What Made Lori Vallow Daybell Kill Her Children? — Read an Excerpt From Children of Darkness and Light (Exclusive)

Retired criminal attorney and author Lori Hellis had just moved to Arizona when the news of the missing Daybell children emerged. She followed the case closely, trying to unpack how a perfect storm of people and circumstances culminated in the death of innocents.

Now, her new book Children of Darkness and Light, out now from Pegasus Crime, draws on her professional expertise, expansive investigation and personal interviews, to "shed light on the darkest corners of a story that began with doomsday prophecies and ended in an all-too-real horror," according to the book's synopsis.

Below, read an exclusive excerpt that lays out how Lori Daybell started to go so wrong.

The town of Rexburg, Idaho, is unlikely to attract national attention for any reason, let alone as the epicenter for a conservative religious movement that spawned a notorious murder case. Rexburg calls itself “America’s Family Community.” It’s a quiet little farm town where the crime rate is low, and murders are nearly nonexistent. Lori Vallow expected her move to Rexburg to be a fresh start for her and her children —Tylee, 16, and J.J., 7 — but trouble seemed to follow her.

People who knew Lori Cox Yanes Lagioia Ryan Vallow said she was magnetic. If Lori was your friend, prepare for some serious love bombing because she stuck to her friends like Velcro. She was bubbly and generous and loved entertaining. Before her move to Rexburg, she lived in the expansive home her estranged fourth husband, Charles Vallow, rented for her after their final separation. The beautiful residence was built in the Mediterranean style, popular in the affluent suburbs around Phoenix, Ariz. A home reflects the people who live there, and Lori’s upscale rental in Chandler, Ariz., was no exception. It was outwardly gracious while inwardly a little odd. The backyard patio and pool were beautiful.

Any room visitors might see was furnished like a model home, except for the empty, mirror-lined living room where Lori danced on wood floors to Christian and eighties rock music for hours every day. Lori’s bedroom was tidy; the bed was neatly made with a pretty comforter, and nothing was out of place. In contrast, her children’s rooms looked like an afterthought. Neither of the children had furniture, just a single unmade mattress tossed on the floor. Clothing and toys littered the remaining floor space.

Barely a month before her move to idyllic Rexburg, Lori’s fourth husband, Charles had been shot to death in the mirrored living room of that Chandler, Ariz., home by Lori’s brother, Alex Cox. Alex, who later moved to Rexburg with Lori, claimed Charles threatened him with a baseball bat, so he fired two shots into Charles’s chest in self-defense. Lori didn’t tell anyone where she was going when she left Arizona three weeks later. Even Colby Ryan, her adult son from her second marriage, knew only that she was going “somewhere cold.”

Charles Vallow was a successful financial planner and a generous man who was happy to help his extended family. Before he died, he was paying for cell phones and auto insurance for most of Lori’s family, including her parents. He was also helping support Colby, who had recently married and had his first child. Charles liked being a family man; he had been the one to approach his sister, Kay Woodcock, about adopting her grandson, Canaan. 

When Lori and Charles finalized the adoption, Canaan was a year old. They changed his name to Joshua Jackson Vallow; the family called him J.J. J.J. was diagnosed on the autism spectrum and also had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which meant he was highly energetic, easily overwhelmed and prone to emotional meltdowns that required much patient attention. The Woodcocks were convinced Lori was the right mom for the job.

Few who knew Lori Vallow then would have recognized that she was struggling. On the outside, she was the same bubbly, blonde mom she had always been, but inside, she was seething; only those closest to her noticed. Lori and her third husband, Joe Ryan, had been fighting over Tylee’s custody since they divorced when Tylee was a baby, and their emotionally and financially draining custody and visitation disputes continued unabated. Tylee, who had always been Lori’s sweet little girl, became a sarcastic, bitter and often surly teenager.

J.J. required constant attention, and persistent money problems meant Charles was no help because he worked more than he was home. Nothing seemed to fill the emptiness, and Lori escaped more and more into books. She liked romantic young adult novels but also began reading more books with a Mormon doomsday theme. 

Lori’s friends and family say that although she had always been interested in end-time theology, it was around this time that her interest in near-death experiences and apocalyptic prophecies became obsessive. She started listening to doomsday podcasts and reading religious books, searching for a deeper spiritual connection.

Family members say she read The Second Comforter: Conversing with the Lord Through the Veil by Denver Snuffer Jr. Snuffer is a lawyer who lives in Utah and was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 2013 for apostasy. He leads a group called the “Remnant Movement.” Snuffer believes the mainstream LDS Church is itself in apostasy and must be returned to faithfulness. The mainstream church teaches that only men are endowed with priesthood power.

