Lori Vallow trial — live: Tammy Daybell cause of death revealed as prosecutors outline motive for murders

Opening statements are underway in the high-profile trial of “doomsday cult mom” Lori Vallow who is accused of killing her two children and new husband’s ex-wife.

Ms Vallow, 49, is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and grand theft in connection over the deaths of her daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, and son Joshua “JJ” Vallow, seven.

Tylee and JJ were last seen alive in September 2019. Their bodies were found buried on Ms Vallow’s new husband Chad Daybell’s property in Idaho in June 2020.

Ms Vallow is also charged with conspiracy to murder Mr Daybell’s first wife Tammy Daybell, who died suddenly in her sleep in October 2019.

Ms Vallow has pleaded not guilty to all charges in a dramatic case spanning a string of murders, unexplained deaths and bizarre cult beliefs about killing zombies.

Jury selection took place last week in Ada County Courthouse with a pool of 1,800 potential jurors narrowed down to 12 jurors and six alternates on Friday.

As the trial gets under way, Ms Vallow will be forced to come face to face with JJ’s grandparents after Judge Steven Boyce denied her request to ban them from the courtroom.

Key points

• Opening statements to begin in Lori Vallow trial

• Lori Vallow charged with murder of son, daughter and husband’s first wife

• Prosecutors say murders were spurred by doomsday cult beliefs

• ‘Cult mom’ also charged with ex-husband’s murder in Arizona

• Slain son’s grandparents can attend trial, judge rules

Tammy Daybell was killed by asphyxiation prosecutor reveals

17:18 , Oliver O'Connell

Blake says Tammy Daybell died “at the hands of another and died of asphyxiation,” according to Utah medical examiner. This is the first time that information was made public.

After Tammy died, Alex Cox said, “I hope I’m not their fall guy” (referring to Chad and Lori). Alex died the day after he said that.

17:16 , Oliver O'Connell

Prosecution says 9 October 2019 was a significant day. Tammy was shot at by an unknown person (believed to be Lori’s brother Alex Cox). Lori is later overheard saying “he can’t do anything right,” and upset.

Blake says after Tammy died, Lori met Chad’s kids and they were “all over each other.”

Chad told his children that Lori had a young daughter who recently died but there was no mention of JJ and Lori never said anything.

Blake talks about the malachite wedding rings that were ordered before Tammy died and how Chad and Lori exchanged those rings on the beach in Hawaii.

17:09 , Oliver O'Connell

Lori began convincing people JJ was a zombie and they believed her. She told a friend April Raymond that when she got divorced that JJ would live with Charles.

Lori told people she was on a religious mission to gather the 144,000.

They manipulated people to not question their actions. When their actions didn’t line up with their teachings all the time so those beliefs changed over time to accommodate that.

Blake says when Alex Cox — who would do anything Chad and Lori asked — first moved to Rexburg, he texted Lori and set the wifi password to “too many kids.”

Lori responded, “Funny.”

16:57 , Oliver O'Connell

“This case actually starts in October 2018. That’s when the defendant met Chad Daybell for the very first time.”

Lori and Chad designated themselves as biblical figures named “James and Elena.”

16:56 , Oliver O'Connell

Crime scene photos are shown to the court of how the remains of Tylee and JJ were found as well as an autopsy photo of Tammy Daybell.

“The missing children, the sudden death of Tammy, the quick marriage of Chad and the defendant left so many questions for those still grieving the loss of Tammy and those still wondering 24/7 about the whereabouts of the children.”

“They were dancing on a sunny beach in Hawaii as Tylee and JJ were in shallow graves.”

State presents opening argument against Vallow

16:48 , Oliver O'Connell

Fremont County Lindsey Blake will be giving opening statements on behalf of the state. She moves to a lectern in the courtroom and has a presentation she will be presented. “Money, power, and sex -- that’s what this case is about.”

“The defendant used money, power, and sex to get what she wanted. It didn’t matter what it was.”

“Tylee had money, Lori wanted it, Tylee’s gone.”

“JJ took time and he also lost his father. When he lost his father, he became much more difficult to care for. He was entitled to social security benefits. The defendant didn’t want to have to take care of JJ anymore, he had money, JJ’s gone.”

“Tammy had a life insurance policy. Lori wanted Chad all to herself. Tammy’s gone.”

16:46 , Oliver O'Connell

The full indictment is read out to the court.

Vallow shows no emotion when the names of her children are mentioned.

Her plea of not guilty is read out.

A timeline of the trail of mystery deaths surrounding the ‘doomsday cult mom’

16:27 , Oliver O'Connell

More than three years after her children were last seen alive, “doomsday cult mom” Lori Vallow is about to finally stand trial for their murders.

Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 8, vanished without a trace in September 2019, sparking a multi-state search while their mother appeared carefree – marrying her new husband Chad Daybell on a beach in Hawaii.

The children’s bodies were finally discovered nine months later buried in a pet cemetery on Mr Daybell’s property in Idaho.

Their disappearances and deaths mark only part of a dramatic case that spans a deeply disturbing pattern of murders, unexplained deaths and bizarre cult beliefs about killing zombies.

Now, Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell are charged in Idaho with JJ and Tylee’s murders, as well as the murder of Mr Daybell’s first wife Tammy Daybell.

Ms Vallow is also separately charged in Arizona with conspiring to murder her fourth husband Charles Vallow, with the help of her now-deceased brother Alex Cox – who mysteriously also died three months after the children’s disappearance.

The doomsday couple – who are yet to turn on each other – were due to stand trial together in Idaho but the cases have now been severed.

Lori Vallow: A timeline of mystery deaths surrounding the ‘doomsday cult mom’

16:25 , Oliver O'Connell

Judge Boyce instruct the jurors not to look up any information about the case and not to speak with anyone about it.

The clerk of the court swears in the jury and puts them under oath. They all stand and raise their right hand.

The trial will run from 8.30am to 3.30pm each day with morning and afternoon breaks in addition to lunch.

16:21 , Oliver O'Connell

Judge Boyce introduces counsel. Vallow stands with them. The judge summarises the charges against Lori. She looks down at the desk in front of her but glances toward the jury.

16:19 , Oliver O'Connell

The jury of eight women and ten men is now seated in the courtroom in two rows.

The youngest member of the jury appears to be in her twenties and the oldest in her 60s or 70s. Most of the jury appear to be in their 40s.

Judge Boyce asks for jury to be brought in

16:15 , Oliver O'Connell

7th District Judge Steven Boyce has entered the courtroom.

The jury will be seated on the right side of the courtroom, the defence team faces them on the left side of the courtroom.

Boyce is explaining the courtroom conduct order that is in effect for both the courtroom and overflow rooms.

He emphasises that there will be no re-entry if people leave the main courtroom, but breaks will be scheduled in the morning and afternoon along with lunch.

The jury is now being brought in.

Lori Vallow seated with lawyers

16:06 , Oliver O'Connell

Watch: What can we expect as trial gets underway?

15:33 , Oliver O'Connell

Defence team arrives at courthouse

14:58 , Oliver O'Connell

Lori Vallow loses bid to ban JJ’s grandparents from trial

14:30 , Rachel Sharp

“Cult mom” Lori Vallow has failed in her bid to bar the grandparents of her slain son from her murder trial.

Ms Vallow’s trial began on 3 April in a court in Idaho, where she faces life in prison for the murders of her two children Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, seven.

Ahead of the trial, Ms Vallow’s defence team asked Judge Steven Boyce to prohibit JJ’s grandparents Kay and Larry Woodcock from hearing testimony in the courtroom.

The move came in response to Judge Boyce’s order ruling that any witnesses in the case will be excluded from the trial – and from hearing other witness testimony – unless they are victims in the case.

Read the full story here:

Lori Vallow loses bid to ban slain son’s grandparents from murder trial

Opening statements to begin on Monday morning

14:10 , Rachel Sharp

Opening statements are set to begin on Monday morning in the high-profile trial of “doomsday cult mom” Lori Vallow who is accused of killing her two children and new husband’s ex-wife.

Ms Vallow, 49, is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and grand theft in connection over the deaths of her daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, and son Joshua “JJ” Vallow, seven. She is also charged with conspiracy to murder Mr Daybell’s first wife Tammy Daybell, who died suddenly in her sleep in October 2019.

Ms Vallow has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Jury selection took place last week in Ada County Courthouse with a pool of 1,800 potential jurors narrowed down to 12 jurors and six alternates on Friday.

As the trial gets under way, Ms Vallow will be forced to come face to face with JJ’s grandparents after Judge Steven Boyce denied her request to ban them from the courtroom.

Prosecutors say doomsday cult beliefs are at centre of murders

13:50 , Rachel Sharp

At the centre of the string of alleged murders and mystery deaths stands the couple’s bizarre doomsday cult.

Chad Daybell ran a publishing company that put out books about apocalyptic scenarios loosely based on the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Lori Vallow followed his books for some time, before the pair finally met in person at a religious conference in Utah in October 2018.

At this point, investigators say their relationship became romantic.

And as their relationship grew more intense, so too did their apocalyptic beliefs.

Vallow claimed in divorce documents that Ms Vallow believed she was a god-like figure chosen to carry out the work of 144,000 believers.

