Mommy Doomsday

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Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline, the dark story that's riveted the country.
Mommy Doomsday. Now, exclusive new interviews, startling new information, and a new twist that will leave you cold.

Speaker 1 I'm basically a ticking time bomb.

Speaker 4 We've kept really private, but this story had to be told because it's not going away.

Speaker 4 It's just sick. Who does that to children? Who does that?

Speaker 1 Did you begin to rethink what happened to Tammy? Yeah, I did.

Speaker 4 Who is this woman that replaced my sister?

Speaker 5 Someone said, I have a recording of Lori Vallo saying she wanted to murder your brother.

Speaker 3 I was going to kill him, like the scriptures say.

Speaker 6 What he suffered is unimaginable.

Speaker 7 This is beyond disturbing.

Speaker 8 What were they planning? What were they concocting?

Speaker 9 It was something that could have been prevented.

Speaker 1 Okay, baby.

Speaker 8 There's still so much more to come.

Speaker 8 It's going to be surprising for everybody.

Speaker 1 Here's Keith Morrison with Mommy Doomsday.

Speaker 1 You know her name by now. Much of the world does.
Lori Vallo Daybell.

Speaker 1 She's suspected of some of the worst crimes imaginable. We've been following her story for more than a year.
Tracked her from the Arizona desert to the mountains of Idaho to the beaches of Kauai.

Speaker 1 We've had nothing? No comments. And back to the mainland again.

Speaker 1 Welcome back, boy. Where are the kids?

Speaker 1 All the way to a courthouse in Rexburg, Idaho. to answer the terrible allegations against her.

Speaker 10 There's been a clear and alarming pattern in the defendant's life.

Speaker 1 Of course, we know now what happened to her children, Tylie and JJ, and the horrible truth about where they were all those months after they were reported missing.

Speaker 6 Letting family members just twist in the wind, knowing your children are dead in someone's backyard.

Speaker 5 It's inconceivable.

Speaker 1 Lori has not been charged with murdering her children. but she is certainly under investigation for murder.

Speaker 1 And we've spent months now tracing her path of heartbreak, hearing the stories, many for the first time, of the other people who've died after crossing paths with Laurie.

Speaker 1 Like her fourth husband, Charles.

Speaker 7 He knew that his demise was going to come in the form of this bubbly blonde in yoga pants.

Speaker 7 He knew that.

Speaker 1 And the husband before that, he's dead too.

Speaker 1 And the wife of Laurie's current husband, her name was Tammy. I miss her a lot.
Tammy's only sister is speaking out for the first time anywhere.

Speaker 4 She was a real person. She was an amazing, brilliant person that died too soon.

Speaker 1 As did so many, it seems, connected to Lori and her new husband, Chad.

Speaker 1 Death seems to follow them like a shadow.

Speaker 8 What were these two doing in their relationship? What were they planning? What were they concocting?

Speaker 1 What, indeed?

Speaker 1 Where Where to start?

Speaker 1 Maybe here,

Speaker 1 Phoenix, April 2018.

Speaker 1 The sudden death of Lori's third husband, Joe Ryan. This is his sister, Annie.
Do you think she had something to do with the death of your brother? Seriously?

Speaker 5 I've wrestled so much with this question.

Speaker 1 Joe was born in Connecticut in 1958, the oldest of five. Annie was the youngest.

Speaker 5 Shortly after I was born, the family just fell apart and we were divided up into different foster homes.

Speaker 1 Not the best way to begin life, split up. Annie was just a baby when it happened.
And her big brother, Joe, seemed desperate for family.

Speaker 5 When he was in his young 20s, he was in the Navy, he organized this Thanksgiving dinner because we had never had Thanksgiving dinner together as a family. And so he took on all of the costs of it and

Speaker 5 everything because it was just so important to him for us to be together.

Speaker 1 He stayed single all through his 20s and 30s, patiently waiting, it seemed, for his chance to become someone who wasn't at all like his absent father.

Speaker 1 He

Speaker 5 so much would talk about how when he had kids, he was going to be there at their games, at their place.

Speaker 5 I mean, he wanted to be.

Speaker 1 He was going to be the reverse of your father.

Speaker 5 Exactly. Everything the opposite of our dad.

Speaker 1 And then, finally, Joe was in his early 40s, a successful businessman.

Speaker 5 He called me

Speaker 5 to tell me he found the one.

Speaker 1 Her name, Lori.

Speaker 1 She was Joe's hairdresser.

Speaker 5 They were like a celebrity couple. They were beautiful.
They were both super extroverts. So they kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

Speaker 1 Joe proposed. Lori said yes, on one condition, that Joe convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Speaker 1 And he did.

Speaker 5 He had never been a religious guy, you know, so that was a tectonic shift from anything I had ever seen from him, but he was very, very happy.

Speaker 1 In 2001, just months after he'd met her, Joe Ryan married Lori Cox on the beach in Maui.

Speaker 1 He was 43, she was in her late 20s. His first marriage, her third, to which she brought her young son, Colby.

Speaker 1 And something else. Lori was expecting a girl.

Speaker 5 He was talking about wanting a little girl years before he met Lori, and so I was like,

Speaker 1 you're getting your girl. In September 2002,

Speaker 1 there she was.

Speaker 1 They named her Tylee.

Speaker 5 Joe was over the moon with Tylee. He was convinced that she looked just like him.

Speaker 1 And she...

Speaker 5 She didn't, but we all had to pretend that she did.

Speaker 1 Joe bought a dream house for his new family near Austin, Texas, and proudly flew Annie and her family from the East Coast for a look.

Speaker 1 But during that visit, Annie could see, as she put it, that the new leather smell of the marriage had already worn off, and Joe was fighting an old enemy, his hair-trigger temper.

Speaker 5 It was their first big rain, and

Speaker 5 and the roof in the living room bleaked. It was like humiliating for him, and he really lost it.
And it was in front of all of the kids, you know, like punching the wall, dropping F-bombs.

Speaker 5 You know, I mean, I didn't hate Joe. I wasn't, you know, I was just disappointed.

Speaker 1 So much so that Annie would begin an estrangement from Joe that would last, to her regret now, forever.

Speaker 1 Joe

Speaker 1 wanted perfection. What he got,

Speaker 1 he had no idea.

Speaker 1 When we come back, a shattered marriage and stunning claims of abuse.

Speaker 1 Did you believe that Joe Ryan sexually abused Colby?

Speaker 12 I do not believe he sexually abused Colby.

Speaker 9 I did not, nor do I today.

Speaker 12 She was the mastermind behind the whole thing.

Speaker 6 To see

Speaker 5 what he suffered

Speaker 6 is unimaginable.

Speaker 6 Tesca number 13 is Lori Ryan.

Speaker 1 What a moment it was. 2004, Lori Ryan, center of attention in a beauty pageant.
Competing to be crowned, Mrs. Texas.

Speaker 1 But right here, before the judges, dropping what afterwards sounds almost like a hint.

Speaker 3 Being a good mom is very important to me and a good wife and a good worker and being all those things together is not easy. So I'm basically a ticking time bomb.

Speaker 1 Two months after the pageant, Lori filed for divorce. Ticking time bomb is a pretty good description of how it went.

Speaker 12 This was just an awful, awful case.

Speaker 1 Tom Ware and Vivian Lewis, highly experienced mental health professionals, were assigned to help the court decide custody of Tylee. Why are the two of you speaking up?

Speaker 9 I'll be point-blank frank. It's very hard to remove a child from a mother.
And yes, there are children who need to be removed from their mother's care.

Speaker 1 She was talking about Lori

Speaker 1 and about protecting Tylee or trying to.

Speaker 12 As Tylee's guardian had lied him then, I was her spokesperson. And I still feel that duty now that in a way I'm speaking for Tyle.

Speaker 1 During the fight for custody, Lori claimed that Joe had been sexually abusing both Tyle and her son, Colby. In fact, Colby told us about his past with Joe during an interview last year.

Speaker 14 He would like spank me and then he just did weird things like little hits in the head. They thought it was funny.
Okay. And, you know, he was

Speaker 14 sexually abusive as well.

Speaker 1 With you.

