PHOENIX — Lori Vallow Daybell, the Idaho mother with doomsday religious beliefs who was convicted of killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival, is on trial again. This time, she’s accused in Arizona of conspiring to murder her estranged husband.
The case has drawn public attention in part because Vallow Daybell, 51, has doomsday-focused religious beliefs. She isn’t a lawyer but has chosen to represent herself in the six-week trial. Opening statements are scheduled Monday in a Phoenix courtroom.
Prosecutors say she conspired with her brother to kill Charles Vallow, so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty and has not spoken publicly about the details of Vallow’s death. Here’s what to know about the case.
Vallow was fatally shot in July 2019. Vallow Daybell then moved to Idaho with her children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan. She married Daybell just two weeks after the death of his wife, Tammy Daybell. The children went missing for several months before their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on Chad Daybell’s property. JJ was 7 and Tylee was 16.
Vallow Daybell is already serving three life sentences in Idaho for the children’s deaths and for conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death in the three killings.
Four months before he died, Charles Vallow filed for divorce from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets.
He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.
Police say Vallow was fatally shot by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, when Vallow went to pick up his son at Vallow Daybell’s home in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Vallow Daybell’s daughter, Tylee, told police that she confronted Vallow with a baseball bat after she was awakened by yelling in the house.
Tylee said she was trying to defend her mother, but Vallow took away the bat, according to police records. Cox told police that he fired after Vallow refused to drop the bat and came after him.
Cox told investigators that Vallow Daybell and the children left the house shortly before the shooting. Investigators say she went to get fast food for her son and bought flip-flops at a pharmacy before returning home.
Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense and wasn’t arrested in Vallow’s death, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.
Vallow Daybell was a beautician by trade, a mother of three and a wife — five times over.
Her first marriage, to a high school sweetheart when she was 19, ended quickly. She married again in her early 20s and had a son. Then, in 2001, she married Joseph Ryan, and they had Tylee. They divorced a few years later, and Ryan died in 2018 at his home of a suspected heart attack.
Charles Vallow entered the picture several months later. Vallow and Vallow Daybell married in 2006 and later adopted JJ, but by 2019 their marriage had soured. The two were estranged but still married when Cox fatally shot Vallow.
Public interest from around the world only grew as the investigation into the missing children took several unexpected turns, each new revelation seemingly stranger than the last.
Daybell, who was once a contestant on “Wheel of Fortune,” has been the subject of a Netflix documentary and Lifetime movie.
While representing herself, Vallow Daybell has complained about news coverage of her criminal cases, invoked her right to a speedy trial, questioned whether a government witness was truly an expert and engaged in disputes over the pre-trial exchange of evidence.
At a hearing last week, she lost a bid to strike three people from the prosecution’s witness list, including the grandmother of her adopted son. Another witness says Vallow Daybell spoke about Vallow as being “possessed” in the months before his death. When the judge asked her to argue her point, Vallow Daybell lowered her head, sighed and paused a few seconds. “Their information is not firsthand,” Vallow Daybell said. “These witnesses are all coming together. They are watching everything that goes on on TV regarding this.”
If convicted in Arizona of conspiring to kill Vallow, she would face a life sentence.
Vallow Daybell will wear civilian clothing during her trial and will not be handcuffed or shackled when jurors are in the courtroom. She, however, is expected to be wearing a belt-like device under her clothes that will let a jail officer deliver an electric shock by remote control if there’s a disturbance.
The Idaho investigation began at the end of 2019 when Vallow Daybell’s adopted son’s grandmother, worried about his welfare, reached out to police. Vallow Daybell had been evasive when asked about her two youngest children.
Chad Daybell called 911 in October 2019 to report that his wife Tammy Daybell was battling an illness and died in her sleep. Her body was later exhumed, and an autopsy determined she died of asphyxiation.
Idaho police did a welfare check on the kids in November 2019 and discovered they were missing and hadn’t been seen since early September. Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell left town a short time later, eventually turning up in Hawaii without the kids. She was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 on a warrant out of Idaho.
Defense attorneys told jurors that she was a “kind and loving mother” who happened to be interested in religion and biblical prophesies.
A witness at the Idaho trial said Vallow Daybell believes evil spirits have taken over people in her life and turned them into “zombies.”
The trial over Charles Vallow’s death will mark the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell.
She’s scheduled to go on trial again in late May on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.
Someone in a Jeep fired a gunshot at Boudreaux in 2019 outside his home in a Phoenix suburb, missing him but striking his car. The Jeep matched the description of one registered to Charles Vallow, who was killed nearly three months prior to the shooting outside Boudreaux’s home.
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she would face a life sentence. ____ Associated Press writer Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
