PHOENIX — Lori Vallow Daybell, already serving life sentences in Idaho in the killings of her two youngest children and a romantic rival, will be sentenced Friday on two murder conspiracy convictions in Arizona, signaling an end to a winding legal saga for the mother with doomsday religious beliefs who claimed people in her life had been possessed by evil spirits.
In separate trials this spring in Arizona, Vallow Daybell was convicted of conspiring to murder her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, and her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux. Authorities say she carried out the plots with her brother Alex Cox, who acknowledged killing Vallow in July 2019 and was identified by prosecutors as the person who shot at Boudreaux months later but missed.
Prosecutors say Vallow Daybell conspired to kill Vallow so she could collect on his $1 million life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author of several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world. They say Boudreaux suspected Vallow Daybell and Cox were responsible for Vallow’s death. Boudreaux then went into hiding with his children because he feared Cox would kill him, prosecutors said.
Public interest in Vallow Daybell, 52, grew as the investigation into her own missing children — 7-year-old Joshua “JJ’ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan — took several strange and unexpected turns. Their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on Chad Daybell’s property on June 9, 2020.
Chad Daybell was sentenced to death in the killings of the children and his wife, Tammy, the romantic rival. Vallow Daybell was convicted of conspiring to kill Tammy.
Prosecutors in Arizona are seeking life sentences on each of Vallow Daybell’s latest convictions. Once sentenced in Arizona, Vallow Daybell will be sent back to prison in Idaho.
Charles Vallow filed for divorce four months before he died. He said Vallow Daybell became infatuated with near-death experiences and claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets. He told police she threatened to kill him and he was concerned for his children.
Vallow was shot when he went to pick up his son at Vallow Daybell’s home outside Phoenix, police said. Vallow Daybell’s daughter, Tylee, told police the sound of yelling woke her up, and she confronted Vallow with a baseball bat to defend her mother. Vallow managed to take the bat from her.
Cox told police that he shot Vallow after he refused to drop the bat and came after him.
Cox died five months later from a blood clot in his lungs. His self-defense claim was later called into question, with investigators saying Cox and Vallow Daybell waited more than 40 minutes before calling 911.
Right before his death, Vallow and his wife’s other brother, Adam Cox, planned an intervention to try to bring Lori back into the mainstream of their shared faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Adam Cox, a witness for the prosecution, testified his sister claimed to be in the process of “translating from being a mortal human to an immortal human being, a celestial being.” He also said she told people that Vallow was no longer living and that a zombie was inside her estranged husband’s body.
Almost three months after Vallow died, someone fired a shot at Boudreaux from an open window of a Jeep as he was driving up to his home in Gilbert, another Phoenix suburb. It narrowly missed Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.
Boudreaux said Pawlowski aspired to be like her aunt. The two started attending religious meetings together in 2018. Soon after, Pawlowski said they should stockpile food for the end of the world.
Prosecutors tied the Jeep to Vallow Daybell and said she loaned it to Alex Cox. The two bought a burner phone used to carry out the attack and tried to concoct an alibi for Cox to make it seem like he was in Idaho at the time, prosecutors said.
Unlike her Idaho case, Vallow Daybell chose to represent herself at both Arizona trials, even though she isn’t a lawyer.
At her first trial, she argued her brother Alex Cox acted in self-defense when killing Vallow. She struggled with legal duties that most lawyers consider routine, such as lining up witnesses to testify.
She argued at the second Arizona trial that no evidence established that she conspired with Cox to kill Boudreaux.
“I’m not defensive,” Vallow Daybell told jurors. “I’m not angry.”
She clashed with Judge Justin Beresky and tried to get him removed from the case, arguing he was biased against her. She insisted on exercising her speedy trial rights yet complained she didn’t have enough time to prepare.
During jury selection in the case involving Boudreaux, Vallow Daybell said she was sick and couldn’t go to trial. Beresky pushed ahead, saying there was no objective evidence to support her claim.