It’s been three years since police uncovered the dead bodies of kids Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan, who were 7 and 16 at the time of their disappearance, on a rural Idaho property belonging to their stepfather.
The grisly investigation that followed revealed allegations of doomsday plots and fringe religious beliefs, and ended with the children’s mother, Lori Vallow, and their stepfather, Chad Daybell, being charged for their deaths. Vallow and Daybell are also believed to be behind the murders of each person’s former spouse.
Daybell’s trial has yet to be scheduled but Vallow’s murder trial moved forward this week when jury selection began on Monday.
Ahead of the proceedings, here’s everything you need to know about the grim story of Vallow, infamously dubbed “cult mom.”
The murders
The story begins even before Vallow’s children were reported missing.
In early 2019, Vallow was still married to JJ’s father, Charles Vallow, but the two were estranged and he had filed for divorce.
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In the divorce documents, Charles claimed his wife believed she was a god-like figure, sent to usher in the apocalypse and carry out the work of 144,000 believers, a reference to the Bible’s Book of Revelations.
Their marriage ended suddenly that July when Lori Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed Charles outside the family’s suburban Phoenix home. Police initially determined the shooting was in self-defence and Cox was never charged. Cox died five months later of a blood clot.
Charles was Vallow’s fourth husband. Her third husband Joseph Ryan, who was the father of Tylee, died in 2018 of a heart attack.
After JJ’s father was killed, Vallow and the kids moved to eastern Idaho, where JJ’s grandparents said they struggled to reach him by phone. JJ’s grandparents said they last spoke to their grandson on August 2019 during a FaceTime call that lasted less than a minute, NBC reported. They eventually grew suspicious and called police.
In November 2019, Idaho police formally began to search for JJ and Tylee after several family members reported they hadn’t seen or spoken to the children since September.
At this point, Vallow had already begun a relationship with Daybell, an Idaho man that ran a small publishing company where he released a number of fiction books about apocalyptic scenarios loosely based on the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Police in Rexburg, Idaho tried to conduct a welfare check on Vallow’s children on Nov. 26, 2019, but they were nowhere to be found. The couple lied to police and said JJ was in Arizona with a family friend.
When police returned the next day, the couple had left town.
A months-long search for the missing children followed, spanning several states. Police determined Tylee was last seen in September headed into Yellowstone National Park with her mom and other family members for a day trip. JJ was last seen by school officials several days later.
Authorities tracked down Vallow and Daybell and found them together in Hawaii in January 2020. But again, JJ and Tylee were not with them.
Vallow was ordered to physically produce the children to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare by the end of the month, but when she failed to do so, Vallow was arrested for child desertion.
At this time, rumours began to swirl about Vallow and Daybell, as the case of their missing children gained national attention. In a February 2020 interview with local KSL, Tylee’s aunt said Vallow was disturbed and “unhinged.”
Months later, in June 2020, police finally located the bodies of the children buried in the yard of Daybell’s eastern Idaho home.
Daybell was promptly arrested for charges of destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence, as well as desertion. Vallow and Daybell weren’t charged with murder until May 2021.
Court documents later revealed that JJ’s remains were found buried in a pet cemetery on Daybell’s property and that Tylee had been dismembered and burned in a fire pit.
‘Zombies’ and doomsday plots
When the bodies were found, Vallow’s longtime best friend Melanie Gibb had already been cooperating with authorities for months, according to Rexburg police documents written by Lt. Ron Ball.
“Gibb reports that when she arrived in Rexburg, Lori Vallow informed her that JJ Vallow had become a ‘zombie,'” Ball wrote. “Gibb further reports that the term ‘zombie’ refers to an individual whose mortal spirit has left their body and that their body is now the host of another spirit. The new spirit in a ‘zombie’ is always considered a ‘dark spirit.'”
It wasn’t the first time Gibb said she heard her friend talk about zombies, according to the statement. Gibb said Vallow had called Tylee a zombie in the spring of 2019 when the teen didn’t want to babysit her little brother and that Vallow had first learned the concept from Daybell at the start of that year.
Gibb said the couple believed that when a zombie takes over a person’s body, “the person’s true spirit goes into ‘limbo’ and is stuck there until the host body is physically killed,” the court document said. “As such, death of the physical body is seen as the mechanism by which the body’s original spirit can be released from limbo.”
In the course of the investigation into JJ and Tylee’s deaths, detectives learned that Daybell’s previous wife, Tammy Daybell, had unexpectedly died in October 2019 of what was initially reported as “natural causes.”
Daybell and Vallow married just two weeks after Tammy’s death. Authorities exhumed Tammy’s body and prosecutors believe Daybell and Vallow collaborated to kill her.
When Vallow and Daybell were eventually charged in their murders, the indictment said the couple “did endorse and espouse religious beliefs for the purpose of encouraging and/or justifying the homicides” of Tammy, Tylee and JJ.
Prosecutors believe the couple collected Tammy’s life insurance policy and the kids’ social security and survivor benefits.
A month later, Vallow was additionally charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder for the death of her previous husband, Charles.
Several family members and friends described to detectives a group led by Vallow and Daybell that met to pray, believing that they could drive out evil spirits and seek revelations from “beyond the spiritual veil.”
In police reports, one friend said Vallow told her she could “teleport” between Arizona and Hawaii, and that Daybell said he had a “portal” in his home where he could receive revelations and travel to other realms.
The trial
In Idaho, Vallow will stand trial for murder, conspiracy and grand theft charges in the deaths of JJ, Tylee and Tammy. Vallow is not expected to face charges in the death of her previous husband until the Idaho trial is completed.
Daybell faces the same charges as Vallow in Idaho but will stand trial separately. Vallow has pleaded not guilty in the case, and her lawyers have submitted formal notice that they intend to offer an alibi.
In that court document, Vallow’s lawyers said she was in her own apartment in Rexburg, Idaho, when the children died at a nearby apartment where her brother lived. The lawyers said she was with a couple of friends, “and/or Chad Daybell.”
Her lawyers also wrote that Vallow was in Hawaii with other friends when Daybell’s previous wife died the next month.
Daybell’s lawyers haven’t offered details about his planned defence, other than saying in court that Daybell and Vallow will have “mutually antagonistic defences” — a legal term that generally means a jury would have to disbelieve one defendant in order to believe the other.
Vallow’s trial is expected to last up to 12 weeks.
The judge has banned cameras from the courtroom and the trial was moved to Boise to increase the likelihood of finding jurors that aren’t deeply familiar with the case.
Prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty against both defendants. But just two weeks before the trial was to begin, 7th District Judge Steven Boyce granted a request from Vallow’s defence lawyers to take the death penalty off the table.
The judge said the decision was made because of the volume of evidence that was turned over to the defence team. Daybell still faces the death penalty in his case.
— with files from The Associated Press
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