Bodies of 2 kids ID’d as Idaho town mourns
BOISE, Idaho — The bodies found this week at a rural property in Idaho are those of two children missing since last year, authorities confirmed Saturday.
The Rexburg Police Department issued the news release confirming that remains found Tuesday have been positively identified by the medical examiner’s office as belonging to Joshua “JJ” Vallow, who was 7 when he vanished in September, and his 17-year-old sister, Tylee Ryan.
Police discovered the two sets of human remains after issuing a warrant at the home of Chad Daybell, who married the children’s mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, a few weeks after the kids were last seen. Relatives confirmed to the media the next day that it was the children.
For police, the grisly discovery last week marked a significant break in a monthslong investigation into what happened to the two children.
For relatives, their heartbreak was magnified.
For a cluster of small Idaho towns, it was the denouement of one mystery and the start of another: Where are JJ and Tylee? Right here, and yet irretrievably gone. Why are they gone? That may never be fully answered.
“I never thought it would come to this — I didn’t think they were dead,” said Timanee Olsen, a specialty cookie baker who has closely followed the case and after hearing about the bodies, planned a vigil to mourn the kids who disappeared from Rexburg. “It’s just sparked a lot of sadness in our town.”
The children’s mother, Ms. Vallow Daybell, has been in jail since February on felony child abandonment and other charges. Her new husband, Mr. Daybell, was charged with concealing or destroying the bodies after police searched his rural property Tuesday.
The complex case began with Ms. Vallow Daybell’s brother shooting and killing her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, in suburban Phoenix last summer in what he said was self-defense.
Mr. Vallow was seeking a divorce, saying Lori believed she had become a godlike figure who was responsible for ushering in the biblical end times.
Shortly after Mr. Vallow’s death, Lori and the children moved to Idaho, where Mr. Daybell lived. He ran a small publishing company, putting out many fiction books he wrote about apocalyptic scenarios, and friends said he claimed to be able to receive visions from “beyond the veil.”
He was married to Tammy Daybell, who died last October of what her obituary said were natural causes. Authorities grew suspicious when he married Lori just two weeks later, and they had Tammy Daybell’s body exhumed in December. The results of that autopsy have not been released.
Police began searching for Tylee and JJ in November after relatives raised concerns. Police say the Daybells lied to investigators about the children’s whereabouts before quietly leaving Idaho. They were found in Hawaii months later.