“Doomsday cult” mom Lori Vallow Daybell’s murder trial in Arizona stemming from the alleged shooting death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, is delayed until February 2025.
The already convicted murderer’s trial was scheduled to take place on August 1.
But Gerald Bradley, Vallow Daybell’s public defender, argued in court on July 2 that he needed more time to go through over 100,000 pages of discovery provided by the prosecution.
Prosecutors also told the judge they had provided Bradley with “digital media” totaling over 15 terabytes of data. Therefore, the next status conference for the trial is on Sept. 6 at 9 a.m. The trial is scheduled to start on February 24, 2025.
Ada County Jail/Madison County Jail
Newsweek has contacted the public defender’s office for comment.
Who is Lori Vallow Daybell?
In May 2023, an Idaho jury convicted Vallow Daybell, 51, of murdering her children Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7. She also helped her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, kill his first wife, Tammy Daybell so that they could be free of any obstacles in their affair.
Natalie Behring/Getty Images
Vallow Daybell was sent to the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Pocatello, Idaho before being extradited to Arizona. She is currently being held at the Maricopa County Jail in Arizona.
While serving life sentence in prison for those murders, she was also indicted in Arizona in May 2023 on charges that she conspired to kill her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux. The man claimed someone nearly shot him in the head from a car at a rental home.
Chad Daybell, 55, was sentenced to death for his role in the killing of the children and Tammy Daybell. Chad was a self-published writer of Doomsday-focused fiction when he and Lori had an affair while they were part of a “doomsday cult” that shared apocalyptic religious beliefs.
John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register via AP
Prosecutors in Vallow Daybell’s case called witnesses who claimed the couple conspired to kill the two children and his first wife because they wanted to overcome any obstacles to their own relationship.
The prosecution also said the couple justified their killings by creating an apocalyptic belief system where evil spirits can possess people and turn them into “zombies.” The only way to save someone’s soul is for them to die.
Vallow Daybell’s lawyers filed a motion earlier this month to deny the media from filming the most recent court proceeding. Her defense team claims local news outlet FOX 10’s coverage has “vilified and maligned” Vallow Daybell, impacting her constitutional rights to a fair trial.
Bradley further claimed he believed finding a jury pool for this upcoming trial would be difficult due to the media coverage.
Associated Press
The judge ultimately sided with the media and allowed the status conference to be filmed, but Vallow Daybell waived her appearance and was taken back to jail. This move was uncharacteristic of Vallow Daybell, who seemingly likes to do her hair and makeup for court dates.
Book Author Weighs In
Investigative journalist and author John Glatt has covered Lori Vallow Daybell in-depth, culminating in the release of his book “The Doomsday Mother: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and the End of an American Family” in January 2022.
Newsweek spoke to Glatt on Wednesday about who Vallow Daybell was prior to the murders.
“I spoke to friends who knew her pretty well. She had some strange beliefs before she met Chad, but from my interviews and everything, I think they fed into each other – his kind of like an electric storm,” Glatt said. “Once they met each other, they kind of went into this totally different mode of murder, ‘zombies,’ and everything.”
While Glatt is unsure how Vallow Daybell is treated by fellow inmates while incarcerated, he noted that she appears to have some sort of “device or some sweets to make lipstick” and makeup for her court appearances.
John Glatt/St. Martin’s Press
“She must have friends there to help her do this. She’s very personable, as I understand, to everybody who knows her,” Glatt said. “She’s quite gregarious, and they [her friends] liked her before this happened, so I would imagine she knows how to make friends behind bars.”
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