What to Know About the Trial of Lori Vallow Daybell

Lori Vallow Daybell is on trial in Idaho this week in the deaths of three people, including two of her children, in a case that has drawn widespread attention for what prosecutors have described as her “doomsday” religious beliefs and for the questionable circumstances surrounding the deaths of other members of her family.

Ms. Vallow Daybell, 49, and her husband, Chad Daybell, 54, have been indicted by a grand jury, but the two will be tried separately. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, conspiracy and grand theft in connection with the deaths of Ms. Vallow Daybell’s children Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua, or J.J., Vallow, 7. The remains of Ms. Vallow Daybell’s children were found buried on Mr. Daybell’s property in 2020.

Mr. Daybell has also been charged with first-degree murder in the death of his former wife, Tammy Daybell. Mr. Daybell and Ms. Vallow Daybell each face one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in Tammy Daybell’s death.

Just two weeks before the start of the trial, a judge granted a request from Ms. Vallow Daybell’s lawyers to take the death penalty off the table. However, Mr. Daybell still faces the death penalty if convicted.

The case is the subject of a Lifetime movie, “Doomsday Mom: The Lori Vallow Story,” and a Netflix documentary series, “Sins of Our Mother.” Here’s what to know.

What happened to the children?

Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow were reported missing in November 2019 by J.J.’s grandparents, who had gown suspicious when they were unable to reach him by phone.

Officers with the Rexburg Police Department in Idaho attempted to conduct a welfare check and later executed search warrants at the apartment complex where Ms. Vallow Daybell and her husband lived. The authorities said the couple seemed unconcerned with the children’s whereabouts.

In February 2020, Ms. Vallow Daybell was arrested in Hawaii on a warrant issued by the authorities in Idaho, after, they said, she had not cooperated with the effort to find the missing children.

In June 2020, investigators found human remains buried on Mr. Daybell’s property in Idaho that were later identified as belonging to his wife’s missing children. He was arrested and charged with concealing evidence. Both Mr. Daybell and Ms. Vallow Daybell have been in custody since they were arrested.

At Ms. Vallow Daybell’s trial, Detective Ray Hermosillo of the Rexburg Police Department described photographs of the children’s remains. J.J. was wearing red pajamas, his bruised arms bound with duct tape. Tylee’s remains had been burned and packed into a bucket that was buried elsewhere on Mr. Daybell’s property, he said.

Ms. Vallow Daybell’s ‘doomsday’ beliefs have drawn attention to the case.

Prosecutors did not say how the children were killed, but the couple’s religious beliefs played a role, according to the indictment. They “did endorse and teach religious beliefs for the purpose of justifying” the deaths, the indictment said. Those beliefs drove interest in the case, and news headlines labeled Ms. Vallow Daybell the “Doomsday Mom.”

In divorce records obtained by the Phoenix television station Fox 10, Charles Vallow, one of Ms. Vallow Daybell’s former husbands, said she had told him that she believed she was “receiving spiritual revelations and visions to help her gather and prepare those chosen to live in the New Jerusalem after the Great War as prophesied in the Book of Revelations.”

Mr. Daybell has written several novels with recurring doomsday themes, and both he and Ms. Vallow Daybell have been linked to an entity called Preparing a People, which aims to ready people for the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to its website.

What happened to the couple’s former spouses?

In July 2019, Charles Vallow, the fourth of Ms. Vallow Daybell’s five husbands, was shot and killed in Arizona by her brother, Alexander Cox. She and Mr. Vallow were estranged at the time. Mr. Cox, who has since died, told the police that Mr. Vallow had hit him in the head with a baseball bat and that the shooting was in self-defense.

In a separate case, Ms. Vallow Daybell has been charged in Arizona with conspiring to murder Mr. Vallow.

Mr. Daybell’s previous wife, Tammy Daybell, was found dead in her Idaho home in October 2019. The authorities initially said that she appeared to have died of natural causes, but her body was exhumed that December after the authorities began to question the circumstances of her death and its potential connection to the disappearances of Ms. Vallow Daybell’s children.

Prosecutors said in court at the start of Ms. Vallow Daybell’s trial this week that an autopsy later determined that Tammy Daybell died of asphyxiation. Mr. Daybell had increased the amount of coverage in a life insurance policy for her in September 2019, a little more than a month before her death.

Ms. Vallow Daybell and Mr. Daybell married shortly after their spouses died.

The trial could last 10 weeks.

It has taken years for Ms. Vallow Daybell to stand trial because she was declared not competent and was required to undergo “restorative treatment.”

Prosecutors described Ms. Vallow Daybell as a negligent mother with extreme beliefs who was on a “religious mission” that was more important than caring for her children.

“The defendant and Chad used their self-proclaimed religious teachings to justify their actions to others — their actions from affair to murder,” a prosecutor, Lindsey Blake, said in court.

Friends of Ms. Vallow Daybell’s will testify that she had said the children and Tammy Daybell were “dark” and “possessed” by evil spirits before their deaths, according to prosecutors, who are expected to call dozens of witnesses.

In his opening statement, Jim Archibald, a lawyer for Ms. Vallow Daybell, asked the jury of 10 men and eight women to “focus on the actions of Lori, not on Chad Daybell or Alex Cox,” adding that she was with other people in her apartment when J.J. and Tylee were killed and that she was in Hawaii at the time of Tammy Daybell’s death.