‘Doomsday’ killer Lori Vallow Daybell receives two more life sentences
Lori Vallow Daybell, an Idaho woman already convicted of the murders of her two youngest children, received two further life sentences for conspiring to murder her fourth husband and the ex-husband of her niece.
The sentences, announced Friday, follow two separate trials in Arizona this year and bring an end to the legal cases against Vallow Day, who was convicted in Idaho in 2023 of murdering her 7-year-old son, JJ Vallow, and her daughter, Tylee Ryan, who was almost 17. She had also been found guilty of conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell, the first wife of her husband Chad Daybell. An author of self-published apocalyptic novels, Chad Daybell was convicted last year of all three murders and sentenced to death.
Prosecutors alleged that the couple justified the killings through “doomsday” religious beliefs and bizarre ideas about cleansing “zombie” spirits.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Justin Beresky told Vallow Daybell at her sentencing Friday that she should “never be released from prison.”
“You’ve not victimized just a single victim, but many. You’ve shattered lives,” he said.
“The amount of contemplation, calculation, planning, manipulation that went into these crimes is unparalleled in my career,” Beresky added.
Vallow Daybell’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, was fatally shot in July 2019. The couple were estranged at the time. Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, told police that he acted in self-defense, according to records published by KUTV in Salt Lake City. Cox had not been charged in the killing before he died in December 2019.
But prosecutors said Vallow Daybell was motivated by her husband’s $1 million life insurance policy and her wish to marry Chad Daybell. Adam Cox, the brother of Vallow Daybell and Alex Cox, testified during the trial that he believed his sister was behind Vallow’s killing; she was convicted in April.
The second trial involved the alleged attempted murder of Brandon Boudreaux, the former husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, who was shot at from a vehicle in October 2019. His former wife, Melani Pawlowski, had been attending religious meetings with her aunt and suggested that they stockpile food for the end of the world, Boudreaux said earlier in the trial, the Associated Press reported.
In both cases, prosecutor Treena Kay said in court Friday, Vallow Daybell “twisted religion and fashioned it as a justification for her actions. The reality is that this defendant is the same as every other murder defendant.”
Kay argued that Vallow Daybell was also motivated by money in the attack on Boudreaux. But in this case, the beneficiary would have been her niece.
In court Friday, Boudreaux spoke of the impact of the shooting and said he was scared to live with his children for months after he was shot at.
“The betrayal by someone connected to my family has left me battling overwhelming emotions over the years. I felt fear, paranoia,” he said. “I lived with constant vigilance, loneliness, regret, sadness, depression, anger, heartache and embarrassment.”
Boudreaux said that he had decided to forgive Vallow Daybell but that he had “never seen any remorse or acknowledgment from Lori or any of her conspirators.”
Vallow Daybell, who represented herself at both trials, gave a rambling statement to the court in which she did not admit any wrongdoing, saying: “Losing those close to you is painful, and I acknowledge all of the pain and I do empathize. I feel it, too. If I was accountable for these crimes, I would acknowledge it and I would let you know how sorry I was.”
Vallow Daybell’s son Colby Ryan told the court Friday that Charles Vallow “cared for his family. He took care of our family and he made sure we had a good life. He was a very generous man.”
“Not only are my father, sister and brother gone, but so is my mother,” he said, adding that he had to “fight to stay alive after the pain. There are no words for what I’ve experienced, and I had to choose to fight and stay alive.”