Attorneys define complicated plot in trial of slain children’ mother

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho prosecutors have instructed motives, confirmed graphic photographs and described an advanced plot involving efforts to forged out evil spirits within the triple homicide trial of a lady accused within the deaths of her two children and a romantic rival.

On Tuesday, a detective who helped unearth the youngsters’s our bodies is anticipated to take the stand.

“The defendant used money, power and sex to get what she wanted,” Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake instructed jurors Monday throughout the first day of arguments. “It didn’t matter what it was.”

Lori Vallow Daybell and her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, are each charged with a number of counts of conspiracy, homicide and grand theft in reference to the deaths of Vallow Daybell’s two youngest youngsters: 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and massive sister Tylee Ryan, who was final seen a number of days earlier than her seventeenth birthday in 2019. Prosecutors additionally charged the couple in reference to the October 2019 dying of Chad Daybell’s late spouse, Tammy Daybell.

Both defendants have pleaded not responsible, however are being tried individually. Chad Daybell’s trial continues to be months away. Vallow Daybell faces as much as life in jail if convicted.

Vallow Daybell by no means reported her two youngest youngsters lacking, prosecutors mentioned. Instead, Rexburg police mentioned each she and Chad Daybell lied to investigators concerning the children’ whereabouts. The seek for the children lasted for months earlier than it got here to a tragic conclusion in June of 2020, their stays discovered buried in Chad Daybell’s japanese Idaho yard.

Tylee’s physique had been burned, Blake mentioned, and abandoning solely “a mass of bone and tissue” and a few DNA on a pickaxe and shovel. Duct tape had been wrapped round JJ’s fingers and head, his physique wrapped in trash baggage.

Tammy Daybell had died months earlier from what was initially reported as pure causes, purportedly dying her sleep in after coming down with an sickness. But authorities grew suspicious after they discovered Chad and Lori had married simply two weeks after Tammy’s dying. With the seek for the lacking children nonetheless underway, investigators had Tammy Daybell’s physique exhumed.

An post-mortem confirmed she died of asphyxiation attributable to another person, Blake mentioned.

As she spoke, she confirmed graphic photographs to the jury of shallow graves, the youngsters’s stays and Tammy Daybell’s physique.

All three of the victims had been killed as a result of they had been obstacles to Vallow Daybell’s romantic and monetary objectives, Blake instructed jurors.

“Remember, the defendant will remove any obstacle in her way to get what she wants, and she wanted Chad Daybell,” Blake mentioned.

Defense legal professional Jim Archibald introduced jurors with a far totally different image, describing Vallow Daybell as a “kind and loving mother to her children” who occurred to have a specific curiosity in faith and Biblical prophesies involving the tip of the world.

“Some people care less about Biblical prophesies, some people care a lot about it,” Archibald mentioned. “Thankfully in this country, we get to worship as we choose.”

Vallow Daybell is presumed harmless, Archibald reminded jurors, and mentioned the felony costs themselves — which accuse Vallow Daybell of both directing, encouraging, aiding or collaborating within the murders — present that prosecutors don’t actually know what occurred within the case.

“Did she kill, or did she assist, or did she encourage, or did she direct? They aren’t sure,” Archibald mentioned.

Archibald additionally mentioned Vallow Daybell’s non secular beliefs solely started to alter after she met Chad Daybell, a non secular writer whose fictional books targeted on the apocalypse and had been loosely based mostly on the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But Blake mentioned these beliefs veered towards the intense, with the couple saying individuals had been “dark” or “light,” telling mates and acquaintances that “dark” individuals had been taken over by evil spirits. They ultimately started instructing mates that when these evil spirits had been robust sufficient, the individual grew to become a “zombie,” and the one option to free that individual’s soul was by killing them.

Friends of Vallow Daybell will testify that she mentioned the youngsters and Tammy Daybell had been “dark” earlier than their deaths, Blake mentioned. At least one pal instructed police that Vallow Daybell referred to as each youngsters “zombies” earlier than they disappeared, based on police data.

“The common theme was the body has to be destroyed,” Blake mentioned. “The defendant and Chad used their self-proclaimed religious teachings to justify their actions to others — their actions from affair to murder.”

JJ Vallow’s grandmother, Kay Woodcock, was the primary witness to take the stand after opening arguments. She cried after Madison County prosecutor Rob Wood confirmed her a photograph of JJ.

Woodcock mentioned Vallow Daybell was as soon as a “doting mother,” however her opinion of the defendant modified after Charles Vallow filed for divorce in early 2019. After Charles Vallow died, once-regular cellphone calls and visits with JJ dropped off, she mentioned.

She solely had contact with JJ 3 times after his father died, Woodcock mentioned, briefly FaceTime video calls. The final name occurred the month earlier than JJ was final seen alive, she mentioned. It solely was about 35 seconds lengthy.

“He just said, ‘Hi Mama, hi Papa,’” Woodcock mentioned, referring to JJ’s nicknames for his grandparents. “’Gotta go, Mama. Gotta go, Papa. Bye!’”

Woodcock ultimately contacted authorities and requested them to do a welfare verify on JJ, prompting Rexburg Police to open a lacking individuals case in November 2019. During that interval, police say the couple lied concerning the youngsters’s whereabouts.

Prosecutors say the couple deliberate to make use of life insurance coverage cash from Tammy Daybell’s dying, and that Vallow Daybell saved accumulating and spending the youngsters’s social safety and survivor advantages after they died. Tylee’s father died after he and Vallow Daybell divorced years earlier. JJ’s father Charles Vallow — who Vallow Daybell was married to when she met Chad Daybell — was fatally shot by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox.

Vallow Daybell is charged in Arizona in reference to Charles Vallow’s dying, however but to enter a plea. Cox, who instructed police the capturing was in self-defense, died a number of months after the capturing and was by no means charged.

The couple had eradicated “any and every obstacle that was in their way of getting exactly what they wanted,” she mentioned.

It could not have been the primary try on Tammy Daybell’s life: Ten days earlier, she had referred to as police to report {that a} masked man approached her in her driveway and shot at her a few instances earlier than working away.

Later that night time, somebody overheard a cellphone name between Vallow Daybell, who was indignant, and one other individual, Blake mentioned.

“She made statements along the line of, ‘he can’t do anything right,’” the prosecutor instructed jurors.

Another witness testified that he was additionally the goal of a capturing in October 2019. Brandon Boudreaux was previously married to Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.

Pawlowski appeared as much as Vallow Daybell, Boudreaux mentioned, and the ladies started attending non secular conferences collectively. Pawlowski grew more and more non secular, he mentioned, fixated on the concept that the world was about to finish.

The two divorced in 2019. Boudreaux mentioned he was driving to his new rental residence when somebody parked in a Jeep Wrangler close to his driveway shot at him, the bullet shattering his automobile window. Boudreaux mentioned he acknowledged the Jeep as one which had belonged to Tylee.

Vallow Daybell has not been charged with the capturing try towards Boudreaux, however prosecutor Rachel Smith mentioned the shootings had been all a part of the identical plan to “cause the death of multiple people in her world.”