'A family tragedy is not a crime': Lori Daybell speaks to jurors as her Arizona trial begins

PHOENIX — Lori Vallow Daybell got emotional, grabbing a tissue to wipe her eyes as she told the jury, who will determine if she is guilty of conspiring to murder her husband, about leaving the home with her two children before her husband was shot.

"Spouses having insurance policies is not a crime. Collecting Social Security (benefits) is not a crime. Self-defense is not a crime. A family tragedy is not a crime; it's a tragedy," Daybell said while presenting opening arguments.

Representing herself in her second jury trial, and the first related to her fourth husband's death in Arizona, Daybell told jurors she and Charles Vallow had a "happy marriage." She said they lived separately because of Joshua "JJ" Vallow's schooling needs, and she asked her husband to stay at a hotel while in town because of recent physical violence between Vallow and her daughter, Tylee Ryan.

On the morning he was killed, Daybell said Vallow went to her house to pick up JJ and take him to school; he and came back into the house get his phone, leaving JJ alone in the car.

"Charles began to scream at me when I refused to give him his phone," she said, saying it woke up Tylee and Daybell's brother Alex Cox.

Daybell said Tylee came out of her room with a baseball bat to protect her mother, and when Tylee fell to the ground after a struggle with Vallow over the bat, Cox intervened. She said she sent Tylee out to the car before Vallow got the bat and came toward Daybell.

"At some point, while I was running away from Charles, who was chasing me with the bat ... Alex apparently retrieved his gun," she said. She said she ran outside without shoes before Cox fired the gun, killing her husband.

Daybell said she and her children went to Burger King, which Vallow had promised to JJ, picked up flip-flops since they left without them, brought JJ to school, and then went home to talk to police.

Daybell said in her opening arguments that she followed the instructions of officers and didn't hear anything back from the Chandler Police Department until June 2021, almost two years after Vallow's death, when she was charged.

Case history

In her first jury trial two years ago in Idaho, Daybell was convicted of killing her two youngest children, Tylee and JJ, and conspiring to murder her new husband's wife, Tammy Daybell. She was given five sentences of life in prison without parole by the Idaho judge.

Vallow, for which Lori Daybell is on trial now, occurred in July 2019, months before her children were killed. She then married Chad Daybell just two weeks after the death of his wife, Tammy Daybell. The children were reported missing for several months before their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on Chad Daybell's property. JJ was 7 and Tylee was 16.

Idaho police did a welfare check on the kids in November 2019 and discovered they were missing and hadn't been seen since early September. Lori Daybell and Chad Daybell left town a short time later, eventually turning up in Hawaii without the kids. She was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 on a warrant out of Idaho.

Chad Daybell was sentenced to death in the three killings during a trial last year.

Four months before he died, Vallow filed for divorce from Lori Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets. Vallow alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him, and he sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife and changed the beneficiary of his life insurance.

Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense and wasn't arrested in Vallow's death, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox's account of Vallow's desth was later called into question.

Prosecutors' arguments

A jury of 16, including four alternate jurors, took their seats in a Phoenix courtroom for the first time on Monday morning. After opening arguments, one of the 16 jurors was dismissed for work reasons after opening arguments. The rest of the room was filled with reporters and members of the public who wanted to view the proceedings.

Prosecutor Treena Kay provided a detailed timeline and argued that phone records, witness testimony and forensic evidence will show that Cox's shooting of Charles Vallow was "not self-defense."

Kay opened her statements with texts from Lori Daybell to Cox two days before "they killed Charles Vallow." In the texts, Lori Daybell asked her brother to stay close to her and said there was lots to do and "it's all coming to a head this week."

Kay argued that Lori Daybell conspired with Cox to kill Vallow and cash in on a life insurance policy because she wanted to be married to Chad Daybell. She said Lori Daybell, Cox and Chad Daybell all believed that "those who disagreed with them were dark, possessed by evil spirits sometimes called 'Z's' or 'zombies.'" She said Lori Daybell used "religion … as justification to kill Charles Vallow."

