Background
Lori Vallow was born in 1973 in California and spent much of her adult life moving across the western United States, ultimately settling in Arizona and later Idaho. She had been married several times and was the mother of several children, including her adopted son Joshua "JJ" Vallow and her biological daughter Tylee Ryan. By the late 2010s, Vallow had become deeply involved in fringe apocalyptic religious beliefs that drew loosely from offshoots of Latter-day Saint culture, including ideas about the imminent end of the world, the assignment of "light" and "dark" labels to people, and the notion that certain individuals had become "zombies" possessed by evil spirits.
Around 2018 to 2019, Vallow met Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who self-published fiction and doomsday-themed books and ran a small publishing company. Daybell shared and promoted similar apocalyptic teachings and claimed prophetic insight, including the ability to rate people's spiritual standing. The two formed a relationship while both were still married to other people. Their shared beliefs would later form the ideological backdrop prosecutors used to explain a series of deaths surrounding the couple.
The Deaths and Disappearances
In July 2019, Lori's brother Alex Cox shot and killed her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, in Arizona. Cox claimed self-defense at the time, and no charges were initially filed; Charles had reportedly sought to have Lori committed and was pursuing divorce. In October 2019, Tammy Daybell, Chad Daybell's wife, died at her Idaho home in what was first attributed to natural causes. Her death drew renewed scrutiny after Chad Daybell married Lori Vallow just two weeks later, in November 2019. Tammy's body was later exhumed, and authorities concluded she had been asphyxiated.
The couple's two youngest children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow, were last seen in September 2019. When relatives and authorities sought to check on the children in late 2019, Lori and Chad gave conflicting and false accounts of their whereabouts and then left Idaho for Hawaii. The children's prolonged disappearance triggered a national search and intense media attention throughout early 2020.
Investigation and Discovery
Investigators grew suspicious as Lori repeatedly failed to produce the children or explain their absence. In early 2020 she was charged in Idaho with crimes related to abandoning and concealing her children, and she was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020. Her brother Alex Cox, considered a person of interest, had died in December 2019 of what was ruled natural causes, removing a key potential witness.
In June 2020, investigators searching Chad Daybell's rural property near Rexburg, Idaho, discovered human remains buried on the land. The remains were identified as JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan. JJ had been wrapped in plastic and bound, and Tylee's remains had been burned and dismembered. The grim discovery transformed the case from a missing-children investigation into a multiple-murder prosecution and prompted authorities to pursue conspiracy and murder charges against both Lori and Chad.
Charges and Trial
Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were indicted on charges including first-degree murder and conspiracy in the deaths of JJ Vallow, Tylee Ryan, and Tammy Daybell. Prosecutors argued that the couple's apocalyptic beliefs, combined with financial motives such as life insurance and Social Security benefits, drove them to eliminate people they had labeled obstacles or "zombies." Lori's case was delayed after she was found mentally unfit to stand trial in 2021 and was committed for treatment before being restored to competency.
Lori Vallow Daybell's trial took place in Idaho in the spring of 2023. In May 2023, a jury found her guilty on all counts, including the murders of her two children and conspiracy in the death of Tammy Daybell. She was sentenced to multiple terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Chad Daybell was tried separately in 2024; he was convicted of murder and, unlike Lori, was sentenced to death.
Aftermath and Legacy
Lori Vallow Daybell faced additional prosecution in Arizona related to the 2019 shooting death of her former husband Charles Vallow and an alleged conspiracy to kill a relative. In 2025 she was convicted in Arizona proceedings and received further life sentences, and she chose to represent herself in some of those hearings, drawing additional public attention.
The case became one of the most widely covered American true-crime stories of its era, spawning extensive news coverage, documentaries, podcasts, and books. It drew particular interest because of the intersection of fringe doomsday religious ideology, family annihilation, and the deaths of two children. For many observers, the case underscored how extremist apocalyptic beliefs can be invoked to rationalize violence, and it left lasting grief among surviving relatives, including the children's extended family who had pressed authorities to search for them.
