What Did Lori Vallow Daybell Do? Inside Her Life Before, During and After the 'Doomsday' Murder of Her 2 Children

Lori Vallow Daybell is speaking out in one of her first interviews since being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in July 2023.

The Idaho mother was found guilty of murdering her two children, Joshua Jaxon "J.J." Vallow and Tylee Ryan, two months earlier, in addition to conspiring to murder husband Chad Daybell's first wife, Tammy Daybell.

Tammy's October 2019 death was initially deemed to be from natural causes, and no autopsy was performed. Within weeks, Lori and Chad got married.

Around the same time, J.J.'s grandparents alerted authorities that neither of the children had been seen since September 2019. When the police arrived at Chad and Lori's home, they found the property had been "abruptly" vacated.

In February 2020, Lori and Chad, who had fled to Kauai, Hawaii, were arrested for failing to meet a court order to produce the children. Four months later, J.J. and Tylee's remains were found buried on Chad's property, leading the couple to be indicted on charges of murder. Tammy's body was then exhumed, and an autopsy was performed, which concluded she died from asphyxiation with her cause of death being amended to homicide.

Lori has since appealed her conviction, and in May 2024, Chad was sentenced to death for murdering J.J., Tylee and Tammy. Now, Lori is opening up in a March 2025 interview with Dateline's Keith Morrison.

“I have seen things in the future that Jesus showed me when I was in heaven,” she told Morrison of why she wholeheartedly believes she and Chad will be exonerated. “And we were not in jail, and we were not in prison, and they were still in the future, from now.”

Here is everything to know about Lori Vallow Daybell and her life leading up to her trial.

Lori Vallow Daybell has been married five times

Lori Vallow Daybell was born Lori Norene Cox on June 26, 1973, in San Bernadino, Calif. She got married for the first time in 1992, when she was 19 years old, to her high school sweetheart, Nelson Yanes. According to the East Idaho News, the pair divorced not long after marrying and shared no children.

In 1995, Lori married William Lagioia, with whom she shares a son Colby Ryan, and the marriage was shortlived, as she and Lagioia divorced in 1996.

Lori married her third husband, Joseph Ryan, in 2001. They divorced in 2004 and shared a daughter Tylee. Ryan died in 2018 of an apparent heart attack, which authorities confirmed after looking into his death when an audio recording surfaced of Lori saying, "I went through a lot of years of this kind of hard stuff, and I was going to murder him. I was going to kill him, like the scripture says. Like Nephi killed — just to stop the pain and to stop him coming after me and to stop him coming after my children."

In 2005, Lori married Charles Vallow, with whom she adopted J.J. Charles is also a father to two children from his previous marriage to Cheryl Wheeler.

Charles filed for divorce from Lori in 2019, citing her religious beliefs and alleged threats against his life if he got in the way of what he said she believed to be her mission.

On July 11, 2019, Lori's brother Alex Cox shot Charles to death in Lori's Arizona house. Cox claimed he fired the gun in self-defense while Lori, J.J. and Tylee were all in the home. Cox wasn't charged with a crime in relation to the slaying, and has since died of natural causes.

Lori met author and self-proclaimed doomsday prophet Chad Daybell in 2018 and married him on Nov. 5, 2019 — two weeks after the death of Chad's wife Tammy Daybell and three weeks before the missing person's case was opened for J.J. and Tylee.

Her loved ones noticed a marked change in her behavior in 2018

Those closest to Lori say that before 2018, she was a doting mother to Tylee and J.J., as well as a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One of her former neighbors from when she lived in Hawaii, Leigh Tucker, told PEOPLE that Lori seemed "like a supermom," explaining, "She was always well put together. Dressed nicely, organized, unflappable. I wanted to be just like her."

After meeting self-professed doomsday prophet Chad Daybell, however, Lori's loved ones perceived what they say were massive changes in her demeanor and behavior.

"I saw a change in 2018," Larry Woodcock, Lori's former father-in-law, told PEOPLE in January 2021. "It was ... just crazy," he said of Lori's beliefs in Chad's theories. I couldn't believe that she was falling for it." He added that Lori "loved her daughter and loved J.J.," leaving him and wife Kay struggling to reconcile who she was with the murders she was accused of committing.

"I thought Lori was great, very loving," Lori's former sister-in-law, Annie Cushing, concurred. "But there was a tectonic shift in her, and she went over the edge."

Larry also said that while he believed Lori and Chad may have hidden the children or joined a cult, he and Kay couldn't fathom the couple actively harming J.J. and Tylee. Tucker, similarly, said she "can't wrap [her] mind around" the allegations against Lori.

On April 25, 2023, Lori's sister Summer Cox Shiflet took the stand during Lori's murder trial. "I don't remember the exact wording, but she basically told me she knew where they were and they were safe," Shiflet recalled.

A phone call between the sisters was then played in court. In the recording, Shiflet yelled at her sister about the alleged crimes, revealing that Lori went to Hawaii and was "dancing on the beach" after her kids' deaths.

"Lori if you let this happen to them and put them in the ground like a piece of trash, I don't know you..." Shiflet adds on the call. "We would have taken them!"

She asked Chad Daybell to spiritually gauge her children

Lori reportedly exchanged emails with Chad Daybell asking him whether J.J. and Tylee's spirits were "dark" or "light." According to Fox10 Phoenix, Chad informed Lori via email that Tylee's spirit was rated "4.1D" and J.J.'s "4.2L," also noting that Tylee's deceased father Joseph's spirit was a "4.3D."

