10 Things to Know about the Doomsday Killer
This criminal case has multiple shocking and disturbing turns. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re going over everything you need to know about the Vallow–Daybell doomsday murders.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Now, Lori Daybell appears to be somebody else.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're going over everything you need to know about the
00:08Vallow-Daybell doomsday murders.
00:10The story and what's happening at this wedding is incredibly dark.
00:15When Lori Vallow Met Chad Daybell
00:17After writing An Errand for Emma, Chad Daybell and then-wife Tammy Douglas started Spring
00:22Creek Book Company, through which he self-published other religious novels targeted at Latter-day
00:27Saint readers.
00:28About maybe a year or two ago, Lori started reading some books and near-death experience
00:34books and started saying some weird things.
00:38Among Daybell's fans was Lori Vallow, a former Miss Texas contestant.
00:42Vallow and Daybell were married to different people when they first met in 2018 at a Preparing
00:47a People event to, quote, prepare the people of this earth for the second coming of Jesus
00:52Christ.
00:53Chad and Lori first met in 2018 at a conference for doomsday preppers.
00:57According to the police report, they believed they had been married in a past life and were
01:02meant to be together, despite already being married to other people.
01:06According to Vallow's friend Melanie Gibb and future sister-in-law Sulema Pastenes,
01:11there was an immediate flirtation between Lori and Chad, who started getting together
01:15for doomsday conferences.
01:17Gibb recalls the two discussing, quote, zombies and, quote, dark spirits, while another friend,
01:22April Raymond, says that Lori called her then-husband Charles a, quote, demon.
01:27I think that Lori was kind of at a crossroads in her life for a lot of reasons.
01:32I think she was unhappy in her marriage.
01:36She had recently become a grandmother and she had met Chad Daybell.
01:41Lori Vallow's Previous Marriages
01:43Upon meeting Daybell, Vallow was on her fourth marriage.
01:47Vallow had been 19 when she married her high school sweetheart, Nelson Yanes.
01:51In 1992, she marries her high school sweetheart.
01:55He wasn't my favorite, and we didn't have a close relationship.
02:00That marriage ended quickly, and Vallow soon tied the knot with William LaGioia, the father
02:04of her firstborn child, Colby.
02:07Vallow had another daughter named Tylee with her third husband, Joseph Anthony Ryan Jr.,
02:11who also became Colby's adoptive father.
02:14Accused of abusing his wife and children, Ryan lost custody amid an intense divorce
02:19and legal battle.
02:20Those allegations were investigated but never substantiated.
02:24This custody battle drags on for years.
02:26Months before Vallow met Daybell, Ryan died from a heart attack.
02:30A year after splitting from Ryan, Lori married Leland Charles Anthony Vallow, who converted
02:35from Catholic to Mormon for her.
02:37They get married in Las Vegas.
02:42Charles Vallow, to me, was the best of Lori's husbands.
02:47They had been dating and we all liked him.
02:51The couple adopted Joshua Jackson J.J. Vallow, Charles' grandnephew who was diagnosed with
02:56autism.
02:58Religious Beliefs
02:59A strong believer in reincarnation, Daybell proclaimed that in one of his 31 past lives,
03:05he was Jesus' follower James the Less, and Lori was his wife Elena.
03:09At any point when she's talking about all of this, are you thinking in your head, I
03:13need to distance myself from Lori?
03:16I did.
03:17I did feel that way.
03:18Lori was also Joseph Smith's great-grandmother and the prophet Moroni's wife, according
03:23to Daybell.
03:24His thoughts on the apocalypse are reflected in his books, which he doesn't view as fiction.
03:29Following multiple brushes with death, Daybell claimed he gained the power to see, quote,
03:34beyond the veil.
03:35In his memoir, Chad Daybell writes, I don't fictionalize any of the events portrayed.
03:41My torn veil allows information to be downloaded into my brain from the other side.
03:46Daybell and Vallow scored people based on how good and evil they appear, using a scale
03:51ranging from light to dark.
03:53They utilized a, quote, vibration scale to measure special powers.
03:58Despite belonging to LDS, the couple's beliefs contradicted many of the church's teachings,
04:03sharing more in common with a doomsday cult.
04:05I think she's so brainwashed and so far gone.
04:08This person that she's married to is writing books about doomsday and the end of the world.
04:15I know her, but her Mormon religion don't teach that.
04:18Charles Vallow's death.
04:20Although Vallow and Daybell were growing closer, they were, quote, not allowed to divorce their
04:25respective spouses due to a message from, quote, beyond the veil.
