The husband of so-called “cult mom” Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, himself known in the press as the “doomsday prophet,” was sentenced to death in Idaho on Saturday for the murders of Lori’s two younger children and his first wife in 2019.
Judge Steven Boyce of the Seventh Judicial District formally imposed the death sentence on the 55-year-old former gravedigger after a jury “found beyond a reasonable doubt” that the punishment would be appropriate. Chad was found guilty on Thursday of three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and grand theft by deception, one count of conspiracy to commit firstdegree murder, and two counts of insurance fraud.
The sentencing came after an emotional penalty hearing when family members of the victims, including Lori’s adult son, Colby Ryan, tearfully testified about their loss.
Chad is the fifth husband of Lori, who was also convicted last year in the murder of her two youngest children — seven-year-old Joshua Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan — in what prosecutors argued was a scheme by religious fanatics at Rexburg, Idaho to kill innocent family members in order to collect life insurance payouts and Social Security benefits to fund a new life in Hawaii.
JJ Vallow, who actually was Charles’ nephew whom Charles adopted, was reported missing by his grandparents, of Louisiana, in November, 2019, and he and his sister, Tylee, the daughter of Lori’s third husband, Joseph Ryan, could not be found when law enforcement did a welfare check. Lori and Chad were discovered to have left Idaho for Hawaii, where they insisted to reporters that Lori’s children were safe.
In the spring of 2020, Lori was extradited from Hawaii back to Idaho, and languished in the Madison County jail while refusing to divulge the location of her children. Their bodies were eventually found buried in Chad’s backyard. JJ had been suffocated. Tylee’s body had been so badly burned it was impossible to determine her cause of death.
Unlike Chad, Lori was sentenced to multiple fixed life terms in prison with no possibility of parole. Her trial had been delayed for months for reasons related to her mental health, which was also considered a mitigating factor in her sentence.
The trials of Chad and Lori have drawn widespread attention over the couple’s belief in an extreme strain of Mormonism. Their professed beliefs — including that certain family members were “dark” and “marked” for death — were described by prosecutors as creating a faith-based rationale for the murders. In 2021, Chad had been excommunicated from the Mormon church for his extreme beliefs.
Chad and Lori were the subject of a hit Netflix true-crime documentary in 2022, called, “Sins of Our Mother.” The couple was also featured in repeated episodes of “2020” and, of course, “Dateline.”
According to court documents, Lori said she was “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020” and didn’t want anything to do with her family “because she had a more important mission to carry out.” The 144,000 is a reference to a group of faithful Christians destined to rule with God in heaven after the Rapture. Lori and Chad’s focus on the end of times earned them the “cult” and “doomsday” epithets.
Prosecutors in Chad’s case presented reams of evidence that the couple thought Lori’s two children, Tylee and JJ, were “dark spirits” and “zombies.” Chad was accused of conspiring to kill them with Lori’s now-deceased brother, Alex Cox, in 2019, roughly a year after the couple met at a religious conference. Law enforcement officials believe that Alex may have been the one who actually carried out the murders.
Chad was also convicted of murdering his then-wife, 49-year-old Tamara “Tammy” Daybell on October 19, 2019. Tammy’s sudden death, in bed, was at first attributed to an unknown illness and, at Chad’s direction, she was buried hastily, without an autopsy, and her death was officially attributed to natural causes. Lori and Chad got married in Hawaii only 17 days later. During the publicity storm surrounding the search for JJ and Tylee, Tammy’s body was exhumed and ruled a homicide by asphyxiation.
“Three dead bodies,” prosecutor Lindsey Blake told jurors during closing arguments on Wednesday, “and for what? Money, power and sex. That’s what the defendant cared about.”
The death sentence for Chad is just the latest in the sordid soap opera surrounding Lori and her fifth husband. Despite being sentenced to life in prison in Idaho, she is scheduled to go on trial in August for the murder of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and for conspiracy to attempt to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the then-estranged husband of her niece, who is now named Melani Pawlowski. Melani was part of Chad and Lori’s small faith circle, which Chad dominated with his extreme religious beliefs.
Alex Cox figures largely in these two alleged crimes. He shot and killed Charles at Arizona in 2019, claiming self-defense. Prosecutors believe it was he who took a shot at Brandon and missed, while Brandon was driving. Now prosecutors have charged Lori with plotting to kill Charles and Brandon, and using her brother to carry out the murder and attempted murder.
Shortly prior to Charles’ death, he unsuccessfully sought to have Lori committed, telling police she believed he’d been possessed by an evil spirit named “Ned Schneider.”
(At Chad’s trial, testimony showed that Chad and Lori also believed that Tammy had gone “dark” and was possessed by a malevolent force named “Viola.” Tammy’s “death percentages” were also very high, with Chad telling friends he had a premonition Tammy was going to die soon.)
After Charles died, Lori was furious to find that he’d recently changed beneficiaries on his million dollar life insurance policy, the jury heard in her trial.
Alex died in December 2019, and the medical examiner ruled he was done in by a blood clot. But his alleged role in the four murders (Tylee, JJ, Tammy and Charles) and one attempted murder (Brandon) combined with his young age and the suspicious timing of death have led to ongoing calls for his death to be investigated again.
(Joseph Ryan, Lori’s third husband and Tylee’s father, was found dead in his Phoenix apartment in 2018. After Lori was in the news, the investigation into his death was reopened, and again was attributed to natural causes. Ryan had gone through a bitter custody fight over Tylee.)
As for Chad’s fate, Idaho is one of 21 states where capital punishment is legal, but executions in Idaho are rare. In February, Idaho prison staff gave up on their efforts to carry out the state’s first execution since 2012 after they could not successfully set an intravenous line in the condemned man, Thomas Creech.
