Several of Doomsday author Chad Daybell’s five children will testify in his high-profile death penalty case, where defense lawyers say they will detail their mother’s “health struggle” before her mysterious 2019 death.
“They’re going to talk about their mother’s use of various medical treatments she would use—oils she would put on her leg, medicine, and different herbs she would take, and that their mother was suffering from a number of maladies, and she would refuse to see a doctor,” defense attorney John Prior told Ada County Court jurors in his Wednesday opening statements.
The highly anticipated testimony from three or four of Daybell’s children will help to explain the circumstances surrounding the October 2019 death of his first wife, Tammy Daybell. Prosecutors, however, allege that Daybell conspired with his paramour, Lori Vallow Daybell, to murder Tammy for an insurance payout before flying to Hawaii to get married 17 days later.
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The murder at the Daybell’s Idaho home was allegedly the last of three murders the religiously fanatical couple committed in 2019. Prosecutors alleged Daybell and Vallow killed her children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, in September 2019 and buried them in Daybell’s backyard.
“When he had a chance at what he considered his rightful destiny, he made sure that no person, no law would stand in his way," Madison County Prosecuting Attorney Rob Wood said in his opening statements. “His desire for sex, money, and power led him to pursue those ambitions and this pursuit led to the deaths of his wife and Lori's two innocent children.”
Daybell, 55, has pleaded not guilty to several charges—including first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, grand theft, and insurance fraud—in connection with the three murders. In July, Vallow was sentenced to life in prison in connection with the case.
Defense lawyers, however, insist that there is no evidence to prove that Tammy Daybell’s death was a homicide or that evidence at the scene where Vallow’s children were found can be directly linked to his client. He added that Daybell led a normal life, where he ran a publishing company and wrote apocalyptic novels aimed at Mormons, until he met Vallow at a religious conference in 2018.
“She pursued him. She encouraged him,” Prior said, adding that the pair eventually had an affair while they were both still married to other people.
Prosecutors, however, argued that “that ordinary existence was not enough” for Daybell, who created an alternate reality for him and Vallow driven by their shared religious beliefs. That belief, prosecutors say, included labeling people who stood in his way as “zombies” and “dark spirits.”
“You’ll hear in the world Chad and Lori planned for themselves, they identified those who stood in the way of their dream as dark,'” Wood said. “Their spouses, Lori’s own children, and anyone who opposed them were labeled sometimes as dark spirits or even zombies.”
At Vallow’s trial, prosecutors revealed harrowing evidence about the three murders, including her children, which were found in Daybell’s backyard in June 2020. Prosecutors said J.J was found smothered with a white plastic bag duct-taped over his head in a pet cemetery while Tylee’s heavily burned remains were discovered in a fire pit. Prosecutors detailed how Tammy Daybell was asphyxiated in her Idaho home and that her death was initially deemed due to national causes.
“Tammy Daybell, a vivacious, happy mother, was another individual labeled as a dark spirit to be removed,” Wood said on Monday. “You will hear from multiple witnesses that Chad predicted multiple times that Tammy would die an early death.”
