PHOENIX (AP) — Lori Vallow Daybell ’s brother told jurors Thursday at her Arizona trial that he believes she was behind the killing of her estranged husband.
Adam Cox, a witness for the prosecution, said Charles Vallow’s 2019 shooting death outside Phoenix occurred just before the two men planned an intervention to bring her back into the mainstream of their shared faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Cox said Vallow Daybell’s religious beliefs were “off the wall” and outside of the faith’s teaching. He said she claimed to be in the process of “translating from being a mortal human to an immortal human being, a celestial being.”
He remembered telling his sister, “I don’t know if you are crazy but what you told me is not true, not real.” He noted other family members cut off contact with him when he brought up concerns about her beliefs.
Vallow Daybell, who was already convicted in Idaho of killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiring with another brother, Alex Cox, to murder Charles Vallow at her home in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb.
Prosecutors say she conspired to kill Vallow so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Vallow, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.
Adam Cox said he traveled to the Phoenix area to help carry out the intervention. He was supposed to stay with his brother Alex, but Alex didn’t respond to his calls or text. He later learned that Alex was staying at Vallow Daybell’s home, leading Adam to become suspicious that Lori and Alex were planning something.
The intervention never occurred. Adam Cox said he later learned of Charles Vallow’s death about two days after the fact from a friend who found out online.
Cox was questioned in court by Vallow Daybell, who isn’t a lawyer but is representing herself at trial.
She addressed her brother in the courtroom as “Mr. Cox.” Her questioning emphasized that she and her brother Adam weren’t close touch in recent years.
She finished by asking Cox if he personally witnessed her conspiring with their brother Alex to murder Charles Vallow.
“No,” Cox answered.
Later, under questioning from a prosecutor, Adam Cox said Vallow Daybell had told people that Charles Vallow was no longer living and that a zombie was living inside her ex-husband’s body.
He repeated his suspicion about Alex Cox dropping out of contact with him and being present at his sister’s house on the morning Charles Vallow was killed.
“No doubt in my mind that they killed him. That’s a feeling I got,” Adam Cox said.
If convicted in Arizona of conspiring to kill Vallow, she would face an additional life sentence.
The trial over Charles Vallow’s death will mark the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell.
She’s scheduled to go on trial again in late May on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she would face another life sentence.
In a previous trial, Daybell was sentenced to death in the killings of his wife and Vallow Daybell’s two youngest children. The children went missing for several months before their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on Chad Daybell’s property.
