'Cult mom' Lori Vallow's husband told cops she was threatening to kill him months before he was shot dead
New bodycam footage of the late husband of Lori Vallow, the Idaho mom facing trial on charges stemming from the mysterious disappearance of her two young children, shows he had been concerned for his well-being seven months before his death at the hands of her brother.
Vallow's case has made national headlines over the past few months after it emerged that she did not report her children missing for more than two months after they were last seen in September 2019 and refused to cooperate with authorities.
She and current husband Chad Daybell had then gone on the run on November 26 after authorities started investigating the disappearance of the two children, seven-year-old Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, who is autistic, and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan.
The details of the case that have been reported since have painted Vallow as an unstable personality, a view that was seemingly shared by her estranged late husband Charles Vallow. Charles was shot and killed in "self-defense" by Vallow's brother, Alex Cox, in July 2019, and called police in January that year to complain that she had "lost her mind" and had threatened to murder him.
In the bodycam footage obtained by ABC News via the Freedom of Information Act, Charles tells a Gilbert, Arizona, police officer that his then-wife was behaving erratically, withdrawing large amounts from their bank account, and was threatening his life.
"'I will kill you because you're not Charles, and nobody will care'," he told the officer of the warning he had been given, adding that she kept referring to him as "Nick Schneider," a name he did not know. "It's the name she used. I don't know where it came from. I'm just like ... I'm as bewildered as you are."
He says that Vallow, who he revealed was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, believed she was "a resurrected being of God" and had threatened to murder him with her "powers."
It was a claim he later repeated in divorce papers, where he said Lori referred to herself as "mother" and was someone who was "infatuated" with doomsday and near-death experiences. "Mother 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," he wrote.
When the officer asks him how she poses a threat to their children, Charles said that in a phone call earlier that day, she allegedly told him and his church bishop, "Come take the kids. I don't care what happens to them."
"I don't know what she's going to do to them. I don't know if she's going to flee with them, if she's going to hurt them," he said, adding that she called him a "dark spirit."
After months on the run, Vallow was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020, three weeks after she failed to attend a January 30 hearing in Madison County, Idaho, to which she had been ordered to bring Joshua and Tylee. She had subsequently been charged with two felony counts of desertion and non-support of dependent children, as well as resisting or obstructing officers, criminal solicitation to commit a crime, and contempt of court.
She is currently being held in an Idaho jail on a $1 million bond and has continued to maintain her innocence.