Lori Vallow Daybell, the ‘Doomsday Mom’ who was convicted of murdering her children in Idaho, returned to court to face a jury again – this time in Arizona on a charge of conspiracy to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow.
Prosecutors said during the opening statements on Monday that the 51-year-old conspired to carry out the murder, so she could go forward with the marrying Chad Daybell, an Idaho writer who wrote religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
But Vallow Daybell, who represents herself at the new trial, broke tears as she gave her opening statements when she painted Charles as the aggressor in an incident that led to his death in which he chased her at one point with a bat.
“Wives who have insurance policies are not a crime. The collection of social security is not a crime. Self -defense is not a crime,” Vallow Daybell told the jury. “A family tragedy is not a crime – it’s a tragedy. ‘
Charles’s death was the first step in a greater plot of Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell to get rid of their lives of ‘obstacles’, which means their spouses and her children, according to the testimony of the SMS message presented during her 2023 trial for the murders of the first woman of Tyle Ryan and JJ, with the death of Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell.
Four months before he died, Charles Vallow of Vallow Daybell applied for divorce to divorce, saying that she had loved with an almost-death experiences and claimed that she lived many lives on other planets.
He claims that she threatened to destroy him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary evaluation of his wife’s mental health.
According to police, Charles was fatally shot by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, when Charles fetched his son at Vallow Daybell’s home in Chandler, a suburb in Phoenix. Vallow Daybell’s daughter, Tylee, told police she confronted Charles with a baseball bat after waking up by screaming in the house.
Tylee said she was trying to defend her mother, but according to police, Charles took away the bat. Cox told police he fired after Charles refused to drop the bat and came after him.
Cox told investigators that Vallow Daybell and the children left the house shortly before the shooting. Investigators say she went to fetch fast food for her son and that she bought flip-flops from a pharmacy before returning home.
Cox, who claimed to have acted in self -defense and was not arrested in Charles’s death, died five months later, who said medical investigators said a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.
During Vallow Daybell’s opening statements on Monday, she took the jury back to the night of Charles’ death.
She claimed that Charles struggled the baseball bat from Tylee while trying to defend her mother and that a battle between Charles and Cox led to Charles running to her with the bat behind her.
As she ran outside with her daughter, her brother Charles shot in an act of self -defense, Vallow Daybell claimed.
Prior to the opening of Vallow Daybell, prosecutor Treana Kay argued that telephone records, testimony and forensic evidence would show that Cox’s shooting of Charles was not self -defense.
“Lori Vallow wanted to be Lori Daybell, wife of Chad Daybell, and in July 2019 Lori Vallow wanted to keep the same lifestyle she had with Charles. And she could do it all if Charles died,” Kay said. “She could marry Chad Daybell and become Lori Daybell. She would get a life insurance policy of a million dollars. ‘
“Lori Vallow is the reason why Alex could shoot Charles,” she said. “Lori Vallow is the reason why Charles died.”
Vallow Daybell, who did not plead guilty, is already serving three life sentences in Idaho for the death of her children and killing Tammy Daybell.
After the death of Charles in 2019, she moved with her children to Idaho, which went missing in September the same year.
Meanwhile, in October 2019, Chad Daybell called 911 to report that his wife Tammy Daybell struggled a disease and died in her sleep. Her body was unearthed later, and an autopsy determined she died of suffocation.
Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell left the city a short time later and eventually showed up in Hawaii where they got married without the children. She was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 on a warrant from Idaho.
In June 2020, the bodies of the children were buried on Chad Daybell’s property.
A witness at the Idaho trial said that Vallow Daybell believes that evil spirits have taken over people in her life and turned them into ‘zombies’.
In 2024, Chad Daybell was sentenced to death in the three murders.
The hearing on the death of Charles Vallow will be the first of two criminal hearings in Arizona for Vallow Daybell.
She is scheduled to be heard again at the end of May on a charge of conspiracy to kill Brandon Boudreaux, the ex -man of Vallow Daybell’s cousin, Melani Pawlowski.
Someone in a Jeep fired a gun shot at Boudreaux in 2019 outside his home in a suburb in Phoenix and missed him, but hit his car. The Jeep corresponds to the description of one registered with Charles Vallow, who died almost three months before the shooting outside Boudreaux’s home.
Vallow Daybell pleaded not guilty. If convicted, his life imprisonment would be sentenced to life.
