Mom convicted of killing kids pleads not guilty

A woman sentenced to life in an Idaho prison for murdering her two youngest children and another woman has pleaded not guilty to charges in Arizona of conspiring to kill her estranged husband and her niece’s ex-husband.

Lori Vallow Daybell, dressed in an orange jail uniform, was arraigned Thursday in state court in Phoenix. Her trial is scheduled for April 4.

After the hearing, Keith Terry, Vallow Daybell’s attorney, declined a request to comment on his client’s behalf.

In 2019, Vallow Daybell still lived in a Phoenix suburb with her children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and then-16-year-old Tylee Ryan. She was estranged from her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, at the time, and he had written in divorce filings that she claimed to be a goddess sent to usher in the Biblical apocalypse.

Charles Vallow was shot and killed by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, that summer. Cox told police he acted in self-defense, and he was never charged. Cox died later that year of what investigators said were natural causes.

Shortly after Charles Vallow died, Vallow Daybell and her kids moved to Idaho. Prosecutors said she made the move to be closer to her then-boyfriend, Chad Daybell.

Chad Daybell has also been charged in the murders of the two kids and his late wife. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Over the next several weeks, Vallow Daybell’s two children disappeared, and Chad Daybell’s thenwife, Tammy Daybell, died of what was initially believed to be natural causes. But authorities became suspicious when Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell married just two weeks later, and they determined Tammy Daybell had been asphyxiated.