BOISE, Idaho (CN) — After last week saw the testimony of former friends and family members of Lori Vallow, the trial of the Idaho mom accused of killing her two youngest children and her husband's last wife continued Monday with Rexburg Police Detective David Stubbs returning to the stand to finish detailing the searches police carried out in the early days of their investigation.
Stubbs testified before Judge Steven Boyce that local police searched two apartments connected to Vallow, one that had Lori’s name on it which she was not living in, and another where she actually lived but that was listed under her brother’s name, Alex Cox.
Stubbs said these searches and others allowed police to recover cell phones connected to the case, either through Vallow herself, her husband Chad Daybell or her brother. Police acquired nearly two dozen electronic search warrants in their search for the children, according to the detective.
He said police petitioned the phone companies to perform a live “tap and trace” of the numbers associated with Vallow, Cox and Tylee Ryan, Vallow's 17-year-old daughter who Vallow is accused of murdering along with her 7-year-old adopted son Joshua "JJ" Vallow, and her husband’s former wife Tammy Daybell. She has been on trial for their murders since April 10.
The trace took them to Kauai, Hawaii where they found Lori and 10 devices in her rental car, including burner phones. All were seized by police. A notebook was also recovered with an entire page of new email addresses and phone numbers for law enforcement to track down.
Stubbs said that during their data hunt they found searches for the definition of “possessed” and “how to remove the rear seat of my Jeep Rangler.” One of the accounts linked to Vallow was also looking at wedding dresses the same day as the funeral for Daybell’s late wife.
During cross-examination, Vallow’s defense attorney John Thomas appeared to take issue with the way that burner phones were being characterized. Stubbs had testified that burner phones were mostly used by drug traffickers and people trying to hide something, but Thomas asked the detective if burner phones were used in normal everyday life by some people, which the detective conceded.
Defense attorneys finished their cross-examination of Stubbs by asking if police found anything more blatantly damming in their data dives.
“Based on anything you’ve seen, is there anything in there where Lori had texted or emailed, or any type of data that says anything about wanting to kill her children?” Thomas asked. Stubbs said no and left the stand shortly after.
Nicole Heidman, who works for the FBI, was next to testify. Heidman said she was brought in to look at some Google search data on accounts linked to Vallow and the case, such as Daybell’s Gmail account.
A printed summary of the search data Heidman was tasked with combing through was entered as evidence and shown to the jury. From Daybell’s account there were histories for wedding jewelry, questions over “when you surprise someone with accusations” and searches to see if Daybell’s astrological sign was compatible with those of Vallow’s and his late wife.
Search data from Lori’s account was shown to include looking at life insurance plans for children, how to sell service dogs — which JJ had — and more wedding items.
The final witness of the day was Nick Ballance, a special agent with the FBI who specializes in using data from cell towers to find devices and their owners. Ballance spoke about the different cell towers around Rexburg used by law enforcement to create a map on the location of the devices most important to their investigation. This mainly focused around Vallow’s apartment and Daybell’s house, where the charred remains of the children were ultimately found buried near a burn pit.
Prosecutors had just begun to ask Ballance for more specifics of the GPS search that led investigators to the bodies of JJ and Tylee when the judge excused the court for the rest of the day. Ballance will return to the stand Tuesday morning.
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