Lori Vallow Daybell, LDS member, holds extreme beliefs. What role did they play in murders?

By trial witness accounts, Lori Vallow Daybell was a good mom for most of her life. The Idaho resident, now 50, once worked as a hairstylist in Arizona, before moving to Rexburg, and was a devoted member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But in 2018, around the time she met her latest husband, Chad Daybell, family members and friends said her traditional beliefs started growing toward extremism. Five years later, Vallow Daybell was convicted of the first-degree murders of two of her children, 7-year-old JJ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan. She’s now serving three life sentences.

Chad Daybell, who authored several books about the end of times, believed that he received personal revelations from God that told him certain people — including the children and his first wife, Tammy Daybell — were possessed by dark spirits and would need to be cast out, according to witness testimony during Vallow Daybell’s trial. Madison County Prosecuting Attorney Rob Wood said the Daybells used their beliefs to commit murder.

“The only reason religion matters is because it’s the tool they used to manipulate others,” Wood said during the prosecution’s closing arguments in May.

But experts say it’s more complicated than that.

Lindsay Park, who identifies as a “Mormon feminist” and is the executive director for Sunstone Education Foundation, a magazine that focuses on Latter-day Saints politics and culture, said she’d categorize the Daybells as “Mormon fundamentalists” — a term typically associated with polygamist beliefs. Though they didn’t practice polygamy, the Daybells took the fundamental tenets of the church and rewrote them, taking ideas to the extreme, Park told the Idaho Statesman.

“It’s Mormon fanfic,” said Park, who was raised within the church. “That’s what they’re doing.”

Daybells ‘found roots in Mormonism’

The Latter-day Saints church teaches its members that Jesus Christ will return to Earth. Joseph Smith, the founder and first president of the LDS church, had a failed prophecy that the “end of all Nations” was coming in the 1800s because of the tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, according to the church’s website. Again, in the 1970s toward the end of the civil rights movement, Park said, Latter-day Saints believed that the world was coming to an end.

The Daybells held beliefs the world would end in July 2020, and that they would lead a group of 144,000 people who the Book of Revelation in the Bible said would be saved during the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, according to witness testimony. Park said now church members are taught to prepare for an emergency, not that “the streets will run red with blood and Christ is coming.”

“The political anxieties of the country really play out in these groups,” Park said about the end-of-time beliefs. “It really ramps up in the prepper community.”

Historian Benjamin Park, an associate professor who studies religion at Sam Houston State University in Texas, said there are mentions of the 144,000 within the Bible, but the belief and many “extreme apocalyptic ideas of Mormonism” subsided over time.

Benjamin Park, who was also raised within the church, added that most Latter-day Saints pride themselves on being the most literal interpreters of the Bible. In reality, he said, most members of the church — just like most Christians — read the Bible selectively.

“So those passages like the Book of Revelation, like the 144,000, are sitting there ripe for exploration,” Benjamin Park told the Statesman. “But most Mormons don’t draw from that. You won’t find that passage in most Mormon curriculum.”

Most Latter-day Saints wouldn’t consider the Daybells’ beliefs mainstream, Benjamin Park said, but he added that claims that their beliefs aren’t connected to the church “misunderstands how religion operates.”

“Those people found roots in Mormonism. They believe that they are restoring the true ideas of Mormonism,” Benjamin Park said about the Daybells. “And until we recognize the cultural connections between these things — which requires introspection, which requires looking at how these peaceful, mostly graceful filed theologies can breed extremists in some instances — then we’re just gonna be facing the same episodes again and again.”

He added that he believes the church needs to have a more “direct confrontation” with extremism. Instead, the church is encouraging members to draw literal interpretations from scripture, which could “pave the way” for the radical beliefs that the Daybells had, he told the Statesman.

The Church of Jesus Christ declined to comment for this story.

