On the morning of June 9, 2020, Rexburg police and FBI agents walked onto a rural property in Salem, Idaho, with a search warrant for the home of Chad Daybell. They dug near a pond and in the corner of the yard where the family buried its pets. Within hours they found what the country had wondered about for six months: the remains of 7-year-old JJ Vallow, wrapped in plastic, and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, burned and buried in pieces. Chad, watching from the house, tried to drive away. Officers stopped him. His wife, Lori Vallow Daybell, was already sitting in the Madison County jail.

A Hairdresser, a Prophet, and a Book Series

Lori Vallow, born in Loma Linda, California, on June 26, 1973, was a hairdresser on her fourth marriage, to financial adviser Charles Vallow. She had a daughter, Tylee, from an earlier marriage; in 2013 the couple adopted JJ, Charles’s nephew.

Chad Daybell was a former gravedigger from Utah who self-published end-times novels. He and his wife Tammy had five children and lived in Rexburg, Idaho. In October 2018 she met him at a “Preparing a People” conference in Utah, and an affair began almost at once. They told followers that people could be graded as “light” or “dark,” and that a dark person whose spirit had been pushed out was a “zombie.” The only way to free the body, they taught, was for it to die.

“Be Like Nephi”: The Death of Charles Vallow

In February 2019 he filed for divorce in Arizona, writing that Lori had threatened to kill him and believed she was a god preparing for the Second Coming. He moved his $1 million life insurance policy away from her and named his sister, Kay Woodcock, as beneficiary.

On July 11, 2019, Charles arrived at Lori’s house in Chandler, Arizona, to pick up JJ for school. Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, shot him twice. Cox said Charles had swung a baseball bat at him, and he waited about 45 minutes before calling 911. Lori drove JJ to school anyway. No charges were filed. Two days earlier, Lori had texted her brother to “be like Nephi,” a Book of Mormon figure commanded to kill a wicked man. In the group’s messages, Charles was now “Ned,” a dark spirit wearing his body.

Yellowstone, Then Silence

Lori moved the children to Rexburg in late summer 2019, minutes from Chad. On September 8 the family drove to Yellowstone National Park, where Tylee was photographed. She was never seen alive again. JJ was last seen on the night of September 22, asleep on a couch, as Cox carried him upstairs. Two days later Lori told his school she would homeschool him.

On October 2, a rifle shot missed Brandon Boudreaux, the estranged husband of Lori’s niece, by inches in his driveway in Gilbert, Arizona. He recognized the Jeep as one Tylee drove. On October 19, 2019, Tammy Daybell, 49, died in her bed. Chad declined an autopsy and collected about $430,000 in insurance. On November 5, he married Lori on a beach in Kauai.

The Welfare Check and the Backyard

Kay Woodcock could not reach JJ. On November 26, 2019, at her request, Rexburg officers knocked on Lori’s door. Lori said the boy was in Arizona with her friend Melanie Gibb. Gibb told police that was false, and that Lori and Chad had asked her to lie. By the next day the townhouse was empty; the couple had flown to Hawaii.

Cox died of a blood clot on December 12, 2019, the day after Tammy was exhumed. Lori was arrested on Kauai on February 20, 2020, on child-desertion charges, with bail set at $5 million. When the children were found that June, JJ had been suffocated with a plastic bag and duct tape; Cox’s fingerprints and Lori’s hair were on the wrapping. Like the McStay family disappearance, the case turned on graves the killers assumed no one would open.

Idaho Verdicts: Life, Then Death

A grand jury indicted both Daybells in May 2021. Lori’s trial opened in Boise on April 3, 2023; prosecutors called about 60 witnesses, the defense none. On May 12, 2023, the jury convicted her on every count. At sentencing on July 31, she told the court that “no one was murdered.” Judge Steven Boyce gave her three consecutive life terms without parole and said she had gone down a “bizarre, religious rabbit hole.”

At Chad’s trial in 2024, prosecutors said he wanted “sex, money and power”; his attorney argued Alex Cox did the killing and Lori the planning. On May 30, 2024, Chad was convicted of all three murders, and on June 1 the same jurors sentenced him to death. As in the Watts family murders, the man who dug the graves had expected never to be suspected.

Arizona: Lori Defends Herself

Extradited to Arizona in November 2023, Lori won the right to represent herself. She told jurors “the evidence will show” Charles died in self-defense, then called no witnesses. On April 22, 2025, after about three hours of deliberation, the jury found her guilty of conspiring to murder Charles Vallow.

The Boudreaux trial went faster. Prosecutors showed video of Lori putting the Jeep’s back seat into storage, and records showing Cox left his phone in Idaho as an alibi. On June 12, 2025, the jury convicted her in under an hour. On July 25, 2025, Judge Justin Beresky imposed two more life sentences, consecutive to her Idaho terms. Lori told the court: “If I was accountable for these crimes, I would acknowledge it.” Kay Woodcock called her “a manipulator, a parasite and a coward.”

Where It Stands in 2026

Both Daybells are appealing. In January 2026, Deputy Attorney General Jeff Nye filed a 59-page brief with the Idaho Supreme Court rejecting Lori’s five claims, among them that the trial judge wrongly removed her chosen attorney, Mark Means. Her opening brief followed on April 3, 2026, asking that the convictions be thrown out or a new trial ordered. No oral argument date has been set.

Chad’s death sentence is under the Idaho Supreme Court’s automatic review, a process that has averaged more than 27 years in Idaho. On July 1, 2026, a law signed by Governor Brad Little made the firing squad Idaho’s primary execution method. In January 2026, state Senator Tammy Nichols introduced a bill to keep prisoners from profiting on books or interviews, citing the Daybell cases by name.

Why This Case Still Matters

Most family killings are private. This one had an audience. Lori and Chad built a small circle of believers who joined “castings” over Zoom, prayed for Charles Vallow to die, and accepted that two children had become zombies. Several of them later testified, which is how the “dark spirit” language became sworn evidence. It also showed how slowly the system reacts when a parent says a child is “with a friend.” The Pike County massacre taught the same lesson from a different angle: inside a family, the people who know the most are often the last to talk.

Alex Cox was never charged with anything, and he died with whatever he knew about the last hours of Tylee and JJ.

Related Cases

• Chris Watts / the Watts family murders — A Colorado father, a pregnant wife, two daughters, and an oil site.
• The Pike County massacre — Eight Rhoden family members killed in one Ohio night, four kin charged.
• The McStay family disappearance — A family of four vanished in 2010, found in the Mojave three years later.

Sources

• Arizona’s Family: Lori Vallow Daybell receives 2 life sentences in Arizona cases
• Arizona’s Family: Jury finds Lori Vallow Daybell guilty in murder conspiracy trial
• East Idaho News: Jury finds Lori Daybell guilty of conspiracy in her 3rd trial
• Court TV: Prosecutors push back on Lori Vallow Daybell’s appeal
• KIFI Local News 8: Lori Vallow Daybell files appeal to overturn triple-murder convictions
• The Spokesman-Review: Idaho bill seeks to clamp down on prisoner profits
• Wikipedia: Lori Vallow Daybell

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