The Doomsday Mom: The Complete Story of Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell

Chad Guy Daybell grew up in Springville, Utah, a small city south of Provo. By most accounts, nothing about him stood out. He managed his high school basketball team and later studied journalism at Brigham Young University. Scott Mitchell, a former classmate who went on to play quarterback in the NFL, summed him up for the Deseret News in three words: “He was invisible.”

On March 9, 1990, Chad married Tamara “Tammy” Douglas in the Manti Utah Temple. Tammy was born in Pasadena, California, and moved to Springville at 13. She met Chad at BYU. Together they had five children: Garth, Emma, Seth, Leah, and Mark.

Chad worked a string of jobs. He dug graves at the Springville cemetery as a student and went back to work there in the late 1990s. He was a copy editor at the Ogden Standard-Examiner and later managing editor at a Utah publisher, Cedar Fort. In 2004, he and Tammy founded their own small publishing house, Spring Creek Book Company. Tammy served as its chief financial officer.

The Author Who Claimed to See the Future

Chad’s real passion was writing. He published One Foot in the Grave in 2001, and in 2007 he released the first book in his Standing in Holy Places series, novels about the last days before the Second Coming. Other titles included The Great Gathering, Days of Fury, and Escape to Zion.

Chad claimed to have had near-death experiences, one at 17 and another in his early 20s, and he presented his books as more than fiction. BYU folklorist Christopher Blythe told the Deseret News that Chad “revealed that his novels were based on events he had seen in his own visions.” He built a small but devoted following among readers interested in end-times prophecy, and he spoke at events and on podcasts in that world.

In 2015, Spring Creek was incorporated in Idaho, and the Daybell family moved to a rural home in Salem, Idaho, a small community outside Rexburg. Tammy worked as an assistant school librarian. To neighbors, they looked like an ordinary family.

The Meeting in St. George

In October 2018, Lori Vallow attended a class taught by Melanie Gibb at a church building in Gilbert, Arizona, and the two women quickly became close. A few weeks later, they traveled together to a conference in St. George, Utah, organized by a group called Preparing a People. One of the speakers was Chad Daybell.

Gibb later testified that she couldn’t remember whether she personally introduced Chad and Lori, but she remembered what she saw. “They seemed to be attracted to each other; that caught my attention,” she said. Zulema Pastenes, another woman in the group, testified that Lori was “very flirtatious after meeting Chad at a conference.”

The connection moved fast. Chad told Gibb that he and Lori had been married in previous lives. Pastenes later testified that Chad told her “They had been married to each other seven times before in other lives.” In their private messages, Chad and Lori gave each other new names, “James” and “Elena.” Lori believed that in a past life she had been married to the apostle James, and that James was Chad.

Nate Eaton, the EastIdahoNews.com reporter who covered the case from start to finish, described their bond to NBC’s Dateline: “This was like an instant fatal attraction.” Lori kept a separate phone just for Chad, Gibb testified, and told her they were intimate. When the couple were later indicted, prosecutors said the conspiracy began around October 26, 2018, just weeks after they met.

Late that year, Chad and Lori recorded a podcast episode together for Preparing a People called “Time to Warrior Up,” alongside Gibb and Jason Mow. The episode was later taken down.

Light, Dark, and “Zombies”

The beliefs Chad and Lori shared with their small circle went far beyond anything taught by their church. According to Gibb’s interviews and testimony, the couple believed they were leaders of the 144,000, a group mentioned in the Book of Revelation, who would prepare the world for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Lori believed the Second Coming would happen in July 2020.

Central to their thinking was a scale of “light” and “dark.” Chad claimed he could rate people, and he kept a chart listing people, their past-life names, and how many lives they had lived. Gibb testified that people’s places on the scale were tied to contracts they’d made before coming to Earth. A person who fell too far toward dark could be taken over by an evil spirit. In the group’s language, that person became a “zombie,” someone whose own spirit had left and whose body was now possessed.

The group also performed what they called “castings,” prayers meant to drive evil spirits out of a person. Gibb testified that a successful casting meant either a new spirit entered the person or the person died. She said she was present for castings involving Charles Vallow, Tammy Daybell, and Brandon Boudreaux.

Charles Becomes “Dark”

The first person singled out was Lori’s own husband. At Chad’s 2024 trial, prosecutors asked Gibb when Lori began talking about people becoming dark. “I would say sometime between January and February of 2019,” she answered. Asked who the first person was, she said: “Yes. It was Charles Vallow.” And asked where Lori got that idea: “Yes, she received it from Chad.”

Lori came to believe the real Charles was gone and that his body had been taken over by a spirit named Ned Schneider. Some court filings spell the name “Nick.” A police affidavit, quoted by the Post Register, said “Charles talked about how Lori had told him that he was possessed by a dark spirit by the name of Ned Schneider” and that “Lori would even refer to Charles in conversation and documentation by the name of Ned.”

In late January 2019, Charles told his attorney about two disturbing phone calls. According to the filing, on January 29, Lori told him she was “a God assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000” at Christ’s Second Coming, which she believed would happen in July 2020, and that “if Father got in her way of her mission she would murder him.” (“Father” referred to Charles.) The next day, while he was traveling in Houston, she called him Nick Schneider and said “Nick was Father’s real name because Nick had killed Father and taken his identity.” She said she “would kill him upon his return home and had an angel there to help her dispose of the body.”

The filing listed other claims Lori had made: that “she is sealed [eternally married] to the ancient Book of Mormon prophet Moroni,” that “she has lived numerous lives on numerous planets prior to this current life,” and that she was “a translated being who cannot taste death sent by God to lead the 144,000 into the Millennium.”

“She’s Lost Her Mind”

On January 31, 2019, Charles flew home from Houston and found his truck gone from the airport. When he got home, he was locked out. Gilbert police body camera video, released after the children disappeared, shows him pleading with officers for help. He had paperwork asking for a mental health evaluation of his wife.

He told officers, “She lost her reality,” and worried about what she might do with the children: “I don’t know what she’s going to do with them. Flee with them. Hurt them.” He also explained the religious beliefs behind it: “We’re LDS. She thinks she’s a resurrected being and a god and a member of the 144,000.” And he described what Lori had told him: “You’re not Charles. I don’t know who you are or what you did with Charles, but I can murder you now with my powers.”

Even then, he couldn’t hide how much he loved her. “I love her to death. This is killing me, officer,” he said.

Police treated it as a civil, non-criminal matter. Later that day, Lori went to the Gilbert police station with Tylee and told officers that Charles had cheated on her and taken her purse. She was evaluated at a local crisis facility and released.

The Divorce Filing and the Insurance Policy

In February 2019, Charles filed for divorce and asked for sole custody of JJ. His filing said Lori had moved $35,000 out of their business account, first $10,000 and then $25,000. Around the same time, Lori left for Hawaii for nearly two months. Kay Woodcock later testified that Lori “left her husband and her child for 58 days.” Larry Woodcock described it to KPLC: she left him “for 60 days, doesn’t tell you where she’s at, what she’s doing, drains your bank account.”

In early 2019, Charles also took a step that would matter a great deal later. He removed Lori as the beneficiary of his $1 million life insurance policy and named his sister Kay instead.

Despite everything, Charles withdrew the divorce petition, saying he wanted to save the marriage. But by mid-2019 the couple was living apart, and Lori was renting a house in Chandler, Arizona, where her brother Alex was staying with her and the kids. On June 29, 2019, Charles sent an email to a woman he had never met, Tammy Daybell, saying he had “some disturbing information regarding your husband and my wife.”

Less than two weeks later, Charles Vallow was dead.