‘Doomsday Mom’ Lori Daybell on trial in murder of ex-husband

PHOENIX (CN) — Lori Vallow Daybell, the “Doomsday Mom” convicted in Idaho in the murder of her two children, whom she said were turned to zombies, will defend herself Monday morning in Arizona state court against another murder charge relating to her ex-husband Charles Vallow.

The 2019 shooting of Charles Vallow in Chandler, Arizona, is just a thread in a web of murders surrounding Vallow Daybell and her husband Chad Daybell, a Mormon author turned cult leader who taught of reincarnation, the end of the world, dark spirits and zombies.

Though prosecutors believe Charles Vallow was shot by Vallow Daybell’s brother Alex Cox, who died before he could be prosecuted, they accuse Vallow Daybell of orchestrating the murder. She is charged with conspiracy, which carries a punishment of up to life in prison.

In a Phoenix courthouse, Maricopa County Judge Justin Beresky swore 16 jurors in Tuesday afternoon. Vallow Daybell, representing herself, was uncharacteristically mild-mannered as she questioned potential jurors.

A day prior, she was high-strung and at times vitriolic with Beresky as she argued miscellaneous motions. The state challenged nearly every witness on her list for late disclosure, saying most haven’t been served and none deposed by the prosecution.

“The state is claiming trial by ambush. They’ve interviewed every single person on this list,” Vallow Daybell said Monday afternoon, referring mainly to past police interviews. She accused the state of prosecutorial misconduct and taking advantage of her lack of legal savvy.

“If you want your speedy trial, guess what, you’re not gonna get any witnesses, good luck!” she said then.

Beresky reminded the defendant that her former counsel wanted more time before trial for that very reason, but she fired them because she wanted to move more quickly.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Beresky said.

Vallow Daybell said she’s doing the best she can to communicate with her investigator and her paralegal while incarcerated.

“I can’t represent myself because of that fact?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Beresky said. “I said sometimes there are reasons not to go to trial as fast as you want.”

The two later bickered over her motion to preclude her communications with her appeal attorney, which she believed at the time to be confidential. Beresky told her that because her attorney didn’t use the jail messaging program correctly, the communications were never properly sealed.

“How is he not using it correctly?” Vallow Daybell asked.

“I don’t know how else to explain it to you. I’ve told you five times now,” Beresky said.

Central to the case are Vallow Daybell’s beliefs that she is a deity who can communicate with souls on the other side. Those beliefs stem from her relationship with Chad Daybell, whose books about doomsday and near death experiences, radicalized her religious beliefs before they met and fell in love in 2018.

Breaking from the traditional teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which eventually excommunicated him and his followers, Chad Daybell, in the “Church of the First Born,” taught that he had lived 31 previous lives on different planets, and five of his lives crossed paths with Vallow Daybell’s past lives on earth. He said the world would end on July 22, 2020, and that he and Vallow Daybell were deities chosen to lead the 144,000 survivors and true followers of Jesus Christ.

Most consequential, he taught that humans can be possessed by dark spirits, which eventually turn the body into a zombie. The only way to free the person’s soul from the dark spirit, he would say, is by killing the zombie.

Charles Vallow reported to Chandler police in February 2019 that Vallow Daybell threatened his life, and wrote in a divorce filing that she told him he was possessed by a dark spirit named Ned Schneider and that she would murder him if he got in the way.

Charles Vallow learned of his wife’s affair with Chad Daybell in June, emailed Chad Daybell’s wife about it, and was killed a month later. Alex Cox told police he shot Charles Vallow in self defense after being struck with a baseball bat.

Vallow Daybell moved with her children, 7-year-old Joshua and 16-year-old Tylee, to Rexburg, Idaho, to live with Chad Daybell in August 2019. Joshua and Tylee went missing a month later, and in October, Chad Daybell’s wife Tammy Daybell was found dead. The lovers married in Hawaii in November 2019 but were arrested in 2020 when Rexburg police found Joshua’s and Tylee’s bodies in Chad Daybell’s backyard.

In their respective murder trials in Idaho, the couple blamed each other for manipulating them into their radical beliefs. Prosecutors said the religious angle was a sham, covering up their intentions to eliminate threats to their marriage and collect life insurance and social security payouts in the process.

Both were convicted in all three murders. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death, but Vallow Daybell received life in prison and was later extradited to the Maricopa County jail to face two more murder charges.

She will give her opening statement in Charles Vallow’s murder trial on Monday at 10:30 a.m. The trial is expected to last six weeks, and Vallow Daybell says she likely won’t testify.

Following a jury verdict, she will face trial a third time over the attempted murder of Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece. Like Charles Vallow, Boudreaux told police that he feared for the safety of the Vallow family.

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