Lori Vallow’s sister Summer Shiflet, right, testifies in court on April 25, 2023; JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan appear inset. (Courtroom pool sketch artist; Fremont County Sheriff’s Office)
Lori Vallow Daybell’s sister took the stand in the ongoing triple murder trial on Tuesday – initially to smiles from the defendant. But, as the witness departed, the accused “cult mom” killer was left looking dejected, defeated, and broken by her sibling’s testimony.
The words of the defendant’s sister transfixed jurors in Ada County, Idaho, through a recorded video call from June 2020. Lori Vallow asked her sister to call her then, and she obliged.
Summer Shiflet sat there listening, and wiping away tears, as prosecutors played that jailhouse call Tuesday afternoon.
Summer -Did you know they were there?
Lori -I can’t talk about it.
Summer – I don’t know what to say. You know how much I love you and Alex and I am sick to my stomach and you let this happen to them and throw them away like garbage
Lori – You think I let that happen? Thanks…— Pretty Lies & Alibis🎙 (@PrettyLiesAlibi) April 25, 2023
“There is nothing OK about this,” Shiflet tells Vallow at one point in the recording. “Nothing.”
The accused then registers her assent to that description of the state of things in their extended family: “Nothing about this is OK, Summer.”
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.
Vallow asks at another point in the call: “You don’t think I’m in pain?”
“No, I don’t,” Shiflet responds. “You were dancing on the beach, having a great time! You got wedding pictures while your kids are in the ground?”
The theme of the trip Vallow and her current husband took to Hawaii – immediately after the three murders occurred – came up repeatedly during the video call between the two sisters.
“You went off to Hawaii and were dancing on the beach as the kids were in the ground,” Shiflet yells at Vallow at another point, according to courtroom reporting by East Idaho News Director Nate Eaton. “You had to know they were there! I don’t understand! They were just little kids! I don’t understand!”
“Lori, if you let this happen to them and put them in the ground like a piece of trash, I don’t know you,” Shiflet says in the call, again screaming at her sister. “We would have taken them!”
Vallow, at one point, accuses her sister of effectively being too influenced by what she sees on TV about the case.
“This has nothing to do with what’s on TV,” Shiflet replies – noting that she had previously defended her sister in TV interviews.
Shiflet then asks Vallow to tell the truth about the deaths of the two children. To which the defendant replies: “I would love to.”
“There is nothing in the scriptures that is Godly about hurting a child!” Shiflet exclaims later on in the phone call. “They deserve a proper burial with a family that loves them in the least!”
The grieving aunt continues to press her sister about the photographs of Vallow and Daybell on the beach in Hawaii. The sister insists that she and the rest of the family should have at least been told about the deaths of the children – increasingly frustrated with Vallow’s claims that she, Shiflet, doesn’t understand what’s going on.
“So I’m deceived? Everyone in the world is deceived?” Vallow’s sister says indignantly. “I am telling you, because I love you with all my heart, please consider that Chad has lied and been deceived, and you have been deceived, and this is not what you think it is. There is nothing OK about killing children. Nothing.”
Observers in the courtroom reportedly cried as the call was played.
“And even if you didn’t kill them and Alex didn’t kill them, and Chad didn’t kill them, you threw them away like garbage!” a sobbing Shiflet tells her sister as the call draws to an end, “In a pet cemetery!”
Lori gave Summer a big smile as she was sworn in. #lorivallow@LawCrimeNetwork
— Pretty Lies & Alibis🎙 (@PrettyLiesAlibi) April 25, 2023
To me, Lori looks broken with Summer on the stand. #lorivallow@LawCrimeNetwork
— Pretty Lies & Alibis🎙 (@PrettyLiesAlibi) April 25, 2023
“Ms. Shiflet, she lied to you about them being safe,” Madison County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Spencer Rammell asked Shiflet at one point during her testimony. The witness replied: “I believe so, yes.”
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