Lori Vallow Daybell, the ‘mom at the end of the world’, declared competent to stand trial for the death of her ex-husband

Lori Vallow Daybell, Idaho’s “doomsday mother,” is already in prison serving three consecutive life sentences.

Last year, she was convicted of killing her two minor children and conspiring to kill a former romantic rival: her fifth husband’s former wife, Tammy Daybell.

Dubbed the apocalyptic Vallow-Daybell murders, the strange case followed Vallow Daybell and her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, a self-published writer of end-of-the-world fiction based loosely on Mormon teachings, who was sentenced to death by all three. murders.

The couple made headlines after prosecutors argued that the couple justified the murders by creating an apocalyptic belief system that people could become possessed by evil spirits and become “zombies,” and that the only way to save the soul of a possessed person was for the possessed body to die.

This week, the case took a new turn when Vallow-Daybell was found competent to stand trial on additional charges of conspiracy to kill her ex-husband Charles Vellow and her niece’s ex-husband.

So what exactly is going on?

Missing children set off the first alarms

Local police were first alerted to the case in October 2019, when a family member became concerned that Vallow Daybell’s children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and his sister Tylee Ryan, 17 , they would not have been seen for an extended period of time.

The family member said his mother would not give him a direct answer about where they were.

In June 2020, investigators announced that they found human remains while searching Daybell’s property in rural Idaho, and that the bodies belonged to JJ and Tylee.

Tylee’s DNA was later found on a pick and shovel in a shed on the property, and JJ’s body was wrapped in trash bags and duct tape, prosecutors said.

In the Fremont County Courthouse in St. Anthony, Idaho, Judge Steven W. Boyce said the search for the missing children, the discovery of their bodies and the photos of evidence shown in court left authorities and jurors traumatized, and that I could never recover them. images of murdered children outside his head.

Murder of two previous spouses under mysterious circumstances

As police investigated the two missing children, many began to become paralyzed by the mysterious deaths of their ex-spouses.

Vallow Daybell’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed in 2019 by Vallow Daybell’s brother, who told police he acted in self-defense and was never charged.

At the time, Vallow Daybell was already in a relationship with Chad Daybell and had moved from Phoenix to Idaho to be closer to him.

Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow married in November 2019, about two weeks after his previous wife, Tammy, was killed.

Tammy Daybell was initially described as having died of natural causes, but a subsequent autopsy showed she had been asphyxiated, authorities said.

Husband and wife now sentenced for death of spouse

In May 2023, Vallow Daybell was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences, without the possibility of parole, after being convicted of killing her two minor children and conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell.

At the time, she had not been charged with the murder of Charles Vallow.

Less than a year later, in June 2024, an Idaho jury unanimously agreed that Daybell deserved the death penalty for the murders of Tammy and the two children.

Prosecutors in the Idaho case called dozens of witnesses to bolster their claims that Chad and Vallow Daybell conspired to kill the three to remove any obstacles to their relationship and to obtain survivor benefits and life insurance.

The court heard Tammy Daybell’s body was also found bruised, suggesting she fought back while being suffocated in her bed.

During a trial that lasted nearly two months, prosecutors said Daybell promoted unusual spiritual beliefs, including apocalyptic prophecies and stories of possession by evil spirits, to justify the murders.

On Thursday, two court-appointed doctors in Arizona found Vallow Daybell suitable to face charges of conspiracy to kill her ex-husband, Charles Vallow, and a niece’s ex-spouse, Brandon Boudreaux.

Police say Vallow Daybell’s brother shot Boudreaux in October 2019 during the murder of Charles Vallow.

Charles Vallow was JJ’s father.

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge tentatively set Vallow Daybell’s trial for February of next year.

ABC/AP