She later faced two separate trials in Arizona. Prosecutors charged her with conspiring in the 2019 shooting of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and plotting against her former nephew-in-law, Brandon Boudreaux. Acting as her own lawyer, she was found guilty in both cases and handed two more life sentences.
The cost of keeping her behind bars in Arizona
Her stay in Arizona did not come cheap. According to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, her booking fee alone was $640. Housing her cost $137 a day. Extradition from Idaho to Arizona came to more than $15,000. By August 2025, the bill for her time in custody there had already passed $100,000, with the cost of her return to Idaho still to be added.
Why she escaped death row
When she faced trial in Idaho, prosecutors wanted the death penalty. The problem was time. There was so much evidence to prepare that it would have pushed the trial past the deadline set by her right to a speedy hearing. Because she refused to waive that right, the judge ruled capital punishment could not be pursued. She received life without parole.
Her husband, Chad Daybell, took a different path. He waived his speedy trial right and in 2024 was sentenced to death. He is one of only nine prisoners currently on Idaho’s death row.
Who is Lori Vallow Daybell?
Lori Vallow Daybell was born in 1973. She has been married five times. Her third husband, Joseph Ryan, was the father of her daughter Tylee. With her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, she adopted JJ.In July 2019, Charles was shot dead by Lori’s brother, Alex Cox. Weeks later, Chad’s wife, Tammy, died suddenly. Lori and Chad married in Hawaii not long after.Months later, investigators discovered the bodies of JJ and Tylee buried in Chad’s garden. That discovery led to murder charges against them both.Relatives remember Lori as a caring mother before she met Chad Daybell in 2018. He was a self-published author with extreme religious ideas about the end times. Lori absorbed his beliefs. She began to talk about “zombies”, about spirits being “light” or “dark”, and about her role in preparing for Christ’s return.
In court, jurors heard a recording of Lori’s sister, Summer Shiflet, confronting her: “Lori if you let this happen to them and put them in the ground like a piece of trash, I don’t know you… We would have taken them!”
What she said in court
At her sentencing in 2023, Lori told the judge: “Jesus knows me and Jesus understands me. I mourn with all of you who mourn my children and Tammy. Jesus Christ knows the truth of what happened here. Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case.”
She insisted her children were “happy” in the spirit world and described Tammy Daybell as her “eternal friend.”
She has not softened since. In a 2025 interview with NBC’s Dateline, she told journalist Keith Morrison: “I have seen things in the future that Jesus showed me when I was in heaven. And we were not in jail, and we were not in prison, and they were still in the future, from now.”
Lori will now serve her sentences at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Centre in Idaho. Her appeals are ongoing.
Chad Daybell waits on death row. Families of the victims continue to demand answers. JJ’s grandfather, Larry Woodcock, summed up the frustration: “There are just so many unanswered questions… If she would just be half-honest and give us answers because we just don’t understand it.”
