Lori Vallow Daybell was found guilty Tuesday of conspiring to murder her estranged husband in 2019, failing to convince a jury she had acted in self-defense.
It was the latest twist in a convoluted case that involved a purported doomsday cult and several murders.
Vallow Daybell had help from brother Alex Cox, who shot Charles Vallow at her home in a Phoenix suburb. Vallow Daybell represented herself in the Phoenix trial, telling the jury her brother had shot Vallow in self-defense after Vallow chased her with a baseball bat.
Jurors didn’t buy it, deliberating three hours over two days before finding her guilty.
“Many days she was just smiling and laughing and didn’t seem to take anything very seriously,” juror Victoria Lewis told reporters outside the courthouse.
Prosecutors told the court that Vallow Daybell had acted out of self-interest, not self-preservation, with plans to cash in on her estranged husband’s $1 million life insurance policy.
Charles Vallow had filed for divorce four months before his death, expressing fears for his and the children’s safety and requesting a mental health evaluation for his wife. She was apparently immersed in the fantasy world woven by Chad Daybell, writer of doomsday-inspired novels, caught up in his fictional web of zombies and apocalypse.
In September 2019, Vallow Daybell’s daughter Tylee, 17, disappeared. A couple of weeks later, so did Josh “JJ” Vallow, age 7.
Amid the investigation, authorities took another look at not only Charles Vallow’s death but also that of Tammy Daybell, the wife of Vallow Daybell’s boyfriend, Chad Daybell. She had died in October 2019 of apparent natural causes. Suspecting foul play, they exhumed and autopsied the two and ruled the deaths suspicious.
Four months after Vallow’s death in November 2019, Vallow Daybell married Chad Daybell. The children’s remains were found on Daybell’s property in Salem, Idaho, in 2020.
Vallow Daybell was convicted in 2023 and is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering Tylee and JJ, and conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell. Tuesday’s verdict adds a potential fourth life sentence to the mix.
Chad Daybell, too, is serving life sentences for the three deaths.
Vallow Daybell has one more murder trial to go, for her part in an alleged plot to kill her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux, who survived.
With News Wire Services