Snuffer wrote, “It is not required that you have the priesthood to receive the Second Comforter. Everyone is invited to come to Him. The promises He made are clearly directed at both men and women ... God is no respecter of persons and is universally willing to accept all who come unto Him.”

According to Snuffer, the Second Comforter is Jesus Christ, who appears in person to each seeker. The idea that Jesus can personally appear to anyone is antithetical to mainstream LDS Church teachings. Lori, having been raised within the patriarchal framework of the LDS Church, where men control nearly everything, including one’s connection to the divine, must have found the idea that a woman could have an intimate relationship with a living and present Jesus Christ hard to resist. It was a vulnerability that Chad Daybell, Lori’s prophet and fifth husband, would exploit.

Lori continued to find comfort and distraction in young adult fiction.

She read the entire Twilight series by LDS author Stephanie Meyer several times; the books appealed to Lori’s naive view of romantic relationships. She also discovered books by Chad Daybell, which mixed fanciful ideas like time travel with long-held LDS beliefs. It was a potent combination for someone like Lori. The stories made an even more profound impression on Lori when Chad announced that the books were not wholly fiction but had been inspired by his religious visions. Chad became a larger-than-life figure for Lori.

Lori’s interest in the end times wasn’t new, but her obsession with it was. Her son Colby remembered his mother talking about how the end was coming soon when he was about 10 or 11. Although Lori had been studying near-death experiences and reading doomsday books since 2012, her downward spiral began in earnest a few weeks after Lori first met Melanie Gibb in 2018.

Not long after their move to Arizona, Lori met a new friend named Melanie Gibb, who shared her doomsday views. They met at a class where Melanie taught a group of women about food storage and other end-of-time survival strategies. Their connection was instantaneous, and Lori began her signature love bombing. Lori and Melanie started seeing one another several times a week and often met at the LDS temple in Mesa, Ariz., for prayer and ancestry work. They were both devout in their LDS faith, interested in the end times and each had a son with ADHD and autism.

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Melanie loved Lori, but she was not impressed with Lori’s children. J.J. was a demanding, uninhibited and sometimes destructive 7-year-old, and Tylee was a bitter, angry teenager with a perpetual chip on her shoulder. Colby had moved out and married his pregnant girlfriend after a failed attempt at the LDS mission all young Mormon men are expected to serve. Lori seemed to float above all the dysfunction like the proverbial swan, gliding gracefully on the surface while furiously paddling underneath. 

In an early selfie, Lori and Melanie could be sisters: Lori, the pretty cheerleader, and Melanie, an academic, less flashy sibling. By the time Melanie Gibb self-published a book titled Feel the Fire in 2019, she was firmly in Lori’s orbit. Melanie Gibb would also enter that crowded Boise courtroom four years later to testify against her best friend.

Charles and Lori’s 14-year marriage was Lori’s longest, and friends and family members said they appeared happy until Lori began flirting with the offbeat neo-fundamentalist religious ideas of Chad Daybell and others.

Lori accompanied Melanie and several other women on a road trip from Phoenix, Ariz., to St. George, Utah, to attend the October conference of Preparing a People (PAP). During their seven-hour drive, the women talked nearly continuously as they got to know each other. Melanie knew Lori was enamored with Chad Daybell’s books and that Chad Daybell was speaking at the event. Melanie had met Chad at earlier PAP conferences and looked forward to introducing Lori to him. She couldn’t know she would be starting the equivalent of a nuclear chain reaction that, when finally spent, would cost the lives of at least five people.

When Lori and Melanie arrived at the conference, they found Chad at a vendor table, selling his books. Melanie introduced him to Lori and later described the moment as “electric.” Lori and Chad began talking nonstop about their ideas. Lori had already stumbled upon the doctrine of multiple mortal probations, a form of reincarnation, so she was enchanted when Chad told her they had been married to one another in a previous life. Lori spent most of her weekend helping Chad sell his books. Chad told her he believed she was a goddess, an exalted being whom God had placed on Earth to begin preparation for the end times. He had seen in a vision that together, they would gather and lead the 144,000 of God’s chosen and usher in the new millennium. They were together non-stop and arranged to meet again in a few weeks when Chad was scheduled to speak at a Preparing a People event near Lori’s home in Arizona. As Lori drove home from Utah, in her mind, God seemed to affirm everything she had been learning.

Adapted from Children of Darkness and Light: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell: A Story of Murderous Faith by Lori Hellis. Published by Pegasus Crime, September 24, 2024.  

Children of Darkness and Light: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell: A Story of Murderous Faith by Lori Hellis is available now, wherever books are sold.