Speaker 1 Not an easy job to investigate allegations of sex abuse, but that's what these experts were assigned to do in granular detail.

Speaker 1 Their conclusion? Did you believe that Joe Ryan sexually abused Colby?

Speaker 12 I do not believe he sexually abused Colby.

Speaker 9 I did not, nor do I today.

Speaker 12 The allegations against Joe were absurd.

Speaker 1 Absurd? Now, what made you say that?

Speaker 12 It was the nature of one of the allegations. When you really look at it,

Speaker 12 it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 It's not based in reality. As for Lori's allegations that Joe sexually abused Tyley, do you believe Joe Ryan sexually abused Tyley?

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 1 In fact, both experts believe both Tylee and Colby were manipulated by Lori.

Speaker 12 She was the mastermind behind the whole thing.

Speaker 9 Lori absolutely matches much of the criteria for an offending, falsely accusing mother.

Speaker 12 She was on a mission.

Speaker 6 She was on a mission.

Speaker 12 She wants Joe out of the picture.

Speaker 1 We asked Colby about these findings. He said his mom has done a lot of things.
Manipulating him into making these claims was not one of them.

Speaker 9 I respect what he believes happened to him. It's his belief system based on his memories.

Speaker 1 But when Lori found out the experts didn't believe the allegations against Joe,

Speaker 1 oh boy.

Speaker 9 She said to me, if this doesn't come out the way I want it to, I'm taking the kids to Mexico. She made it very clear that

Speaker 9 this needed to go in the direction that Joe was guilty of incest.

Speaker 9 And if you didn't go along with that, then she could give you a very hard time.

Speaker 1 It got worse. Lori told her, said Lewis, that Tylee was the reincarnation of her late sister, and that a former lawyer, a dead man, visited her at night.

Speaker 1 Did you believe that she was delusional in any way?

Speaker 16 As I look back, I see delusion.

Speaker 1 Later, Lori told another therapist that death would be an option. before giving Tylee to her father, Joseph Ryan, even for a visit.

Speaker 1 Days after Lori made that statement, Lori's brother, Alex Cox, a name you'll want to remember, tracked down Joe Ryan to a parking lot, lunged at him with a stun gun, and later pleaded guilty to aggravated assault.

Speaker 6 To see

Speaker 6 what he suffered

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 unimaginable.

Speaker 6 Just to

Speaker 6 see how much he was targeted by this family.

Speaker 1 In the end, both court-appointed experts made the same recommendation. They concluded Joe was not a danger to Tylee.

Speaker 1 But after a jury trial in 2007, the judge only gave Joe some visitation and made five-year-old Tylee's sole conservator her mother, Lori.

Speaker 9 I mean, when you think about it, children could be alive today had this gone just a little bit differently 13, 14 years ago.

Speaker 1 By the time of the decision, Lori had remarried her fourth husband, who was a man named Charles Vallo.

Speaker 1 They moved away from Joe, moved from Texas to Arizona. And when Joe followed, Lori did all she could to keep Tylie away from him.
Enough to get her charged with judicial interference.

Speaker 1 And then in 2014, Charles and Lori moved far away to Kauai.

Speaker 5 The move to Hawaii was to completely sever the tie between Tylee and Joe.

Speaker 1 Did Joe try to stop that?

Speaker 5 Joe went to great lengths to try to stop that. She just kept finding these loopholes where, you know, it was like, oh, things didn't go the way I want.
Well, then I'm just going to bounce.

Speaker 1 What Joe didn't know was that the end of this fight, and of all of them, in fact, was very near.

Speaker 5 Coming up, Lori would go, Annie, the world is a better place without Joe Ryan in it.

Speaker 1 A sudden death and a terrifying admission.

Speaker 5 She actually said, Sometimes I think it would be better just to put my kids in a car and go over the side of the cliff.

Speaker 1 When dateline continues,

Speaker 1 Families are so complicated, aren't they?

Speaker 1 Annie didn't speak to her brother Joe for years, as Joe fought bitterly with Laurie over custody of Tylee and poisonous allegations of abuse.

Speaker 1 And yet, through all the trouble, Annie tried hard to stay connected to Tylee.

Speaker 1 Even after Laurie married her next husband, husband number four, Charles Vallow, who saw to it that Annie was included in this new extended family.

Speaker 5 We went on a family vacation together even after Lori and Joe split up because I wanted to be a part of Tylee's life. He was very kind.

Speaker 1 Charles was the image of a man in love. Lori seemed happy in her new life, too.

Speaker 1 They did eventually return from Hawaii to Arizona, where Joe still lived.

Speaker 1 And on a spring day in 2018, Annie's phone rang. No, it wasn't Joe.
It was another of her brothers with news of a letter, strangely from the city of Phoenix.

Speaker 5 They were trying to find

Speaker 5 a relative who could claim Joe's body.

Speaker 1 Joe's body?

Speaker 1 Disbelief. Shock.

Speaker 1 Annie left urgent messages for Lori.

Speaker 5 So when she called me back, I was very surprised to hear her say, oh yeah, I knew. And when I said, what do you mean?

Speaker 5 You knew? Why didn't you tell me? And she said, well, I didn't think you would care.

Speaker 1 And Annie was further shocked to learn that by the time she spoke with Lori, Joe had been dead for more than a month. It happened in this apartment complex in Phoenix.

Speaker 1 Police reports that a neighbor's dog had smelled something, scratched at Joe's door. When police made a welfare check, they found Joe on his bed

Speaker 1 in what they called an advanced state of decomposition. Best guess, he'd been dead about a week.
The ME ruled Joe Ryan had died of cardiovascular disease, natural causes. He was only 59.

Speaker 1 Lori invited Annie out to Phoenix to comfort Tylie.

Speaker 5 When I came out there, no one needed my support.

Speaker 1 Didn't seem broken up about it at all.

Speaker 5 No. Lori had no tolerance for it because even if my eyes missed it up, Lori would go right into this campaigning mode against Joe.
Annie, the world is a better place without Joe Ryan in it.

Speaker 5 And, you know, which to me...

Speaker 1 Saying this to Joe's own sister. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, she said that to me.

Speaker 1 It was strange, said Annie.

Speaker 1 As was this.

Speaker 1 Lori somehow had in her possession a box of family photo albums belonging to Joe.

Speaker 5 She had told me that she and Tylee went to the apartment and two police officers let them inside the apartment.

Speaker 5 She said that she brought out these photo albums and then she said there were stacks and stacks of files on the floor of Joe's bedroom.

Speaker 5 It doesn't seem plausible that police officers would have allowed her to just start collecting her ex-husband's files.

Speaker 1 And Annie's eyebrows went up even further when Phoenix PD released photos it had taken inside of Joe's apartment the day his body was discovered.

Speaker 5 So when I got these pictures, I was looking for the box of photo albums and these stacks and stacks of files, and I can't find them anywhere in the pictures.

Speaker 5 And so that for me is really the biggest question mark.

Speaker 1 In other words, Annie wondered if Lori actually got into Joe's apartment and removed the photo albums before the police got there.

Speaker 1 Phoenix police have not responded to our request for comment.

Speaker 1 Annie noticed too, the police photos revealed something that didn't seem like the Joe she knew on his front door.

Speaker 5 There was an extra deadbolt on the inside, and to me, that communicated a man living in fear.

Speaker 1 And one more thing. She thinks about it all the time.
The Joe she knew was a neat freak, a perfectionist. And yet, Joe's place was a mess.

Speaker 1 No pictures on the walls, bills from collection agencies strewn all about.

Speaker 1 She saw his driver's license photo taken seven months before his death.

Speaker 5 His face was bloated,

Speaker 5 and he just...

Speaker 5 You know, he just looked like a shell of

Speaker 5 the man I once knew.

Speaker 1 Something broke Joe. Life broke Joe or Lori did.
Who knows, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 During that trip, Annie noticed something different about Lori, too.

Speaker 1 Lori had always been open about her LDS beliefs, but now she seemed to be moving beyond them into something more extreme. Lori seemed obsessed about the biblical end times.