04:28Regardless, Charles Vallow filed for divorce in February 2019.
04:33She took all the money out of her bank account today.
04:35What did she say yesterday?
04:36She said, you're not Charles.
04:38I don't know who you are, what you did with Charles, but I can murder you now with my powers.
04:42Charles feared for his life, claiming that Lori said he was, quote, possessed by a dark
04:46spirit by the name of Ned Schneider.
04:49Meanwhile, Lori viewed herself as, quote, a god assigned to carry out the work of the
04:54144,000 at Christ's second coming.
04:57Did she explain what the 144,000 was?
05:01I'm pretty familiar with revelations, and so I knew what she was referring to.
05:05These are the people that will be here at the second coming.
05:09Charles also worried about Tylee and JJ, the latter of whom he was about to pick up
05:13when Lori's brother Alex Cox confronted him.
05:16Alex fatally shot Charles in what he called self-defense.
05:20He wasn't charged, although further investigation suggested a conspiracy, with Alex calling
05:25Charles a, quote, zombie.
05:27He was just yelling at me.
05:28He came at me with a bat.
05:30Was he living here or visiting?
05:32Alex Cox claims to have suffered a blow to the head from the bat swung by Charles, yet
05:36he declines medical attention.
05:38Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow disappear.
05:41Hours after Charles died on July 11, 2019, Lori supposedly threw a pool party.
05:47A week later, Lori learned that Charles changed his life insurance beneficiary to his sister,
05:52Kay.
05:53He told me that he had changed the beneficiary to Kay Woodcock, his sister, because he trusted
05:58her to give the money to JJ.
06:00No longer receiving $1 million, Lori moved from Chandler, Arizona to Rexburg, Idaho,
06:06where Chad resided.
06:07Alex, Tylee, and JJ accompanied Lori, who removed the children from her life insurance
06:12policy that August.
06:13On September 8, 2019, the family visited Yellowstone National Park, marking Tylee's last sighting.
06:20Authorities say no one ever saw Tylee again after that point, after that very last photo.
06:26JJ was last seen by Melanie Gibbs' boyfriend, David Warwick, as Alex carried him to bed
06:31on September 22.
06:32Aside from some activity on Tylee's Venmo account, she had vanished along with JJ.
06:38Yet Lori showed no concern while Chad claimed both children were, quote,
06:42zombies.
06:43The police reported no one saw or heard from JJ after September 23.
06:49But Janice says she called Lori on October 1, a full week later, and could hear JJ playing
06:55in the background.
06:56Brandon Boudreaux's shooting
06:57In 2008, Brandon Boudreaux married Lori's niece, Melanie Cope.
07:02While Brandon had been close to Lori's family, his marriage to Melanie neared its
07:06end by the summer of 2019.
07:08In 2019, Brandon Boudreaux was going through a divorce with Lori and Alex's niece, Melanie.
07:13Court documents from the matter gave the first glimpse into the dark religious beliefs tied
07:17to Lori, Alex, Chad, and others in their tight circle.
07:21Brandon claimed that Melanie shared many of Lori's spiritual ideas, convinced she had
07:25joined a cult.
07:26Lori classified Brandon as a, quote,
07:29very high dark, claiming he was linked to Hitler.
07:32Driving to his new home in Gilbert, Arizona on October 2, 2019, Brandon was shot at by
07:38someone in a Jeep registered to the deceased, Charles Vallow.
07:41Charles Vallow did indeed own a Jeep Wrangler that was registered down in Texas.
07:45But dead men don't drive.
07:47So who was inside the Jeep?
07:49As he approached, he saw what he believed was Alex Cox.
07:53Melanie was one of only five people who knew where Brandon now lived.
07:57Hours before the attack, Alex Cox had looked up directions to Brandon's address.
08:01Lori had searched about the shooting online, fueling suspicions that she was involved.
08:06And I remember having that uncomfortable, you know, question that I go to him with,
08:12you know, did you take a shot at Brandon?
08:15And he said no.
08:17He joked about it.
08:18Tammy Daybell's Murder
08:20Tamara Tammy Douglas married Chad Daybell in 1990, having five children together.
08:25In February 2019, Chad predicted his wife of almost 30 years would die before age 50.
08:31Tammy's death was odd from the beginning.
08:35Family said she died in her sleep.
08:37They didn't want an autopsy performed.
08:39On October 19, five months after turning 49, Tammy was discovered dead.
