- Seemingly perfect mum Lori Vallow Daybell fell into extreme doomsday beliefs after meeting Chad Daybell
- A string of sudden deaths and disappearances rocked their families in 2019
- Both were later convicted of murder and given severe prison sentences
Lori Vallow seemed to have it all – a loving husband, three gorgeous kids, and a booming hairdressing business.
Everyone who crossed paths with her described her as charismatic, kind, and a wonderful mother.
Lori hadn’t always been so lucky in love though.
Born into a large Mormon family, Lori had already been married three times when she met and fell for financial advisor Charles Vallow in 2006.
As a father of two himself, he didn’t mind that Lori’s kids, son Colby and daughter Tylee, were born to different fathers.
‘Lori and Charles tied the knot just months after meeting.’
The pair weren’t just dedicated to their children, they were deeply committed to one another, tying the knot just months after meeting.
Seven years later, wanting to expand their family, the couple adopted Charles’ great-nephew, Joshua Jaxon, known as JJ, as his parents weren’t able to look after him.
Now, with their family complete, Lori, Charles, and the kids relocated to Hawaii, US, where they spent their days running and playing together on the beach.
After three years in paradise, Lori, Charles and their two youngest kids moved to Arizona, while their eldest, Colby, who was all grown up, began life with his own family.
It was then that Lori became more involved with her church, spending hours each day devouring their teachings, including the supposed second coming of Christ.
She was also taught that 144,000 people would survive.
Fearful that her family would be left behind, Lori wanted to prepare for such an event, and began researching further on how to protect her loved ones.
She began stockpiling food and water, and would read as much as she could to expand her knowledge on their survival.
Convinced the end of the world was approaching, Lori was delighted to discover books by Chad Daybell – author and professional grave digger. In his writings, Chad detailed his near-death experiences, and visions of the future, predicting doomsday in July 2020.
In October 2018, Lori and Chad met at a spiritual conference.
Chad, struck by Lori’s beauty – despite him being married and a father himself – told Lori he believed they’d been married in a past life.
He also had a vision for the future – he believed they were the chosen ones to eradicate anyone possessed by a dark spirit before the end of the world.
By January 2019, Charles became increasingly worried his wife was losing her grip on reality, as she spoke endlessly about her ‘mission’.
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Concerned, he called police, who determined that the family weren’t in any immediate danger.
‘Charles took Lori to seek help at a mental health facility.’
Instead, Charles took Lori to seek help at a mental health facility.
But after her release, Lori warned her husband if he got in her way again, she would kill him.
In time, their relationship became so fractured, they separated. Charles moved out, but he hadn’t given up on Lori, convinced that she could be saved.
He even went as far as planning an intervention with her brother Adam.
But sadly, when Charles arrived at his former home in July 2019, tragedy unfolded when he was involved in a scuffle with Lori’s other brother Alex.
According to reports made to police, Charles grew increasingly aggressive, threatening Alex with a baseball bat and, in an attempt to defend himself, Alex fatally shot Charles, aged 62.
Shockingly, just three months later, more tragedy followed when Chad woke to find his wife, Tammy, had died in her sleep. She was just 49.
Leaning on one another for support, Chad and Lori bonded over their grief and grew ever closer.
But their family and friends were blindsided when just two weeks later, in November 2019, they learned the couple had eloped, marrying in Hawaii.
Had they been planning to be together all along?
Stranger still was the fact that contact between Lori’s two youngest kids and their extended family had completely dried up.
Desperate to know whether the kids were safe, Kay Woodcock, Charles’ sister and JJ’s grandma, reported Tylee and JJ missing.
Police conducted a search of the couple’s home, but there was no sign of the children.
Lori claimed they were staying with her friend, Melanie Gibb, but the following month, Melanie confessed to police it was a lie.
‘It was if they had vanished without a trace…’
It was if they had vanished without a trace…
Suspicious, police exhumed Tammy Daybell’s body five days later.
Shockingly, coroners determined she’d died from asphyxiation, and had bruising on her arms, suggesting that she’d been held down.
The next day Lori’s brother Alex died of a pulmonary embolism.
It seemed tragedy followed Lori and Chad wherever they went.
In February 2020, more than four months after Tylee and JJ were last seen alive, Lori was arrested after failing to produce them to authorities.
She was charged with two felony counts of desertion and non-support of dependent children, resisting or obstructing officers, criminal solicitation to commit a crime and contempt of court.
Police refused to give up on finding the kids and continued the search.
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That June, during a search of Chad’s property, police made a sickening discovery – Tylee, 16, and JJ, seven, were dead.
Horrifyingly, they’d been dismembered and burned, before being buried in shallow graves.
Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were charged with their murders.
Those close to the family speculated that Lori’s deranged beliefs had turned the once devoted mother into a cold-blooded killer. Yet it seemed so unfathomable.
In May 2021, Lori Vallow pleaded not guilty on all counts.
During her trial, the court heard a number of text messages sent between Lori and Chad discussing how her kids had been inhabited by demons.
Please ask the Lord to take them, Lori had begged Chad.
‘Chad said a plan was being orchestrated.’
There is a plan being orchestrated, he replied.
On May 12, 2023, a jury in Boise, Idaho, US, found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty on all counts.
While her children’s bodies rotted in shallow graves, she and Chad had been happily honeymooning in Hawaii.
That July, Lori Vallow, 50, appeared in Fremont County Courthouse, Idaho, where Judge Steven W Boyce condemned her monstrous acts.
‘A parent killing their own children is the most shocking thing really that I can imagine,’ he said, noting Lori’s lack of remorse.
When given the chance to speak, Lori claimed her children had visited her and were ‘happy and busy in the spirit world’, adding they didn’t blame her for their deaths.
She was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, and an additional 10 years for grand theft for claiming benefits that were meant for her children, even after they’d died.
In Boise, Idaho, in June 2024, Chad Daybell, 55, was sentenced to death after being found guilty on all charges.
He received an additional 15 years for two counts of insurance fraud after taking out two life insurance policies on his former wife.
Last June, Lori Vallow Daybell was handed an additional two life sentences after being found guilty of conspiring to murder her ex-husband, Charles Vallow and her niece’s ex-husband Brandon Boudreaux, who’d suspected she and Chad were responsible for Charles’ death.
‘Colby described his struggles after the pain of losing his family.’
During the trial, Lori’s eldest son Colby described his struggles after the pain of losing his family. ‘Not only are my father, sister and brother gone, but so is my mother,’ he said.
Delivering her powerful victim impact statement, Charles’ sister Kay said, ‘This courtroom is where Charles finally receives the justice he fought for and never saw in life… The very person who should have cherished him the most, his own wife, betrayed him in the cruellest, most calculated way.’
Both Lori and Chad have appealed their criminal convictions. There is also a separate review of Chad Daybell’s death sentence.
The appeals are yet to go through the courts.
