Lori Vallow Daybellwas sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole formurderingher two children and conspiring to murder her husband’s first wife in aplotthat stemmed from the bizarre doomsday prophesies she believed.
Judge Steven Boyce gave Vallow, 50, consecutive sentences of life without parole months after the Idaho mom’sMay convictionfor the 2019 murders of her son 7-year-oldJoshua “J.J.” Vallowand her daughter 16-year-oldTylee Ryan, as well asTammy Daybell, 49. Tammy was married to Lori’s fifth husbandChad Daybellfor nearly 30 years before her death.
Lori was a follower of Chad’s religious doomsday writings and beliefs, which held that Lori’s children were zombies and Lori was a “goddess,” among other outlandish theories. Chad, 54, is charged in connection with the deaths of Tylee, J.J. and Tammy, but will be tried separately. He has pleaded not guilty.
Dennis Fujimoto/AP/Shutterstock
Prior to sentencing her, Judge Boyce called Lori’s crimes “heinous and egregious,” saying Lori that she hadn’t shown any remorse for her actions.
Vallow addressed the court before Boyce sentenced her, making bizarre, rambling claims that both her slain children as well as Tammy Daybell had visited her after their deaths, and saying that J.J. had told her, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Mom.”
In opening statements of the weeks-long trial, Fremont County Prosecuting Attorney Lindsey Blake said the case was about “money, power and sex.”
“Lori used money, power and sex or the promise of those things to get what she wanted,” Blake said.
“After she met Chad Daybell, she changed,” her son testified.
Lori’s friendMelanie Gibbalso testified, saying that Lori and Chad had"an attraction from the very beginning"after they met at a conference in 2018. Gibb said that Lori “shared with me that [Chad] told her that they had been married in another time period.”
Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow.Eric Grossarth/ EastIdahoNews.com
Gibb testfied that Lori believed that people existed on a scale of “light” and “dark” — with those that “signed contracts” with Jesus Christ being light and those who did the same with Satan as dark. In September 2019, Gibb said Lori told her that J.J. and Tylee had recently become “dark.”
When police arrived at Chad’s property with a search warrant in November 2019, they said the couple had fled. Lori and Chad were discovered in Hawaii in 2020 andserved court orders to turn Tylee and J.J. over to child services in Idaho, but they did not comply.
Then, in June 2020, investigators discovered the children’s remains during a grisly excavation on Chad’s property.
“We eventually uncovered bits and pieces of Tylee — whom we assumed it was Tylee — that had been burned,” police detective Ray Hermosillo told the court. “There were pieces of bone, charred flesh, just globs of flesh that were falling apart.”
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Tylee’s manner of death was homicide, but her cause of death was undetermined. Her autopsy took several days because her remains were not found intact.
Lori Vallow (center).Lori Vallow Daybell Trial
Tammy, whose death was initially believed to be from natural causes, was asphyxiated, prosecutors revealed during the trial.
Days after Lori was convicted in Idaho, a grand jury in Maricopa County, Ariz., indicted Lori forallegedly conspiring to kill her niece’s husband Brandon Boudreauxon Feb. 24, 2022. Boudreaux survived the alleged plot. She has pleaded not guilty in that case.
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source: people.com
