PHOENIX (AP) — Lori Vallow Daybell, the Idaho mother with doomsday religious beliefs who was convicted of killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival, is on trial again. This time, she’s accused in Arizona of conspiring to murder her estranged husband.
The case has drawn public attention in part because Vallow Daybell, 51, has doomsday-focused religious beliefs. She isn’t a lawyer but has chosen to represent herself in the six-week trial. Opening statements are scheduled Monday in a Phoenix courtroom.
Prosecutors say she conspired with her brother to kill Charles Vallow, so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty and has not spoken publicly about the details of Vallow’s death. Here’s what to know about the case.
What happened in Arizona
Vallow was fatally shot in July 2019. Vallow Daybell then moved to Idaho with her children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan. She married Daybell just two weeks after the death of his wife, Tammy Daybell. The children went missing for several months before their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on Chad Daybell’s property. JJ was 7 and Tylee was 16.
Vallow Daybell is already serving three life sentences in Idaho for the children’s deaths and for conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death in the three killings.
Four months before he died, Charles Vallow filed for divorce from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets.
He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.
Who fired the gun
Police say Vallow was fatally shot by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, when Vallow went to pick up his son at Vallow Daybell’s home in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Vallow Daybell’s daughter, Tylee, told police that she confronted Vallow with a baseball bat after she was awakened by yelling in the house.
Tylee said she was trying to defend her mother, but Vallow took away the bat, according to police records. Cox told police that he fired after Vallow refused to drop the bat and came after him.
Cox told investigators that Vallow Daybell and the children left the house shortly before the shooting. Investigators say she went to get fast food for her son and bought flip-flops at a pharmacy before returning home.
Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense and wasn’t arrested in Vallow’s death, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.
How she’s fighting the case
While representing herself, Vallow Daybell has complained about news coverage of her criminal cases, invoked her right to a speedy trial, questioned whether a government witness was truly an expert and engaged in disputes over the pre-trial exchange of evidence.
At a hearing last week, she lost a bid to strike three people from the prosecution’s witness list, including the grandmother of her adopted son. Another witness says Vallow Daybell spoke about Vallow as being “possessed” in the months before his death. When the judge asked her to argue her point, Vallow Daybell lowered her head, sighed and paused a few seconds. “Their information is not firsthand,” Vallow Daybell said. “These witnesses are all coming together. They are watching everything that goes on on TV regarding this.”
Who was killed in Idaho
The Idaho investigation began at the end of 2019 when Vallow Daybell’s adopted son’s grandmother, worried about his welfare, reached out to police. Vallow Daybell had been evasive when asked about her two youngest children.
Chad Daybell called 911 in October 2019 to report that his wife Tammy Daybell was battling an illness and died in her sleep. Her body was later exhumed, and an autopsy determined she died of asphyxiation.
Idaho police did a welfare check on the kids in November 2019 and discovered they were missing and hadn’t been seen since early September. Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell left town a short time later, eventually turning up in Hawaii without the kids. She was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 on a warrant out of Idaho.
When are the two trials in Arizona
The trial over Charles Vallow’s death will mark the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell.
She’s scheduled to go on trial again in late May on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she would face a life sentence.
