Shocking video shows 'cult mom' Lori Vallow laughing hours after husband was killed
Lori Vallow was reportedly caught on camera laughing with an investigator just hours after her brother had fatally shot her estranged husband in Arizona.
Video footage released this week showed the "cult mom" having a friendly interview with a Chandler Police Department official on July 11, 2019. It was filmed shortly after Charles Vallow, Lori's fourth husband, was shot dead by her brother Alex Cox during a custody dispute at her home. It was originally determined that Cox acted in self-defense, but the case was reopened later that year after Lori's children Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua "JJ" Vallow, 7, were reported missing. She was subsequently charged with conspiracy to murder Charles in June this year, after being indicted in the deaths of her children as well.
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Lori was heard in the video — released with several police case files this week — laughing about daughter Tylee before giving the police her version of events that lead up to the shooting. She told authorities that she had asked Cox to come to her house fearing Charles would "ambush" her when he arrived to pick up JJ, their adoptive son.
"I was expecting kind of an ambush for him to come over," Lori told the detective. "Be just mean. 'It’s my house, I’m on the lease. I’m going to stay here.' He’s acting really weird like he’s plotting something. Why are you even here? What did you come here for?" she added. Lori then explained her marital issues with Charles, who had filed for divorce months earlier.
Authorities released another video from the same day, which saw Lori's daughter Tylee telling an officer about how she used a bat to protect her mother from her stepfather. "My stepdad was like, he was like — I don’t even know how to explain it," Tylee said. "He honestly just looked like kind of a crazy person. Like screaming and like his face was beet red, he just looked, like, really mad." She said she grabbed the bat from her room fearing Charles would hurt her mother. "I haven't really seen him all the way like that before. That's like the craziest I have ever seen him," she added.
Furthermore, Tylee also alleged that she "kind of never got along" with her stepfather. “It’s for the most part been pretty mundane but there have been a few like, violent times with him when I was really scared he was going to hit me or my mom like just cause everything was kind of crazy," she said. "Me and him have always kind of not gotten along like just since I was little and so there have been a few times we have gotten in fights and stuff like that so I am just always kind of scared of that.”
In May, Lori and her fifth husband Chad Daybell were charged over the murders of Tylee and JJ, who were last seen in September 2019 and were found buried on his property in June 2020. Chad is slated to stand trial at the end of this year, while Lori was ruled "unfit to stand trial" days after both were charged. This came after the 47-year-old "cult mom" underwent a competency evaluation on March 8 after her attorney questioned her "fitness to proceed" with the trial.
Lori and Chad were also slapped with a series of other charges, including conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and grand theft in connection to the kids' deaths. Meanwhile, Chad was also charged with the death of his ex-wife, Tammy Daybell, after investigators reopened the case and her body was exhumed in December 2019.