Speaker 5 She actually said,

Speaker 5 sometimes I think it would be better just to put my kids in a car and go over the side of the cliff than to endure

Speaker 5 what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 That was May 2018. Just a few months later, a recording was made.
Lori, in an unguarded moment, moment, talking about Joe

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 murder

Speaker 17 coming up.

Speaker 3 I was going to murder him. I was going to kill him, like the scriptures say.

Speaker 1 What did you think as you heard those actual words?

Speaker 5 To hear her talk so confidently about wanting to murder Joe, it was astounding.

Speaker 1 It was during Annie's trip to suburban Phoenix after her brother Joe's death. Something flashed bright neon in her mind about Joe's ex-wife Laurie, or Lolo, as the family called her.

Speaker 5 I actually had a text exchange with one of my daughters where I said I think Lolo might be a sociopath. I wanted nothing to do with her after that visit.

Speaker 1 And so Annie did not

Speaker 1 until she learned in late 2019 that her niece, Tylie, was missing. And Lori's story hit the world stage.

Speaker 15 Are your children still alive?

Speaker 1 And someone approached Annie with an offer.

Speaker 5 Someone reached out to me and said, I have a recording of Lori Vallo saying she wanted to murder your brother. Would you like it? I'm like, let me think about it.
Yes.

Speaker 3 I'll just start by saying that I am a personal witness of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 The tape was secretly, but legally, recorded at a religious gathering Lori attended in a Phoenix suburb six months after Joe's death.

Speaker 1 Here, Lori talks about her custody battle with Joe and again accuses him of unspeakable crimes, which, you'll recall, mental health professionals did not believe Joe committed.

Speaker 3 I had been married to someone who was very awful who raped my children.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I had divorced him and gotten away from him. And he was constantly trying to get custody of my three-year-old daughter and

Speaker 3 just to rub it in my face. So the court told me that if I didn't take my daughter to him and drop her off with him every weekend or every other weekend, that they would put me in jail.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 4 I had to go take her

Speaker 3 to this monster, my little, sweet little baby girl, and drop her off.

Speaker 1 On the tape, Lori said she was nearing a breaking point and then found a verse in an LDS holy book and applied it to what she said she'd endured from Joe.

Speaker 3 I was going to murder him. I was going to kill him, like the scriptures say, and I just felt I couldn't take it anymore.

Speaker 1 And I would go through the scriptures and find all the things like, if he comes against you once, if he comes against you twice, if he comes against you three times then you can kill him there it is there's my answer what did you think as you heard those actual words as you played the tape and you heard her say those things my first reaction was shock to hear her talk so confidently in front of other people about wanting to murder Joe it was astounding But Lori also said on the tape that she decided not to go through with murdering Joe, that instead she dedicated her life to going to the LDS temple.

Speaker 3 I don't want to do anything that's wrong. I did not have a murderous heart.
I just wanted to stop the bleeding and stop the pain.

Speaker 1 And anyway, hadn't the medical examiner ruled Joe died of natural causes? The heart attack, basically.

Speaker 1 But Annie looked at the ME's report, discovered there had been only an external examination of Joe's body.

Speaker 5 So they didn't open him up. It seemed like the Emmy may have based his cause of death on Joe's medical history.

Speaker 1 In fact, the Emmy's office told us that's not uncommon and likely what happened.

Speaker 1 Annie found herself wishing the police had asked themselves a particular question when they contemplated Joe's untimely death. When he died,

Speaker 1 who gained? Anyone?

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 so this is something I've been trying to find out about since the beginning. And

Speaker 5 someone who was privy to this information

Speaker 5 just let me know that there was a life insurance policy.

Speaker 1 A payout as 2018 drew to a close that, according to this insider, sent to Lori up to $150,000.

Speaker 1 Then, just a few months later, life insurance would become become an issue again when Lori's fourth husband ended up dead as well.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 19 She was always happy, bubbly, and everyone loved her.

Speaker 1 The good life in Hawaii. Another joyous beginning, another dark ending.

Speaker 16 Your mother threatened me, murder me, kill me.

Speaker 1 She threatened to murder you? Yes.

Speaker 1 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 1 It was early 2019,

Speaker 1 only a couple of months after Lori was caught on tape admitting she'd considered murdering her third husband, Joe Ryan.

Speaker 3 I was going to murder him. I was going to kill him.

Speaker 1 And just weeks after Joe's life insurance had paid Lori and daughter Tylie as much as $150,000,

Speaker 1 when police in suburban Phoenix found Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallow,

Speaker 1 in a real jam.

Speaker 16 What makes her a danger to herself and to others? She threatened me, murder me, kill me.

Speaker 1 She threatened to murder you? Yes. Of course, as we know now, Charles was right to be worried about his safety.
This man who so rarely seemed worried during his 62 years on earth.

Speaker 1 Leland Charles Vallow was one of seven children born to staunchly Catholic parents in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He was tall, athletic, played college baseball,

Speaker 1 and then moved to Dallas, became a salesman, was very good at it.

Speaker 1 As a young Dallas model, he discovered.

Speaker 7 He came over to introduce himself.

Speaker 7 I said, I'm Kimberly.

Speaker 7 And he said, you're my wife. That's your name.
You're my wife. And I thought, wow, he's very secure.

Speaker 1 Kimberly was right. Charles was.

Speaker 1 It was 1982. She was 19.
He was 26. What was dating him like?

Speaker 7 He was a romancer. I remember a lot of flowers.
I remember jewelry. He knew how to do the guy thing.

Speaker 1 Their wedding in 1984 was Texas-sized in every way.

Speaker 7 Big hair, big this, big veil, big, that's how it was. Charles really had a lot of shine.
He was kind of a go-big or go-home guy.

Speaker 1 He wanted to make a big family, too.

Speaker 1 But life doesn't always cooperate with ambition. Kimberly had a miscarriage.

Speaker 7 I was disappointed, but he was literally devastated. He cried non-stop.

Speaker 1 Then the flip side of love. Confidence that once seemed attractive began to look careless.
One day, said Kimberly, Charles was fiddling with a handgun. He didn't mean to fire it, she said, but he did.

Speaker 1 How close did it come to you?

Speaker 7 Very. I would say about this far from my head, and I just couldn't believe it.

Speaker 1 We can't know Charles's version, of course, of the marriage or the divorce.

Speaker 7 He got very vindictive and he got very aggressive toward me. Charles has a sense of desperation about him when things go sideways.

Speaker 1 But eventually, a divorced and wounded Charles landed in Austin and found love again with With this woman, Cheryl, they married in 1991.

Speaker 20 I was very young when I married him. I was 23.
He was 34.

Speaker 1 Still, very successful. They both were, financially.
But what Charles wanted more than anything was children.

Speaker 1 They adopted one of Charles' nephews, and then Cheryl gave birth to a son.

Speaker 1 But...

Speaker 1 After 12 years, it all turned sour.

Speaker 20 And it just became a situation where we're just not cut out for each other.

Speaker 20 And this is not going to work. And

Speaker 20 so.

Speaker 1 We both moved on.

Speaker 20 We both moved on.

Speaker 1 Their divorce, too, was angry, bitter, though Cheryl still liked him. So when he met Laurie Ryan two years later,

Speaker 20 I was happy to see him find... his next spouse because

Speaker 1 that part is a little unusual that you're happy to have somebody somebody.

Speaker 20 I really was because, you know, I thought she, you know, this beautiful woman, she's got two kids, she's very religious, this is going to be wonderful.

Speaker 1 Charles proposed marriage. Lori had a condition.
Charles would have to convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which he did.

Speaker 1 Sound familiar?

Speaker 1 And he joined Lori in another cause, too. He helped Lori with her custody battle while fighting his own, all in the same family court.

Speaker 1 That's when Lori leveled those sex abuse allegations against Tyle's dad, Joe Ryan, followed by turmoil, many court dates involving several households and investigations, and a constant airing of grievances.

Speaker 1 And at the center of it all, said Cheryl, was Lori.

Speaker 20 I saw her more in court than I did out of the courthouse. I saw an instability, and I didn't want her around my boys.

Speaker 1 Did Charles see this instability?

Speaker 20 Not that I'm aware of. He didn't share it with me.

