A law enforcement witness testifies in the Lori Vallow murder trial by way of a courtroom sketch on April 24, 2023; Lori Vallow appears center, her dead children, JJ Vallow, on the left, and Tylee Ryan, on the right, appear inset. (Courtroom pool sketch artist; Law&Crime Network; Fremont County Sheriff’s Office)
The triple murder trial of Lori Vallow Daybell — a “doomsday cult”-connected mother of two dead children and former wife to two dead husbands — stretched into its tenth day of testimony in an Ada County, Idaho, courthouse on Tuesday morning.
Vallow, 49, and her fifth and current husband, Chad Daybell, 54, stand accused of murder in the 2019 deaths of Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ashlyn Ryan, 17. The children disappeared on different dates in September of that year. Vallow was initially arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 on charges of child desertion. Daybell was arrested later that year after the children’s bodies were found buried in shallow graves on his property in Salem, Idaho.
The two were indicted for the murder of Vallow’s children and Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell, 49, in May 2021. They were initially prosecuted as husband-and-wife co-defendants, but the couple’s cases were recently severed and they now face separate trials.
The third week of the trial comes after an abbreviated first and second week. Despite canceling over a day’s worth of testimony due to an unforeseen personal tragedy affecting the prosecution’s lead attorney, the trial is well ahead of schedule. Seventh District Court Judge Steven W. Boyce cut proceedings short by an entire additional day last week to maintain some prior scheduling.
Keeping proceedings apace is the speed at which the many witnesses in the complex case are testifying – most quite quickly for the state and with little in the way of cross-examination by the defense.
Last week, jurors heard from Lori Vallow’s only surviving son, Colby Ryan, who took the stand and discussed his faith and family. He later sat silently for jurors to watch as prosecutors played a jailhouse phone call between him and his mother in which he accuses her of murdering his siblings and calls her a liar.
Later in the week, copious amounts of financial data came into play to support the state’s timeline with regard to the death of the children and to support the grand theft charges against their mother. Lori Vallow effectively stands accused of conspiring to kill her children and stealing money that belonged to them. Those charges are laid out in somewhat unique, combined indictments.
On Monday, the court mostly heard from law enforcement witnesses who explained various documents entered into evidence as well as numerous suspicious Google searches and cellular phone records used to track the defendant’s movements – and the movements of the man who killed her prior husband; her brother, Alex Cox. Jurors also heard that Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell made numerous visits to various LDS Temples in the days before and after the two children are believed to have been killed.
More Law&Crime coverage: The 7 most damning pieces of evidence presented during the first week of ‘cult mom’ Lori Vallow’s murder trial
Law&Crime correspondent Gigi McKelvey will provide updates in court on Tuesday and throughout the trial.
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