Multiple friends cited in police reports say that the couple believed they could drive out evil spirits and seek revelations from “beyond the spiritual veil”.

Ms Vallow even believed she could teleport between Arizona and Hawaii, according to documents.

But – most chillingly – the couple allegedly believed that people, including JJ and Tylee, had become “zombies”.

They allegedly had a scoring system for ranking how far people’s souls had gone from good to evil.

The only way to then rid an individual of the zombies would be for them to die, according to documents.

Prosecutors believe that Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell used these beliefs to further their plots to kill JJ, Tylee and Tammy.

Chilling final photo of slain children

13:30 , Rachel Sharp

This is the last known photo – and sighting – of Tylee Ryan before she was killed and buried in the grounds of Chad Daybell’s property.

Taken on 8 September 2019, JJ, Tylee, Lori Vallow and her brother Alex Cox went on a visit to Yellowstone National Park.

Tylee, 16, was never seen or heard from again.

Days later, on 22 September, JJ was also seen for the last time – at his school in Rexburg and by his mother’s friends at her apartment that night.

Lori Vallow’s former friend says ‘doomsday cult mom’ saw her children’s murders as ‘mercy’

13:10 , Rachel Sharp

“Cult mom” Lori Vallow allegedly killed her two children in what she believed was an act of “mercy,” her former friend has said.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with NewsNation, a former friend of Ms Vallow, who asked to only be identified as “Jess,” said that the murder suspect believed she needed to “kill her children’s [possessed] bodies” to give them a chance to go to heaven.

“They don’t see the zombies as people. They see them the way someone would see a cockroach being controlled by a parasite,” she said in the interview aired on Wednesday night. “When people have these beliefs, killing the kids, to them, is mercy.”

Read the full story:

Lori Vallow saw her children’s murders as ‘mercy’, former friend says

Is Lori Vallow’s trial being broadcast?

12:50 , Rachel Sharp

Lori Vallow’s murder trial is not being broadcast live,

Since her arrest in February 2020, court proceedings had been televised.

However, Ms Vallow’s defence asked the District Judge Steven Boyce to ban news cameras from the courtroom at her trial, citing the need for a fair trial.

In September, the judge agreed and prohibited the case being livestreamed.

Yet another death... of Lori Vallow’s brother

12:30 , Rachel Sharp

In December 2019, Lori Vallow’s brother Alex Cox died suddenly aged just 51.

At the time, authorities were demanding Ms Vallow present her children. Tammy was about to be exhumed. And Cox had killed Lori Vallow’s husband Charles Vallow that July.

One day, Cox was found gasping for air on the bathroom floor of the home he shared with his wife Zulema Pastenes – who he had married just two weeks earlier.

The autopsy found he had a blood clot wedged in the arteries of his lungs and his death was ruled natural causes. However the overdose drug Narcan was also found in his system.

Days before his death, Ms Pastenes said he suggested his death could be looming.

“Like one or two days before he passed, he said to me, ‘Zulema, if anything happens to me, I want you to know that there is money in a bag in the closet and it’s for you. It’s not much but it’s for you,’” she told police, according to court records.

The day he died, he had also allegedly called Mr Daybell to receive a “blessing” over the phone.

No charges have ever been brought in connection to his death.

Lori Vallow also awaiting trial in Arizona for ex-husband’s murder

12:10 , Rachel Sharp

Two months prior to JJ and Tylee’s disappearance, Lori Vallow’s brother Alex Cox shot and killed her husband Charles Vallow.

It was the morning 11 July 2019 and Charles had gone to his estranged wife’s home in Chandler, Arizona, to pick up JJ.

Charles and Ms Vallow had been married since 2006 and had adopted JJ – who was the biological grandson of Vallow’s sister.

Cox claimed that Charles attacked him with a baseball bat so he shot him in self-defence.

Police interviews with 16-year-old Tylee and a smiling Ms Vallow gave a similar version of events.

However, Cox did not perform CPR on Vallow and waited 43 minutes to call police. Investigators say that Charles was also already down on the ground when Cox shot him a second time.

Charles’ death came months after he had filed for divorce from Ms Vallow, saying that he feared for the safety of himself and the children and that Ms Vallow had threatened to kill him.

In February, he had pleaded with authorities to stage a mental health intervention for his wife, warning that she believed she was a god preparing for a second coming.

Court documents reveal that he had also learned about Ms Vallow’s relationship with Mr Daybell that June and had emailed Tammy with the information. He and one of Ms Vallow’s other brothers were planning an intervention over her cult beliefs at the time of his death – an intervention she is believed to have been tipped off about.

At the time of Charles’ shooting, the case was ruled self-defence.

