What happened to Tylee Ryan and J. J. Vallow? The kids’ mother, Lori Vallow, and her Husband, Chad Daybell, are charged for their murder.
Lori Vallow and husband Chad Daybell made headlines in 2019 after her children vanished and were never reported missing.
In May 2023, Vallow was found guilty of all counts. The couple were charged after a thorough investigation with murder of the kids as well as three other muders including her own brother.
Idaho mother Lori Vallow Daybell has been sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday, August 1, 2023, in the murders of her two youngest children and a romantic rival in a case that included bizarre claims that her son and daughter were zombies and that she was a goddess sent to usher in the Biblical apocalypse.
Read on for everything about how Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband Chad underwent these murder operations.
Who is Lori Vallow?
Lori Vallow Daybell (real name Lori Norene Cox, also known as Lori Ryan Daybell) is an American hairdresser who has been charged with the murder of her two children.
She was born on June 26, 1973, in Loma Linda, California.
Lori has been married for the fifth time with her first marriage being at the age of 19.
In 2001, she married her third husband with whom she had a daughter, Tylee, on September 24, 2002.
Lori married a fourth time in 2006 to Charles Vallow.
They adopted his grandnephew Joshua Jaxon, or JJ.
Lori’s children Tylee and JJ reportedly vanished in September 2019.
Two months later she married Chad in Hawaii – her fifth husband.
The hairdresser was then arrested in February 2020 after failing to produce proof of life for her missing kids to the Madison County Prosecutor’s Office in January.
The couple never reported the children missing and jetted off to Hawaii soon after investigators questioned them about the kids.
Lori’s family members have accused her of being part of a “doomsday cult” with her husband.
She’s also been connected to the mysterious deaths of three people, including her brother. All of her murders involved her fifth husband Chad Daybell.
Lori Vallow Daybell was charged with her fifth husband Chad Daybell. Where are they now?
Both Lori and Chad were incarcerated during their trial, which began on April 3, 2023.
Lori and her husband have both been charged with first-degree murder of her children.
Chad is also charged with the murder of his former wife, Tammy Daybell, 49, who died under “suspicious circumstances” in 2019.
He has since pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and is being held without bail while he awaits trial.
In September 2021, a judge ruled that Lori was still not competent to stand trial and will spend another 180 days in a state mental facility.
On October 8, 2022, Vallow’s case was suspended.
A judge ruled that it would resume once her competency could be determined.
On March 21, 2023, a judge ruled that Vallow would not face the death penalty.
The prosecution had motioned for the death penalty, claiming these murders were “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel” and Vallow “exhibited utter disregard for human life”.
But the defendant’s defense team countered by filing a motion to dismiss because of the heavy media coverage the case has garnered.
They argued it could ultimately prejudice a jury’s ruling.
Seventh District Judge Steven Boyce agreed at the hearing that the death penalty was still on the table for Daybell’s case.
Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to murder, conspiracy, and grand theft charges.
This comes after the bodies of Tylee, 16, and JJ, 7, were found at Chad’s Idaho home on June 9, 2020.
On May 5, 2023, Vallow was found guilty of murdering her children and will likely face a life imprisonment sentence.
Vallow appeared in court again on July 31, 2023, where she was sentenced to life in prison.
What happened to Lori’s children Tylee and JJ?
JJ and Tylee disappeared in September 2019 but weren’t reported missing until months later.
JJ was enrolled at Kennedy Elementary School on September 3, 2019, but was “unenrolled” nearly three weeks later after Vallow claimed she was homeschooling him.
Tylee was last seen in Yellowstone Park on September 8, 2019, on a family trip with her mom and uncle Alex Cox.
Lori initially told cops her children were staying with a family friend in Arizona when police conducted a welfare check at the family home in Rexburg on November 26.
Detectives later determined she lied and discovered that Daybell and Vallow “abruptly vacated their home” when police returned to question them the next day.
The couple reportedly told people Tylee was dead and claimed she had no other younger children, despite having an older son Colby.
In February 2020, unearthed surveillance footage appeared to show Lori dumping children’s items at a storage facility the year prior, around the time she and Daybell fled to Hawaii.
Authorities in Idaho say there’s no sign that JJ and Tylee ever made it to Hawaii.
The “charred remains” of Lori’s children were then found wrapped in plastic bags buried in a pet cemetery on her husband Chad’s property, a court heard.
Investigators made the grisly discovery at Chad’s home on June 9, 2020.
Lori Vallow’s surviving son, Colby Ryan, took the stand for the prosecution.
Colby Ryan, Lori Vallow’s surviving son, took the stand for the prosecution in her triple-murder trial.
NBC News shares that Ryan got emotional as the prosecutors showed him photos of his siblings J.J. and Tylee. He said that Tylee was receiving social security benefits due to her father’s passing in 2018, which allowed her to help him out financially. However, Ryan explained that once Tylee disappeared, the funds were sent to him from a different account with his mother’s name.
Prosecutors played an emotional recorded phone call with Ryan confronting his mother about his siblings’ deaths. The call was made after J.J. and Tylee’s remains were found.
During the call, Lori can be heard denying having an involvement in the murder of J.J. and Tylee. She told Ryan that he wasn’t there so he doesn’t know what happened. Additionally, Lori said that J.J. and Tylee are happy and that would become clear in the afterlife.
Lori Vallow’s story was told in the Netflix series ‘Sins of Our Mother.’
The public can learn more about the case and Lori’s various marriages in the Netflix docuseries Sins of Our Mother. In addition to Tylee and J.J. Vallow (who was the biological grandnephew of Vallow’s late fourth husband, Charles Vallow), Colby Ryan is Lori’s firstborn child. In the series, Colby goes into detail about what life with Vallow was really like.
Lori and her second husband, William Lagioia, welcomed Colby in 1996. Colby shared his story for the first time at length on the series, discussing his late siblings and how he learned about their disappearances and his mom’s relationship with Chad Daybell. Colby himself was dealing with legal matters of his own.
In August 2022, Colby was arrested in Mesa, Ariz., for two counts of sexual assault against an unnamed woman. The charges were dropped “without prejudice” the following month, which means that he can still be charged again in the future.
