Idaho mom sentenced in deaths of 2 children and her romantic rival
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho mother Lori Vallow Daybell has been sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday in the murders of her two youngest children and a woman she saw as a romantic rival in a case that included bizarre claims that her son and daughter were zombies and that she was a goddess tasked with ushering in an apocalypse.
Vallow Daybell, 50, was found guilty in May of killing her two youngest children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, as well as conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell, her fifth husband’s previous wife. Vallow Daybell will serve three life sentences one after the other, the judge said.
The husband, Chad Daybell, is awaiting trial on the same murder charges. Vallow Daybell also faces two other cases in Arizona — one on a charge of conspiring with her brother to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and one of conspiring to kill her niece’s ex-husband. Charles Vallow was shot and killed in 2019, but her niece’s ex survived an attempt later that year. Vallow Daybell has not yet entered a plea on the Arizona charges.
At the Fremont County Courthouse in St Anthony, Idaho, Judge Steven W Boyce said the search for the missing children, the discovery of their bodies and the evidence photos shown in court left law enforcement and jurors traumatized, and he would never be able to get images of the slain children out of his head.
A parent killing their own children “is the most shocking thing really that I can imagine,” Boyce said.
Vallow Daybell justified the murders by “going down a bizarre religious rabbit hole, and clearly you are still down there,” the judge said.
“I don’t think to this day you have any remorse for the effort and heartache you caused,” he said.
Boyce heard testimony from several representatives of the victims, including Vallow Daybell’s only surviving son, Colby Ryan.
“Tylee will never have the opportunity to become a mother, wife or have the career she was destined to have. JJ will never be able to grow and spread his light with the world the way he did,” Ryan wrote in a statement read by prosecuting attorney Rob Wood. “My siblings and father deserve so much more than this. I want them to be remembered for who they were, not just a spectacle.”
JJ’s grandmother Kay Woodcock, who first raised the alarm about the missing children in 2019, told the judge that it has been 1,536 days since she was last able to hug and kiss her grandson.
JJ was a preemie and had autism, and his biological parents weren’t able to care for him so he was adopted by Woodcock’s brother Charles and Lori Vallow.
Vallow Daybell appeared stoic through most of the testimony, but wiped her eyes when Woodcock talked about how confident she had been that Vallow Daybell would be a good mom.
Judge Boyce also heard from Vallow Daybell before handing down the sentence. She quoted Bible verses about how people should not judge each other.
“I mourn with all of you who mourn my children and Tammy,” Vallow Daybell said, crying and calling Tammy Daybell her “eternal friend.”
“Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case,” she said. “Accidental deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal side effects from medication happen.”
She also claimed that she regularly is visited by the spirits of the three victims, and that the children’s spirits had told her to “stop worrying” and that she “didn’t do anything wrong.”