Chad Daybell has been found guilty of killing his wife's two youngest children and his previous wife, marking the end of a years-long investigation filled with bizarre claims. The verdict capped a complex trial that spanned nearly two months.
Now the jury will be tasked with deciding if Daybell should be sentenced to death for the crimes. The trial now enters the penalty phase, with prosecutors attempting to show that the crimes merit a death sentence because they were especially depraved, heinous or cruel or that they meet one of the other "aggravating factors" detailed in state law.
Prosecutors had said they would seek the death penalty if Daybell was convicted. Daybell’s defense attorney argued there was not enough evidence to tie Daybell to the killings, and suggested Vallow Daybell’s older brother, Alex Cox, was the culprit.
Chad Daybell sits at the defense table after the jury's verdict in his murder trial was read at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, on Thursday.
Vallow Daybell was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Daybell’s defense, meanwhile, will try to provide the jury with mitigating circumstances that could show the panel a lighter sentence is more appropriate.
Read also: Vallow-Daybell Trial: Key Evidence
The Chilling Timeline of Events
The case began in September 2019, when extended family members reported the two children missing and law enforcement officials launched a search that spanned several states. The subsequent investigation took several unexpected turns.
Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were having an affair when both of their spouses died unexpectedly, investigators said. Vallow Daybell’s husband was shot to death by her brother Alex Cox in Arizona in July 2019; the brother told police it was in self-defense. He was not charged.
Vallow Daybell, her kids JJ and Tylee, and Cox subsequently moved to eastern Idaho to be closer to Daybell, a self-published writer of doomsday-focused fiction loosely based on Mormon teachings. In October 2019, Tammy Daybell died. Chad Daybell initially told police she was battling an illness and died in her sleep, but an autopsy later determined that she died of asphyxiation.
Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell married just two weeks after Tammy Daybell died, surprising family members. Nearly a year after the children went missing, their remains were found buried on Chad Daybell’s property in eastern Idaho. Investigators later determined both children died in September 2019.
Prosecutors say Cox conspired with Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell in all three deaths, but Cox died of natural causes during the investigation and was never charged.
Read also: Key Testimony in the Daybell Case
The Motivation: Apocalyptic Beliefs and Financial Gain
Prosecutors called dozens of witnesses to bolster their claims that Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell conspired to kill the two children and Tammy Daybell because they wanted to get rid of any obstacles to their relationship and to obtain money from survivor benefits and life insurance.
Prosecutors say the couple justified the killings by creating an apocalyptic belief system that people could be possessed by evil spirits and turned into "zombies," and that the only way to save a possessed person’s soul was for the possessed body to die.
Timeline of events in the Chad Daybell case.
Fremont County prosecutor Lindsay Blake said Daybell, 55, styled himself a leader of what he called "The Church of the Firstborn" and told Vallow Daybell and others that he could determine if someone had become a "zombie." Daybell also claimed to be able to determine how close a person was to death by reading what he called their "death percentage," Blake said.
With these elements, Daybell followed a pattern for each of those who were killed, Blake said. "They would be labeled as ‘dark’ by Chad Daybell. Their ‘death percentage’ would drop. Then they would have to die," she said in her closing argument.
Read also: The Chilling Daybell-Vallow Case
Blake also said Daybell manipulated Vallow Daybell and her brother, Cox, into helping with the plan, at times bestowing ‘spiritual blessings’ on Cox and warning Vallow Daybell that the angels were angry because she was at times ignoring him.
Daybell's attorney, John Prior, rejected the prosecution’s descriptions of Daybell’s beliefs, describing Daybell as a traditional member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a deeply religious man who talked about his spiritual beliefs every chance he could get.
Defense Arguments and Witness Testimonies
Prior said police looked only for things they could use against Daybell rather than the actual facts of the case - and he claimed that the children’s late uncle, Cox, committed the crimes. He noted that Cox had previously killed JJ Vallow’s father in Arizona and that the two children were the only witnesses to that shooting.
He also said Cox tried to frame Daybell by burying the slain children in Daybell’s yard in eastern Idaho. Witnesses for both sides agreed that Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell were having an affair that began well before Tammy Daybell died.
Defense witnesses included Dr. Kathy Raven, a forensic pathologist who reviewed reports from Tammy Daybell’s autopsy and said she believed the cause of death should have been classified as "undetermined." Chad Daybell’s son, Garth Daybell, told jurors he was home the night his mother died and that he heard no disturbance.
He said he later felt like police officers and prosecutors were trying to pressure him to change his story, even threatening him with perjury charges at one point.
The Verdict and Sentencing
A jury in Boise, Idaho, sentenced Chad Daybell to death on Saturday for the murders of his former wife and his second wife's two youngest children. As the judge handed down the death penalty, Daybell stayed still and showed no emotion.
