Opening statements began Monday in the Arizona trial of “Doomsday mom” Lori Vallow Daybell, the mother who was sentenced to life in prison in Idaho for killing her children in 2019.
In Arizona, Vallow Daybell has been indicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow.
She has pleaded not guilty to the charge and is representing herself at the trial.
“I’m fighting for my life here,” Vallow Daybell told CBS affiliate AZFamily’s True Crime Arizona correspondent Briana Whitney in a jailhouse interview ahead of opening statements.
Jury selection in the Arizona case began on Monday, March 31. About 200 potential jurors were screened, AZFamily reported, but many were ruled out by Vallow Daybell and prosecutors because they knew about the case. Sixteen jurors, including four alternates, were chosen. The jury is made up of 13 men and three women, AZFamily reported.
AZFamily has been permitted by the judge to stream the trial on a 30-minute delay. The trial is expected to last until mid-May at the latest.
What did Lori Vallow Daybell do?
Lori Vallow Daybell was sentenced to life in prison without parole in the killings of her children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua Jaxon “JJ” Vallow. Tylee was Vallow Daybell’s child from a previous relationship. She and Charles Vallow adopted JJ in 2012.
In 2018, Vallow Daybell met doomsday fiction author Chad Daybell. A year later, she separated from Vallow and began a relationship with Daybell.
The couple held apocalyptic religious beliefs that prosecutors claimed were used to justify the killings of Tylee, JJ and Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell.
Kauai Police
Tylee and JJ disappeared within two weeks of each other in September 2019. In October 2019, Tammy Daybell was found dead in her bed. A coroner said her death initially appeared to be due to natural causes, but an autopsy wasn’t conducted before her body was buried. Two weeks later, in November 2019, Daybell and Vallow Daybell were married in Hawaii.
The remains of Tammy Daybell were exhumed in December 2019, an autopsy was performed and her cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation. In February 2020, Vallow Daybell was arrested in Hawaii for ignoring a police order to produce her children, who had been reported missing by their grandparents. Several months later, in June 2020, the bodies of Tylee and JJ were found on a property owned by Chad Daybell.
Daybell and Vallow Daybell were each charged in the deaths of Tammy Daybell, Tylee and JJ. In separate trials, they were each found guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the children’s deaths. Vallow Daybell was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in Tammy Daybell’s death and of theft charges related to financial payments sent to her children.
Daybell was found guilty of murder in Tammy Daybell’s death, as well as several other related charges. He has been sentenced to death.
John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register via AP
What was Lori Vallow Daybell’s relationship with Charles Vallow?
Lori Vallow Daybell and Charles Vallow were married from 2006 to 2019.
In early 2019, Vallow became very worried about his wife. He went to the police with his concerns, telling them that Vallow Daybell believed she was a “god” who was preparing for the end of days.
“She threatened me, murder me, kill me,” he told police in a conversation recorded on video, according to “48 Hours.”
Vallow filed for divorce in February 2019. In the filing, he said that Vallow Daybell had threatened to murder him. He also expressed fears for JJ and Tylee’s safety.
Kay Woodcock
How did Charles Vallow die?
Charles Vallow was shot and killed by Lori Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alexander Lamar Cox, on July 11, 2019.
Vallow had gone to the home where Vallow Daybell was living with Cox and the two children after their separation to pick up JJ. The home was in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.
In police video, Tylee said that she heard Vallow and Cox arguing.
“Honestly, it feels, it feels like 2 seconds, and 40 minutes at the same time. … I just kind of heard yelling over everything. I don’t know, I kind of just do that when everything is, like, really loud, I kind of just tune what people are saying out,” she told detectives.
Cox told police that he had killed Vallow in self-defense. He was not arrested.
Cox’s wife, Zulema Pastenes, testified that Daybell and Vallow Daybell had convinced him that his divine mission was to protect his sister. Pastenes said that Cox told her he feared the pair would make him their “fall guy.” That conversation, Pastenes said, occurred a day before Cox’s sudden death in December 2019. Medical examiners said he died of a pulmonary blood clot.
What to know about the latest charges
Lori Vallow Daybell has been charged with conspiring with Alex Cox to kill Charles Vallow. The trial is taking place in Phoenix, Arizona, where Vallow died.
April Raymond told “48 Hours” that Vallow Daybell, her former friend, told her she believed Vallow was already dead and had a demon living inside him. She would later make similar comments about her children.
In December 2024, a judge ruled that Vallow Daybell was mentally fit to stand trial. She will be able to wear civilian clothes and will not be shackled, but will have to wear a shock vest, AZFamily said.
Complicating the trial is Vallow Daybell’s decision to represent herself. Vallow Daybell said that she has studied case law during her time in prison. She also said she has experience in court that will help her represent herself.
“My intention is to say the things that I would say for myself,” Vallow Daybell said in the jailhouse interview with Whitney.
She said her attorneys in Idaho did not always say what she wanted them to and “sometimes you just have to be able to do it for yourself.”
Vallow Daybell said she hadn’t decided yet if she would testify at the trial.
“We’re going to see how it goes,” she said.
The logistics of preparing for the case have been a challenge, Vallow Daybell said. At a hearing on March 18 she said it was difficult for her to communicate with her legal team while in jail.
“Where I am at the jail, the communication is very difficult for me to get ahold of my investigator, get ahold of my paralegal. I’m 23 hours a day locked down. If I don’t have Wi-Fi, I don’t have a phone, if I don’t have battery, I don’t have a phone,” she said.
If found guilty, Vallow faces life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. She is already serving multiple life sentences with no possibility of parole after the convictions in Idaho.
This trial is not the last of her legal troubles. Vallow Daybell also faces a charge of conspiracy to commit murder for the attempted shooting of her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux. Boudreaux was shot at in 2019 while driving near his home but was unhurt. Prosecutors say Cox carried out the shooting but missed his target. Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office
Lori Vallow Daybell’s “Dateline” interview
In a jailhouse interview with NBC’s “Dateline,” which aired in March, Vallow Daybell made multiple baseless claims. She was often combative toward correspondent Keith Morrison as she claimed to be innocent of all charges.
She said she “was not there” when JJ and Tylee were killed and was not involved in Tammy Daybell’s death. She tried to blame JJ’s death on Tylee, Morrison said, but investigators have said Tylee died before JJ.
“She came in and she had her own agenda,” Morrison said of Vallow Daybell ahead of the airing of the “Dateline” episode. “She wanted to be the aggressor.”
During the interview, Vallow Daybell also briefly discussed how she would serve as her own attorney in the Charles Vallow case. She called the process “great” but a “difficult thing to do.”