Kay said the day before Vallow was killed, Cox came to Lori Daybell's home prepared with a handgun and ammunition. "Lori and Alex knew exactly when this murder would happen and where it would happen. They just had to make sure that Charles stayed in the house," she said.

The prosecutor said Lori Daybell took Vallow's cellphone and "refused to give it back" so that he would stay instead of leaving with JJ as planned. "Lori Vallow is why Alex was able to shoot Charles. Lori Vallow is why Charles is dead," Kay said.

Kay said Vallow was shot twice — once in the chest through the heart, which can take seconds to minutes to cause someone to die. She said blood on Vallow's hand shows he placed it on the first wound on his chest before Alex Cox fired a second shot while Vallow was lying on the ground.

Kay said Lori Daybell was on the phone with Cox three minutes and 17 minutes after she left the home. Cox called police 47 minutes after his sister left. She claimed he used the time to set up a "staged" scene to claim Vallow had hit him with a bat — but she said physical evidence doesn't support that story.

The prosecutor said when Lori Daybell returned to the home, officers thought they would need to tell her of her husband's death, but she responded that she was there and knew what happened, relaying her side of the story to them and saying she left after seeing Vallow on the ground.

Kay said Lori Daybell didn't tell any of her husband's family, including his sons, about his death the next day.

Who is Lori Daybell?

Lori Daybell was a beautician by trade, a mother of three and a wife — five times over, which she spoke about in her opening arguments.

Her first marriage, to a high school sweetheart when she was 19, ended quickly. She married again in her early 20s and had a son. Then, in 2001, she married Joseph Ryan, and they had Tylee. They divorced a few years later, and Ryan died in 2018 at his home of a suspected heart attack.

Charles Vallow entered the picture several months later. He and Lori Daybell married in 2006 and adopted JJ in 2012.

Lori Daybell told the jurors Vallow owned his own business and worked as a contractor selling life insurance, and they each had the maximum policy possible, which was $1 million for him and $2 million for her.

Public interest from around the world in Lori Daybell's story grew as the investigation into the missing children took several unexpected turns, each new revelation seemingly stranger than the last.

"I want to see how she commands the courtroom," said Bill Hurley, a spectator who jockeyed for one of about 40 seats in a packed courtroom gallery. Hurley is from the Phoenix suburb where Vallow was shot in 2021 and has been closely following the case.

How she's fighting her case

While representing herself, Lori Daybell has complained about news coverage of her criminal cases, invoked her right to a speedy trial, questioned whether a government witness was truly an expert, and engaged in disputes over the pre-trial exchange of evidence.

At a hearing last week, she lost a bid to strike three people from the prosecution's witness list, including the grandmother of her adopted son. Another witness says Lori Daybell spoke about Vallow as being "possessed" in the months before his death. When the judge asked her to argue her point, Lori Daybell lowered her head, sighed and paused a few seconds. "Their information is not firsthand," Lori Daybell said. "These witnesses are all coming together. They are watching everything that goes on on TV regarding this."

If convicted in Arizona of conspiring to kill Vallow, she would face a life sentence.

Lori Daybell will wear civilian clothing during her trial and will not be handcuffed or shackled when jurors are in the courtroom. She, however, is expected to be wearing a belt-like device under her clothes that will let a jail officer deliver an electric shock by remote control if there's a disturbance.

2 trials in Arizona

Lori Daybell is scheduled to go on trial a third time in late May, about two weeks after this trial ends, on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of her niece, Melani Pawlowski.

Someone in a Jeep fired a gunshot at Boudreaux in 2019 outside his home in a Phoenix suburb, missing him but striking his car. The Jeep matched the description of one registered to Charles Vallow, who was killed nearly three months before the shooting outside Boudreaux's home. Officers testified in the Idaho trial that they believed this car belonged to Tylee and that Cox was the person who drove it to Arizona and fired at Boudreaux.

Contributing: Rebecca Boone

Correction: A previous version attributed a quote and some information to Kay Woodcock, Charles Vallow's sister, which should have been attributed to prosecutor Treena Kay.

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