Now, Ms Vallow is charged with his murder. Her brother Cox has not been charged – because he too is now dead.

Lori Vallow: A timeline of the trail of mystery deaths surrounding the ‘doomsday cult mom’

12:00 , Rachel Sharp

More than three years after her children were last seen alive, “doomsday cult mom” Lori Vallow is finally on trial for their murders.

Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 8, vanished without a trace in September 2019, sparking a multi-state search while their mother appeared carefree – marrying her new husband Chad Daybell on a beach in Hawaii.

The children’s bodies were finally discovered nine months later buried in a pet cemetery on Mr Daybell’s property in Idaho.

Their disappearances and deaths mark only part of a dramatic case that spans a deeply disturbing pattern of murders, unexplained deaths and bizarre cult beliefs about killing zombies.

Now, Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell are charged in Idaho with JJ and Tylee’s murders, as well as the murder of Mr Daybell’s first wife Tammy Daybell.

Ms Vallow is also separately charged in Arizona with conspiring to murder her fourth husband Charles Vallow, with the help of her now-deceased brother Alex Cox – who mysteriously also died three months after the children’s disappearance.

The doomsday couple – who are yet to turn on each other – were due to stand trial together in Idaho but the cases have now been severed.

Now, Ms Vallow’s murder trial is under way in Idaho.

Here’s a timeline of the tragic and bizarre case:

Lori Vallow: A timeline of mystery deaths surrounding the ‘doomsday cult mom’

What happened to Tammy Daybell?

11:55 , Rachel Sharp

Chad Daybell married his first wife Tammy in 1990 and they had five children together. They also founded a publishing company together – the company that released his doomsday books.

Just one month after JJ and Tylee vanished – on 19 October 2019 – Tammy, an otherwise healthy 49-year-old, died suddenly in her sleep.

In a bizarre twist, her death came just 10 days after she had called 911 to report someone shooting at her with a paintball gun in the driveway of their home.

Despite the mysterious circumstances, her husband declined an autopsy and her death was ruled natural causes.

It was only after the two children were reported missing – and authorities began delving into Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell, their sudden remarriage and bizarre cult beliefs – that questions began being asked about her death.

Investigators exhumed her body for an autopsy in December 2020.

Once again, officials have not revealed how Tammy died.

But her husband and his new wife are now charged with her murder, with prosecutors alleging that the couple conspired with Cox to kill the 49-year-old.

What happened to Lori Vallow’s children JJ and Tylee?

11:50 , Rachel Sharp

JJ and Tylee were last seen alive in September 2019 – not long after Lori Vallow had moved the two children from Arizona to Idaho, allegedly to be close to Mr Daybell.

Chilling photos captured a smiling JJ, Tylee and Ms Vallow’s brother Alex Cox on a visit to Yellowstone National Park on 8 September.

The photo is now believed to be the last proof of life of 16-year-old Tylee.

After that day, she was never seen or heard from again.

Days later, on 22 September, JJ was also seen for the last time – at his school in Rexburg and by his mother’s friends at her apartment that night.

By the next morning, the seven-year-old – who had autism – had vanished.

When asked where he was, Ms Vallow allegedly told friends Melanie Gibb and David Warwick that he had to be taken away because he was “being a zombie”.

In June 2020, JJ and Tylee’s remains were discovered buried in Mr Daybell’s backyard.

Their causes of deaths have never been released but court documents give a harrowing picture of what may have happened.

JJ’s body was found in a black plastic bag wrapped in duct tape while Tylee’s body had been dismembered and burned in a fire pit, before being buried in the pet cemetery.

A doomsday cult and five mystery deaths: Everything you need to know about Lori Vallow’s trial

11:45 , Rachel Sharp

It looked every inch the fairytale wedding.

Dressed in white with pink flower garlands around their necks, the bride and groom couldn’t have looked happier as they exchanged vows on a paradise beach in Hawaii.

Photos captured the apparently blissful day as they toasted their nuptials, embraced and she danced to him playing the guitar.

But, behind the photos, something much more disturbing was going on.

Her two children had not been seen alive in two months.

His wife of three decades – the mother of his five children – had died suddenly just two weeks earlier.

And her husband had been shot dead by her brother (who would also soon be dead) not long before.

In the three years since the November 2019 wedding of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, a deeply disturbing tale of suspected murders, unexplained deaths and apocalyptic cult beliefs about killing zombies has come to light.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp delves into what we know so far about the case:

Lori Vallow case summary: Doomsday cult, mystery deaths and kids in a pet cemetery

Welcome to The Independent’s liveblog on the Lori Vallow trial

11:40 , Rachel Sharp

Opening statements begin today in Lori Vallow’s murder trial.

Follow along here for all the latest updates.