Lori Vallow Daybell, seen here in 2023, is representing herself in a courtroom in Phoenix, where she is on trial on a charge of conspiracy to commit first degree murder.
Tony Blakeslee/AP
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Tony Blakeslee/AP
Lori Vallow Daybell, who is serving three life sentences for murdering her children and conspiring to kill her husband’s former wife, is on trial again, this time in Arizona.
Prosecutors accuse Vallow Daybell of conspiring with her late brother, Alex Cox, to murder her husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019 to benefit from a $1 million life insurance policy and marry another man, Chad Daybell.
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty.
The trial is being livestreamed online after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Justin Beresky granted a media request for courtroom coverage. Proceedings are set to resume each day at 10:30 a.m. local time (1:30 p.m. ET).
The case has drawn wide attention, in part because prosecutors have accused Vallow Daybell of invoking outlandish religious beliefs about zombies and the end of the world to justify the crimes she’s been convicted of: the murders of two of her children and her husband’s former wife in Idaho.
Charles Vallow was killed in 2019
On July 11, 2019, Cox called 911 and “reported that he had shot and killed his brother-in-law,” the Maricopa County prosecutor’s office said when it announced the charges.
Cox claimed he acted in self-defense after an argument and was not charged with any crime. Months earlier, Charles Vallow had told police that his wife was threatening to kill him, describing her behavior as increasingly unbalanced.
“You’re not Charles. I don’t know who you are, what you did with Charles. But I can murder you now, with my powers,” Vallow quoted his wife, according to police body-cam footage.
Cox died in December of 2019 of what were determined to be natural causes. A grand jury indicted Vallow Daybell on the conspiracy murder charge in Vallow’s death in June 2021. She’s also accused in Arizona of conspiring with Cox to attempt to kill her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux, who was shot at in the fall of 2019 but survived.
Both sides start to lay out their cases
Vallow Daybell is representing herself in the trial in Phoenix, assisted by advisory attorneys. Opening arguments were presented on Monday.
“They are alleging that insurance money was my motive. Social Security was my motive,” Vallow Daybell told the jury on Monday. “Spouses having insurance policies is not a crime. Collecting Social Security is not a crime. Self-defense is not a crime.”
“A family tragedy is not a crime,” she continued. “It’s a tragedy.”
She also said her late husband, Charles Vallow, who worked in insurance, had taken out a valuable policy on her life as well as his own.
But prosecutor Treena Kay argued that the evidence would show Charles Vallow’s killing was premeditated — part of Vallow Daybell’s plan to leave one husband for another.
Kay also cited Vallow Daybell’s remarks to friends, claiming that Charles Vallow was no longer himself, alleging that he was possessed by a spirit named “Ned.”
The prosecutor also cited a text message sent after Charles Vallow died in which Lori Vallow Daybell told Chad Daybell that Charles had changed his life insurance policy without her knowing it, removing her as the main beneficiary.
The message was “a confession by Lori of how religion and money were twisted to justify Charles’s murder,” Kay said.
The prosecution’s first witnesses included members of the Chandler Fire Department, who described being called to a home in Chandler, Ariz., where Charles Vallow had been shot in the chest. They testified that they performed CPR on Vallow, but stopped after no pulse or heartbeat could be restored.
The trial is expected to last through the middle of May, according to the court’s calendar.
Vallow Daybell was found guilty of other murders in 2023
This new trial starts nearly two years after an Idaho jury convicted Vallow Daybell of murdering her two youngest children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua Jaxon “JJ” Vallow, and conspiring to murder Tammy Daybell, Chad’s then-wife, who was found dead in her home in October 2019.
Weeks after Tammy’s death, Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell married in Hawaii.
Vallow Daybell’s children were last seen alive in September 2019 — the same month they moved with their mother from Chandler, Ariz., to Rexburg, Idaho. Their bodies were found months later, buried on Chad Daybell’s property in Idaho.
Vallow Daybell was sentenced to multiple life terms in prison without the possibility of parole. She has filed a notice of appeal in that case.
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office initiated the extradition process for Vallow Daybell to face charges in Arizona following her sentence in Idaho.
