Lori Vallow Daybell found guilty in attempted murder trial, ending a series of cases

USA Today

21 hours ago

Lori Vallow Daybell found guilty in attempted murder trial, ending a series of cases
An Arizona jury has found Lori Vallow Daybell, who along with her husband has been connected to a series of murders, including those of her two children, guilty in the 2019 attempted murder of her niece's ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux.
The Maricopa County jury spent almost 30 minutes deliberating on June 12 before convicting Daybell after five days of testimony.
The trial marked the end of a series of court cases for Daybell involving the murders of her former husband, her two children and the former wife of her current husband, Chad Daybell — a sequence shaped by apocalyptic religious beliefs.
Prosecutors in Idaho and Arizona argued that Daybell plotted to remove people who stood in the way of her plan to live with Chad Daybell while benefiting from life insurance policies.
Previously: 'Doomsday mom' Lori Vallow Daybell's attempted murder trial to begin jury selection
Daybell is already serving a life sentence in Idaho after being convicted of murdering her children, Joshua 'J.J.' Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and conspiring to kill Chad Daybell's first wife, Tammy Daybell.
In Arizona, she was convicted of conspiring with her brother, Alex Cox, to murder her then-husband, Charles Vallow, who was shot in 2019.
June 12 was the first full day of jury deliberations in the current trial.
Boudreaux's testimony was the first heard by jurors in the trial, which has lasted five days. He recounted the breakdown of his marriage with Daybell's niece Melani Pawlowski, his suspicions about Daybell and her brother, Alex Cox, and what happened the morning of the shooting — when someone fired at him from a Jeep outside his rental home.
"So as l let the car kind of coast in, that back window pops up, I see a muzzle, I hear a bang and you know, your flight or flight kicks in at that point," he testified to the jury.
He said he suspected Cox and Daybell immediately.
Prosecutor Treena Kay stuck to the narrative introduced in her opening statement, presenting cellphone location data, receipts and video footage to place Cox at the scene driving Daybell's Jeep. She argued that Daybell helped provide an alibi, arranged for the phone used in the plot and facilitated the shooting.
'She is responsible. She is a co-conspirator. She is assisting. She is promoting this crime,' Kay said during her closing argument.
Daybell, who represented herself at trial, did not testify. Instead, she tried to cast doubt on nearly every piece of evidence, at times suggesting data could have been tampered with before it was analyzed.
She also tried to shift the focus onto her niece, Pawlowski, asking detectives whether Pawlowski stood to gain financially if Boudreaux died.
During her closing, Daybell characterized the charges as part of a vendetta, saying Boudreaux had long blamed her for the collapse of his marriage.
'Boudreaux decided that I was responsible for his family tragedy, and I'm really sorry he feels that,' she said.