“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” ― Joseph Conrad
The verdict
By the standards of the developed world, murder is common in America. In 2020, there were 26,031 in the US. Most are little noted. Some are notorious – notably school shootings and other massacres. And some seem incomprehensible. On Friday, a jury in Idaho determined Lori Vallow Daybell was involved in three of them. As CNN reports:
A jury has found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty on all counts of killing her two children and conspiring in the murder of her husband’s first wife.
Vallow Daybell, who pleaded not guilty, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of conspiracy in the 2019 deaths of her children 17-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow, as well as Tammy Daybell, the first wife of her husband Chad Daybell.
Causes
Maternal filicide — the deliberate killing of a child by its mother — is as incomprehensible as it is rare. Although, according to the Dept. of Justice, an average of 450 children are killed by a parent each year in the US, the majority are killed by the father. And when the mother is the murderer, the victims are more likely to be less than a year old (40% of victims) than any other age
According to a study published in World Psychiatry (2007), psychiatrists identify five types of maternal filicide.
- Altruistic filicide occurs when a mother believes death is in the child's best interest.
- Acutely psychotic filicide involves a delusional mother who may be experiencing command hallucinations and not appear to have any motive.
- Fatal maltreatment filicide occurs due to "cumulative child abuse, neglect, or Munchausen syndrome by proxy."
- Unwanted child filicide is when the mother believes her kid is a "hindrance."
- Spouse revenge filicide describes a mother who kills as revenge against the child's father. This is the rarest of the five motives.
To a layperson, Vallow falls into as many as three categories (1, 2, & 4). And may also have been motivated by greed, which the researchers did not include for some reason.
Background
Vallow was a mother to three children. The two youngest, Tylee Ashlyn Ryan (17) and Joshua Jaxon “J.J.” Vallow, originally from Chandler, Arizona, disappeared in September 2019. Their remains were found in June 2020, buried in shallow graves in Chad Daybell's backyard in Rexburg, Idaho. Daybell was Vallows’ lover at their time of death. And her fifth husband when the authorities dug up their bodies.
In November 2019, when the police asked Vallow and Daybell where the children were, they claimed that J.J. was staying with family friend Melanie Gibb in Arizona. Gibb denied it. This inconsistency was not the only suspicious event in Vallow’s life.
In July 2019, Vallow's brother, Alexander Cox, shot her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Cox claimed self-defense. Cox then died of a blood clot on December 12, 2019.
In October 2019, Brandon Boudreaux, the then-estranged husband of Lori's niece, Melani, was shot at in the driveway of his Gilbert, Arizona home. The shots came from a vehicle still registered to the deceased Charles Vallow.
In October 2019, Daybell's wife, Tammy Daybell, was attacked in her driveway by what she believed was someone shooting a defective paintball gun. Ten days later, on October 19, she died in her sleep. The coroner initially recorded the cause of death as “natural causes". The authorities did not perform an autopsy.
However, when Chad and Lori married two weeks after Tammy's death, law enforcement became suspicious and exhumed Tammy's corpse. The coroner determined that someone had asphyxiated her.
On June 9, 2020, police executed a search warrant at Daybell's home and discovered the remains of J.J. and Tylee. Chad was arrested later that day on charges of destruction or concealment of evidence. On May 25, 2021, the state charged Lori and Chad with the first-degree murders of Tylee, J.J., and Tammy.
Insanity
Vallow is a Mormon — but not mainstream. Daybell is also a Mormon, who in 2004 founded Spring Creek Book Company, which he used to self-publish his end times fiction and other religious books.
In 2015, Vallow became obsessed with Daybell's Standing in Holy Places series of books. In the fall of 2018, Lori and her friend Melanie Gibb met Chad at a "Preparing a People" event — where Mormons prepare for Jesus Christ’s Second Coming. Note: although the attendees at these events are all Mormons, the Church rejects the practice as too weird even for them.
According to Gibb, by the end of the weekend, Chad told Lori the two had been married in seven previous lifetimes. It was an effective pickup line, and the two soon began a private communication.
At a later event, Chad went full-on with the insanity. He claimed he had lived 31 different lives on various Earth-like planets. He referred to people as being on a scale from “light” to "dark." The "dark" individuals were from this Earth but were followers of Satan. The "light" were "followers of Jesus Christ". Chad referred to Lori as an "eternal being" who had lived 21 separate lives, with only five on Earth. Coincidentally, the same five that he had lived on this planet. Lori was hooked.
Vallow and Daybell joined the Church of the Firstborn, a fundamentalist Mormon doomsday cult. One of the cult’s beliefs was that some people became “zombies.” On March 24, 2020, an NBC News report showed that Chad and Lori had become convinced that Tylee and J.J. were "possessed" and had become zombies.
Vallow’s May 2021 indictment stated the couple “did endorse and espouse religious beliefs for the purpose of” justifying or encouraging the killings of the children and Tammy Daybell.
Money
Vallow and Daybell were motivated by more than cultism. One of the charges against Vallow was that she did not report her children missing so she could keep collecting their social security benefits — i.e. grand theft by deception. (Note: I can find no information on why they were getting SSI benefits. Although benefits are usually paid to kids with disabilities whose parents are indigent.)
[Update: DKer Mathy Kathy has shed light on the benefits issue: “JJ and Tylee were each receiving 'survivor' benefits after both their dads died. Daily Mail May 2021” — my thanks to MK]
Conclusion
In his summation to the jury, prosecutor Rob Wood said, "We told you this was about money, power, and sex. We talked about religion, but this was not about religion. This was about money, power, and sex."
I suppose there was some tactical reason to convince the jury it was not about religion — perhaps Wood wanted to ensure there was no "religious freedom” distraction. After all, this is Idaho. And the echoes of Ruby Ridge — a fatal clash between the Feds and the apocalyptic, fundamentalist Christian Weaver family reverberate.
However, once again religion, when taken to excess and abused, has been a significant factor in unspeakable behavior.
”The horror! The horror!”