Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell

The cosmic puzzle here involves the psi dynamics of gravitation, resonance and sympathy: how two people with congruent deranged belief systems may be drawn toward each other, and then reinforce each other’s delusions.

This background story comes from articles I read about the case before I began collecting the headlines below, and will include an attempted simplification of the Wikipedia article I link to below. The story is complicated by the fact that Lori Vallow was married five times, and different events occurred in quite a few different locations.

Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell are both Mormons. Prior to their meeting, he was married and had five grown children; she also was married, and was living with two children. One, Tylee Ryan, was her biological child from her third marriage; the other, J. J. Vallow, was a special-needs great-nephew of her fourth husband, whom they adopted.

Chad Daybell developed a preoccupation with an idiosyncratic apoctalypticism (belief in the imminent End of the World). He self-published a series of “novels,” Standing in Holy Places, analogous to Tim LeHaye’s Left Behind series and Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth; only, I feel certain Chad Daybell regards his books as prophecy, not fiction. He also had a podcast.

Daybell’s apoctalypticism anticipates, before The End, a period of intense persecution of “the saints,” that is, in this case, the Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons. Ellen G. White’s apocalypticism similarly anticipates a period of intense persecution of Seventh-Day Adventists; and LeHaye’s and Lindsay’s books mentioned above similarly anticipate intense persecution of born-again Christians.

Lori Vallow became a follower of Chad Daybell. She developed the belief that Jesus would return in glory in July 2020, and that she would be a prominent leader in the events that would unfold. Chad Daybell told her he could see “light” and “darkness” in people, signifying that they were followers either of Jesus or Satan, respectively; and that her estranged fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and both of the children, were “dark.”

In an altercation at her home on July 11, 2019, in the presence of both children, Lori Vallow’s brother Alex Cox shot and killed Charles Vallow, purportedly in self-defense. In turn, Alex himself died on December 12, 2019, of blood clots.

On October 19, 2019, Chad Daybell’s wife Tammy died at home. At the time, authorities did not suspect foul play. Two weeks later, November 5, 2019, Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell married.

On November 26, 2019, in response to requests from J.J.’s blood relatives who were concerned that they had had no contact with him for some time, police made a welfare check at Lori’s home. She made misleading statements as to the children’s whereabouts. On November 27, 2019, Chad and Lori Daybell moved to Hawaii.

On July 9, 2020, police found the children’s remains on property belonging to Chad Daybell.