Idaho woman convicted of killing her two children sentenced to life in prison
Lori Vallow Daybell, an Idaho mother convicted of murdering her two youngest children and a romantic rival, was sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday.
Vallow Daybell was found guilty in May of killing her children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, seven, and Tylee Ryan, 16, as well as conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell, her fifth husband’s previous wife. Vallow Daybell will serve three life sentences one after the other, the judge said.
Her husband, Chad Daybell, is awaiting trial on the same murder charges. Vallow Daybell also faces two other cases in Arizona – one on a charge of conspiring with her brother to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and one of conspiring to kill her niece’s exhusband.
The case made international headlines after the nationwide search undertaken for the children as well as the bizarre details that emerged, including Vallow Daybell’s claims that her son and daughter were zombies and that she was a goddess sent to usher in the Biblical apocalypse.
At the Fremont county courthouse in St Anthony, Idaho, judge Steven W Boyce said the search for the missing children, the discovery of their bodies and the evidence photos shown in court left law enforcement and jurors traumatized, and he would never be able to get images of the slain children out of his head.
Vallow Daybell justified the murders by “going down a bizarre religious rabbit hole, and clearly you are still down there”, the judge said.
In July 2019, Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, in a suburban Phoenix home. Cox told police he acted in self-defense. He was never charged and later died of what authorities determined were natural causes.
Vallow Daybell was already in a relationship with Daybell, a self-published writer of doomsday-focused fiction loosely based on Mormon teachings. She moved to Idaho with her kids and brother to be closer to him.
The children were last seen alive in September 2019. Police discovered they were missing a month later after an extended family member became worried. Their bodies were found buried in Daybell’s yard the following summer.
Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow married in November 2019, about two weeks after his previous wife, Tammy, was killed. She initially was described as having died of natural causes, but an autopsy later showed she had been asphyxiated, authorities said.
Defense attorney Jim Archibald argued during the trial that there was no evidence tying Vallow Daybell to the killings, but plenty showing she was a loving, protective mother whose life took a sharp turn when she met Daybell and fell for his “weird” apocalyptic religious claims. He suggested that Daybell and Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, was responsible for the deaths.
Daybell told her they had been married in several previous lives and she was a “sexual goddess” who was supposed to help him save the world by gathering 144,000 followers so Jesus could return, Archibald said.
On Monday, the court heard testimony from several representatives of the victims, including Vallow Daybell’s only surviving son, Colby Ryan.
“Tylee will never have the opportunity to become a mother, wife or have the career she was destined to have. JJ will never be able to grow and spread his light with the world the way he did,” Ryan wrote in a statement read by prosecuting attorney Rob Wood. “My siblings and father deserve so much more than this.”
Samantha Gwilliam, the sister of Tammy, read a statement from their father, Ronald Douglas, describing the profound impact Tammy’s unexpected death had on their family.
Douglas said his wife was fighting cancer, and spent the last months of her life watching the murder trial.
The “revelations of deceit and intrigue” during the trial caused the woman extreme emotional stress, he said. Tammy’s murder and the subsequent trial caused the Douglas family to be estranged from their grandchildren, he added.
In her own statement, Gwilliam told Vallow Daybell the family has been hounded by media and others drawn by “all of the salacious scandal you stirred up”.
“I miss my sister every day. I will grieve her, and the loss of my mother, every single day of my life,” Gwilliam said.
Gwilliam argued that Daybell made Vallow Daybell feel special. “You felt powerful,” Gwilliam said, calling Vallow Daybell a “liar, adultress, and murderer”. “You are not exalted beings,” she said, a reference to the Mormon blessing of living eternally with God and Jesus Christ.
Despite extreme spiritual beliefs both Daybells espoused, Gwilliam argued their motive was simpler: money. Family members of Vallow Daybell’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, made similar claims. Vallow had removed his wife from his million-dollar life insurance policy. Vallow’s death, his family argued, was the beginning of Vallow Daybell’s “cruel campaign of terror”.
After the victim impact statements, Vallow Daybell, her hair in her signature long waves, addressed the court. She referenced a Biblical story in the New Testament about Jesus’ response to an adultering woman who authorities believed should be stoned. “Jesus knows me,” she said, beginning to cry. “And Jesus understands me. I mourn with
all of you who mourn my children. And Tammy.
“Jesus Christ knows the truth of what happened here,” Vallow Daybell continued. “Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case. Accidental
deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal side effects from medications happen.”
Vallow Daybell went on to claim she died while in labor with Tylee and her spirit left her body. This experience, she argued, permitted her access to Heaven and what she called “the spirit world”. Since her out-of-body experience, Vallow Daybell claimed she has had communications with people in Heaven, including her sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents and Jesus Christ. She said she knows “for a fact” her children are “happy and busy in the spirit world” and Tammy is also “very happy and extremely busy”.
In her statement, Vallow Daybell said she was “homesick” for Heaven and looked forward to the day she was reunited with JJ, Tylee, and Tammy. “Heaven is more wonderful than you can possibly imagine. I do not fear death but I look forward to it.”
Wood, the prosecuting attorney, argued at the hearing there was no evidence that her crimes were impacted by mental illness.
“The evidence is overwhelming that she did know right from wrong,” Wood said.