Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell to stand trial together for children’s murders once Vallow declared fit
For Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, their young marriage will have to withstand sickness, health and a murder trial.
The newlyweds will be reunited in a courtroom to stand trial together for the murder of Vallow’s children, 7-year-old JJ and 17-year-old Tylee, and soon as Vallow is declared competent, Seventh District Court Judge Steven Boyce said during a hearing last week, the Rexburg Standard Journal reported Sunday.
Madison County Prosecutor Rob Wood and Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake filed a joint request to Boyce, asking for Vallow and Daybell to face a jury together, citing that evidence “demonstrates that defendants acted in concert in a common scheme or plan, as well as a conspiracy.”
Vallow, who was declared unfit to stand trial in June and committed to a mental health facility for “restorative treatment,” had her stay extended another 180 days at a Sept. 8 hearing, meaning a joint trial would not begin until at least March.
Daybell’s trial was originally scheduled for Nov. 8 but had already been postponed.
Investigators believe Vallow and Daybell killed JJ and Tylee in early September 2019, although their bodies were not found until June 2020, buried on Daybell’s Idaho property. JJ’s arms and legs were duct taped together inside a garbage bag and Tylee’s body had been dismembered and burned.
Daybell was arrested and has been charged with the murders of both children, as well as first-degree murder and insurance fraud in the death of his late wife, Tammy Daybell. Idaho prosecutors said last month that they plan to seek the death penalty, calling the murders “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel” and saying that Daybell “has exhibited a propensity to commit murder, which will probably constitute a continuing threat to society.”
Vallow was already behind bars when her children’s bodies were dug out of the ground and faces the same charges in the deeaths of JJ and Tylee, in addition to one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the 2019 death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Charles was fatally shot by Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, in Chandler, Ariz., and Cox died months later.
According to prosecutors and witnesses, Daybell and Vallow were entrenched in a world of doomsday conspiracy theorists and that they believed zombies had taken over the bodies of their loved ones, requiring them to kill them.
