Idaho suspect: Kids are ‘zombies’
Authorities in Idaho relied on cellphone tracking data to locate the remains of two children this month after they had been missing since September, court documents say.
The remains of Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17, were found June 9 on the property of Chad Daybell, the two children’s stepfather, who married their mother, Lori Vallow, just weeks after his wife of 30 years died under “suspicious circumstances” last year.
Police used information from the cellphone of the children’s late uncle, Alex Cox, to find their remains buried on Daybell’s property, a probable cause affidavit unsealed Friday says.
Cox fatally shot Charles Vallow, Lori Vallow’s ex-husband, in July 2019. Lori Vallow and Daybell are in custody in Idaho awaiting court hearings on separate felony charges.
The twisting case spans multiple states, death investigations and allegations of cult-like religious beliefs since police first announced in December the children were missing.
In the court document unsealed Friday, police say Lori Vallow’s friend, Melani Gibb, cooperated with authorities and told them that Vallow believed her children had become “zombies.”
Gibb said Vallow told her she believed a “zombie” was “an individual whose mortal spirit has left their body and that their body is now the host of another spirit,” the affidavit says. The new spirit is “dark” and puts the person into a “limbo” that can only be released once the person’s “physical body” is killed, she allegedly believed.
Daybell faces two felony counts of destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence. Vallow faces two felony child desertion charges. Vallow was arrested in February in Hawaii after she failed to meet a court-ordered deadline to bring the children to authorities.
The couple had been living in Hawaii since December before Vallow was arrested. They married there weeks before, shortly after Tammy Daybell had died. An autopsy for Daybell is pending.