'The Doomsday Cult Mom': Trials of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, case details and all you need to know about Court TV's coverage
Lori Vallow and her husband Chad Daybell are facing charges after the police found the bodies of their two children, Joshua Vallow and Tylee Ryan, in their backyard. The children had been reported missing by family members in Septemeber 2019, and the subsequent investigations led authorities to the gruesome discovery. Daybell, a former gravedigger, has written numerous doomsday books and is rumored to have started a cult-like following. The couple is also believed to have some involvement in multiple other suspicious deaths including each of their previous spouses.
Vallow and Daybell are awaiting trial, and Court TV is giving us access to it in a segment titled 'The Doomsday Cult Mom'. Here is what you need to know about it.
Release date
The airing date for 'The Doomsday Cult Mom' has not been announced as of yet. Please watch this space for updates.
Case
Rexburg, Idaho, residents Joshua "JJ" Vallow and Tylee Ryan were reported missing since September 2019, by family members who had been concerned about the children since they hadn't heard from them for weeks. While Tylee,16, was last seen alive at Yellowstone National Park on September 8, 2019, seven-year-old JJ's last known whereabouts were recorded at Rexburg's Kennedy Elementary School on Septemeber 23, 2019.
Amid investigations, the police questioned the children's mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, who falsely claimed that JJ was staying with a family friend Gibb in Arizona. Vallow and the kids had previously lived in Arizona before moving to Idaho. When the authorities contacted Gibb, she informed them that JJ was not with her and she hadn't seen him for several months.
Over a week later, Gibb contacted the police saying Vallow and Daybell had asked her to lie to the police about JJ's whereabouts but she refused. While search efforts for JJ ensued, police also realized his older sister, Tylee Ryan, was also missing. Vallow was highly uncooperative with the investigations. Further complicating the case was a trail of suspicious deaths and a shooting. In July 2019, Vallow's estranged husband Charles Vallow was fatally shot in Arizona, by her brother who cited his actions as self-defense, which the police accepted. Her brother, Alex Cox died of a blood clot in December 2019.
Brandon Bordeaux, the estranged husband of Vallow's niece Melani was shot at from vehicle registered in the deceased Charles Vallow's name, in the driveway of his Arizona home in October 2019. Around the same time, Tammy Daybell, Chad Daybell's wife, was attacked in her driveway by someone she believes was shooting a defective paintball gun. The shooting prompted Bordeaux to hire a private detective to look into the suspicious incident, and other private investigators he hired in Idaho noticed the children had gone missing.
A few weeks after the incident, on October 19, Tammy died in her sleep from "natural causes", as was initially recorded, but no post-mortem or autopsy was performed. Authorities became suspicious of Tammy's cause of death when they found out that Daybell and Vallow had married just two weeks after Tammy's passing. In June, police executed a search warrant at Daybell's home where they discovered the human remains of the two missing children, JJ Vallow, and Tylee Ryan. Days after the family members of the family told the media that the remains belonged to the children, Rexburg police confirmed that bodies have been identified as JJ and Tylee after an autopsy.
Accused
Lori Vallow
Lori Vallow had a string of marriages that ended with divorce before she met Chad Daybell. At age 19, she married her high school boyfriend Nathan Yanes in 1992 and they divorced shortly after. At 22, she married William Lagioia in 1995 with whom she has a son Colby, and they divorced in 1998. In 2001, she married Joseph Anthony Ryan Jr, who legally adopted Colbym and they shared a daughter, Tylee.
Ryan filed for divorce in 2004. Ryan was attacked by Vallow's brother, Alex Cox in 2007, in Texas. He later pleaded guilty for his actions and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Lori Ryan then married Charles Vallow in Las Vegas, in 2006 and adopted his grandnephew, Joshua Jaxon 'JJ' Vallow.
It was around 2015, the Vallow learned about Daybell. She read his 'Standing in Holy Places' series of books and became "obsessed" with them, according to a friend. She joined Daybell on the podcast 'Preparing a People' in December 2018 and would continue to do so. Charles Vallow filed for divorce in February 2019 after she vanished for 58 days, saying his wife had "threaten[ed] to murder him." She had also taken US$35,000 from their joint bank accounts, and stolen his truck. However, he withdrew the divorce a month later saying he "wanted to try to make the marriage work".
In March 2020, it was revealed to the Arizona police that Vallow could soon be indicted in relation to Charles Vallows' death. Days before Chad Daybell's wife had died, Vallow, who continued to use her late husband's Amazon after his death, purchased a wedding ring for $35.99. Vallow was arrested in Kauai, Hawaii, and charged with desertion and nonsupport of her dependent children in February 2020. She was extradited to Idaho in March, where she appeared in court and the judge reduced her bail from $5M to $1M. While the coronavirus pandemic delayed Vallow's case, she remained in custody in Idaho.
Chad Daybell
Daybell, who graduated with a BA in journalism from the Brigham Young University, had been married only once, to Tammy Douglas. He has also worked as a cemetery sexton or gravedigger. He founded the Spring Creek Book Company in 2004 and devoted his time writing end times fiction and other religious books under the penname Douglas. In October 2019, Tammy reported to the police that she had been shot at by a masked man with what she believed was a defective paintball marker, but the Fremont County sheriff's office did not find the perpetrator. Ten days later she was found dead in her home, by natural causes.
Her husband claimed she had retired for the night with a hacking cough and died in her sleep. However, no post-mortem or autopsy was performed because Daybell declined and the county coroner did not overrule his decision. Two months later, Tammy's body was exhumed and autopsied but the results remain confidential. In June 2020, police executed a search warrant at Daybell's home, where they discovered human remains of Lori's children, JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan.
Days after family members told media that the remains belonged to the children, Rexburg, Idaho, police confirmed the bodies had been identified as the missing children. Daybell was arrested on charges of destruction or concealment of evidence, and his bail was set at $1M.
Creator
Court TV is the only multi-platform network devoted to live, gavel-to-gavel coverage with in-depth reporting and expert analysis of the nation's most important and compelling trials. Court TV is part of Katz Networks, a division of The EW Scripps Company.
Trailer
We will update this space with the official trailer for 'The Doomsday Cult Mom' soon.
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