Jury selection is expected to begin Monday in the trial of Chad Daybellwho is charged in the deaths of his wife, Tammy Daybell, and his then-girlfriend Lori Vallow’s two youngest children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan.
THE A bizarre case attracted national attention after JJ’s grandparents reported missing children in 2019, weeks after they were last seen and shortly after Tammy Daybell’s death, initially attributed to natural causes. THE bodies of children were found burned and buried in the Daybells’ backyard in eastern Idaho in 2020.
Chad Daybell’s trial is expected to last up to 10 weeks. The 55-year-old self-published author is charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
The children’s mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, who married Chad Daybell just weeks after his wife’s death, was convicted last year by an Idaho jury and life sentence without parole in this case, in a trial that exposed the couple’s relationship bizarre and apocalyptic beliefs.
The couple claimed they could tell if people had been possessed by dark spirits that could turn them into “zombies,” their former friend Melanie Gibb testified in court. They believed that the only way to get rid of a zombie was to destroy the body of the possessed person by killing them.
Chad Daybell is also charged with insurance fraud in connection with the death of Tammy Daybell and two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and grand theft by deception in the children’s deaths.
If convicted, he faces the death penalty.
JOHN ROARK/AP
Daybell has pleaded not guilty. Last week, his attorney John Prior told KIVI-TV in Boise that Daybell was ready to move forward with the case and “wants to tell his story.”
Two days later, 7th District Judge Steven Boyce issued a gag order barring attorneys or parties in the case from speaking about it before jury selection and opening statements.
Chad and Lori Daybell were originally scheduled to stand trial together, but 2022 Prior asked court to divide cases, saying the co-defendants will have “mutually antagonistic defenses.” The legal term generally means that a jury would have to disbelieve one defendant in order to believe the other.
“Our version of the facts of this case will be very different from the one that Ms. Vallow and her attorney are going to present,” Prior told the judge, who later agreed to split the cases.
The dark case began in the fall of 2019, after extended family members noticed that Lori Vallow’s two youngest children were apparently missing and prompted law enforcement to launch a search. The ensuing investigation, which lasted several months, spanned several states and took several dark and unexpected turns.
Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were having an affair when both their spouses died suddenly, investigators have learned. Vallow’s husband was shot by his brother, Alexander Cox, in Arizona in July 2019 and the brother told police it was in self-defense. She was extradited to Arizona after her conviction in Idaho, where she faces two charges of conspiracy to commit murder in the death of her husband and in the case of Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of her niece, who authorities say Cox shot. Cox died suddenly in December 2019.
Tammy Daybell died in her sleep in November 2019, with the untimely death initially attributed to natural causes but later determined to be due to asphyxiation, according to an autopsy. Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell married just two weeks after Tammy Daybell’s death, surprising family members and authorities.
The couple’s friends later told detectives that the two men also had unusual religious beliefs, including that they had been reincarnated and were responsible for bringing people together before a biblical apocalypse.
Lori Vallow Daybell called her two youngest children zombies before they disappeared in September 2019, a friend later testified at her trial, Gibb said.
Prosecutors say Lori and Chad Daybell espoused these apocalyptic beliefs to justify the deaths of his children and wife, but it was all part of a plan to remove any obstacles to their relationship and obtain money from survivor benefits and life insurance.
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