The Chad Daybell trial has captivated the nation, marked by shocking revelations and legal battles. Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow Daybell, led a Mormon religious sect described in the media as a "doomsday cult." This article provides a detailed overview of the trial's progress, including verdicts, sentencing, and significant testimonies.
The Murders and Initial Investigations
The Vallow-Daybell doomsday murders consist of a series of killings-including child murder, filicide, and spousal murder-committed by an American couple, Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell. The murders started when Lori's estranged husband, Charles Vallow, was shot dead by her brother Alex Cox on July 11, 2019, in Chandler, Arizona. Next, Lori's daughter, Tylee Ryan (16), and adopted son, Joshua Jaxon "J. J." Vallow (7), disappeared from their home in Rexburg, Idaho on September 9 and 23, 2019, respectively. They hadn’t been seen since September 2019, and investigators said the children’s mother Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband Chad both lied to police about their whereabouts.
Police found the remains of 17-year-old Tylee Ryan and her brother, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow, on June 9 after months of searching. Their remains were found on an Idaho property belonging to Chad in June 2020 following a monthslong search. On October 2, 2019, Lori's nephew-in-law Brandon Boudreaux survived a murder attempt in Gilbert, Arizona.
At the time of the murders, Chad and Lori were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). However, their beliefs had deviated significantly from mainstream Mormonism. Chad was an apocalyptic author and publisher who claimed to have visions of the future and to have lived through multiple past lives, and prophesied the world would end in July 2020.
The case was set in motion by the children's disappearances. Tylee was last seen alive on September 8, 2019, and J.J. on September 22, 2019. In late November 2019, after police questioned Lori about J.J.'s whereabouts, she and Chad abruptly vacated their homes in Idaho and left for Hawaii. As police searched for J.J., they discovered that Tylee was also missing.
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Investigations revealed that Tylee and J.J.'s disappearances had been preceded and followed by the suspicious deaths of Lori and Chad's respective spouses and by the attempt on Brandon Boudreaux's life. Lori and Chad had married two weeks after the death of Chad's first wife Tammy. On February 20, 2020, Lori was arrested for desertion and non-support of her children.
Backgrounds of Chad and Lori
Radicalized Religion: When did Lori Vallow Daybell's beliefs become dangerous?
Chad Guy Daybell was born on August 11, 1968, in Provo, Utah, to a Mormon family and grew up in the neighboring city of Springville. He was accepted and enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU) after high school. One year into college, he applied to be a missionary, for which he spent two years in New Jersey. He then resumed his studies and graduated from BYU with a B.A.
By the end of the 2000s, the Daybells were facing financial problems. At that time, Chad's publishing business provided an annual income of approximately $2,000. Chad's novels often depicted apocalyptic situations and dystopian futures, and featured characters based on his own family. In a memoir called Living on the Edge of Heaven, he claimed to have had two near-death experiences that allowed him to receive supernatural visions from "beyond the veil." A recurring theme in Chad's writings was a supernatural voice giving instructions and advice to him or to his characters.
Over time, Chad's religious beliefs became increasingly extreme. Jason Gwilliam, the husband of Tammy's sister, later recalled that Chad's views had started changing around 2006 and 2007, as he became "hyper-focused on preparing for end of times." In 2010 or 2011, Chad started claiming he had visions about how the end of the world would occur. During the 2010s, Chad became the publisher of apocalyptic author and self-proclaimed clairvoyant Julie Rowe. In 2015, Chad claimed he heard the "voice" telling him to relocate to Rexburg, Idaho.
Lori Norene Ryan Daybell, also referred to as Lori Vallow Daybell, was born Lori Norene Cox on June 26, 1973, in Loma Linda, California. She grew up in a Mormon family. Her parents were tax protesters who adhered to sovereign citizen ideology and were in a conflict with the IRS for about two decades. In 1992, at the age of 19, Lori married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended in divorce shortly afterwards. In October 1995, Lori married again and had a son named Colby in 1996, before divorcing in 1998. She worked for some time as a hairdresser.
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In 2001, Lori married Joseph Anthony Ryan Jr., who gave his name to Colby. The couple's daughter, Tylee, was born in 2002. In 2018, Ryan was found dead in his apartment from what was determined to be arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. After Lori's arrest in 2020, and after a recording surfaced in which she mentioned wanting to kill Ryan "like Nephi killed," police reviewed Ryan's death. In February 2006, Lori married Leland Charles Anthony Vallow, who commonly went by the name Charles. In 2013 the couple adopted Charles' grandnephew, Joshua Jaxon "J.J." Vallow, as the boy's birth parents were unable to care for him.
