For more than five years, the world has watched as a bizarre saga unfolded – starting with a frantic search for Lori Vallow Daybell’s children, the tragic discovery of their bodies buried in her new husband’s backyard, and ultimately, her conviction.
The so-called “doomsday cult mom,” 52, is serving life sentences in Idaho for killing two of her children in 2019. She was sentenced again on Friday to two life sentences with the possibility of parole on separate conspiracy to commit murder charges in Arizona.
In April, Vallow Daybell was convicted of conspiring with her brother, Alexander Cox, to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Prosecutors say Cox fatally shot him in July 2019.
“My father, Charles Vallow, cared for his family,” Colby Ryan, the only surviving son of Vallow Daybell and Charles Vallow, said in court Friday. “He took care of our family, and he made sure we had a good life. He was a very generous man.”
She was convicted again in June for conspiring with Cox to kill her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux. Prosecutors said Cox attempted to kill Boudreaux in an October 2019 drive-by shooting.
“The betrayal by someone connected to my family has left me battling overwhelming emotions over the years,” Boudreaux said in court.
Cox died in December 2019.
Charles Vallow’s death was the first step in a wider plot by Vallow Daybell and her current husband, alleged cult leader Chad Daybell, to rid their lives of “obstacles” as they termed their spouses and her children, according to text message evidence presented at her 2023 trial for the murders of young J.J. Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan.
In May 2023, Vallow Daybell was found guilty of the children’s murders and of conspiring to kill her husband’s former wife, Tammy Daybell. She was sentenced to three life terms.
Here’s what to know about Vallow Daybell’s convictions:
Charles Vallow: Lori Vallow Daybell’s fourth husband killed two months before children vanished
Vallow Daybell, now 51, was once a beautician by trade, a mother of three, and a wife — five times over. Two of them are dead and her current husband, Chad Daybell, is on death row in Idaho after being handed the death penalty when he was convicted of murder in 2024.
Her first marriage, to a high school sweetheart when she was just 19, ended quickly. She married again in her early 20s, and had a son named Colby before divorcing.
In 2001, Vallow Daybell married again, this time to a man named Joseph Ryan. The couple had a baby girl named Tylee in 2002 but divorced just a few years later. Ryan later died in his home of a suspected heart attack.
Charles Vallow, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, entered the picture several months later. Vallow Daybell joined the LDS church and the pair married in 2006. They later adopted J.J.
But by 2019, that marriage had also soured. Charles Vallow filed for divorce, contending in court papers that Vallow Daybell also believed herself to be a deity tasked with helping to usher in the Biblical apocalypse.
That year was the last time Vallow Daybell was in Arizona – until November when she was extradited there to face charges in Charles Vallow’s murder.
In 2019, Vallow Daybell lived in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler with Tylee and J.J.
She was married to her fourth husband Charles Vallow, but he had filed for a divorce in February of that year based on claims that her religious beliefs were devolving into something far more sinister.
In one filing, he wrote that Vallow Daybell had claimed to be a goddess sent to usher in the Biblical apocalypse. He had also allegedly expressed concerns that Vallow Daybell was cheating on him with Chad Daybell, who shared her extreme beliefs.
Prior to Vallow Daybell’s trial, police had released body-camera footage showing a concerned Charles Vallow reporting to detectives that his wife’s fanatical religious views had escalated, that she had become “unhinged” and was worried she might try to hurt him or the children.
He had called Gilbert Police in January 2019 after he was unable to speak to his two kids for a few days. He told the responding officer about the alarming beliefs his wife was sharing.
“She’s not here,” Charles Vallow said in the video. “She lost her reality.”
Charles Vallow then explained to the officers that Vallow Daybell considered herself a “translated being” and a God who spoke with an ancient prophet and Jesus Christ daily. The religious views had been growing over the years, but had become more extreme and dangerous, he said.
He said Vallow Daybell told him a man named Nick Schneider had taken over his body and she would have to kill him.
“I can murder you now with my powers,” she had told him, according to Charles Vallow, which prompted him to call the police for fear of his own safety and the safety of Tylee and J.J.
“I love her to death. This is killing me, officer,” Charles Vallow said.
Despite the imminent end to their marriage, Charles Vallow and Vallow Daybell were tied together by J.J.
Months before Charles Vallow was killed, Vallow Daybell had called him and told him to take the kids. He was on a business trip in Houston at the time. When he returned, his truck was not at the airport and Vallow Daybell had thrown out all of his clothes and drained their bank account.
More bodycam footage shows officers with him at the house, kicking in the door. They had an order to pick Vallow Daybell up for a mental health exam and to check on the children.
“The only reason why we’re here is some of the statements that you made towards our dispatcher – that you provided to them … he (an officer) made the discussion to conduct the welfare check to make sure your children are safe,” an officer said.
No crime had been committed, so the police left.
On July 11, Charles Vallow went to Vallow Daybell’s home for a custody exchange that turned deadly when he was shot by her brother, Alex Cox, at a home in Chandler, Arizona.
Cox told police he acted in self-defense, and he was never charged. He died suddenly aged 51 on December 11, 2019 – hours after Tammy’s body was exhumed.
