Court hears Lori Vallow Daybell’s appeal in Idaho killings of 2 of her children, romantic rival

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Supreme Court is scheduled Monday to hear Lori Vallow Daybell’s appeal of her convictions in that state for killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival.

She is asking the court to reverse her convictions in the deaths of Joshua “JJ” Vallow, Tylee Ryan and Tammy Daybell, whose husband married Vallow Daybell weeks later. JJ was 7, and Tylee was 16. Vallow Daybell holds doomsday religious beliefs and has claimed that people in her life were possessed by evil spirits.

The children went missing in 2019. Their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on the property of Vallow Daybell’s new husband, Chad Daybell, an author of several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.

Vallow Daybell was sentenced to three life sentences in the state, while Chad Daybell was sentenced to death for the three killings.

Vallow Daybell was convicted separately in Arizona for conspiring to murder her estranged husband and her niece’s ex-husband, the latter of whom survived.

In the Idaho appeal, her lawyer argued that a lower court denied her a speedy trial, that it would not let her keep the attorney of her choice — the judge ruled that there was a conflict of interest because the lawyer had represented both her and her husband — and that it should not have allowed jurors to hear about the shootings involving Charles Vallow and Brandon Boudreaux in metro Phoenix.

Months after filing for divorce from Vallow Daybell, Charles Vallow was fatally shot in July 2019 in Chandler by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, whose claim of self-defense was later called into question by investigators.

Nearly three months after Charles Vallow’s killing, someone parked in a Jeep fired a gunshot at Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, as he was driving up to his home in Gilbert, another Phoenix suburb. The shot narrowly missed Boudreaux.

Prosecutors say Vallow Daybell conspired with Cox to kill Charles Vallow so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry Chad Daybell, then her boyfriend. Cox, who was identified by prosecutors as the person who shot at Boudreaux, later died from a blood clot in his lungs.

Vallow Daybell received two life sentences for her Arizona convictions, and she has appealed those as well.