An Idaho jury on Friday unanimously found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty of murdering her daughter and son, and also guilty of conspiring to kill her husband’s first wife, as part of a cryptic religious prophecy that prosecutors said Vallow Daybell was attempting to fulfill.
The former beauty pageant contestant was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her two children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua Jaxon “J.J.” Vallow. She was also charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of the children and Tammy Daybell, the former wife of her fifth husband, Chad Daybell. He pleaded not guilty to the same charges as his wife and will stand trial later this year.
Prosecutors argued that the couple thought of themselves as godlike figures tasked with ridding the world of “zombie” spirits, which inhabited Vallow Daybell’s children, among others. The case’s bizarre details of a onetime beauty pageant contestant entangled in fringe “doomsday” religious beliefs and several suspicious deaths spawned a Netflix documentary series.
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“We are very pleased with the jury’s verdict, and we want to thank them, as well as the alternates, for their service over last six weeks during this trial,” prosecutors Rob Wood and Lindsey Blake said in a statement to The Washington Post. Prosecutors said they will not be giving any other interviews because Daybell’s case is still pending.
Vallow, who sat in between her two attorneys, did not show any emotion when the verdict reached by the 12-panel jury was read Friday.
In the fall of 2019, a multistate search began for Vallow Daybell’s two children after their grandparents asked authorities to conduct a wellness check because they hadn’t heard from J.J., who had special needs, in more than a month. The couple told police the boy was staying with a family friend in Arizona.
Authorities did not believe their story, but when they returned to Vallow Daybell’s home with a search warrant the next day, the couple were gone. They had flown to Hawaii to be married. Fox 10 Phoenix obtained footage of the pair in January 2020, a month before their arrests, poolside and tanning when police served them a court order to bring the children to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
In a trial that lasted six weeks, authorities and prosecutors provided graphic and emotional testimony about discovering the remains of Tylee and J.J. on the Daybells’ Idaho property in June 2020, after a months-long search.
J.J.’s body was wrapped in black plastic and buried near a pond. Duct tape was used to bind his wrists, arms and feet, and he had visible bruising on his arms, according to a report from the Ada County, Idaho, coroner. Tylee’s remains, mostly burned bone fragments, were located in a pet cemetery near a fire pit, according to audio recordings released following the trial.
Prosecutors would also eventually file murder charges against the couple in the October 2019 death of Daybell’s first wife, Tammy. It was initially believed the 49-year-old mother of five died naturally in her sleep, but in the first week of the trial, prosecutors revealed that an autopsy performed after her body was exhumed had determined her cause of death to be asphyxiation “at the hands of another,” according to Salt Lake City-based KSL TV.
Significant portions of the trial centered on the couple’s extremist religious beliefs.
Zulema Pastenes, Vallow Daybell’s sister-in-law, testified that the couple believed they needed to destroy the children’s bodies so demons could not inhabit them, according to East Idaho News’s Nate Eaton, who was reporting from the courtroom for much of the trial.
Records from a police investigation, which were published by Salt Lake City-based TV station KUTV, alleged that “Lori Vallow believed she was an exalted Goddess.” The couple thought they could teleport and launch natural disasters, and they believed they were “directed to lead 144,000 people in preparing for the end of the world.”
One neighbor described Vallow Daybell as a “supermom” before the killings.
She won $17,500 on “Wheel of Fortune” in 2004. During the Mrs. Texas beauty pageant, she joked, “Being a good mom is very important to me and being a good wife. … Being all those things together is not easy and I’m basically a ticking time bomb.”
The former beauty pageant contestant was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her two children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua Jaxon “J.J.” Vallow. She was also charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of the children and Tammy Daybell, the former wife of her fifth husband, Chad Daybell. He pleaded not guilty to the same charges as his wife and will stand trial later this year.
Prosecutors argued that the couple thought of themselves as godlike figures tasked with ridding the world of “zombie” spirits, which inhabited Vallow Daybell’s children, among others. The case’s bizarre details of a onetime beauty pageant contestant entangled in fringe “doomsday” religious beliefs and several suspicious deaths spawned a Netflix documentary series.
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“We are very pleased with the jury’s verdict, and we want to thank them, as well as the alternates, for their service over last six weeks during this trial,” prosecutors Rob Wood and Lindsey Blake said in a statement to The Washington Post. Prosecutors said they will not be giving any other interviews because Daybell’s case is still pending.
Vallow, who sat in between her two attorneys, did not show any emotion when the verdict reached by the 12-panel jury was read Friday.
In the fall of 2019, a multistate search began for Vallow Daybell’s two children after their grandparents asked authorities to conduct a wellness check because they hadn’t heard from J.J., who had special needs, in more than a month. The couple told police the boy was staying with a family friend in Arizona.
Authorities did not believe their story, but when they returned to Vallow Daybell’s home with a search warrant the next day, the couple were gone. They had flown to Hawaii to be married. Fox 10 Phoenix obtained footage of the pair in January 2020, a month before their arrests, poolside and tanning when police served them a court order to bring the children to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
In a trial that lasted six weeks, authorities and prosecutors provided graphic and emotional testimony about discovering the remains of Tylee and J.J. on the Daybells’ Idaho property in June 2020, after a months-long search.
J.J.’s body was wrapped in black plastic and buried near a pond. Duct tape was used to bind his wrists, arms and feet, and he had visible bruising on his arms, according to a report from the Ada County, Idaho, coroner. Tylee’s remains, mostly burned bone fragments, were located in a pet cemetery near a fire pit, according to audio recordings released following the trial.
Prosecutors would also eventually file murder charges against the couple in the October 2019 death of Daybell’s first wife, Tammy. It was initially believed the 49-year-old mother of five died naturally in her sleep, but in the first week of the trial, prosecutors revealed that an autopsy performed after her body was exhumed had determined her cause of death to be asphyxiation “at the hands of another,” according to Salt Lake City-based KSL TV.
Significant portions of the trial centered on the couple’s extremist religious beliefs.
Zulema Pastenes, Vallow Daybell’s sister-in-law, testified that the couple believed they needed to destroy the children’s bodies so demons could not inhabit them, according to East Idaho News’s Nate Eaton, who was reporting from the courtroom for much of the trial.
Records from a police investigation, which were published by Salt Lake City-based TV station KUTV, alleged that “Lori Vallow believed she was an exalted Goddess.” The couple thought they could teleport and launch natural disasters, and they believed they were “directed to lead 144,000 people in preparing for the end of the world.”
One neighbor described Vallow Daybell as a “supermom” before the killings.
She won $17,500 on “Wheel of Fortune” in 2004. During the Mrs. Texas beauty pageant, she joked, “Being a good mom is very important to me and being a good wife. … Being all those things together is not easy and I’m basically a ticking time bomb.”
