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Lori Vallow Daybell: What to know about 'Doomsday Mom' and her convictions
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'
New York Times
23-04-2025
- New York Times
‘Doomsday Mom': What to Know About Lori Vallow Daybell's Convictions
Lori Vallow Daybell, the so-called Doomsday Mom who is serving three consecutive life sentences in Idaho for her role in the murders of two of her children and her husband's ex-wife, was convicted on Tuesday in Arizona of conspiracy in the killing of a former spouse. Ms. Vallow Daybell, 51, went on trial again on April 7 in the Arizona case, where she was charged with conspiring with her brother to kill her estranged fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019. She pleaded not guilty and represented herself, arguing that the killing was in self-defense. After deliberating for just under three hours, a jury in Maricopa County Superior Court returned the unanimous guilty verdict against her. A sentencing date has not been set. Ms. Vallow Daybell and her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, 54, were tried separately in Idaho in connection with the deaths of two of Ms. Vallow Daybell's three children: Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua Vallow, 7, known as J.J. The children's remains were found buried on Mr. Daybell's property in 2020. In addition to being found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of the children, and of grand theft, in May 2023, Ms. Vallow Daybell was found guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the death of Tammy Daybell, Mr. Daybell's former wife. Mr. Daybell was found guilty of first-degree murder in May 2024 and was sentenced to death for the murders of Tammy Daybell and the children. The case is the subject of a Lifetime movie, 'Doomsday Mom: The Lori Vallow Story,' and of a Netflix documentary series, 'Sins of Our Mother.' Here's what to know about Ms. Vallow Daybell. What happened to the children? Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow were reported missing in November 2019 by J.J.'s grandparents, who had grown suspicious when they were unable to reach him by phone. Officers with the Rexburg Police Department in Idaho attempted to conduct a welfare check and later executed search warrants at the apartment complex where Ms. Vallow Daybell and her husband lived. The authorities said the couple seemed unconcerned with the children's whereabouts. In February 2020, Ms. Vallow Daybell was arrested in Hawaii on a warrant issued by the authorities in Idaho after, they said, she had not cooperated with the effort to find the missing children. In June 2020, investigators found human remains buried on Mr. Daybell's property in Idaho that were later identified as belonging to his wife's missing children. He was arrested and charged with concealing evidence. Ms. Vallow Daybell's 'doomsday' beliefs drew attention to the case. Prosecutors did not say how the children were killed, but the couple's religious beliefs played a role, according to the indictment. They 'did endorse and teach religious beliefs for the purpose of justifying' the deaths, the indictment said. News headlines labeled Ms. Vallow Daybell the 'Doomsday Mom.' In divorce records obtained by the Phoenix television station Fox 10, Charles Vallow, one of Ms. Vallow Daybell's former husbands, said she had told him that she believed she was 'receiving spiritual revelations and visions to help her gather and prepare those chosen to live in the New Jerusalem after the Great War as prophesied in the Book of Revelations.' Mr. Daybell has written several novels with recurring doomsday themes, and both he and Ms. Vallow Daybell have been linked to an entity called Preparing a People, which aims to ready people for the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to its website. Her second trial concerned the death of her fourth husband. After she was convicted in Idaho, Ms. Vallow Daybell was extradited to Arizona in December 2023 to face charges of conspiracy to commit murder in two other cases. The first of these, which ended in a conviction on April 22, involved the murder of Charles Vallow, the fourth of her five husbands, who was shot and killed in Arizona by her brother, Alexander Cox, in July 2019, when she and Mr. Vallow were estranged. Mr. Cox, who has since died, told the police that Mr. Vallow had hit him in the head with a baseball bat and that the shooting was in self-defense. Ms. Vallow Daybell is also expected to face trial in May on charges that she conspired to murder Brandon Boudreaux, her niece's former husband, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Boudreaux was not injured in October 2019 when someone shot at him from a Jeep that matched the description of a vehicle registered to Mr. Vallow, according to The A.P. What happened to Chad Daybell's ex-wife? Mr. Daybell's previous wife, Tammy Daybell, was found dead in her Idaho home in October 2019. The authorities initially said that she appeared to have died of natural causes, but her body was exhumed that December after the authorities began to question the circumstances of her death and its potential connection to the disappearances of Ms. Vallow Daybell's children. Prosecutors said at the start of Ms. Vallow Daybell's trial in Idaho that an autopsy later determined that Tammy Daybell died of asphyxiation. Mr. Daybell increased the amount of coverage in a life insurance policy for her in September 2019, a little more than a month before her death. Ms. Vallow Daybell and Mr. Daybell married shortly after their spouses died. Prosecutors described Ms. Vallow Daybell as a negligent mother. It took years for Ms. Vallow Daybell to stand trial in Idaho because she was initially declared not competent and was required to undergo 'restorative treatment.' During the trial, prosecutors described Ms. Vallow Daybell as a negligent mother with extreme beliefs who was on a 'religious mission' that she viewed as being more important than caring for her children. Former friends testified about Ms. Vallow Daybell and Mr. Daybell's purported religious beliefs. One, Melanie Gibb, said that Ms. Vallow Daybell believed that evil spirits could turn people into 'zombies' by taking over their bodies, and that she called J.J. and Tylee 'zombies,' The A.P. reported. Ms. Gibb testified that Ms. Vallow Daybell believed that the only way to get rid of the evil spirit was to kill the body. In the Idaho case, Jim Archibald, a lawyer for Ms. Vallow Daybell, described her as a 'kind and loving mother to her children' who was interested in religion and biblical prophesies involving the end of the world. He said that she was with other people in her apartment when J.J. and Tylee were killed and that she was in Hawaii at the time of Tammy Daybell's death. Ms. Vallow Daybell did not testify in her own defense, and her lawyers rested their case without calling any witnesses, Boise State Public Radio reported, telling the judge that they did not believe the state had proven its case. Judge Steven W. Boyce of Idaho's Seventh Judicial District said at the sentencing that allowing Ms. Vallow Daybell to serve her life terms concurrently 'would not serve the interest of justice.' 'The most unimaginable type of murder is to have a mother murdering her own children,' Judge Boyce said, 'and that's exactly what you did.'
