Lori Vallow Daybell Hearing in Madison County

Lori Norene Vallow, 47, (aka Lori Daybell) is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing to begin at 10:30 a.m. MST/12:30 p.m. EST. She is the woman charged in two Idaho counties for allegedly helping to cover up the deaths of her children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17. This is the next step in a case with a convoluted, bizarre backstory. You can watch it in the player above.

This particular hearing concerns the charges out of Madison County. It is there that she is accused of lying to police investigating the disappearances of the kids, and of asking friend Melanie Gibb to lie about the whereabouts of JJ. She also snubbed a well-publicized court order to turn over the kids. At the time, authorities proceeded as if the children were alive, but desertion charges against Lori Vallow tragically became moot with the discovery in June 2020 of Tylee and JJ’s remains in the Fremont County backyard of Lori Vallow’s newest and fifth husband Chad Daybell, 52.

Vallow had allegedly referred to her children as “zombies” around the time they went missing.

Her late brother Alex Cox–who shot and killed her fourth husband Charles Vallow in July 2019 when the family lived in Arizona–looms large over the case. Investigators cite witness statements who claimed to see him carry JJ (apparently asleep) on September 22, 2019. Cox was also there when Tylee was last accounted for at a family trip to Yellowstone National Park on September 8, 2019. Investigators noted that Cox’s phone was placed at locations where the children’s bodies were found. Quoted from an affidavit:

The first gravesite matched two GPS pings from Cox’s phone on September 23, 2019, the day Joshua would’ve been last seen.

The area of the second gravesite matched several GPS pings from Cox’s phone on September 9, 2019, the day after Tylee was last seen.

As shown in court documents and police body cam footage, Charles Vallow had a fractured relationship with Lori Vallow, even telling police on January 31, 2019, that she had threatened to kill him.

“She’s lost her mind,” he said. “I don’t know how else to say it. We’re LDS [Latter-day Saints]. She thinks she’s a resurrected being and a god, and member of the 144,000.” She asserted that Jesus was “coming next year,” according to his account.

Cox had not been charged in Charles Vallow’s death when he himself passed away from what Arizona medical examiners described as a blood clot in December 2019.

No one has been prosecuted for the deaths of the children. Vallow is charged in Madison County with resisting and/or obstructing an officer, solicitation, and contempt. She has been fighting the case, and the trial is set for January 25. Vallow is also charged with two counts of conspiracy in Fremont County in connection to hiding the bodies. Co-defendant Chad Daybell faces two counts of destruction, alteration, and concealment of evidence, and two counts of conspiracy in connection to this.

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