His death was also ruled natural causes, with indications of a blood clot wedged in the arteries of his lungs. However, the overdose drug Narcan was also found in his system.
Meanwhile, Vallow Daybell and her kids had moved to Idaho shortly after Charles Vallow died. At her murder trial, prosecutors said she made the move to be closer to her then-boyfriend Daybell so they could continue their plot to remove any obstacle to their happiness.
Weeks after J.J. and Tylee vanished without being reported missing by their mother, another member of the family faced an attack back in Arizona.
Brandon Boudreaux: Ex-husband of Lori Vallow Daybell’s niece was targeted in drive-by shooting
On October 2, 2019, Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski, was targeted in a drive-by shooting outside his home in Gilbert.
The bullet missed his head by mere inches.
Pawlowski (she remarried in November 2019 to Ian Pawlowski, who testified at Vallow Daybell’s trial), was very close to Vallow Daybell and believed in many of the same bizarre doomsday prophecies espoused by her and Chad Daybell.
This ultimately ended her marriage to Boudreaux with whom she shared custody of their five children. From evidence heard at Vallow Daybell’s trial, it is apparent that he too was considered an “obstacle” and — in their beliefs — a “dark” spirit had possessed him.
Google location data showed Alex Cox traveling to and from Gilbert, Arizona, from Idaho in early October 2019.
On October 2, Boudreaux was shot at after returning home from the gym. He had earlier taken his older children to school and dropped the youngest off at Pawlowski’s home.
The shots were fired from the back window of a grey Jeep Wrangler that had had its back spare tire removed.
Video footage from a storage facility in Idaho showed Cox and Vallow Daybell placing the spare tire in a storage facility the day before he drove south to Maricopa County and then taking it back out a few days later.
When police were finally made aware of J.J. and Tylee’s disappearance in November 2019 – weeks after the death of Chad Daybell’s first wife and his new marriage to Vallow Daybell – Charles Vallow’s death and the alleged attempt on Boudreaux’s life became key points in the investigation.
But it wasn’t until June 2020 – shortly after the children’s bodies were found on Chad Daybell’s Idaho property – that Vallow Daybell was charged with conspiring to kill Charles Vallow. Her indictment for conspiring to kill Boudreaux came days after her murder conviction in May 2023.
Boudreaux gave heartbreaking testimony at Vallow Daybell’s trial about the end of his marriage to Pawlowski and broke down as he recalled having to be the person who identified J.J. Vallow’s remains.
Questions linger over Pawlowski’s involvement in the attempt on her former husband’s life. She was present in court in Boise for Vallow Daybell’s trial as her husband testified, but did not take the stand herself much to the surprise of those closely watching the case.
Two women — Zulena Pastenes and Melanie Gibb — who were close to Vallow Daybell and were involved in the strange rituals she conducted as part of their shared beliefs about the second coming did testify at her trial.
Lori Vallow Daybell’s new husband gets the death penalty
After a seven-week trial, Chad Daybell was found guilty in May 2024 of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Tylee, J.J. and his former wife Tammy Daybell.
Two weeks after Tammy Daybell’s death, Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell married on a beach in Hawaii.
Only after the children were reported missing did authorities began delving into the couple’s bizarre cult beliefs. Questions were asked about Tammy Daybell’s death and her body was exhumed for an autopsy. Authorities determined she had died of asphyxia and Chad Daybell was charged with her murder, as well as the murders of Vallow’s children, who were found buried in his Idaho backyard nine months after they went missing.
Prosecutors say Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell justified the three killings by creating an apocalyptic belief system, which was part of an elaborate scheme to eliminate any obstacles from their lives.
But Chad Daybell’s attorney claims he was manipulated by Vallow Daybell, who was convicted of the murders in 2023 and received three life sentences. Like Vallow Daybell, Chad Daybell did not testify in his defense.
On June 1, 2024, he was handed the death sentence. He was then moved to an Idaho Department of Correction maximum security facility to await his execution.
‘Doomsday Mom’ maintains her innocence
Jurors in Ada County Court in Boise, Idaho, took almost seven hours to find Vallow Daybell guilty after hearing harrowing details about the doomsday mom’s path of deadly destruction and were shown graphic images of the murdered children’s remains.
J.J., who had autism, had been smothered with a plastic bag taped over his face, his little body still dressed in a pair of red pajamas. Tylee’s cause of death has been impossible to establish as the teenager’s dismembered, charred bones and body parts were found scattered in the ground on Chad Daybell’s pet cemetery.
The state called over 60 witnesses to lay out its case that Vallow Daybell was motivated by both her doomsday cult beliefs but also lust for Daybell and financial greed when she conspired with him and her brother Cox to kill the three victims. During closing arguments, prosecutors argued that Vallow Daybell had been driven by “money, power and sex” to kill the three victims.
Vallow Daybell continues to maintain her innocence nearly two years later and in her first interview from prison, she told Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison that she believes she will be set free.
“I will be exonerated. We will both be exonerated in the future,” she says in the episode, referring to her husband Chad Daybell.
“I have seen things in the future that Jesus showed me when I was in heaven,” she adds when pressed by Morrison. “And we were not in jail and we were not in prison.”
