Lori Vallow Daybell: What to know about 'Doomsday Mom' and her convictions

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Lori Vallow Daybell now faces sentencing in two Arizona convictions after a jury found her guilty of conspiring to murder her niece's ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux.
The two convictions capped a series of tangled conspiracies, apocalyptic beliefs and family murders that unfolded in 2019 and led to trials in two states.
The Arizona trials were marked by drama both in front of the jury and behind the scenes.
As her own attorney, Daybell filed several motions to have her convictions thrown out and have multiple judges disqualified.
She also repeatedly clashed with the judges and prosecutors.
But she insisted to the jury in her second trial in Arizona that she was a loving person without anger, telling them: 'I am a person who loves all people and has no malice toward people, not even the prosecutors.'
Born in 1973 in Southern California into a large Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints family, Daybell eventually would live in three different states and marry five different men by the time she was 46.
Her first four marriages would last about three years each.
Daybell married her first husband, Nelson Yanes, when she was 19, according to reporting by East Idaho News.
After their brief marriage ended, she married William Lagioia in 1995, with whom she had a son, Colby Ryan. The two were separated by 1998.
In 2001 she married Joseph Ryan and had her second child, Tylee Ryan. The two lived in Texas, where she had a career as a hairdresser and competed as a beauty queen. She also appeared on 'Wheel of Fortune,' winning about $17,500 in cash and prizes. Her marraige with Ryan lasted until 2004. He died of a heart attack in 2018.
In 2006 Lori Daybell married Charles Vallow in Las Vegas. The family lived in Texas for several years before relocating to Hawaii in 2014 and ran a juice business.
The family moved again in 2016, this time to Arizona, where Charles worked as a life insurance agent.
Two years into their life in Arizona, Lori Daybell met Chad Daybell at e religious conference in St. George, Utah, for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who focused on apocalyptic beliefs.
Chad Daybell was a self-published author who wrote fiction centered on end-times prophecy.
Aspects of her life and the murders have been covered in two streaming movies since 2021.
The Lifetime movie "Doomsday Mom: The Lori Vallow Story," which stars Lauren Lee Smith as Lori Daybell, focuses on the disappearance of her children, Tylee and Joshua 'J.J.', and the events leading up to the charges against her.
A Netflix documentary titled "Sins of Our Mother," released in 2022, explored her radical beliefs, the deaths of her children, and includes interviews with her surviving son, Colby Ryan.
Both series covered the ins-and-outs of what would be the saga that continues in 2025.
The truth behind Daybell's murders began to unfold almost 900 miles away in Rexburg, Idaho, where the bodies of her two children — 7-year-old Joshua 'J.J.' Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan— were found buried in 2020.
For months, family and friends had searched for the children, who were reported missing in September 2019.
Daybell had recently moved to Idaho to be with Chad Daybell.
Idaho prosecutors claimed the couple justified the murders as a spiritual mission, eliminating anyone who stood in their way of building a new life together, including Chad Daybell's former wife, Tammy Daybell.
According to testimony and evidence, the couple described the children and other relatives as 'zombies.'
Once labeled a zombie, prosecutors said, the couple believed the person's body needed to be destroyed.
Lori Daybell was first represented by a private attorney, Mark Means, who was disqualified after a judge ruled a conflict of interest since he also had represented Chad Daybell. Public defender Jim Archibald took over after Means.
Lori Daybell and Chad Daybell were found guilty of the three deaths in Idaho. She was sentenced to multiple life terms and he was sentenced to death.
After his conviction, Chad Daybell was placed on death row in Idaho, housed at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, just south of Boise. The execution process in Idaho resembles that in Arizona. After sentencing, an automatic appeals process is triggered, meaning it may be years before the state attorney general requests an execution warrant.
When Lori Daybell's Arizona cases are finished, she will return to prison in Pocatello, Idaho. While there is no order prohibiting the two from communicating with each other, communications between prisons in most jurisdictions are prohibited.
After the Idaho cases, two other charges still loomed over Daybell in Arizona. She was her own attorney in these 2025 cases.