"2's and 3's are fluid and can change sides during earth life," Chad wrote. "4.1 and above have made covenants to their side. They rarely switch sides." Chad also labeled Lori's then-estranged husband Charles Vallow at "3L" and her brother Alex Cox at "2L."

She thought her children were "zombies"

At one point, Lori allegedly told a friend that Tylee and J.J. were "zombies" and that she and Chad were on a mission to eradicate zombies before the second coming of Jesus Christ. "[T]he term 'zombie' refers to an individual whose mortal spirit has left their body and that their body is now the host of another spirit," Rexburg police Lt. Ron Ball wrote in an affidavit obtained by PEOPLE. "The new spirit in a 'zombie' is always considered a 'dark spirit.' "

According to the East Idaho News, citing court documents, in March 2020, Lori allegedly also told her niece, Melani Boudreaux Pawlowski, that Pawlowski's children had become "possessed" and were "zombies," per a court filing in Pawlowski's custody case against her ex-husband Brandon Boudreaux. The filing, submitted by Brandon's legal team, also alleged that Lori claimed Brandon "needed to die and that may indicate that Tylee and J.J. needed to die as well."

She allegedly believed she was a god

Lori's ex-husband Charles Vallow claimed in a February 2019 court filing that part of why he wanted to divorce her was because of her extreme religious beliefs, some of which allegedly threatened him with violence, per court documents obtained by Fox 13,

"Mother [Lori Vallow] informed Father [Charles Vallow] that she was a God assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ's second coming in July 2020 and that if Father got in her way of her mission she would murder him," a 2019 court filing read in part.

Elsewhere in the filing, Charles alleged that Lori had "recently become infatuated at times obsessive about near-death experiences and spiritual visions" and that Lori told him she was eternally married to "the ancient Book of Mormon prophet Moroni and that she has lived numerous lives on numerous planets prior to this current life."

Some of her relatives have spoken out about her alleged crimes

In January 2020, Colby Ryan, Lori's son with ex Joseph Ryan, released a YouTube video in which he urged Lori to come clean and help authorities find Tylee and J.J. "I know you know [what] the right thing to do is and I know you have a good heart," he said in the seven-minute clip. "It's time to do the right thing."

Another person originally in Lori's corner was her sister, Summer Cox Shiflet, who later wrote in a June 2020 Facebook post that she could no longer support Lori. "Losing our precious Tylee and JJ in this horrific way is more than we can bear," Cox Shiflet wrote. "We had prayed our hearts out for them and hoped with all of our hearts they were safe. But we sadly have to face this new reality and our family will never ever be the same."

Meanwhile, Lori's former in-laws, Larry and Kay Woodcock, have urged her to be "half-honest" about their grandson's death.

"There are just so many unanswered questions that Kay and I have," Larry told PEOPLE in 2020. "If [Vallow] would just be half-honest. She doesn't even have to be completely honest. Just be half honest and give us answers because we just don't understand it."

There were concerns about her mental health

Wheeler claimed that she became concerned for Lori's mental health within her first year of marriage to Charles.

"She just seemed off," Wheeler told the East Idaho News. "There were a lot of strange goings-on at their home to the point that a judge ordered cameras to be put in their home to protect the children."

In May 2021, District Judge Steven Boyce declared Lori unfit to stand for trial based on a psychological evaluation. "At this time, the defendant is not competent to proceed, and recommends restorative treatment," Boyce wrote in his order. He did not specify what made her incompetent, nor what treatment she'd require. According to NBC News, Idaho does not offer insanity as a defense, but does require defendants to understand charges against them.

The prosecution disputed the psychological assessment. Per a court order obtained by PEOPLE, was committed to 90 days in a psychiatric facility run by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

In April 2022, Judge Boyce declared that Lori was "restored to competency and fit to proceed."

She gave a bizarre rant in court before receiving a life sentence

In July 2023, shortly before Lori was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering her two children and conspiring to murder Tammy, Lori was given an opportunity to speak in court. Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, Lori denied that her children and Tammy had been murdered.

“Jesus knows me and Jesus understands me,” she said. “I mourn with all of you who mourn my children and Tammy. Jesus Christ knows the truth of what happened here. Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case. Accidental deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal side effects from medications happen.”

Lori also told the court that she had a near-death experience in 2002 while giving birth to Tylee. She claimed that her sister, Stacey Lynn Cox Cope, who died suddenly in 1998 at the age of 31, came to her. Because of this experience, Lori claimed she has the power to communicate with dead relatives as well as Jesus Christ and angels.

“Because of these communications, I know for a fact that my children are happy and busy in the spirit world,” she said. “Because of my communications with my friend Tammy Daybell I know she is also very happy and extremely busy.”

Lori also claimed that her children had visited her from the grave and told her they were “happy” and didn’t blame her for their deaths. She also described Tammy Daybell as her “eternal friend."

“I know she is extremely busy helping her family, especially her children and grandchildren, and I have a great love for Tammy,” she said.

Lori spoke out in her first TV interview from prison in March 2025

Morrison paid Lori a visit in prison in March 2025, where he sat down with her for a Dateline special to discuss the case and her conviction that she would be exonerated despite being sentenced to life in prison.

"It's unlike any interview I've ever done," Morrison told KTVB of the experience. "Trying to get her to make sense was a chore."

The episode also features interviews with Colby Ryan, Lori's only surviving child, as well as members of law enforcement.

"I guess I always was a positive, see best in people kind of person, and then I watched someone I knew my entire life do what she did," Colby said. "The way that my sister was treated was with hate. That's not even human to do what they did to her."