their father, Chad Daybell, is charged with one of the most savage crimes to ever befall this community: the murders of his new wife's two children - 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow.
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Mark Daybell: It's just not possible. Anyone who says that my dad could kill a person doesn't know my dad.
Jonathan Vigliotti: The evidence doesn't look good.
Emma Murray: I think I would interpret it as many people have. But we have to remember that this is just one side of the story. And it does look really bad.
The Daybell siblings, Emma, Mark, Leah, Seth, and Garth, spoke out together for the first time.
Emma Murray: Absolutely. None of this would've happened if Lori Vallow had never come into my family's life.
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Lori Vallow: From Doting Mother to "Doomsday Mom"
The Lori Vallow the world has come to know - the "doomsday mom" who refused to say where her children were, the woman now accused with Chad Daybell of murdering her own two kids - is nothing like the doting mother April Raymond once considered a dear friend.
April Raymond: She did everything for JJ, everything for Tylee. They were … the center of her world. And so, I'm not sure what hijacked that priority.
April Raymond met Lori in 2015 in Hawaii. At the time, Lori was married to businessman Charles Vallow and they were raising the two children - Tylee, Lori's teenage daughter from a former marriage, and their adopted son JJ, the grandson of Charles's sister Kay Woodcock. JJ had autism and Lori seemed the ideal mother for him, says Raymond.
April Raymond: JJ was very difficult to take care of … So … I really admired how patient she was with him and how much care she took of him.
But it was Tylee's bond with JJ that Tylee's close friend Vaisia Itaaehau will always remember.
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Vaisia Itaaehau: I loved being around JJ and Tylee. Tylee was really protective over JJ.
But around 2017, friends say Lori's relationships with her kids began to shift - sometime after she started reading the books of Chad Daybell.
Chad Daybell's Influence
Daybell was a professional gravedigger-turned-novelist and podcaster from Rexburg, Idaho. Daybell was married. He and his wife Tammy were raising five children. Some say, over the years, Chad's religious beliefs became extreme. He believed he could talk to dead people and see into the future. According to one witness, Chad talked about dark spirits and zombies.
Morgan Loew: Chad had this belief that some people who were on this earth weren't really the people they were supposed to be. … Their souls had left them. … And - evilness took over their bodies. And the only way to release their spirits to heaven was to kill the bodies.
Sometime in 2018, Lori met Chad Daybell, developing what friends say seemed like a cult-like devotion to him.
Vaisia Itaaehau: She was a fan of his writing. And … when she actually got to talk with him, it, yeah, just escalated from there.
Lori started doing podcasts with Chad.
Morgan Loew: Lori believed that she was chosen to lead the 144,000 after the apocalypse. To lead the survivors of the human race to an eternal life while the rest of society burned.
She also believed she had been appointed another, more ominous role, says Raymond.
April Raymond: Part of her mission on Earth was to eliminate the darkness, the demonic - the evil.
Raymond says Lori told her one of those evil beings was her own husband - Charles Vallow.
April Raymond: The way she had explained it to me about Charles … was already dead. And that there was a demon living inside of him.
The Death of Charles Vallow
By the summer of 2019, Charles Vallow had gone to the police twice - claiming there was something desperately wrong with his estranged wife Lori Vallow.
CHARLES VALLOW: She's psychologically, she's gone. Something's happened to her.
But no one acted on it, and Charles Vallow let his guard down. On the morning of July 11, Charles went to Lori's rental home in Chandler, Arizona to pick up JJ and take him to school.
Morgan Loew: He goes into the house. Lori and Tylee and JJ are there, and so is Alex Cox.
Lori Vallow Daybell trial | A timeline
Alex Cox is Lori's brother.
Morgan Loew: Alex was Lori's protector. … he never hesitated to resort to violence if he believed he was defending his sister.
Within minutes of entering the house that morning, Charles was lying on the floor in a pool of blood ... shot twice in the chest by Alex Cox in what Alex claimed was self-defense. Cox calmly called 911:
911 DISPATCHER: Is he breathing?
ALEX COX: I can't tell.
Morgan Loew: He said, "I need to report a shooting. I - I shot my brother-in-law in self-defense."
911 DISPATCHER: And is he hurt? Is he alive or -?
ALEX COX: Yeah, there's blood. He's not moving.
Dispatchers instructed Cox on how to do CPR:
911 DISPATCHER: Are you still doing chest compressions with him?
CHANDLER POLICE OFFICER. [bodycam video]: So, you get in an argument? What is it over?
ALEX COX: Well, it was over my sister. He was getting physical with her.
Cox told them he got between Charles and Lori and shot Charles dead when Charles charged at him.
Morgan Loew: Lori … takes JJ to school. And she comes back later with Tylee. In bodycam video, police blurred Tylee's face, because she was a minor.
CHANDLER POLICE OFFICER [Bodycam video]: Hi, who are - are you? [Lori speaks] OK, just stand over there for just a second, guys.
Morgan Loew: What was striking about the footage that we saw was that … There's no remorse.
POLICE OFFICER [Bodycam video]: How long have you lived here?
LORI VALLOW: Like three weeks.
POLICE OFFICER: Oh geez, yeah, OK.
LORI VALLOW: That's why the neighbors don't know us very well [laughs].
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