Speaker 1 Instead, Charles was adding to his family. In 2014, he and Lori adopted another of Charles's nephews, JJ,

Speaker 1 a boy with autism.

Speaker 1 And after that, they moved far away from past spousal wars to one of Lori's favorite places on earth, Kauai,

Speaker 1 and into a fine big house on a golf course.

Speaker 23 We immediately headed off as soon as he found out I was from Louisiana.

Speaker 1 Wade English and his wife Frankie were active in a branch of the LDS church in Kauai.

Speaker 1 Charles impressed Wade. Lori charmed everybody.

Speaker 19 I was a part of the Sunday school programs. Man, she had a beautiful voice.
She could really sing.

Speaker 1 And did frequently, huh?

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 19 She was always happy, bubbly, and

Speaker 19 was great with the music and teaching the kids music.

Speaker 23 Like really good with the kids.

Speaker 1 Everyone loved her. Wade and Frankie introduced the Vallas to the island life.
Fishing, adventures, picnics on the beach. In this photo, you can see JJ over there, scoping out the food.

Speaker 1 And though the boy was clearly a handful, said Wade, Charles was very good with him.

Speaker 23 There was patience and calm. There was never anger.
I mean, he didn't even get red in the face, like, you know, I'm saving this up for later. Sure.

Speaker 23 There wasn't even a reaction of that nature.

Speaker 1 And they both were good with JJ.

Speaker 19 I mean, I think it took both of them because probably one had to go hide and scream it under their pillow every once in a while. But I mean, that's just what I would think I would have to do.

Speaker 1 They were surprised to learn that in 2018, Charles and Lori left their paradise and moved to Phoenix.

Speaker 23 I'm like, why would you have left? Like, why would you ever have left that house? He's like, he goes, you know, JJ

Speaker 23 needed things that we couldn't provide on the island.

Speaker 1 Seemed Seemed like a fine reason, taking care of family.

Speaker 1 But of course,

Speaker 1 that wasn't going to happen, was it?

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 24 She was attracted to him on a spiritual level.

Speaker 1 Enter the man who'd become husband number five. Did you see evidence that she and Chad were falling in love?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 24 He seemed to be convinced that she was a very powerful woman.

Speaker 1 By the spring of 2018, Charles and Lori and the kids, Tylee and JJ, were back living in suburban Phoenix.

Speaker 1 It was about that time, you'll recall, that Tylee's aunt noticed Lori was very focused on the biblical end times and, according to Aunt Annie, said something quite bizarre.

Speaker 5 She actually said,

Speaker 5 sometimes I think it would be better just to put my kids in a car and go over the side of the cliff.

Speaker 1 Dark?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 But perhaps it depended on the beholder.

Speaker 24 She had a lot of the same energy I did, enthusiasm for learning and excitement for the second coming.

Speaker 1 After 12 years of marriage to Charles, Lori fell in with this woman, Melanie Gibb, at a church meeting.

Speaker 24 You know, like a sister kind of a friend that you just meet suddenly and just, like, this girl's a lot like me.

Speaker 1 So together, the two of them took a road trip to St. George, Utah to attend a religious conference.
And there, a meeting took place that would alter many lives and possibly end a few as well.

Speaker 1 Because at the conference, Melanie saw a man she knew.

Speaker 1 A frequent speaker at gatherings like these, an author of end times-themed fiction, Chad Daybell.

Speaker 24 He talked about the second coming and the tribulations that would accompany that.

Speaker 1 He could see the spirit world, he said. Could see the past, could see the future.

Speaker 1 Lori seemed entranced.

Speaker 24 She was attracted to him on a spiritual level.

Speaker 1 After all, Chad was a devout Mormon, very married. Lori was married too, of course.

Speaker 1 Back home in Phoenix, Melanie got to know Lori's husband, Charles Vallow.

Speaker 24 Seemed like a really nice guy. He seemed to always be taking JJ places.

Speaker 1 But after that conference, Melanie could also see that something had come between Lori and Charles.

Speaker 24 She seemed to be upset a lot. I could never really figure out why.

Speaker 1 Then, one weekend when Charles was out of town on business, Lori decided to hold a spiritual conference at her house. And one participant drove all the way from Rexburg, Idaho, 13 hours, to be there.

Speaker 24 Chad was there and he seemed to have a great respect for women and so I think that was pleasing to Laurie. He seemed to be convinced that she was a very powerful woman.

Speaker 24 You are here with Lori and Melanie this morning on our podcast Fill the Fire.

Speaker 1 Melanie had a podcast back then, spiritual and health issues. Lori became a regular on it

Speaker 1 and soon there was a special guest, Chad Daybell. The burning in my chest was so strong that I finally could feel a connection to Jesus that I'd never felt before.

Speaker 1 By this time, a more earthly attraction was obvious to Melanie. Did you see evidence that she and Chad were falling in love?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 24 I asked her, like, why don't you get a divorce? And she said, Chad and I are not allowed to.

Speaker 1 Because they were devoted followers of the LDS faith, said Lori.

Speaker 1 But, said Melanie, what Laurie was telling her now was way out in left field, heretical, not church teaching at all.

Speaker 1 Chad told Lori they were both beyond human, exalted, translated beings, he called it, godlike.

Speaker 1 And, he told her, they shared a secret that both led multiple lives, him especially, over thousands of years.

Speaker 25 How many?

Speaker 24 31.

Speaker 1 How many lives had she supposedly had?

Speaker 24 21.

Speaker 1 And what's more? In seven of those previous lives, said Chad, Lori had been his wife.

Speaker 24 And she seemed to be very drawn to that idea. It was very exciting.

Speaker 1 How weird must that be?

Speaker 1 Not only am I attracted to you, that we've been married seven times on different planets in different lives.

Speaker 24 Yeah, she was actually intrigued by it.

Speaker 1 And now, Chad told Lori, they, the two of them, have been chosen, handpicked by God, to lead an elect group of people, 144,000 souls, who would usher in the end times and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 24 They were in charge of this group, and they would find couples or people that would be able to fulfill this calling as the days and the tribulations came upon the world.

Speaker 1 People like... Lori's older brother, Alex Cox.
Remember him? The guy who tased Lori's third husband, Joe, intending to kill him back in 2007.

Speaker 1 And where would the righteous gather? Right here, according to Chad, near his home in Rexburg, Idaho.

Speaker 24 He said, you know, the people, 144,000, aren't going to move here. They figured that most peoples would end up in tents and things of that nature.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, As these extra-special heavenly beings, Chad and Lori sneaked into an LDS temple, into the holiest places in that faith, and performed a secret do-it-yourself sealing ceremony, sealing themselves as husband and wife for eternity.

Speaker 1 But of course, Lori was also, inconveniently, still married to Charles.

Speaker 1 For now, at least. For now.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 26 She says, I'm going to kill you. You're murdered today or tomorrow.

Speaker 25 It's not every day that we have someone come in and say that their wife has threatened their life and that she's got angels ready to dispose of his body.

Speaker 1 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 1 Late January 2019, Charles Vallo flew home from a business trip and the pickup truck he'd parked at the airport in Phoenix was gone. He couldn't reach anyone at home.
So what's going on tonight?

Speaker 16 I can't get in touch with my truck, yes.

Speaker 1 The rest was captured on police body cam once Charles got a ride home and found he was locked out of his house.

Speaker 1 And once police helped him get in, he saw that many of his things were gone.

Speaker 1 Police blurred this video for privacy reasons. There were police! Money in the house! But there was more to it, a whole lot more.

Speaker 1 Charles told police that Lori's mind was increasingly clouded by strange and apparently homicidal religious teachings.

Speaker 16 She said, you're not Charles. I don't know who you are, what you did with Charles, but I can murder you now with my powers.
Has she been to the doctor?

Speaker 16 She won't go to the doctor because she's a translated being and they would find out that she's translated. She cannot be killed.
She cannot die.

Speaker 1 Charles didn't know the half of it. Lori had revealed even more to her friend Melanie.

Speaker 24 She had told me that she had seen in like a dream that he was to pass away.

