Lori Vallow threatened to ‘cut’ up bestie when friendship turned sour

Lori Vallow’s former friend testified Tuesday in Vallow’s murder trial that the “cult mom” threatened to kill her after their friendship soured, according to local news.

Vallow and her husband, Chad Daybell, are facing trial for the 2019 murders of her two children, 7-year-old J.J. Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, and her husband’s first wife, Tammy Daybell. Vallow’s trial began last month after she demanded a speedy trial.

Lori’s former friend, Audrey Barattiero, said on the witness stand Tuesday that she decided to end her friendship with Vallow in October 2019 after she prayed about it.

“I asked her the question, ‘Is there anything weird going on that I don’t know about?’ And she said, ‘What do you mean?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know anything.’ I took her at her word because I’m a trusting person,” Barattiero testified, according to East Idaho News reporter Nate Eaton. 

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“As soon as I turned to go upstairs, she started laughing — like if you were laughing at someone.”

Barattiero added that Vallow told her she is “so naive and too trusting … like a child” who thinks “the world is full of unicorns and rainbows,” Eaton reported. 

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“Well, I’ve got news for you,” Barattiero recalled Vallow saying to her, according to Eaton. “Not everyone is a good person and not everyone can be so kind.”

Vallow then “threatened to kill” Barattiero, she testified. Vallow apparently told Barattiero she would cut her up but “wasn’t in the mental place to do it” and “would get herself in a place to do it,” Barattiero said, as Eaton reported.

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“There would be blood and bleach and something about trash bags. She would bury me in a place nobody would ever find me,” Barattiero added.

Vallow’s defense attorney, Jim Archibald, pushed back against Barattiero’s testimony, saying she never brought up those details in grand jury proceedings. Barattiero pushed back, saying she “did not make it up,” Eaton reported.

When investigators dug up J.J. and Tylee’s remains on Daybell’s rural Idaho property in June 2020 — nearly 10 months after the children went missing in September 2019 — they found J.J.’s body wrapped in tape with a plastic bag over his head and Tylee’s body dismembered and badly burned.

The Ada County coroner testified last month that J.J. died of asphyxiation by a plastic bag, and Tylee died of homicide by unknown means. It was the first time the public had heard how the children died since their bodies were found three years ago.

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Vallow and Daybell, who married in November 2019, quickly after their children’s disappearances and Tammy’s death, are also accused of stealing Tylee and J.J.’s Social Security benefits. 

The pair share apocalyptic religious beliefs and apparently believed they were destined to marry each other upon meeting at a religious convention discussing the end of the world.

They were indicted in late May 2021 on multiple counts each of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, grand theft by deception and first-degree murder related to the deaths of Tylee, J.J. and Tammy Daybell, officials announced at the time. Arizona officials in June 2021 also indicted Vallow in the July 2019 murder of her ex-husband, Charles Vallow.