BOISE, Idaho — Idaho prosecutors suggested motives, showed graphic photos and described a complicated plot involving efforts to cast out evil spirits Monday in the triple murder trial of a woman accused in the deaths of her two kids and a romantic rival.
On Tuesday, a detective who helped unearth the children’s bodies is expected to take the stand.
“The defendant used money, power and sex to get what she wanted,” Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake told jurors during the first day of arguments. “It didn’t matter what it was.”
Lori Vallow Daybell and her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, are both charged with multiple counts of conspiracy, murder and grand theft in connection with the deaths of Vallow Daybell’s two youngest children: 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and big sister Tylee Ryan, who was last seen a few days before her 17th birthday in 2019. Prosecutors also charged the couple in connection with the October 2019 death of Chad Daybell’s late wife, Tammy Daybell.
Both defendants have pleaded not guilty, but are being tried separately. Chad Daybell’s trial is still months away. Vallow Daybell faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Vallow Daybell never reported her two youngest children missing, prosecutors said. Instead, Rexburg police said both she and Chad Daybell lied to investigators about the kids’ whereabouts. The search for the kids lasted for months before it came to a tragic conclusion in June of 2020, their remains found buried in Chad Daybell’s eastern Idaho yard.
Tylee’s body had been burned, Blake said, and leaving behind only “a mass of bone and tissue” and some DNA on a pickaxe and shovel. Duct tape had been wrapped around JJ’s hands and head, his body wrapped in trash bags.
Tammy Daybell had died months earlier from what was initially reported as natural causes, purportedly dying her sleep in after coming down with an illness. But authorities grew suspicious when they learned Chad and Lori had married just two weeks after Tammy’s death. With the search for the missing kids still underway, investigators had Tammy Daybell’s body exhumed.
An autopsy showed she died of asphyxiation caused by someone else, Blake said.
As she spoke, she showed graphic photos to the jury of shallow graves, the children’s remains and Tammy Daybell’s body.
All three of the victims were killed because they were obstacles to Vallow Daybell’s romantic and financial goals, Blake told jurors.
“Remember, the defendant will remove any obstacle in her way to get what she wants, and she wanted Chad Daybell,” Blake said.
Defense attorney Jim Archibald presented jurors with a far different picture, describing Vallow Daybell as a “kind and loving mother to her children” who happened to have a particular interest in religion and Biblical prophesies involving the end of the world.
“Some people care less about Biblical prophesies, some people care a lot about it,” Archibald said. “Thankfully in this country, we get to worship as we choose.”
Vallow Daybell is presumed innocent, Archibald reminded jurors, and said the criminal charges themselves — which accuse Vallow Daybell of either directing, encouraging, assisting or participating in the murders — show that prosecutors don’t really know what happened in the case. “Did she kill, or did she assist, or did she encourage, or did she direct? They aren’t sure,” Archibald said.
Archibald also said Vallow Daybell’s religious beliefs only began to change after she met Chad Daybell, a religious author whose fictional books focused on the apocalypse and were loosely based on the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But Blake said those beliefs veered toward the extreme, with the couple saying people were “dark” or “light,” telling friends and acquaintances that “dark” people had been taken over by evil spirits. They eventually began teaching friends that once those evil spirits were strong enough, the person became a “zombie,” and the only way to free that person’s soul was by killing them.
Friends of Vallow Daybell will testify that she said the children and Tammy Daybell were “dark” before their deaths, Blake said. At least one friend told police that Vallow Daybell called both children “zombies” before they disappeared, according to police records.
“The common theme was the body has to be destroyed,” Blake said. “The defendant and Chad used their self-proclaimed religious teachings to justify their actions to others — their actions from affair to murder.”
JJ Vallow’s grandmother, Kay Woodcock, was the first witness to take the stand after opening arguments. She cried after Madison County prosecutor Rob Wood showed her a photo of JJ.
Woodcock said Vallow Daybell was once a “doting mother,” but her opinion of the defendant changed after Charles Vallow filed for divorce in early 2019. After Charles Vallow died, once-regular phone calls and visits with JJ dropped off, she said.
She only had contact with JJ three times after his father died, Woodcock said, in short FaceTime video calls. The last call happened the month before JJ was last seen alive, she said. It only was about 35 seconds long.