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

On September 8, 2019, Lori, her brother Alex, Tylee, and JJ drove to Yellowstone National Park. Photos from that day would later be shown to the world, because authorities say it was the last time anyone saw Tylee Ryan alive. She was two weeks from her 17th birthday. Alex Cox’s phone showed the group returning to Rexburg that evening.

That same day, back home in Salem, Idaho, Chad Daybell signed an application with Tammy to increase her life insurance to the maximum the policy allowed.

September 9: The Raccoon Text

Investigators later rebuilt the next day minute by minute from cell phone records. According to a police affidavit, Alex Cox’s phone was at Lori’s apartment between 2:42 and 3:37 a.m. on September 9, which the affidavit called “the only time in September he appears to go over to Lori’s between midnight and 6 a.m.” Later that morning, his phone was located at Chad Daybell’s property in Salem.

At 11:53 a.m., Chad sent Tammy a text. He said he had shot a raccoon and buried it “in our pet cemetery,” adding, “I got close enough that one shot did the trick.” A detective later told the court the message was suspicious, because raccoons are usually nocturnal.

Prosecutors believe Tylee was killed on or around September 9, 2019. Her remains would eventually be found in that pet cemetery area of Chad’s property.

JJ’s Last Days

JJ kept going to school for a couple more weeks. Melanie Gibb and her boyfriend, David Warwick, were visiting Lori in Rexburg in late September. Gibb testified that she last saw JJ on the night of September 22, when Alex Cox took him upstairs in Lori’s apartment. Warwick said he saw Alex carrying the boy. The next morning, according to Warwick, Lori said JJ had been “being a zombie” and that Alex had to take him away.

Gibb told police that Lori had begun calling JJ a “zombie,” which in the group’s beliefs meant his spirit had left his body. Gibb said she also heard Lori call Tylee a “zombie,” and that Tylee answered, “not me, mom.” According to Gibb, Chad and Lori said their mission was to “rid the world of” zombies.

On September 23, JJ’s first day absent from school, Alex Cox’s phone was again located at Chad’s property, this time behind the house near a pond, for about 17 minutes in the morning. The indictment says that on that day, Alex “did take possession” of JJ. JJ’s remains would later be found buried in that same area by the pond.

The day after that, Lori texted that JJ’s grandparents had taken him and that he “won’t be back until probably the end of October.” It wasn’t true. An investigator testified there was no sign Kay and Larry Woodcock had ever come to Rexburg. Lori told JJ’s school she would homeschool him.

Zulema Pastenes later testified about what Chad had predicted. “Chad said that J.J. was going to die young, that he was probably going to die soon,” she said, and that “he was going to come right back to earth as Colby’s son.” When Pastenes asked Lori where Tylee was, she said Lori told her Tylee “had to be free,” then put her hand to her face and said, “don’t ask.”

On October 1, Lori rented a storage unit in Rexburg. When police searched it weeks later, they found JJ’s blanket, his backpack, and his toys.

October 2: A Shot in Gilbert

The next target, prosecutors said, was in Arizona. Brandon Boudreaux was the ex-husband of Lori’s niece Melani. At about 9:14 a.m. on October 2, 2019, he pulled into the driveway of his home in Gilbert, Arizona, and noticed a Jeep Wrangler parked nearby. Then he saw the muzzle of a rifle through its open back window.

“I just immediately thought someone’s shooting at me,” he later testified. “So I just accelerated forward.” A single shot hit the driver’s-side door frame of his Tesla. He wasn’t hurt.

The Jeep was registered to the late Charles Vallow. DNA evidence put Alex Cox inside it, and investigators found that Alex and Chad had exchanged calls and messages on burner phones that morning. That evening, back in Idaho, Lori searched online for “man shot in gilbert az.” The same day, she bought a wedding ring on Amazon.

October 9: The Masked Man

A week later, the danger reached Chad’s own home. On October 9, 2019, Tammy Daybell reported that a man in a ski mask shot at her several times with a paintball gun as she unloaded her car in the driveway. He ran off when she yelled for Chad. In a social media post, she wrote that she had “no idea what his motive was, and he never spoke.” A Fremont County deputy investigated but found nothing.

Court documents later indicated that the masked man was Alex Cox, trying to kill her. Zulema Pastenes testified that she was with Lori that day during a casting session when Lori took a phone call and said: “that idiot can’t do anything right on his own.”

In a text on October 5, just days before, Chad had written to Lori: “Tammy is in Limbo and level 3 demonic entity named Viola is in her body.”

That same month, a former friend of Lori’s, Audrey Barattiero, said Lori threatened her too. At Lori’s trial, Barattiero testified that Lori said “she would cut me up and wasn’t in the mental place to do it but would get herself in a place to do it,” that “There would be blood and bleach and something about trash bags,” and that “She would bury me in a place nobody would ever find me.” The defense challenged her account, and Barattiero responded: “I did not make it up.”

October 19: Tammy Daybell Dies

On the night of October 18, 2019, Alex Cox’s phone was located at a church near the Daybell home around 10 p.m. Early the next morning, October 19, Chad called 911 and said Tammy had died in her sleep.

“My dear wife Tammy passed away in her sleep early Saturday, October 19,” Chad wrote in his newsletter. The local coroner ruled her death natural, and no autopsy was performed. At Chad’s trial, his daughter Emma testified that it was she, not Chad, who objected to an autopsy. Tammy was buried on October 22 at Evergreen Cemetery in Springville, Utah. Chad collected about $430,000 in life insurance.

Months later, after Tammy’s body was exhumed, Dr. Erik Christensen, a former Utah chief medical examiner, found that she had died of asphyxia, and he ruled her death a homicide. A second pathologist testified that bruises on her arms and chest were “acute,” meaning they happened close to the time of death, and could indicate that one or two people were involved.

A Wedding on the Beach

Just 17 days after Tammy’s death, on November 5, 2019, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow married on a beach in Kauai, Hawaii. Neither family was there. Kay Woodcock later testified that she had gone into the browsing history of Lori’s Amazon account and seen what Lori had been shopping for: “I got into the browsing history of the Amazon account and I saw that there was browsing for a beach wedding dress.”

The newlyweds returned to Idaho. Tylee had been missing for about two months and JJ for about six weeks, and outside the inner circle almost no one knew. That was about to change.