Lori Vallow Daybell returns to court on Monday to learn her fate after a jury convicted her on murder and conspiracy charges in the deaths of two of her children and her fifth husband’s first wife.
CrimeOnline’s Nancy Grace will be following the proceedings live here and at Fox Nation as witnesses provide victim impact statements before Judge Steven Boyce pronounces Vallow Daybell’s sentence. She faces 10 years to life on each count of murder and conspiracy, plus one to 20 years on a theft charge for continuing to collect government payments for 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan after their deaths.
The saga of the “Cult Mom” has taken nearly four years to reach this point, since relatives asked police in Rexburg, Idaho, in November 2019 to check on the whereabouts of JJ and Tylee, who had not been seen since September.
Officers found Vallow Daybell and her new husband, Chad Daybell, at home, but no signs of the children. Investigators soon learned that Daybell’s wife, Tammy Daybell, had died in October, and that Vallow Daybell’s brother had shot to death Charles Vallow, her fourth husband, reportedly in self-defense, in July.
Daybell, reportedly a member of a doomsday cult offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and Vallow Daybell, who followed him into the cult, married just two weeks after Tammy’s death. And Alex Cox, the brother who shot and killed Charles Vallow, himself died in early December, reportedly of “natural causes.”
By the end of December, Chad and Lori Daybell were refusing to cooperate with investigators, and then, in early January, they disappeared. They were located later that month in Hawaii, and an Idaho court gave them a deadline to produce the children. They missed the deadline, and Lori Vallow Daybell was arrested and extradited to Idaho.
Four months later, investigators found the bodies of JJ and Tylee, buried on property Chad Daybell owned in Salem, Idaho, and he, too, was arrested.
The pair were indicted in May 2021 and initially scheduled to be tried together, but after Daybell waived his right to a speedy trial and Vallow Daybell pointedly did not, attorneys began pushing to have the cases severed. Twice Vallow Daybell was deemed incompetent to stand trial and sent to a state facility for treatment.
Early in 2023, Boyce took the death penalty off the table for her and, finally, separated her case from her husband’s. Vallow Daybell’s trial began on April 3 and ended on May 12, when the jury found her guilty on all counts.
Chad Daybell’s trial is set to begin next April, and Vallow Daybell still faces charges in Arizona, where she’s accused of conspiring to kill Charles Vallow and conspiring in the attempted murder of her former nephew-in-law, Brandon Boudreaux. Arizona authorities have said they will begin the extradition process once the sentencing in Idaho is completed.
Read CrimeOnline’s previous coverage of the case.
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[Featured image: FILE – Lori Vallow Daybell on August 16, 2022. (Tony Blakeslee/East Idaho News via AP, Pool, File)]
