Lori Vallow Daybell appears in a courtroom sketch in May 2023; JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan appear inset on the left; Tammy Daybell appears inset on the right. (Courtroom pool sketch artist; Fremont County Sheriff’s Office)
Prosecutors told jurors in closing arguments of Lori Vallow Daybell’s murder trial that the “doomsday cult” mother was driven purely by her desire for “money, power, and sex” when she and her current husband conspired to kill three people, including her own two children, in the fall of 2019.
The defense countered in a short summation, referencing the lascivious theme as well, often obliquely, but offering a woeful tale of a loving mom snookered and sucked in by a rambling and incoherent religious cult leader – telling the jury she never once asked him to take those three lives.
Vallow, 49, is being tried on triple murder charges in Ada County, Idaho. Closing arguments in the case began at the stroke of noon on Thursday.
The state rested its case on Tuesday. After a long break that day – and loud whispers that the accused murderess might herself testify – the defense rested their case without calling a single witness.
Jury instructions were hashed out beyond the reach of jurors’ ears on Wednesday. Seventh District Judge Steven Boyce settled a series of minor issues – with both the state and defense lodging complaints and offering preferred versions. An explanation of those instructions by the court started the day’s proceedings on Thursday morning.
Prosecutors from two Gem State counties, Fremont and Madison, prosecuted the case due to a number of factors – including the various jurisdictions involved in the alleged criminal conspiracy. An out-of-state prosecutor with vast experience in homicide cases was also brought in to firm up the state’s team. The case was tried in Ada County due to fair trial considerations – after a motion filed by John Prior, an attorney for Chad Daybell, 54, over pretrial publicity in what amounts to the biggest murder case Idaho has seen in decades.
Vallow and her latest husband’s trials were joined until March 2023 when the two cases were severed by the court.
“You are not advocates,” Boyce told the jurors before closing arguments began. “You are judges.”
The state sums it up
Madison County Prosecutor Rob Wood closed for the state – reiterating a theme and theory of the case advanced by Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake on the first day of testimony.
See also Hundreds more cops, station upgrades part of Queensland's $1.2 billion plan to tackle crime
“Money, power, and sex,” Wood said.
The prosecutor told jurors that Vallow and Daybell “set off on a series of events that led to three murders in the state of Idaho.”
Those three murders, the state argued, were of two of Vallow’s children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17, and Chad Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell, 49. The murders, the state claimed, were all part of a grand conspiracy to obtain that aforementioned avaricious trinity of lust, control, and lucre. Wood reiterated the motive: “Lori’s plan was driven by her need for money, power, and sex.”
The impetus, tragic and triumvirate, and simple in terms of execution; the prosecutor said: “Get the money and then commit the murder.”
The three murdered victims can’t speak about what happened to them, Wood said near the end of the state’s closing, arguing that their bodies tell part of the story. There were puncture wounds on Tylee Ryan’s pelvis. JJ Vallow was bound and gagged. Tammy Daybell, shown to jurors on a slab in an autopsy photo, had bruises on her arms that were consistent with being restrained.
And then there was the variation of the LDS faith that came up frequently during the trial – a decidedly non-doctrinaire form of Mormonism far divorced from the words of Joseph Smith, Jr.
Jurors were often rapt with attention as witnesses discussed the defendant’s belief in zombies, portals, past lives, demonic possession, light-and-dark scales denoting a person’s apparently pre-determined relationship with Jesus Christ or Satan. A lot of that, the state offered, was simply a sideshow to the accused killer’s actual deeds.
“It does not matter what they believed, it matters what they did,” Wood said. “They used religion as a tool to manipulate others.”
The endpoint of that manipulation was death. And Vallow, the state argued, was the “common thread” connecting all three murders.
Wood explained again in closing: Vallow got her daughter’s money after she died. Vallow got her son’s money after he died. Vallow and her husband got Tammy Daybell’s money after she died.
“What does your reason and common sense tell you?” the prosecutor asked out loud.
