DEADLY SECRETS
And a shocking arrest
On May 25, the day that Joshua ‘J.J.’ Vallow would have turned 8 years old, his big brother Colby Ryan posted an emotional birthday message to him on YouTube. He hadn’t seen J.J. or sister Tylee, 17, since they’d gone missing in September 2019, and Colby choked back tears as he talked about the boisterous little boy he used to swim and wrestle with and who used to wake him up at 5am to get on his scooter and “just start going”. “You just bring joy,” Colby said. “You just walk into a room and just make people attracted to the light you are … And Tylee, you are such a strong, beautiful sister, and I miss you guys … I’m praying that we make it through this as a family. I’m always here for you. And I love you so much.”
But weeks later, on June 9, it became heartbreakingly clear that J.J. and Tylee never saw the message. After months of searching, Idaho police and FBI agents discovered the children’s remains buried on a rural property outside
Rexburg, Idaho, belonging to Chad Daybell, 51, an author and self-proclaimed doomsday prophet – and fifth husband of the children’s mother, Lori Vallow, 47. “It is not the outcome we had hoped: to be able to find the children safe,” Rexburg Police Department assistant chief Gary Hagen said in a statement. Chad was arrested and charged with two counts of destroying or concealing human remains, his bail set at $1.4 million. He has yet to enter a formal plea. Lori, who was arrested in February after refusing to produce the children, remains in jail on multiple charges; she has pleaded not guilty. The grisly discovery of the siblings’ remains marked another twist in a case that involves numerous suspicious-death investigations in at least four states. But for J.J. and Tylee’s grieving family members, it also proved to be the confirmation of their darkest nightmare. “This is the worst news we will ever get in our lives,” the siblings’ grandparents, Larry and Kay Woodcock, with the Ryan family, said in a statement. “We are filled with unfathomable sadness that these two bright stars were stolen from us.” The children’s devastated brother, Colby, 20, posted a message on his Instagram account addressed to his “beautiful, amazing, sweet angels”, writing, in part, “I’m still here for you. I will always wish I could have traded places with you. But I’ll never let you be forgotten.”
It’s been more than eight months since J.J. and Tylee vanished – and the case first captured the attention of the nation. J.J.’s grandparents contacted Idaho police in November to report that they hadn’t spoken to their grandson in months. When police performed a welfare check on November 26 at the Rexburg home Lori had recently moved into with Chad, she told them the children were visiting relatives in Arizona. Police returned to the couple’s residence the next day, but Lori and Chad had disappeared. Increasingly suspicious – and concerned about the children (J.J. had last been seen September 23, when his mother pulled him out of school; Tylee, during a September 8
trip to Yellowstone National Park) – police dug into the case and learned that Lori and Chad had married just two weeks after the death of Chad’s first wife, Tammy, 49, in October. They exhumed Tammy’s body, opening an investigation into her death, formerly thought to have been of natural causes. “Some things about Tammy’s death came to light, and we agreed that it needed a better look,” says Idaho’s Fremont County sheriff Len Humphries. Police have declined to comment further.
The more investigators probed, the more questions emerged. In July 2019, Lori’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, had been shot to death by her brother, Alex, who himself was found dead in his Gilbert, Arizona, home in December 2019. Before his death, Charles had filed for divorce from his wife, who had become increasingly fixated on Chad’s doomsday teachings. In court documents, he alleged that she had become “obsessive about near-death experiences and spiritual visions.” Charles claimed that his wife told him she was on a mission “to lead the 144,000” at Christ’s Second Coming and threatened to kill him “if he got in her way”.
In January, police tracked down Lori and Chad in Kauai, Hawaii, and gave Lori five days to “physically produce” the children, which she failed to do. On February 20 she was arrested, then extradited to Idaho.
Despite her arrest, the fate of J.J. and Tylee remained an unanswered question
– until local police and FBI agents showed up Chad’s home on June 9, armed with a search warrant, and began digging on the property. The siblings’ remains were found within hours. During Lori’s arraignment the next day, Rob Wood, the special prosecutor handling the case, confirmed the identity of the remains, describing the concealment of at least one of the bodies “to be particularly egregious”.
The grisly discovery has left those who know the couple stunned. “It’s just unreal,” says Lori’s longtime friend April Raymond, who initially worried that Lori was having a “nervous breakdown” when she began describing her unsettling spiritual beliefs to her, insisting that her then husband, Charles, was a “demon” who would soon be dead. “Lori was the mother we all aspired to be, but this feels so cold, calculated and deliberate.” Adds Benjamin
Hyde, who first met Chad when they were Mormon missionaries in the late 1980s: “Chad’s just a quiet guy. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that he could do this.”
But locals in Rexburg, frustrated by Chad and Lori’s refusal to cooperate with the authorities, are glad the father of five, who once worked as a gravedigger, is in custody. “People around here feel it’s long overdue,” says neighbour Brittany Chapple. “Everyone kept wondering, ‘When are they going to arrest Chad? He’s obviously involved.’”
Meanwhile, those who knew and loved the siblings are trying to hold on to happy memories. “Tylee was so very protective of J.J.,” recalls Raymond. “She would often refer to him as her ‘child’. I just hope that neither of them knew what a monster their mother was.” Colby and other family members voiced an even simpler plea: “We … hope they died without any pain and suffering.”
Reporting by K.C. Baker, Steve Helling, Christine Pelisek, Harriet Sokmensuer and Jeff Truesdell
“It’s just unreal. This feels so cold, calculated and deliberate” —APRIL RAYMOND