In October 2018, together with Melanie Gibb and Zulema Pastenes whom she had recently befriended, Lori attended a "Preparing a People" event where she met Chad for the first time. Gibb and Pastenes both said that Lori had behaved in a very flirtatious manner with Chad at the conference. Chad claimed to Lori that they had been married in multiple previous lifetimes. After their initial meeting, Lori's husband went on a business trip, giving her the opportunity to hold a small overnight gathering at her home.
Chad and Gibb were among the attendees, with Chad captivating Lori and the group by sharing his Mormon-influenced, but unique, beliefs. Lori developed a strong attachment to Chad and his teachings. Reincarnation - a concept which is not accepted by the LDS Church - played a key part in Chad's religious views. He claimed to have lived thirty-one previous lives on different planets and that Lori had lived twenty-one separate lives, five of which coincided with his own experiences on Earth.
Lori eventually told Gibb that she and Chad were sealed due to their previous marriages in their past lives, despite their respective spouses still being alive. Chad also claimed to be a reincarnation of James the Less, that Lori had been James' wife under the name "Elena" and that in other past lives Lori had been Mary French, the great-grandmother of Joseph Smith, as well as the wife of the prophet Moroni. According to Chad, past lives were "multiple probations" on Earth.
The Deaths of Charles Vallow and Tammy Daybell
By February 2019, Lori reportedly informed Charles that "she no longer cared about him or J.J.". Charles sought a protective order against Lori at the advice of his attorney. He withdrew the petition one month later, saying he wanted to "try to make the marriage work." Nevertheless, Charles had become so worried by Lori's actions that in February 2019, he changed his $1 million life insurance policy so the beneficiary would be his sister Kay rather than his wife.
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Arizona police detectives later retrieved text messages between Chad, Lori and her brother Alex Cox which referred to Charles as "Ned" or "Hiplos", the names of the "spirit" said to possess him. Lori told members of her religious group that her husband had become a "zombie". On July 11, 2019, Charles went to pick up J.J. at Lori's home in Chandler, Arizona early in the morning. Alex Cox was present. An altercation occurred and Cox shot and killed Charles. Cox claimed self-defense, alleging that he had retrieved his gun after Charles struck him on the head with the bat.
Lori did not call 911; it was later determined that Alex Cox had called it about 45 minutes after Charles was killed. Moments after the shooting, Lori took J.J. Lori texted Charles' sons from a previous marriage that their father had "passed away", then left them without any further information for three days. Charles' sons had to find on their own the mortuary where their father's body was.
By the end of August, Lori relocated to Rexburg, Idaho with her children. While Lori and her children resided in Rexburg, neighbors noticed J.J.'s erratic behavior as Lori often left him outside without adult supervision for long periods of time. J.J. last attended Rexburg's Kennedy Elementary School on September 20. On September 22, Melanie Gibb and her boyfriend, David Warwick, were staying at Lori's home. This was J.J.'s last confirmed sighting.
On October 9, 2019, Tammy reported being shot at in her driveway by a masked man with what she thought was a paintball gun. Ten days later, Tammy was found dead in her home, apparently from natural causes. However, after Tammy's body was exhumed and autopsied, it was determined that she had been asphyxiated by someone else.
Alex Cox's phone was located near the Daybells' residence on October 9, four hours before Tammy was shot at. It pinged again in the same area ten days later, on the night Tammy died. Police found at Cox's home an AR-15 that resembled the description Tammy had made of the supposed paintball gun. Prosecutors later said the "paintball gun" spotted by Tammy on October 9 was a real gun, that may have jammed or misfired, and that the shooter was probably Alex Cox.
The Disappearance and Discovery of Tylee and J.J.
On September 23, J.J. was absent: Lori told Gibb and Warwick that J.J. was attending a "special needs" school. Brandon Boudreaux and Melanie Gibb later said that Lori and Chad were convinced Tylee and J.J. were "possessed" and had become "zombies". Zulema Pastenes testified that Chad had told his followers that J.J. was "full of darkness".
On October 2, 2019, Brandon Boudreaux, the estranged husband of Lori's niece Melani, was shot at from a Jeep while driving home in Gilbert, Arizona. The bullet missed Boudreaux's head by inches. Boudreaux, who had been close to Charles and Lori Vallow's family, recognized the Jeep as a vehicle used by Tylee Ryan. By tracking Alex Cox's cell phone data, investigators later found that Cox had searched on the Internet for directions to Boudreaux's address and had been present near Boudreaux's home during the hours before the shooting.
