Prosecutors say the mother of two children who were found dead in rural Idaho months after her disappearance had conspired with her new husband to hide or destroy the children’s bodies.
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BOISE, Idaho – Prosecutors say the mother of two children who were found dead in rural Idaho months after they disappeared in a bizarre case that captured global attention had conspired with her new husband to hide or destroy the bodies of children.
The new felony charges against Lori Vallow Daybell came Monday night, the latest twist in a case related to the mysterious deaths of the couple’s former spouses and their beliefs about zombies and the apocalypse that may have affected their actions. .
A judge set Daybell’s bail at $ 1 million during his first court appearance on the new felony charges Tuesday. The judge asked her if she understood the accusations and that if she was found guilty she could be sentenced to up to 10 years behind bars. Daybell, who occasionally wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, answered “yes.”
Daybell is already charged with abandoning or abandoning Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17, but because police found his remains buried in her husband’s yard, it is unclear whether those allegations will continue. She is also accused of obstructing a police investigation, asking a friend to lie to the police on her behalf, and contempt of court for failing to follow an order to produce the children.
Daybell’s attorney has indicated that she intends to defend herself against the charges, but has not yet had a chance to testify.
Her husband Chad Daybell was charged this month with concealing evidence by destroying or concealing the children’s bodies. He pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors are using the same behavior alleged in Lori Daybell’s previous charges to support the conspiracy charge, saying she helped Chad Daybell’s efforts to hide the bodies by asking her friend to lie to police about JJ’s whereabouts. and lying to the police when she told them that JJ was in Arizona and Tylee was attending college.
Authorities have not yet said how exactly the children died or who caused their death. Court documents suggest that JJ was buried in a pet cemetery on Chad Daybell’s property and that Tylee’s remains were dismembered and burned. Investigators found the remains by tracking the movements of Lori Daybell’s brother Alex Cox using cell phone data. Authorities searched Chad Daybell’s home again on Monday but have not said what they were looking for.
Cox is also dead, succumbing to an apparent blood clot in his lung at his Arizona home last December. In the most recent court documents filed in the Lori Daybell conspiracy case, Rexburg Police Lt. Ron Ball wrote that Cox was also involved in the conspiracy to conceal the remains of the children by taking JJ to the property of Chad Daybell the day the boy was buried and then tell him Police the boy was visiting his grandparents in Louisiana.
The documents also refer to claims that the Daybells believed that dark spirits, or “zombies,” would possess people. Lori Daybell reportedly told her friend Melanie Gibb at different times in 2019 that both JJ and Tylee had become zombies. Gibb said the Daybells also believed that the only way to rid a person of a dark spirit was to kill them so that the person could rest in the afterlife.
“Vallow informed Gibb that when a person became a ‘zombie’, his original spirit left his body and entered ‘limbo’ and was trapped and could not progress to ‘paradise,'” Ball wrote in an affidavit. Vallow then informed Gibb that in order for the person’s original spirit to be released from limbo, the person’s physical body had to die. Despite the teaching that a physical body needed to die, Gibb reports that Vallow or Daybell never told him that they planned to carry out a physical murder themselves. “
The complex case began last summer with Cox shooting and killing Lori’s estranged husband, Charles Vallow, in the Phoenix suburbs in what he claimed was self-defense. Vallow was seeking divorce, saying that Lori believed that she had become a divine figure responsible for ushering in Biblical end times.
Shortly after Vallow’s death, Lori and the children moved to Idaho, where Chad Daybell lived. She ran a small publishing house, publishing many fiction books she wrote on apocalyptic scenarios loosely based on Theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She also recorded podcasts on how to prepare for the apocalypse, and her friends said she claimed to be able to receive visions of “beyond the veil.”
He had married Tammy Daybell, who died in his sleep last October of what his obituary said were natural causes. Authorities became suspicious when Chad Daybell married Lori just two weeks later, and they exhumed Tammy Daybell’s body in Utah in December. The results of that autopsy have not been published.
Police began searching for Tylee and JJ in November after family members voiced their concern. Police say the Daybells lied to investigators about the children’s whereabouts before quietly leaving Idaho. They were found in Hawaii months later.
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