'Doomsday Dad' Attorney Chad Daybell Accuses Lori Vallow of Family Murders

Eight months later his second wife, Lori Vallow, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murders of her seven-year-old son “JJ” Vallow and her 16-year-old daughter Tylee Ryan, as well as conspiracy to kill Daybell. Chad Daybell's first wife, Tammy Daybell, is on trial in Idaho for the same crimes.

Daybell is charged with three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of conspiracy to commit murder, grand larceny and insurance fraud. If convicted of the murder charges, he faces the death penalty — a possibility rejected by the court in Vallow's case.

Daybell's trial began Wednesday in a Boise courtroom presided over by Judge Steven Boyce, who also served as the judge in Vallow's trial. In a “chapterized” opening statement, prosecutor Rob Wood explained how the remains of Vallow's two children were found buried on Debel's property in Rexburg, Idaho, and provided a timeline of the dizzying events that led to the grim discovery.

The saga began when Daybell and Vallow met in 2018 at a religious conference in St. George, Utah. Both belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Vallow—then an Arizona homemaker married to her fourth husband, Charles Vallow—was a fan of Debel's self-published books, which had won an interested Mormon audience. for their end. -day visions. Daybell claimed to be able to see beyond the “veil” of reality due to his near deaths.

Enamored with Daybell's prophetic aura and fringe beliefs, Vallow continued to see him, and the two formed a close relationship based on his supposed glimpses of their past lives and messianic future. “In his thirst for sex, power and money, Chad created an alternate reality where they called themselves James and Elaina,” Wood told the jury Wednesday, according to live updates by Nate Eaton of Eastern Idaho Newsreporting that Dabel called Vallow an “exalted goddess.”

The couple also believed they could see which people were “light” or aligned with God, as opposed to “dark” or even “zombies” – demonically possessed individuals who stood in the way of their spiritual and romantic aspirations. The list of “zombies” included their respective spouses as well as Wallow's two youngest children (her surviving 27-year-old son, Colby Ryan, testified at her trial). Vallow's brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed her husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019, successfully claiming self-defense, and died later that year of natural causes. Daybell's wife, Tammy, died in her bed months after Charles Vallow's murder, with a delayed autopsy ultimately finding she had suffered asphyxiation. “Tammy Daybell, a vivacious, happy mother, was another person who was labeled as a dark spirit that needed to be removed,” Wood noted in his opening statement. He noted that Daybell and Vallow were married in Hawaii just 17 days after Tammy was discovered dead.

However, it was the disappearance of children JJ and Tylee around that time that finally drew national attention to this shocking case. Concerned relatives were unable to ascertain the welfare or whereabouts of Daybell and Vallow while living alone in Hawaii, reportedly with life insurance money Daybell received after his wife's death. In early 2020, Vallow was arrested and extradited to Idaho for non-support and child abandonment, while Daybell was arrested until that summer, when investigators found JJ and Tylee in shallow graves at his ranch home.

Wood told jurors Wednesday that during the state's lengthy case against Daybell, they would hear “a lot of this defendant's words” and “a lot of texts” he and Vallow sent back and forth, appearing to imply that Daybell's communications would confirm his guilt. a reasonable doubt. But Daybell's defense barrister, John Prior, tried in his opening statement to paint him as a man wooing an attractive, voracious and “very sexual” woman – almost helpless but to do her bidding.

“This beautiful striking woman named Lori Vallow shows up and starts giving him a lot of attention,” Prior said of the couple's first meeting at the religious conference. “He chased him. She encouraged him. He went so far as to go behind the booth and help him sell his books.” Prior also described Wallow's early marriages as “brittle” and stormy in contrast to Dabel's relatively stable family life. He further claimed that there was no DNA evidence from Daybell on JJ or Tylee. As for Tammy's death, he said the jury would learn she used natural remedies for a number of health issues and “refused to see a doctor.”

Reporter Leah Sottile, whose book When the moon turns to blood details of how Daybell and Vallow fell into a perverse belief system of their own making were present in court. Sottile tweeted that Prior's strategy to deflect blame onto the already convicted and sentenced Vallow was “misogynisticand an attempt to convince the jury that Daybell had been “overcome by a Jezebel figure like Vallow — a woman with failed marriages, irresistible sexuality.” He also noted the irony of this along with Prior's argument that Tammy was primarily responsible for her husband's publishing activities: “A man of a very patriarchal faith saying that the women around him controlled him.”

But the prosecution will likely argue that Vallow was swayed by Daybell's discussion of their prominent roles in some kind of covert holy war, and it will take serious work to convince a jury that the influence primarily flowed from the other side. Vallow's own defense team tried to frame Debel as the criminal mastermind of the couple, which did not prevent her conviction. If this turns out to be nothing more than a mirror version of this trial, Daybell's chances of avoiding the death penalty may be slim.