On a sunny January afternoon in 2020, Lori Vallow Daybell lounged poolside in a bikini at a Kauai resort, flipping through papers handed to her by police. The court order demanded she produce her missing children, 7-year-old JJ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, within five days. She glanced up, stayed calm, and never brought them back. Both kids had already been dead for months, their remains later dug up from her new husband’s Idaho property.
The bodycam footage, released years later, captures the chilling moment: Vallow Daybell and husband Chad Daybell in swimwear, reading the order amid the splash of the pool. She barely reacts. Prosecutors later argued this was pure calculation, a mother who had already discarded her children as obstacles in a twisted religious fantasy.
The Cult Beliefs That Turned A Mother Into A Monster
Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell, a self-published author of doomsday novels, subscribed to extreme apocalyptic ideas. They claimed dark spirits could possess people, turning them into “zombies” who had to be eliminated so the pure could survive the end times. Lori positioned herself as a chosen goddess meant to lead the survivors. Prosecutors said money also played a role, Social Security benefits for the kids and life insurance policies.
The body count mounted fast. In July 2019, her previous husband Charles Vallow was shot dead by her brother Alex Cox, who claimed self-defense. That October, Chad’s wife Tammy Daybell died under suspicious circumstances; an exhumation later showed asphyxiation. Within weeks, Lori and Chad married in Hawaii. Her children vanished around the same time. When police asked about JJ in November 2019, she claimed he was at the movies watching Frozen 2 or visiting friends in Arizona. Tylee was supposedly at BYU-Idaho. Neither story checked out. The apartment emptied after the visit.
Bodies Unearthed In The Backyard
By June 2020, investigators were digging on Chad Daybell’s rural Idaho property. They found the children’s remains buried there — one near a pond, the other in an area described as a pet cemetery. The discoveries confirmed what relatives had feared for months. Lori was arrested in Hawaii on a desertion warrant in February 2020; the murder charges came later.
The Trial And The Life Sentence
In May 2023, an Idaho jury convicted Vallow Daybell of first-degree murder in the deaths of both children, conspiracy to commit those murders, conspiracy in Tammy Daybell’s death, and grand theft. She was sentenced in July 2023 to multiple consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Chad Daybell was tried separately, convicted in 2024, and sentenced to death. In 2025, Lori faced additional trials in Arizona, where she represented herself and was convicted of conspiracy to murder Charles Vallow and conspiracy in the attempted murder of her niece’s ex-husband Brandon Boudreaux (who survived). She received two more life sentences there.
During sentencing in Idaho, she maintained her innocence in her own way, telling the court that Jesus Christ knew no one had been murdered.
The Appeal: She Wants A New Trial — And Risks The Death Penalty
More than three years after the Idaho convictions, Vallow Daybell is fighting them. On November 2, 2026, the Idaho Supreme Court heard oral arguments in her appeal. Her lawyers argue she was denied her Sixth Amendment right to the counsel of her choice when retained attorney Mark Means was disqualified over a conflict of interest (he had also represented Chad), that her right to a speedy trial was violated by delays, and that competency issues and other evidence were mishandled. She did not appear in person. The justices took the case under advisement; no ruling has been issued yet.
Her appellate team acknowledges that a successful appeal and new trial could reopen the possibility of the death penalty. She is proceeding anyway.
Who Should Have Stopped Her First?
The Hawaii poolside video remains one of the most haunting images from the case: a mother in a bikini, calmly reviewing a court order for children she had already lost, while the bodies waited in the Idaho dirt. Family members, police inquiries that were brushed off with lies, a brother’s shooting of her husband, and Tammy Daybell’s death all came before the full horror emerged. The case still raises the same question that has followed it for years, how many warning signs were ignored before two children ended up buried in a backyard.
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