Speaker 1 Yes, and Chad had a vision too. That Charles had been overtaken by an evil spirit named Nick Schneider.

Speaker 24 Chad calls her up on the phone and says,

Speaker 24 I just want to let you know that Charles, something happened to him. He became this unclean spirit.

Speaker 1 So what, he'd become a demon or something?

Speaker 24 I guess you could call that.

Speaker 24 They later phrased it as a zombie.

Speaker 1 A zombie? Well, that sounded ominous. But if Charles had any inkling that his wife's new beliefs grew out of her relationship with Chad Daybell, he didn't say so.

Speaker 1 In fact, in a second encounter with police the day after the first one,

Speaker 1 all he asked for was help for Lori. Told them he was very worried about her.

Speaker 26 I've tried to support her as much as I could, but it's gotten really, really bad lately. She's She's had a break.
She says, I'm

Speaker 26 Nick Snyder. I've taken over Charles' body, and Charles has been killed.
I'm going to kill you. You're going to be murdered today or tomorrow.
She says, scared to cry about it. Okay.

Speaker 1 Eventually, Charles and the police found Lori. He requested she take a mental evaluation.
And she did. First, she went down to the police station.
Her visit captured on body cam.

Speaker 3 Unfortunately, yeah, we found it to even go to hotels just so like calms down or something, you know.

Speaker 1 Lori told police that Charles was the problem. He cheated on her, she said.
Flew into a rage when she confronted him, she said. The cops seemed sympathetic.

Speaker 26 But just talking to you, I mean,

Speaker 16 I don't see you being a danger to yourself or anybody else.

Speaker 1 And that's exactly what the mental evaluation found.

Speaker 1 Lori's friend Melanie was there when Lori walked out.

Speaker 24 She passed easily and she got out and they thought she was completely normal.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a lot of people thought she was completely normal, including you, right?

Speaker 24 Oh yeah, she was very good.

Speaker 24 She was slick.

Speaker 1 Within days, Charles went to see a lawyer. Taylor Larson couldn't forget that visit if he tried.

Speaker 25 It's not every day that we have someone come in and say that their wife has threatened their life and that she's got angels ready to dispose of his body.

Speaker 1 A truism, if there ever was one. But there was more

Speaker 1 of a more temporal nature.

Speaker 25 She took out a total of $35,000 out of the business account and pretty much drained everything that was in that account.

Speaker 1 Oh boy. So could he actually afford your services at that stage?

Speaker 25 He had to go and try to scrape and make money real quick to retain our services to file divorce.

Speaker 1 Not only a divorce, but Charles also wanted an order of protection.

Speaker 25 It wasn't necessarily to protect Charles himself, but it was more to protect JJ.

Speaker 1 What about Tylie? Was he worried about her too?

Speaker 25 He was worried that Lori may be brainwashing her with some of her extremist beliefs.

Speaker 1 What was your impression of this guy? Was he broken or what?

Speaker 25 My impression right off the bat was this is a broken man. He had been crying.
Everything that he knew was gone.

Speaker 1 But just two months later, well, well,

Speaker 1 Charles wrote his attorney an email saying he and Lori were back together.

Speaker 25 And at the end, he told me that love wins.

Speaker 1 Wow. So he was excited about this.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I emailed him back and I said, Charles, I'm happy for you.

Speaker 1 Well, you certainly wouldn't want to rain on his parade.

Speaker 25 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Privately, what did you think?

Speaker 25 Privately, I thought maybe this wasn't the best idea.

Speaker 1 And the young family law attorney's instincts were right. Within weeks, Lori had left Charles again.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 one day, when Charles came to pick up JJ for visitation, you need police or paramedics.

Speaker 1 Both. I'm in police in an ambulance.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 25 He said, If anything happens to me, know that it was Lori and her brother Alex that did it.

Speaker 1 Charles's deadly premonition was about to come true.

Speaker 1 it was july 2019 around 8 30 a.m when police in suburban phoenix responded to the call of a shooting in a gated community

Speaker 1 Officers found a man in the driveway and guided him to the curb.

Speaker 1 It was Lori's brother and disciple, Alex Cox.

Speaker 26 I don't live here. My sister lives here and my niece lives here.
And you're just visiting? I was visiting for the night.

Speaker 1 Inside, lying dead on the floor with two bullets in his chest, was Charles Vallow. Copy several gunshot wounds.
As police were talking to Alex, who admitted he was the shooter, Lori arrived.

Speaker 1 That's Tylie on the left. Police blurred her image because she was a minor.

Speaker 1 And if Lori was upset her brother Alex had just killed her husband, she didn't act like it.

Speaker 26 How long have you lived here? Like three weeks. Oh, geez.
Yeah, okay. That's why the neighbors took off us.
Gotcha.

Speaker 26 Like, hi, neighbor, sorry.

Speaker 1 Police said that Lori's demeanor made about as much sense as the explanation she and Alex put forward for the shooting.

Speaker 1 Something about a tussle over a cell phone, Tylie bringing out a baseball bat, Charles making threats, Alex responding.

Speaker 26 I went to my room and got my gun.

Speaker 1 And Charles soon lay dead on the floor.

Speaker 26 There's a couple of showcases behind it.

Speaker 1 Lori, Alex, and Tylee were all taken to the Chandler police station and questioned.

Speaker 1 Alex claimed he'd killed Charles in self-defense.

Speaker 1 And lacking clear evidence to the contrary, police released them all back to the house.

Speaker 1 Lori's friend, Melanie, was shocked, she told us. Yes, she said, Chad Daybell had prophesied that Charles would become a zombie and would die, but shot to death?

Speaker 24 I'm thinking he's going to pass away. Like, they would have a prayer.
Maybe the spirit will leave and his body would just die. And yeah, I just like, I didn't see that coming.

Speaker 1 And when Charles' sons heard the news from Lori,

Speaker 1 here's his ex-wife, Cheryl.

Speaker 20 My oldest son, he's sitting in my yard screaming and crying. And I thought, oh my God.
So I bring him in the house. It's like, what's wrong? And he shows me the text from Lori.

Speaker 1 Text message.

Speaker 20 A text message. Sorry, your dad passed away, but don't worry, I still love you with a heart emoji.

Speaker 1 What did you think? What did you feel? And I couldn't believe

Speaker 1 that she did that in that way.

Speaker 28 I immediately knew they killed him.

Speaker 1 They?

Speaker 1 What did that mean? Probably the same thing it meant for Charles's former lawyer, Taylor Larson, who remembered what Charles once told him.

Speaker 25 He said, if anything happens to me, know that it was Lori and her brother Alex that did it. The instigator would be Lori, but it would be done through Alex's hands.

Speaker 1 In fact, not only had Charles seen it coming, he'd done something about it.

Speaker 1 When, shortly after his death, Lori tried to collect on a million-dollar life insurance policy, she found out that Charles had removed her as beneficiary. She got nothing.

Speaker 1 Then, weeks after the shooting, Lori took Tylee and JJ and moved north to Rexburg, Idaho, to get close to the man she believed she had been married to seven times in seven lives, Chad Daybell.

Speaker 24 She gave other people a story that she was going to get a job there, but her and I both know it wasn't about a job.

Speaker 24 It was about her connecting with Chad and living up there and being part of their mission.

Speaker 1 The mission, you'll recall, to gather the elect for the end times and the second coming.

Speaker 1 That's why Lori's brother and disciple, Alex, moved to Rexburg, too. Each of them rented a townhouse in this complex.

Speaker 1 Once they were settled, Alex and Lori took Tyle and JJ on a family trip to nearby Yellowstone National Park. These photos are the last images of Tylee.
Melanie knew by then.

Speaker 1 Lori told her that Tyle had been declared a zombie. And JJ,

Speaker 1 a couple of weeks after the Yellowstone visit, he was seen on his neighbor's ring doorbell video playing in the courtyard with a friend.

Speaker 1 But, according to Melanie, Lori said he too had become a zombie.

Speaker 24 The reason why I believe he became a zombie is that he was going to stop Chad and Laurie from going forward, and I think he was in the way.

Speaker 24 And I think that's why he became a zombie.

Speaker 1 And what happens to zombies?