On November 26, police visited Lori's townhouse in Rexburg for a welfare check on J.J. at the request of his grandmother, Kay Woodcock. Police later reached Lori, who claimed that J.J. was in Arizona with her friend Melanie Gibb. However, when contacted by police, Gibb stated that J.J. had not been with her for several months. That night, a neighbor observed Lori and Alex Cox packing a truck outside her home. The following day, when the police and FBI arrived to search the house, it was abandoned.
On December 6, 2019, Melanie Gibb contacted the police, revealing that both Lori and Chad had called her separately on November 26 and had asked her to tell police that J.J. was with her. Police efforts to locate J.J. led to the discovery that Tylee was also missing. A connection was made between the investigations in Idaho and those in Arizona. Law enforcement agencies intensified their inquiries about the children's whereabouts, as well as Chad and Lori's departure from Idaho.
On June 9, police discovered the remains of Tylee and J. J. Rexburg Police Detective Ray Hermosillo testified at Daybell's trial about the moment officers found the children's remains. Court documents revealed that Joshua had been buried in a pet cemetery on the property and Tylee had been dismembered and burned in a fire pit.
Lori Vallow Daybell's Trial and Sentencing
Lori Vallow Daybell was found guilty on all charges, including the murders of her two children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua "JJ" Vallow, and conspiracy to commit murder in the death of her husband's first wife. In 2023, Vallow Daybell herself was also convicted in the murders of those two children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua "JJ" Vallow, and was sentenced to life in prison.
An Arizona jury convicted Lori Vallow Daybell of conspiring to murder her estranged husband in 2019. She is already serving life sentences in Idaho for the murders of her children and conspiring to murder her then-boyfriend's wife. Lori Daybell was sentenced to two life sentences in Arizona on Friday for conspiring with her late brother to kill her fourth husband, who was fatally shot in 2019, and her niece's ex-husband, who survived a failed drive-by shooting that same year.
She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years for each conviction, to be served consecutively, the judge said.
Chad Daybell's Trial and Sentencing
An Idaho jury convicted Chad Daybell Thursday of triple-murder in the 2019 slaying of his first wife, Tammy Daybell, and the two youngest children of his now wife, Lori Vallow Daybell. Chad Daybell married Lori Vallow two weeks after the death of his wife, Tammy Daybell.
An Idaho doomsday author who prosecutors say became obsessed with apocalyptic beliefs and labeled people as “zombies” and “dark spirits” was found guilty Thursday in the deaths of his first wife and his current wife’s two youngest children. The jury recommended the death penalty for Chad Daybell after finding him guilty in the murders of Tammy Daybell, Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death for the murders of Tammy Daybell, Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow.
On June 1, 2024, an Idaho jury sentenced Chad Daybell to death for the 2019 murders of his first wife and his second wife’s two youngest children. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death for the murders of his first wife, Tammy, and the youngest children of his second wife, Lori Vallow Daybell.
Following Chad Daybell's conviction, the property was listed for sale in June. The new owners plan to demolish the home and other structures. Chad Daybell's defense attorney John Prior has filed an appeal asking the Idaho Supreme Court to examine the verdict and death sentence.
Key Figures and Relationships
A closer look at the relationships that make up the inner circle of convicted murderers Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell.
- Charles Vallow: Lori's fourth husband, murdered by Alex Cox.
- Tammy Daybell: Chad's first wife, whose death was initially ruled as natural causes but later determined to be a homicide.
- Alex Cox: Lori's brother, who shot and killed Charles Vallow and was involved in other suspicious events.
- Melanie Gibb: A friend of Lori, who provided key testimony about Lori and Chad's beliefs and actions.
- Brandon Boudreaux: Lori's niece's ex-husband, who survived a murder attempt.
The trials of Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell have been marked by shocking details and emotional testimonies, revealing a complex web of relationships and beliefs that led to tragic outcomes. The legal proceedings continue to unfold, with appeals and further investigations underway.
| Person | Relationship to Lori or Chad | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Charles Vallow | Lori's Fourth Husband | Murdered by Alex Cox; Conspiracy to Murder |
| Tammy Daybell | Chad's First Wife | Murdered; Chad Daybell Sentenced to Death |
| Tylee Ryan | Lori's Daughter | Murdered; Lori Vallow Daybell Convicted |
| Joshua "JJ" Vallow | Lori's Adopted Son | Murdered; Lori Vallow Daybell Convicted |
| Alex Cox | Lori's Brother | Died of Natural Causes; Alleged Accomplice |
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