Nanny Recounts First Meeting with Lori Vallow — Who Said Slain Husband Died of Heart Attack
A nanny hired by Lori Vallow to watch over her now-missing 7-year-old son says she was told the boy’s adoptive father had died from a heart attack, despite the fact that he was fatally shot two months earlier in Lori’s home.
And late last September, when police say the boy, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, disappeared, the nanny alleged that Lori had told her that J.J. had gone to spend a month with his grandparents. In reality, say police, the grandparents were the ones who alerted authorities that he was missing.
The information from the nanny, who asked to remain anonymous, came in a written exchange with Salt Lake City TV station Fox13 amid the ongoing five-month search for J.J. and his 17-year-old sister, Tylee Ryan, while Lori remains jailed in Hawaii on charges related to their disappearance.
Police say J.J. was last seen September 23 at his school in Rexburg, Idaho, before his mother withdrew him and indicated to the principal that she was considering home-schooling the boy, who has autism. The last known image of Tylee dates to September 8, when she took a day trip to Yellowstone National Park with her mother, uncle and brother, according to a court filing in Madison County, Idaho, related to Lori’s arrest.
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Prosecutors allege Lori has “abandoned her two minor children, delayed law enforcement’s attempts to locate her children, and encouraged another individual to delay law enforcement’s attempts to locate her children” after she defied a court order to produce the two missing kids by January 31.
Police in Rexburg also have said they “strongly believe that Joshua and Tylee’s lives are in danger” after learning that Lori and her newlywed husband, Chad Daybell, an author who writes about doomsday prophecies, had “abruptly vacated” the couple’s Rexburg home and left the area last November as police began a search for the two children.
That investigation has since yielded a second look at the October death of Chad’s former wife, Tammy, which officials now term “suspicious.” It also has focused renewed attention on the July shooting death in Lori’s prior Arizona home of her former husband, Charles, by Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, during an alleged altercation. Cox, who claimed self-defense and was not charged in the shooting, also has since died under circumstances that authorities are reviewing.
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Charles’ death preceded Lori’s move with her kids to Rexburg, near the company that publishes Chad’s religious writings. She and Chad had appeared together as early as December 2018 on a podcast promoted by a small media company under the banner “Preparing a People,” designed to help its audience plan for the end of the world.
Last September 18, according to the hired nanny, Lori was “very welcoming and gave me a hug” when she invited the nanny over to her Rexburg home for an interview after spotting the nanny’s posting on a website, Care.com, seeking work.
“She explained to me, as we watched J.J. play outside with the neighbor kids, some of his tendencies,” the nanny said. “He gets emotional easily, frustrated, distracted, has difficulty communicating with others, but can follow orders if you look at him right in the eyes.”
“She explained to me how they recently moved here from Arizona. Her husband had just died of a heart attack and how J.J. doesn’t quite understand the situation. Lori said how she and her husband adopted J.J. and that he was her nephew. Her daughter also lives in Rexburg and is going to college,” Lori told the nanny, she recalled.
The nanny never met Tylee. Lori told people that her daughter was attending a campus of Brigham Young University in Rexburg, according to charging documents, but police say she was never enrolled there.
The next day, September 19, Lori asked the nanny to sit with J.J. while Lori and her brother, Alex Cox, went to the airport to pick up a friend. At the end of her work, the nanny was paid $40.
On September 24, the nanny reached out to Lori to see if she was needed again. “I was hoping to keep earning money,” she said.
“Anyways, she responded to me that J.J. was with his grandparents for a month and that she was in Hawaii,” the nanny said. “She said in about a month, when they come back, that I could work again. Well once that month passed, I texted her again around Halloween time, asking if I could work. There was no response. I was upset that she didn’t respond because it has been hard for me to find a job.”
She continued: “I thought it was pretty weird that they just up and left for a month and didn’t need me to work ever again after just hiring me. It seemed irresponsible for a mother to dump her kid off to the grandparents while she had a good time in Hawaii. I assumed she must have really needed a break from J.J., I guess, and I left it at that.”
“That was the last time I ever communicated with Lori.”
Authorities located Lori and Chad January 25 in Kaua’i, Hawaii, when they presented Lori with a court order giving her five days to produce her kids to police or child welfare authorities in Idaho. Lori let that deadline pass, and was arrested February 20.
She is due in court March 2 in Hawaii to face extradition to Idaho. Among other charges in Idaho, she faces two felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of a child, each of which carries up to 14 years in prison if she is convicted.
Lori has not yet entered a plea and PEOPLE was unable to reach her attorney.