Speaker 24 Seems like they are dying.

Speaker 1 Melanie said she had no clue at the time what plans might have been made for Tylie and JJ.

Speaker 1 But she did know that Lori and Chad were deeply in love, and there was a problem. Chad was still married, had been for nearly 30 years, to a woman named Tammy.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 4 She was amazing. She was an awesome person.

Speaker 1 Tammy's sister speaks out for the first time on television.

Speaker 4 You could tell they were affectionate and they loved one another.

Speaker 1 Well, that just adds to the weirdness of it all, doesn't it? It does.

Speaker 1 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 1 Out beyond the gleaming spire of the LDS Temple in Rexburg, Idaho, Chad Daybill, self-styled religious guru, was taking liberties with biblical commandments.

Speaker 1 By the fall of 2019, he'd been married to his wife Tammy for nearly three decades. They had five children.

Speaker 1 But security cameras had lately caught Chad helping another woman move items in and out of a storage unit and patting her in a very,

Speaker 1 shall we say, affectionate way. That That woman, of course, was Lori.

Speaker 1 The two of them took to walking together at the BYU Idaho Running Track, said Lori's friend Melanie, holding hands, hugging, kissing, in full public view.

Speaker 1 Did you ask them, aren't you afraid of being discovered by Tammy?

Speaker 24 Yes. Said, well, Tammy usually doesn't come out over here.
They didn't seem to be worried about it.

Speaker 1 And Tammy Daybell, in ignorant bliss, went about a life she believed still existed.

Speaker 4 You know what? She was amazing. I mean, we all have our faults, but she was an awesome person.
I could go to her with anything.

Speaker 1 This is Tammy's only sister, Samantha, and Samantha's husband, Jason.

Speaker 10 Chad and I were brothers.

Speaker 1 Breaking their silence in their first ever interview.

Speaker 15 They were hand in hand, one and the same. When people mentioned Tammy, you thought about Chad.
When people mentioned Chad, you thought about Tammy.

Speaker 4 They would hold each other's hands and sit right next to each other.

Speaker 4 I mean, you could tell they were affectionate and they loved one another.

Speaker 1 Well, that just adds to the weirdness of it all, doesn't it?

Speaker 18 It does.

Speaker 1 Tammy, the sister, the woman Chad married, was one of five children raised in little Springville, Utah, and by all accounts was gifted, a lover of books from an early age, even had her own lending library.

Speaker 4 She made little library cards for us to check out books from her. And I remember one time I didn't return stuff in a proper fashion and got a little late slip for like a nickel or something.

Speaker 1 Everybody talks about how bright this woman was. Unusually so, I gather.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we're all really pretty smart in our family.

Speaker 1 Tammy played in marching band, was yearbook editor, graduated with high honors. and had her eye on a guy who graduated a year before her, Chad Daybell.

Speaker 1 Back then, Tammy confided all to her cousin Patty.

Speaker 11 The first time that I knew about him, she told me he was on a mission and she said, I'm going to marry him when he comes home. And I was like, did you know him before?

Speaker 11 And she said, no, but I'm going to marry him.

Speaker 1 And when Chad returned to Utah after spending two years in New Jersey.

Speaker 11 So when she got engaged, I was happy for her, but also like, oh, man.

Speaker 1 It's almost like, I mean, she's leaving you to go be with some guy.

Speaker 4 Yeah, how dare she?

Speaker 1 They were married in an LDS temple.

Speaker 4 At their wedding, you could see how happy they were.

Speaker 1 And Tammy, the girl who could have done anything, was content.

Speaker 1 Some of her friends apparently pushed her, say, you know, why don't you, come on, you got to be a this or a that or a scientist or a, you should be more ambitious and professionally.

Speaker 4 But that wasn't her. She was happy being a mom.
And that's okay. It's okay to want that.

Speaker 1 In Springville, Chad and Tammy lived just just around the corner from Samantha and her then new husband Jason. The only brother-in-law in the family, right?

Speaker 15 Yeah, he was someone that I quite frankly looked up to. In a way, a mentor.

Speaker 1 Chad was in charge of the local cemetery.

Speaker 15 While he was there is where he started to just get some ideas that, hey, I think I have a story to tell and I'd like to tell it.

Speaker 1 So Chad started writing books and with Tammy, the girl who'd grown up with her nose in books, launched a mom-and-pop publishing company.

Speaker 4 Tammy loved to help the business so that Chad could just focus on his writing.

Speaker 1 Until they went bankrupt that is.

Speaker 4 That's why Tammy started working at Art City Elementary was to help pay bills, supplement the income. But she loved it.

Speaker 1 It was 2015, the year of their 25th wedding anniversary. When Chad told Tammy he'd received a revelation.

Speaker 1 God was telling him to take her and their five kids and move four hours north to Rexburg, Idaho. How did she feel about that?

Speaker 4 At first, she wasn't happy about it, but, you know, as we do in our religion, she prayed about it and tried to decide what it was that she was supposed to do.

Speaker 1 And Tammy blossomed in Idaho. living on a big rural property where she raised animals and had a big garden and found a fulfilling job as a school librarian.

Speaker 4 As far as I knew, she was really happy.

Speaker 1 The Daybells had lived outside Rexburg for about four years when, in early October 2019, Tammy announced she was coming home for a visit. Alone.

Speaker 1 It was a few weeks after Lori's children, JJ and Tylee, were last seen. Was it unusual for her to drive down without Chad?

Speaker 4 Yeah, actually. You know, they normally drove together, but he said he was busy working, so she decided to come on her own.
And it was a really fun visit. She was happy.
It was like we were kids again

Speaker 4 and not in our 40s.

Speaker 1 Then, after an overnight stay, Tammy said goodbye, pointed her car to Idaho, and drove away.

Speaker 1 And Samantha never saw her sister alive again.

Speaker 1 Coming up, a sudden death and a sudden wedding. You feel almost betrayed.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that was too soon for anybody to get over my sister.

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Speaker 1 During her four years in the farm country outside Rexburg, Idaho, Tammy Daybell embraced a quiet life of service to her faith, her students, to her family.

Speaker 1 Then, it was just a week after that quick visit home to Utah, in her own driveway, her Facebook post.

Speaker 1 Something really weird just happened. A guy wearing a ski mask was suddenly standing by the back of my car with a paintball gun.
He shot at me several times.

Speaker 4 She kind of played it off a little bit because it seemed kind of ridiculous who wants to shoot a paintball gun at you, you know?

Speaker 1 A prank, she thought.

Speaker 1 So did the sheriff's deputies who responded. And then, 10 days later, October 19th.

Speaker 4 I got a phone call from Chad telling me that she had passed away in her sleep.

Speaker 1 How do you process something like that?

Speaker 11 You don't.

Speaker 4 I mean, like, there's just so many thoughts running through your head.

Speaker 24 And a lot of it was like, no,

Speaker 4 that didn't happen.

Speaker 1 What did Chad say happened?

Speaker 4 That she'd been sick and had a coughing fit and passed away.

Speaker 1 How did he sound on the phone?

Speaker 4 He sounded upset and devastated. I mean, I was crying and he was crying.

Speaker 6 And yeah, it was a really hard moment.

Speaker 1 Tammy Daybell was just 49 years old, slim and fit.

Speaker 1 As far as Sam knew, perfectly healthy. Were you surprised to discover there had been no autopsy?

Speaker 15 You know, the question had been asked by my wife to Chad on Saturday when she passed, and his response was, well, she's already over at the mortician. They said there was no need to have an autopsy.

Speaker 1 Oh, decisions to have back. That's one.

Speaker 1 Tammy's funeral at the family's LDS ward in Springville, Utah was painful beyond words. And Chad?

Speaker 4 I never got to talk to him about Tammy and what happened at the end. And in that lens, I feel like, was he avoiding talking to me?

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Did Chad ever tell you he didn't want to live in that house anymore after Tammy died?

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 4 because he said it was going to be hard to be there where she had been. And he had said that he was going to stay with a friend.

Speaker 1 A friend?

Speaker 1 Lori.

Speaker 1 Who, we would later learn, picked out these wedding rings on Amazon two and a half weeks before Tammy died.