Wood noted that Vallow never once reported her children missing. Instead, the prosecutor said: “She lied and she lied and she lied about where they were and while she lied, she kept collecting the money.”
The defense resists the evidence
Attorney Jim Archibald provided closing arguments for the defense.
He started out with something not entirely unlike a sob story about a woman who immediately got married out of high school, got divorced, went to beauty school, married again, and then divorced again, giving birth to her children along the way.
“She worked hard as a single mother,” the defense attorney said.
Lori Vallow’s motherly instincts and virtues continued on when she divorced her third husband, Joseph Ryan, Tylee Ryan’s father, because her children “needed to be protected” from him, Archibald told the jury. And those good qualities were sustained into the marriage with her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, when the couple agreed to adopt JJ Vallow, who was born premature and diagnosed with autism.
“You heard JJ had medical issues when he was born and Charles and Lori were a good fit for him,” Archibald reminded the Ada County jury. “They loved him and they cared for him. Then the story about Lori Vallow changes dramatically in October 2018.”
The defense’s case could be summed up in two words: “Chad Daybell.” Or maybe three: “Chad did it.”
“I talked to you weeks ago about paying attention to who does what,” Archibald said at one point. “Pay attention to burden of proof. We don’t have to provide any witnesses or evidence and my client doesn’t have to testify. You can’t hold that against us.”
The defense attorney noted that some of Daybell’s religious notions included references to Stan Lee and Harry Potter – arguing that it would be hard to make sense of his brain, and telling jurors that while it may not make sense to them, some people under the spell of cultism follow their “goofy” leaders no matter what.
And, Archibald said, key to the questions presented for the jury, his client had not actually lifted a finger when Daybell’s beliefs translated into a concrete plan to kill her children and, maybe, his wife.
“No one here thinks Lori actually killed anyone,” he said. “That’s why she’s being charged with conspiracy. So they want you to be convinced that she’s part of this plan – that there’s a specific plan to kill. If you find her guilty, will that bring the kids back? Nope.”
Archibald also argued that the state failed to connect Vallow to the alleged murder conspiracy.
“Of the 15,000 texts they have in evidence, show me one from Lori that says, ‘So when are you killing Tylee?”” the defense attorney ventured. “Of the 15,000 texts you have in evidence, show me one where Lori is part of that conspiracy. ‘When are you killing JJ by the way?’ There is no such text.”
Instead, the defense offered, Vallow was a follower of Jesus who was led astray by her husband. She abided by the golden rule, he said, holding back tears, until she met Chad Daybell.
And then came the “weird religious babble that really does not make sense.” And then came the children’s murders.
But by then, he said, his client was trapped.
Archibald went on to describe Chad Daybell as someone being led by a “storm,” an apparent nickname for his penis.
“If there is anything we’ve learned about a storm, you hide from a storm,” the defense concluded. “You seek shelter from a storm. Lori spent her whole life protecting her children. Thank you again.”
State gets final word before deliberations
After lunch on Thursday, Wood offered a brief rebuttal argument where he disputed the claim that Vallow was a good mother to her children. The defendant was heard referring to her daughter as “dark,” he reminded the jury. And, when all was said and done, the prosecutor argued, she was “tired” of taking care of her special needs son.
“She didn’t want to deal with him so she found someone else who could and they buried him in the ground,” the prosecutor said.
And when the children were finally gone and the checks were being cashed, she lied to everyone who asked about their whereabouts.
“She knew her children were dead because she helped plan it,” he said. “She knew her children were dead because she encouraged it.”
The state implored the jury to find her guilty as charged.
“When the whole world is out looking for your kids, does a good mom dance on the beach in Hawaii?” Wood asked before answering in the negative.
Alternates were dismissed and jurors were given their charge a few minutes after 2:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.
Cathy Russon, Gigi McKelvey, and Vanessa Bein contributed to this report. Law&Crime also wishes to thank Nate Eaton, News Director for East Idaho News, for his inestimable help reporting this story.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
