Lori Vallow Daybell, the so-called Doomsday Mom who is serving three consecutive life sentences in Idaho for her role in the murders of two of her children and her husband’s ex-wife, was convicted Tuesday in Arizona of conspiracy in the killing of a former spouse.
Vallow Daybell, 51, went on trial again April 7 in the Arizona case, where she was charged with conspiring with her brother to kill her estranged fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019.
She pleaded not guilty and represented herself, arguing that the killing was in self-defense.
After deliberating for just under three hours, a jury in Maricopa County Superior Court returned the unanimous guilty verdict against her.
A sentencing date has not been set.
Vallow Daybell and her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, 54, were tried separately in Idaho in connection with the deaths of two of Vallow Daybell’s three children: Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua Vallow, 7, known as J.J. The children’s remains were found buried on Daybell’s property in 2020.
In addition to being found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of the children, and of grand theft, in May 2023, Vallow Daybell was found guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the death of Tammy Daybell, Chad Daybell’s former wife.
Chad Daybell was found guilty of first-degree murder in May 2024 and was sentenced to death for the murders of Tammy Daybell and the children.
The case is the subject of a Lifetime movie, “Doomsday Mom: The Lori Vallow Story,” and of a Netflix documentary series, “Sins of Our Mother.”
(Ross D. Franklin | AP) The assembled media are set up for live shots in front of Maricopa County Courthouse where the murder trial of Lori Vallow Daybell, who is charged with conspiring to murder her estranged husband, is being held Monday, April 21, 2025, in Phoenix.
Here’s what to know about Vallow Daybell.
What happened to the children?
Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow were reported missing in November 2019 by J.J.’s grandparents, who had grown suspicious when they were unable to reach him by phone.
Officers with the Rexburg Police Department in Idaho attempted to conduct a welfare check and later executed search warrants at the apartment complex where Vallow Daybell and her husband lived. Authorities said the couple seemed unconcerned with the children’s whereabouts.
In February 2020, Vallow Daybell was arrested in Hawaii on a warrant issued by authorities in Idaho after, they said, she had not cooperated with the effort to find the missing children.
In June 2020, investigators found human remains buried on Daybell’s property in Idaho that were later identified as belonging to his wife’s missing children. He was arrested and charged with concealing evidence.
Vallow Daybell’s ‘doomsday’ beliefs drew attention to the case.
Prosecutors did not say how the children were killed, but the couple’s religious beliefs played a role, according to the indictment. They “did endorse and teach religious beliefs for the purpose of justifying” the deaths, the indictment said. News headlines labeled Vallow Daybell the “Doomsday Mom.”
In divorce records obtained by the Phoenix television station Fox 10, Charles Vallow, one of Vallow Daybell’s former husbands, said she had told him that she believed she was “receiving spiritual revelations and visions to help her gather and prepare those chosen to live in the New Jerusalem after the Great War as prophesied in the Book of Revelations.”
Daybell has written several novels with recurring doomsday themes, and he and Vallow Daybell have been linked to an entity called Preparing a People, which aims to ready people for the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to its website.
Her second trial concerned the death of her fourth husband.
After she was convicted in Idaho, Vallow Daybell was extradited to Arizona in December 2023 to face charges of conspiracy to commit murder in two other cases.
The first of these, which ended in a conviction April 22, involved the murder of Charles Vallow, the fourth of her five husbands, who was shot and killed in Arizona by her brother, Alexander Cox, in July 2019, when she and Vallow were estranged. Cox, who has since died, told the police that Vallow had hit him in the head with a baseball bat and that the shooting was in self-defense.
Vallow Daybell is also expected to face trial in May on charges that she conspired to murder Brandon Boudreaux, her niece’s former husband, The Associated Press reported. Boudreaux was not injured in October 2019 when someone shot at him from a Jeep that matched the description of a vehicle registered to Vallow, according to the AP.
What happened to Chad Daybell’s ex-wife?
Daybell’s previous wife, Tammy Daybell, was found dead in her Idaho home in October 2019. Authorities initially said that she appeared to have died of natural causes, but her body was exhumed that December after authorities began to question the circumstances of her death and its potential connection to the disappearances of Vallow Daybell’s children.
Prosecutors said at the start of Vallow Daybell’s trial in Idaho that an autopsy later determined that Tammy Daybell died of asphyxiation. Chad Daybell increased the amount of coverage in a life insurance policy for her in September 2019, a little more than a month before her death.
Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell married shortly after their spouses died.
Prosecutors described Vallow Daybell as a negligent mother.
It took years for Vallow Daybell to stand trial in Idaho because she was initially declared not competent and was required to undergo “restorative treatment.”
During the trial, prosecutors described Vallow Daybell as a negligent mother with extreme beliefs who was on a “religious mission” that she viewed as being more important than caring for her children.
Former friends testified about Vallow Daybell and Daybell’s purported religious beliefs. One, Melanie Gibb, said that Vallow Daybell believed that evil spirits could turn people into “zombies” by taking over their bodies, and that she called J.J. and Tylee “zombies,” the AP reported. Gibb testified that Vallow Daybell believed that the only way to get rid of the evil spirit was to kill the body.
In the Idaho case, Jim Archibald, a lawyer for Vallow Daybell, described her as a “kind and loving mother to her children” who was interested in religion and biblical prophesies involving the end of the world. He said that she was with other people in her apartment when J.J. and Tylee were killed and that she was in Hawaii at the time of Tammy Daybell’s death.
Vallow Daybell did not testify in her own defense, and her lawyers rested their case without calling any witnesses, Boise State Public Radio reported, telling the judge that they did not believe the state had proved its case.
Judge Steven W. Boyce of Idaho’s 7th Judicial District said at the sentencing that allowing Vallow Daybell to serve her life terms concurrently “would not serve the interest of justice.”
“The most unimaginable type of murder is to have a mother murdering her own children,” Boyce said, “and that’s exactly what you did.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