Speaker 1 As the weeks passed and Tammy's family struggled to grasp life without her, Jason got a call from Chad, who'd taken a trip to Hawaii. They thought to grieve.

Speaker 15 He says, I have something I need to tell you, but don't tell anybody.

Speaker 1 I got married while I was in Hawaii.

Speaker 15 I sat there for a good five seconds and I said, excuse me, you did what?

Speaker 15 And he says, I got married while I was in Hawaii.

Speaker 1 What was it like to hear that?

Speaker 4 It was shocking because at that point, Tammy had only been gone for a month.

Speaker 7 And I just thought,

Speaker 4 is the grief clouding his judgment? I mean, who goes and does that? It didn't make sense to me. And obviously, I was really upset.

Speaker 1 You feel almost betrayed. Yeah,

Speaker 4 yeah, because I felt like

Speaker 4 that was too soon for anybody to get over my sister.

Speaker 1 Get over my sister? She asked him, why would he do that?

Speaker 4 He just told us that

Speaker 4 he'd known her from before and

Speaker 4 she understood what he was going through because she had lost a spouse through like a heart attack is what he told us.

Speaker 1 What Chad didn't know. was that a child who had spent borrowing Tammy's detective books was about to pay off.
What did you find out about Lori when you did your research?

Speaker 4 There was just various things on the internet, and I found out her name really wasn't Lori Ryan. It was Lori Vallow.

Speaker 4 And her husband had died from a heart attack,

Speaker 4 but he was shot. And I just thought, is this the same person?

Speaker 4 But there was a Lori Vallow that had done podcasts with Chad.

Speaker 4 And you follow that trail yourself. This was just me trying to figure out who is this woman that replaced my sister because that was how I was choosing to grieve.

Speaker 4 Put one warning bell after another and you're like,

Speaker 4 no, there's something seriously wrong here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you were angry for starters.

Speaker 4 It didn't feel right to me. And I'm very good at telling when people are lying to me.
And I felt like I was being lied to.

Speaker 1 Did you begin to rethink what happened to Tammy?

Speaker 4 Yeah, and I didn't like it.

Speaker 1 But if Tammy's family didn't like it now,

Speaker 1 oh boy, just wait a couple of weeks.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 22 Is JJ safe?

Speaker 30 He is safe and happy.

Speaker 1 Secret recordings as friends turn adversaries.

Speaker 22 I believe that you have been very deceived by Satan.

Speaker 24 These are my friends, and now I was confronting them.

Speaker 1 When dateline continues.

Speaker 1 Tammy Davell's brokenhearted family hoped the shocks would subside after her sudden, unexplained death and her widower Chad's marriage two weeks later in Kauai to a mysterious woman named Lori.

Speaker 1 But then Chad called the family with a question that, again, set off the seismic scale.

Speaker 4 He called to ask about if we'd known anything about Tammy being exhumed, which we didn't know about at the time. Really? No.
We had gone over to the cemetery to look and saw that it had been dug up.

Speaker 1 But when he had called us-I can't imagine what it's like to see that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was shocking.

Speaker 1 But it was true. Investigators had exhumed Tammy's body, tested it, and reburied it the same day.

Speaker 1 Then Samantha grilled Chad about this new wife of his.

Speaker 4 I said, okay, so tell me about her.

Speaker 4 And I said, did she have children? And he told me, no,

Speaker 4 her children are grown. We'll be empty nesters.

Speaker 1 But as we know, even as they were talking, police and the FBI were on a nationwide search for Lori's two children, Tylee, age 17, and JJ, who was seven.

Speaker 1 You may have heard this part of the story, how JJ's grandparents, alarmed that they hadn't heard from him, called police, who went to Lori's townhouse in Rexburg. Hi.
You, Lori.

Speaker 1 Lori, I'm Lieutenant Ball of the Police Department. How are you? You got him in?

Speaker 1 Police body cams recorded the conversation. So JJ,

Speaker 1 he's in Arizona.

Speaker 1 Who's he with in Arizona? He's with one of my friends in Arizona. So

Speaker 1 who's the friend he's with? My friend Melanie. Her name is Melanie Gibb.

Speaker 1 You remember Melanie? Lori's friend, friend, another true believer?

Speaker 24 I get this phone call out of the blue. And Chad said, hey, Melanie, I just want to let you know that the Rexford police are going to call.
Don't pick up.

Speaker 1 How did he seem? Calm?

Speaker 24 No, no, nervous. And he said, and Lori's going to tell them that JJ's with you.

Speaker 3 I think they are at the movies right now.

Speaker 1 But they're at the movie. They're probably at Frozen, too, right now.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 As Melanie's head spun, Her phone rang again.

Speaker 4 Lori calls and says, hey, everything's fine.

Speaker 24 Oh, I told him that JG was with you. You guys were at Frozen.

Speaker 24 So she said that he was visiting me. We were in a movie theater watching Frozen.

Speaker 24 It's like a bomb drops on you. What do you do? You just are in shock a little bit.

Speaker 1 Lori and Chad had just asked Melanie to lie to the police and in that request revealed that they'd been lying to her too. Was that the moment this all changed for you? The bottom fellow?

Speaker 18 Absolutely.

Speaker 24 I can't even begin to tell you how horrible that moment was for me.

Speaker 24 No words can describe it.

Speaker 1 Were you betrayed by these people?

Speaker 24 Oh, yeah. They try to use me as their way of escape.

Speaker 1 When police contacted Melanie, she told them the truth. JJ was not with her.
She didn't know where Tyle was either.

Speaker 1 Police returned to Lori's house with a search warrant, only to find that Lori and Chad had skipped town, gone back to Kauai. No sign of either JJ or Tylee.

Speaker 1 Melanie began cooperating with the police investigation. She called Lori and Chad one final time and recorded the conversation.

Speaker 22 This is a recording on December 8th at 3.43 p.m.

Speaker 22 Hello, sweet Melanie.

Speaker 11 Hi, Chad. Hey, Lori.

Speaker 11 Lori. We're in Nevada.

Speaker 1 The call was friendly at first.

Speaker 22 Is JJ safe?

Speaker 30 He is safe and happy.

Speaker 22 Okay, well, that's good to hear.

Speaker 1 But the tone of the call soon turned. This wasn't a friendly phone call.

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 22 I believe that you have been very deceived by Satan. I believe that he has tricked you.
I mean, Tammy dies

Speaker 22 and then your husband died and then this and then he's missing. It just doesn't sound like God's plan to me.

Speaker 30 You know me, Mel. This does not sound like you.
This sounds like you've been influenced by somebody dark who wants you to

Speaker 30 believe dark things and have fear and have fear of the celestial world.

Speaker 24 It was a very unnerving phone call.

Speaker 24 These are my friends, and now I was confronting them that they...

Speaker 4 potential killers.

Speaker 24 From the teachings of my church, there's a guy named Korhor.

Speaker 24 And Korhor was an Antichrist.

Speaker 24 I called both of them a Korhor.

Speaker 30 That's what you think is me, Corohor? Are you kidding me right now?

Speaker 1 How did it feel when you got off that call?

Speaker 24 Oh, I was a little shaken.

Speaker 24 I had confronted my adversary, right?

Speaker 1 And then her mind flashed back to an earlier conversation with Lori's brother and disciple, Alex.

Speaker 3 And I said to him, do I want to know what happened to JJ?

Speaker 24 Because that little feeling inside was going, there's something kind of weird going on. He goes, you don't want to know.

Speaker 1 And then the story got even weirder.

Speaker 7 Okay, what is your mirror to see?

Speaker 1 Alex fell ill and died suddenly in suburban Phoenix at the age of 51. An autopsy determined the cause was blood clots in his lungs.

Speaker 24 Maybe

Speaker 24 he felt guilty?

Speaker 24 I mean, that's a lot of weight to carry as a person.

Speaker 1 Police and the FBI were now working furiously to find the children. They approached Samantha and Jason, asking them if they'd learned anything from Chad that might help them locate JJ and Tylee.

Speaker 4 When the police asked that, I was like, oh,

Speaker 4 so I am being lied to.

