Lori Vallow appears in a courtroom sketch; her dead children, JJ Vallow, on the left, and Tylee Ryan, on the right, appear inset, on April 18, 2023. (Courtroom pool sketch artist; Fremont County Sheriff’s Office)
The triple murder trial for Lori Vallow Daybell, 49, a “doomsday cult”-connected mother of two dead children and two dead former husbands continues with a seventh day of testimony in Ada County, Idaho, on Wednesday morning.
Vallow and her fifth and current husband, Chad Daybell, 54, stand accused of murder over 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 at his property. The two defendants were indicted for the murder of Vallow’s children and Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell, 49, in May 2021. Initially being prosecuted as husband-and-wife co-defendants, the couple’s cases were recently severed and will be tried separately.
The second week of the trial is abbreviated due to the recent death of lead prosecutor Lindsey Blake’s father.
“There has been a death in the family of one of the prosecutor’s lead attorneys,” the prosecution said in a statement provided to Law&Crime after proceedings came to a close early last Wednesday afternoon. “The Court and defense have been gracious in allowing the prosecution to adjust to this personal situation.”
Last week, jurors heard engrossing testimony from Lori Vallow’s former best friend Melanie Gibb, who detailed the defendant’s belief in “zombies,” “possession,” and other supernatural ideas that stray far from the basic Mormon faith that both once shared.
After that, jurors heard testimony from Zulema Pastenes, the widow of Lori Vallow’s deceased brother Alex Cox, who testified Lori Vallow told her that Charles Vallow was “possessed by a dark spirit.”
The first week of testimony went by relatively quickly as the defense did not perform much cross-examination.
More Law&Crime coverage: The 7 most damning pieces of evidence presented during the first week of ‘cult mom’ Lori Vallow’s murder trial
Tuesday’s testimony in the case was nothing like a reprieve for Lori Vallow. Her only surviving son, Colby Ryan, took the stand and discussed his faith and family. He later sat there 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.
Law&Crime correspondent Gigi McKelvey will provide updates as the case progresses Wednesday and throughout the trial:
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