Scripture in Book of Mormon justifies violence, expert says

Lindsay Park pointed to a story taught to Latter-day Saints since birth. In the Book of Mormon, God and angels asked the prophet Nephi to kill Laban, the keeper of sacred records, because God wanted to obtain the records that would eventually become scriptures within the Book of Mormon. Nephi cut off Laban’s head, and Park said the story teaches readers that the ends justify the means.

“This scripture has justified more violence in Mormon history of fundamentalist sects than any other,” Lindsay Park said.

Text messages obtained by authorities showed Vallow Daybell believed she would “be like Nephi.” Just days before her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, was killed, Vallow Daybell texted her brother — who shot and killed Charles Vallow — that everything was “coming to a head” that week, and that they’d be like Nephi.

Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, died in December 2019 of natural causes. Prosecutors have since charged Vallow Daybell with conspiring to murder Charles Vallow in Arizona.

This isn’t the first time that the story of Nephi has been connected to a homicide. In 1984, two brothers — who were once Latter-day Saints — murdered their sister-in-law Brenda Lafferty and her 1-year-old daughter, in American Fork, Utah, which is about 30 minutes from Salt Lake City. The brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, said they used the story of Nephi to justify the murders after Ron Lafferty received a revelation from God to keep Brenda Lafferty and her daughter from “obstructing God’s work,” The Deseret News reported.

That incident was retold in the 2003 novel “Under the Banner of Heaven” by Jon Krakauer and 2022 Hulu series of the same title.

“It’s been used in 100 other violent ways,” Lindsay Park said. “It’s just this idea that God’s will is more important than the individual.”

Vallow Daybell says she was in contact with Jesus Christ

Vallow Daybell during her July sentencing — in the first public statement since her arrest — said she has a “different perspective” of life because she visited heaven after temporarily dying in the hospital when she gave birth to Tylee in 2002. She added that she now accesses heaven and the spirit world.

“I have had many communications from people now living in heaven, including my children,” Vallow Daybell said just before she was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. “Since then, I’ve had many communications with Jesus Christ, the savior of this world and our heavenly parents.”

Latter-day Saints believe they have a direct connection with God, who can provide revelations about their personal lives, Lindsay Park said. Park called the concept “beautiful” but noted it conflicts with the church’s hierarchical structure. Members of the faith also receive revelations from the church’s Prophet Russell Nelson, which should be prioritized over personal revelations, she added.

“Individuals can have revelations for their lives, but at the end of the day, the priesthood has the final say,” Park said.

Park said the church has modernized its teachings and “stripped away” some exciting concepts, which caused a certain faction of active members to become bored with the church and seek “a sort of spiritual euphoria” outside of the traditional church.

She noted that she wasn’t excusing Vallow Daybell’s crimes, but that Vallow Daybell craved a “spiritual leader,” which made her susceptible to Chad Daybell’s beliefs.

LDS women don’t have same power as men

Most of the Latter-day Saints who are converting to more fringe beliefs like “Mormon fundamentalism” are surprisingly women, Lindsay Park said.

Park pointed to the patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the church, which she said rewards leaders with more power, respect and status in their communities but doesn’t provide women with those avenues to lead.

“Your power comes through the status of the men in your life,” Lindsay Park said, “through your partner, through your husband.”

Several former friends and Latter-day Saints in the jury trial testified against Vallow Daybell and spoke about “castings” they performed to try to cast out dark spirits from specific people — like Charles Vallow.

Vallow Daybell’s former friend Melanie Gibb said that if individuals were properly cast out, they’d die. And another former friend Zulema Pastenes said a dark spirit could be kept out by binding or burning the body. JJ’s body was found bound with duct tape, while Tylee’s body was found in pieces and her flesh was charred, according to law enforcement.

When asked why women like Pastenes and Gibb were able to believe the fringe ideas preached by the Daybells, Park said that from birth LDS women are taught to cede their power and authority over to men.

“Mormon boys are taught from birth that they get to be a god someday,” Park said. “And that is kind of a dangerous thing to just give every man by right of birth.”