Speaker 1 The search for the kids was about to go nationwide.

Speaker 27 Seven-year-old Joshua Vallow and 17-year-old Tyle Ryan were last seen in September.

Speaker 1 Lori and Chad's lives would be turned upside down,

Speaker 1 as would be so many others. That makes you wonder if he'd been lying about a whole lot of things.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I hate to even say it, but

Speaker 4 they would have been empty nesters because those kids were gone.

Speaker 6 And that's really heartbreaking because that's just awful.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 1 Are you okay?

Speaker 1 Jailhouse phone calls and a devastating discovery.

Speaker 4 As we watched that with the world, I was physically ill.

Speaker 1 That's when the reality

Speaker 1 really hit.

Speaker 1 Hey, Chad and Lori's dateline

Speaker 1 January 2020. We said,

Speaker 1 no comments.

Speaker 1 Not quite the quiet island getaway Chad and Lori had planned for Kauai. What do you guys have to say to the people who are looking for your kids?

Speaker 1 What did it feel like when you saw the two of them walking around in Hawaii? Oh, I was livid.

Speaker 24 That was not cool.

Speaker 1 And it didn't last. Before long, a judge in Idaho issued a warrant demanding Lori produce her children.

Speaker 1 When she didn't, she was arrested and flown back to Rexburg. But still, she refused to reveal where J.J.
and Tylee were.

Speaker 1 Chad followed, settled back into that home he'd once shared with Tammy. And then,

Speaker 1 June 9th, 2020, J.J. and Tylee had been missing for eight months.
Nate Eaton is a reporter for East Idaho News and a dateline contributor.

Speaker 1 He was on his morning run that day when he heard his phone chirp, a text from a friend. Did Nate know they were raiding Chad Daybell's house? Tons of cops there.

Speaker 8 I made a call to the sheriff and he confirmed we are there.

Speaker 1 The roads to the house were blocked. Nate raced to the airport, jumped in a helicopter.
We are almost over the house of Chad J-Bel.

Speaker 8 I thought they would be seizing things from inside of the home. And I looked down and they're in the backyard.
And they have like a grid in the backyard, and I see dogs running around.

Speaker 8 And so I instantly knew they weren't focused on the house, they're focused on the yard, on the property.

Speaker 1 Before long, Chad, watching what was going on from his daughter's house across the street, received his regular jailhouse call from Lori.

Speaker 1 Chad sounded despondent.

Speaker 1 You see two slivers, and I love you so much. Shall I try to call you later? You can try, yeah.

Speaker 1 I'll reach if I can.

Speaker 1 Okay, baby. You love me.

Speaker 1 There would be no more phone calls. Not after this.

Speaker 8 When they dug up the first body, Chad apparently got in his car and left. And the police followed him and pulled him over.
They placed him into handcuffs.

Speaker 1 A passing driver recorded the arrest on her cell phone.

Speaker 1 Chad was charged with two felony counts of destruction, alteration, or concealment of evidence. Soon, Lori would be too.

Speaker 1 For months, there had been theories. JJ and Tylee had been buried in Yellowstone Park or even were safe in a hideout with followers of Chad and Lori.
But no, none of the above. Not at all.

Speaker 1 They were killed and buried among pets on Chad and Tammy's property. Tylee's body was dismembered and burned.

Speaker 14 It just

Speaker 4 sick as we watched that with the world. You know, as we watched that play out on television with everybody else, I was physically ill.
Who does that to children? Who does that?

Speaker 6 That's when the reality

Speaker 1 really hit.

Speaker 1 And when I found out

Speaker 1 about the state of Tylee's remains, I will never understand the indignity that they treated her with.

Speaker 5 It was so much worse than I had imagined, and I thought I prepared myself for the worst.

Speaker 1 How did authorities know where they might find the bodies? Chad, it turned out, had given it away, overplayed his hand in a text to Tammy.

Speaker 1 At Chad's preliminary hearing, FBI agents, who had spent months combing through thousands of texts, revealed that most of Chad's texts were unexciting, short, mundane messages about logistics and life.

Speaker 1 Except on September 9th, 2019, he said this.

Speaker 10 Well, I've had an interesting morning. I felt I should burn all the limb debris by the fire pit before it got too soaked by the coming storms.
While I did so, I spotted a big raccoon along the fence.

Speaker 10 I hurried and got my gun, and he was still walking along. I got close enough that one shot did the trick.
He is now in our pet cemetery.

Speaker 1 Fun times.

Speaker 1 A text sent the day after Tylie was last seen alive. alive.

Speaker 1 So of course, investigators wanted to know where exactly was this pet cemetery.

Speaker 8 And they spoke with some of Tammy's family members. One of her sisters said, oh, yeah, I know where that is.
It's right by the fire pit.

Speaker 8 And the investigators put two and two together that maybe we need to look at this fire pit. Oh, and Alex Cox's phone pinged at that location of the pet cemetery.

Speaker 1 Alex Cox, Lori's violent brother, at that time still very much alive, phone records showed he spent several hours at the pet cemetery that day.

Speaker 8 They were able to get right to the GPS location of where Alex had spent his time in Chad's backyard.

Speaker 1 So we're talking about within feet.

Speaker 8 Within feet.

Speaker 1 Then, two weeks later, September 23rd, the morning after the last confirmed sighting of Lori's son, JJ,

Speaker 1 Alex's phone pinged on Chad's property again.

Speaker 1 The FBI agents couldn't miss the connection.

Speaker 10 And once we discovered the human remains in burial site number one and burial site number two,

Speaker 10 that was where we stopped.

Speaker 1 Chad and Lori have both pleaded not guilty to all charges so far. They're being held in separate jails, each on a million dollars bond.

Speaker 1 They are prime suspects, but neither has been charged with murder.

Speaker 1 Remember the mental health experts who'd warned the court about Lori more than a decade ago? Learning what happened to Tyle and JJ

Speaker 1 was just too much.

Speaker 12 I actually became nauseous.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 12 It made me sick to my stomach. Tylie was my client that was found in a pet cemetery.

Speaker 1 It's just unbelievable.

Speaker 9 was something that could have been prevented, and I'm sorry that Tom and I weren't listened to,

Speaker 9 and that leaves two children

Speaker 11 dead.

Speaker 1 As for the others who've died after coming into contact with Lori,

Speaker 1 Lori's third husband, Joe Ryan, found in his apartment in 2018 after that tape surfaced of Lori saying she wanted to kill Joe.

Speaker 3 I was going to murder him.

Speaker 1 Phoenix police announced they would review the case, but that review led to the same conclusion. Joe Ryan died of natural causes.

Speaker 1 His sister Annie still feels like Joe's death may not be a coincidence, given all that happened after.

Speaker 5 But I feel like I'm looking at a 500-piece puzzle, and I have like maybe 270 pieces. There are still so many pieces to this that are missing.

Speaker 1 As for Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallo, Chandler, Arizona Police have told us there is still an open and active investigation into his death and that it will likely be referred to prosecutors within months.

Speaker 8 That's a tricky one because who were the witnesses to that death?

Speaker 8 Tylie, who's no longer here, JJ, who's no longer here, Lori, who has not been cooperating with police, and of course, Alex, who pulled the trigger, who's no longer here.

Speaker 1 And finally, there's Tammy. Chad's wife, who died so mysteriously in 2019.

Speaker 1 Her autopsy was finally completed a month ago, but the results have not been made public. Chad, in that last phone call with Melody, insisted Tammy's death was natural.

Speaker 1 Tammy had been getting weaker and sick, and I begged her to go to the doctor. It must be especially hard.
You wait where that wheel of justice sort of slowly grinds. How is that to deal with?

Speaker 4 Just like with grief, you know, you have good moments and you have sad moments. She was amazing.
We just want her to be remembered

Speaker 4 and not forgotten.

Speaker 1 Remembered and not forgotten. Tammy, Charles, Tylie, JJ.

Speaker 1 Innocent and unaware. They encountered two who imagined they flew close to heaven

Speaker 1 and instead were mere dust like the rest of us

Speaker 1 and left death in their wake.

Speaker 1 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9 8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 1 Good night.

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