The dramatic criminal proceedings surrounding an Idaho mother’s gruesome killing of her two youngest children and her husband’s former wife are far from over: Lori Vallow Daybell still faces felony charges in Arizona, and her husband faces murder charges in Idaho.
Vallow Daybell was sentenced Monday to life in prison without the possibility of parole — the maximum sentence — more than three years after the bodies of her son, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, were discovered by authorities in her husband’s backyard in rural eastern Idaho.
She was convicted in May of first-degree murder charges, as well as on two separate charges of conspiracy to commit murder of her two children, conspiracy to commit murder of her husband’s former wife and on a grand theft charge for allegedly continuing to draw Social Security benefits for her children after their deaths.
Chad Daybell faces murder, conspiracy charges in Idaho
Vallow Daybell’s fifth husband, Chad Daybell, is charged in Idaho with conspiracy to murder and first-degree murder in the deaths of his two step-children and former wife, 49-year-old Tammy Daybell, who died under “suspicious circumstances” in 2019, weeks before Daybell remarried.
The two children went missing in fall 2019, and their bodies were found in June 2020 on the property of Daybell’s home. Prosecutors say the couple held “cult-like” religious beliefs and plotted the killings in order to steal Social Security and insurance money.
Vallow Daybell was arrested in February 2020 in Hawaii, and Daybell was arrested that June.
Daybell also faces two counts of insurance fraud and one count of grand theft related to the deaths in Idaho.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges in May and is expected to stand trial in Idaho in April. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
Lori Vallow Daybell faces conspiracy charges in Arizona
Vallow Daybell also faces conspiracy charges in Arizona.
An Arizona grand jury indicted Vallow Daybell in 2021 on a charge of conspiring to murder her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who was fatally shot by her brother in 2019. Several months before his death, Charles Vallow filed for divorce, alleging Vallow Daybell believed she was a god and had threatened to kill him.
Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alexander Cox, claimed self-defense in the shooting. He died that same year and never faced charges.
Separately, in 2022, an Arizona grand jury indicted Vallow Daybell on a charge of conspiring to murder her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux, who survived a shooting in 2019 allegedly tied to Vallow Daybell and Cox.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said earlier this year it submitted a request to extradite Vallow Daybell to Arizona for prosecution following sentencing and her transfer to the Idaho Department of Corrections.
The office said it expected the process to take “from several weeks to several months,” according to a statement issued at the time, reported by local news outlets.
The office did not respond to request for comment Tuesday.