08:45Although Chad claims she died naturally in her sleep, there were several red flags.
08:50A month earlier, Tammy's life insurance policy was increased.
08:53Chad cashed in on Tammy's $400,000 life insurance policy
08:58and quickly married Lori less than three weeks later in Hawaii.
09:02Ten days before her death, a masked man with a seemingly unloaded gun,
09:06theorized to be Alex Cox, harassed Tammy in her driveway.
09:10Chad displayed little grief, swiftly arranging Tammy's funeral as if it had been preordained.
09:15Tammy Daybell's body was exhumed two months after being buried to perform toxicology tests.
09:21Against Chad's wishes, the suspicious authorities arranged an autopsy,
09:26finding in December that Tammy died, quote,
09:28at the hands of another and died of asphyxiation.
09:31Daybell and Velo's Hawaiian Wedding
09:34As other family members and the authorities questioned what happened to Tylee and JJ,
09:38Lori and Chad booked a trip to Hawaii where they got married on November 5, 2019.
09:42The photos are great, but the one thing you notice about them is it's only the bride and groom.
09:47Charles died four months earlier, while Tammy had only been deceased two weeks.
09:52A day after learning Tammy's body would be exhumed,
09:55Alex Cox mysteriously died from natural causes attributed to blood clots.
09:59Alex Cox suddenly passed out and later died, an autopsy determined of natural causes.
10:06The newlyweds returned to Hawaii around this time,
10:08with suspicions and media attention growing around them.
10:11On February 20, 2020, Lori was arrested in Kauai,
10:15facing the charges of desertion and not supporting her dependent children along with three misdemeanors.
10:21Lori spent a week in a Hawaiian jail before being extradited to Rexburg,
10:25with her bail reduced to $1 million.
10:28She was extradited from Hawaii to a tiny airport in Rexburg, Idaho,
10:33to face child abandonment charges.
10:35Finding the Bodies
10:37On June 9, 2020, the authorities acquired a warrant to search Chad Daybell's home.
10:42George, good morning. This is the outcome no one was wanting.
10:44The desperate search for these missing siblings has been on since September,
10:49and it appears to have come to a tragic end.
10:51In the backyard pet cemetery, they uncovered Tylee's remains,
10:55while JJ was buried by a pond on the property.
10:58Chad had notably been a gravedigger before becoming an author.
11:02After attempting to flee from the crime scene,
11:04Chad was arrested and charged with concealment of evidence.
11:07The family's statement comes as Chad Daybell made his first court appearance Wednesday.
11:11Due to COVID concerns, the 51-year-old appeared via livestream,
11:15dressed in a gray and white striped jumpsuit,
11:17Daybell saying few words, only giving short responses to the judge.
11:21By May 2021, the charges against Chad and Lori had grown more serious,
11:26with both indicted for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder,
11:30among other felonies.
11:31The following June, Lori was also indicted for conspiring to murder Charles Vallow,
11:36although the authorities couldn't link Chad to this case.
11:39The couple would be tried separately, with both pleading not guilty to all charges.
11:44The pair facing nine new charges in all, including grand theft and insurance fraud.
11:49Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel
11:52and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
11:55You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
11:59If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
12:05Trials and Verdicts
12:07Lori's trial began in April 2023,
12:10with the jury finding her guilty on all charges the following month.
12:14For murdering her children and conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell,
12:17Lori received three consecutive life sentences without parole.
12:21Lori Vallow Daybell was convicted of murder, conspiracy, and theft last July.
12:25She was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
12:28Rejecting a speedy trial, Chad's day in court finally came in April 2024.
12:34By the end of May, he was found guilty of first-degree murder,
12:37conspiracy to commit murder, grand theft, and insurance fraud.
12:41Jury deliberations began yesterday, just yesterday afternoon, in fact.
12:45The prosecution claims the murderers were fueled by, quote,
12:48sex, money, and power, along with spiritual beliefs.
12:51Although the death penalty was taken off the table for Lori,
12:54Chad was sentenced to death on June 1st, 2024.
12:58Lori faces further charges in Arizona, where Charles died.
13:01While Alex Cox shot Charles, it's been argued that he was working through his sister.
13:06Lori continues to deny any wrongdoing, while Chad has remained silent.
13:11This is the best justice we can possibly get.
13:14And again, it doesn't change the outcome, but it is good news.
13:21Have you been following the doomsday case?
13:23Let us know in the comments.
13:25Mr. Daybell, do you understand the allegations on both counts that have been brought against you?
13:30I do.