The sentencing came two days after Daybell was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2019 death of his former wife, Tammy Daybell, 49. He was also found guilty of conspiracy charges in the deaths of his second wife, Lori Vallow Daybell's two youngest children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua Jaxon "JJ" Vallow.
Tylee was nearly 17 when she and JJ, 7, were last seen alive in September 2019 - the same month they had moved with their mother from Chandler, Ariz., to Rexburg, Idaho.
10 Horrifying New 'Doomsday Cult' Murder Details Revealed in Chad Daybell's Trial
Prosecutors said Daybell concocted wild, religion-tinged fantasies about people becoming zombies to justify grisly crimes - with the goal, they said, of starting a new life with his second wife, Vallow Daybell, after having an affair with her. They also accused Daybell of insurance fraud in his former wife's death.
Tammy Daybell: "In the Way"
Tammy Daybell, Chad's then-wife, was found dead in her home in October 2019. The librarian and educator was 49. A coroner did not initially perform an autopsy, saying a heart attack was the apparent cause of death. But suspicions later led Tammy's body to be exhumed, and the cause of death was changed to homicide: asphyxiation by suffocation.
In her closing argument this week, Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake said Chad Daybell influenced the coroner's initial ruling by fabricating details about Tammy's medical condition. It was all part of a plan, Blake said, for Chad to eliminate his wife so he could be with Lori Vallow.
Months earlier, Vallow's brother had shot and killed her husband, Charles. "A little over 24 hours from reporting his wife's death," Blake said in her closing argument, "Chad messages Lori: 'I know exactly how you feel. I'm feeling sad, but it isn't for the reason everyone thinks!'"
At the time, Vallow was on a trip to Hawaii. Blake said Vallow had grown frustrated with Daybell, sending him a text saying they couldn't be together until things changed. "What needs to change?" the prosecutor asked the jurors. "Tammy's in the way."
Daybell responded to Vallow's message, Blake added, by saying that being with Vallow was the only thing that mattered to him. "Lori manipulates Chad with sex," Blake said. "From the minute he met her, he wanted to be with her - and she knew it."
Chad Daybell was sentenced to death for the murders of his former wife and girlfriend’s two youngest children.
Discovery of the Children's Bodies
Blake also described how Vallow began asking Daybell about possible plans involving Tylee and JJ. "About a month after Charles' passing, Lori's asking Chad, 'Do you think there is a perfectly orchestrated plan to take the children?'" Blake said, displaying an image of Vallow's text message to Daybell in court.
"There is a plan being orchestrated for the children," Daybell replied in the exchange of messages. "I was shown last night how it fit together again." The children's bodies were found in June 2020 and buried on property in Rexburg owned by Daybell.
Horrific and heart-wrenching photos from the scene were shown to the jury early in the trial. "Tylee's DNA was found on a pickax and a shovel that were in the defendant's garage," Blake told the jury as she reviewed the evidence in her closing argument on Wednesday.
Beliefs and "Death Percentages"
Blake said Daybell used a numerical system to rate members of his and Vallow Daybell's family, with higher numbers reserved for people whom he assessed as being overtaken by dark forces. "Chad said if someone's a zombie, the body has to die," Blake told the jury.
Chad Daybell also was charged with two counts of insurance fraud. Prosecutors say he maxed out Tammy's life insurance policy the month before she died, with himself as a beneficiary. Less than a month after Tammy's death, he married Lori Vallow in Hawaii.
The Role of Extreme Beliefs
Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow Daybell were indicted together on the murder charges in May 2021; their cases were split at Daybell's request. Vallow Daybell was sentenced to multiple life terms in prison last year for the three deaths in Idaho.
Melanie Gibb, a confidante of Vallow Daybell's, testified last year that she saw her friend become increasingly involved with Chad Daybell, with the pair telling her that they had been married in a previous life. They spoke of being joined for eternity and leading 144,000 people in the end times, as described in the Book of Revelation, Gibb said.
Gibb said the couple also shared beliefs about people being overtaken by dark, evil energy. The criminal indictment cites text messages between the pair "regarding death percentages for Tammy" Daybell, as well as messages about her being in limbo, and Tammy "being possessed by a spirit named Viola."
Lori Vallow Daybell's Legal Battles
In addition to the charges in Idaho, Vallow Daybell has been extradited to Arizona to face charges related to her former husband's death in July 2019 and an attempt on the life of her niece's ex-husband.
Lori Vallow Daybell says there were multiple problems with her Maricopa County, Arizona, trial last month, and she wants it redone. She is accused of conspiring with her brother to kill her former husband, Charles Vallow.
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