Her former husband, Charles Vallow, had died after being shot by Daybell's older brother, Alex Cox, in July 2019, months after Vallow had filed for divorce.
Cox told Chandler police he shot in self-defense, but an investigation that spanned almost two years showed Cox and Daybell strategized to lure Vallow to her home and provoke a fight.
Cox never testified in court. He died in December 2019 from an embolism.
Daybell portrayed the shooting as a family tragedy that prosecutors had turned into something more.
Prosecutors said Daybell told acquaintances that Vallow was being controlled by an evil spirit and claimed to have been drugging him.
Daybell attempted to collect Vallow's life insurance policy but was unsuccessful after learning he had changed the beneficiary to his sister, Kay Woodcock.
A jury convicted Daybell of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder on April 22.
After the conviction, Woodcock said, 'I'm glad this is done. Now we just have to get justice for Brandon.'
A little over a month later, Daybell would face Boudreaux in court.
Daybell characterized the attempted murder charges as a vendetta by Boudreaux, claiming that he blamed her for the collapse of his marriage to her niece Melani Pawlowski.
About a month before Charles Vallow's death, Boudreaux texted Daybell and her then-husband, saying she was feeding Pawlowski lies that led to their divorce.
After Cox killed Vallow and the children went missing, Boudreaux grew suspicious. Pawlowski had rented an apartment in the same Idaho complex where Daybell lived.
Now separated, Boudreaux had rented a home in Gilbert, Arizona. One week after moving in, someone shot at him from the back of a Jeep Wrangler parked outside his driveway.
'So as I let the car kind of coast in, that back window pops up, I see a muzzle, I hear a bang — and your fight or flight kicks in at that point,' he testified.
He immediately pointed investigators to Daybell and Cox.
Prosecutors tied the Jeep to Daybell. Cell phone data later revealed Cox drove from Idaho to Arizona two days before the shooting. Records also showed Daybell called herself from Cox's phone in Idaho about an hour before the shot was fired in an effort to create an alibi for Cox, prosecutors argued.
The trial lasted five days. Jurors found Daybell guilty on the sixth day after about 30 minutes of deliberation.
As her own attorney, Daybell struggled to keep up with her cases.
She consistently missed deadlines for disclosing reports and witnesses, while Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Justin Beresky worked to give her enough time to prepare.
At one point, he suggested she request a delay to give her experts time to analyze evidence. She refused.
'This is one of the things where you have to weigh your options on whether it's worth it to get a continuance so you can have your defense do the work that you want done,' Beresky told her.
But Daybell wanted to proceed as scheduled and told the judge, 'I understand that is the rule, and I understand how unfair and prejudicial that would be to me.'
Daybell's sense of injustice grew as the trial went forward. After her conviction, she filed motions to toss out the verdict and disqualify Beresky, claiming bias.
'You've denied every single one of my motions,' she said in court.
Beresky replied: 'File a motion that has legal merit, and I will approve it.'
Her motion to vacate and disqualify him were denied.
She also tried to remove Superior Court Judge Jennifer Green, who had denied her request to disqualify Beresky. The case was referred to a third judge, Kevin Wein, who ruled the motions were untimely and denied her again.
The start of her second trial failed to launch as planned. On the first day, Daybell arrived in a wheelchair and told the judge she was too ill to proceed.
Beresky granted a two-day delay. When she asked if he would have her dragged to court, he replied he would because as her own attorney she would be the only one who could waive her appearance.
'You're welcome to come over to the jail, come to my cell and see how I'm doing in there,' she told him in frustration.
Tensions escalated. On the second day of testimony, Beresky kicked Daybell out of court during a hearing held outside the jury's presence. She had interrupted him and accused him of yelling.
'I'm not yelling, OK,' Beresky replied.
'Yeah, you are. You're not in charge of me that way,' Daybell said.
'Okay, take her out. Take her out. Take her out,' the judge ordered.
He warned that she was on the verge of losing the right to represent herself, and after a recess, she returned and apologized.
Daybell was scheduled to be sentenced by Beresky in both of her Arizona convictions July 25.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Lori Vallow Daybell trials: What to know about 'Doomsday Mom'