The saga of the doomsday-obsessed mom accused of murdering her two kids took another stunning turn Tuesday when she was charged with hatching a conspiracy with her brother to kill her ex-husband.
It’s the fourth slaying tied to Lori Vallow or her current husband, apocalypse author Chad Daybell, who is also accused of killing his previous wife weeks before he remarried.
The new indictment comes as Vallow is confined to a mental health facility following a court ruling that she is incompetent to stand trial with Daybell in the deaths of the children.
ADVERTISEMENT
Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest chapter in the bizarre case that exploded into the headlines in the fall of 2019.
That’s when Idaho police reported that Vallow’s children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old J.J. Vallow, had vanished and she and Daybell were not cooperating in the effort to find them.
Other disturbing details soon came to light: The couple was heavily involved in a religious community that was prepping for the end times, and both had dead spouses in their past.
In July 2019, Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, told investigators that he shot her estranged husband in self-defense in Arizona, where the former couple had lived before splitting up over her growing infatuation with doomsday scenarios.
Charles Vallow had tried to get custody of the children from Lori, writing in a court petition that she “believes that she is receiving spiritual revelations and visions to help her gather and prepare those chosen to live in the New Jerusalem after the Great War as prophesied in the Book of Revelations.“
Charles alleged that Lori told him that if he got in the way “of her mission she would murder him” and that she “had an angel there to help her dispose of the body.”
After Charles was fatally shot, Cox—who reportedly shared his sister’s doomsday beliefs—later died of what authorities say was natural causes.
In the indictment filed Tuesday in Arizona, the grand jury found that Lori entered into an agreement with Cox “that at least one of them or another” would kill Charles Vallow. The filing did not contain any other details.
At the time of Charles Vallow’s death, Chad Daybell was still married to wife Tammy—but that was soon to change.
She was found dead at their Idaho home in July 2019—and after Chad declined an autopsy, the cause of death was listed as natural, even though she was reportedly in good health.
The circumstances of both Charles Vallow and Tammy Daybell’s deaths might never have been re-examined were it not for the disappearance of Tylee and J.J.
The half-siblings were last seen in October 2019, weeks before Lori and Chad took off for Hawaii to get married. After authorities began looking into the whereabouts of the children, the couple allegedly fed them a string of lies and then clammed up.
The search for the children eventually led, months later, to Daybell’s backyard, where their remains were found in shallow graves. Officials described Ryan’s body, buried in a pet cemetery, as “a mass of burnt flesh and charred bone.”
Prosecutors who brought charges against the couple said they used their “religious beliefs” as justification for killing the kids. Daybell was also charged with killing Tammy, whom they believed was “possessed by a spirit,” according to court records.
