Seeing Through the Glass, Darkly: "Doomsday Mom" Lori Vallow Daybell's Crimes, Trial, and Sentencing

Lori Vallow Daybell went down a religious rabbit hole. It took her to the most heinous crimes including the murder of her own children.

Photo by Mitchell Griest on Unsplash

Reality is perception, but an objective reality still exists. One of those objective realities is that Lori Vallow Daybell will serve the rest of her life in prison with no possibility of parole. She can still appeal her conviction, but any other outcome is highly unlikely. For those unfamiliar, Lori Vallow Daybell, a former Wheel of Fortune and beauty pageant contestant, was convicted of the murder of her own children, conspiracy to murder her now husband’s then wife, and she stands accused of conspiracy to murder her prior husband and a conspiracy for the attempted murder of her niece’s ex-husband.

Introduction: The Question of True Crime

“Doomsday Mom,” is the moniker given to Lori Vallow Daybell by other more well-funded outlets for reasons that will become clear. Judge Steven Boyce, the district judge for Fremont County, Idaho ordered that the trial would not be streamed or televised, but audio transcripts would be made available to media outlets who requested it later that day. East Idaho News, the outlet ran by Nate Eaton, diligently uploaded these transcripts to his site. Eaton has covered the case from the very beginning.

My intention, at first, was to cover this case from my legal analysis angle, as I do other cases. However, I internally struggled. Each day I listened, and the notes from the day before sat collecting more and more dust. I did not want to be, or perceived as, some grotesque carnival barker advertising all the horrors of humanity, profiting from others’ pain. Maybe some things are just better left unsaid. But each day I listened to every gruesome detail, every bizarre testimony, all the dry technical data regarding cell phones. I researched late into the hours of the next morning many nights. For what, I did not know. I was content to let it lie as the case gnawed at me.

True Crime Brain can be a scourge. I do not have to tell you about the various TikToks and Facebook posts by people talking about the latest tactics of traffickers waiting to lure women and children out of a Target parking lot. We are inundated with stories about how someone’s cousin’s girlfriend’s college roommate was nearly taken because she saw a stranger wearing a Bluetooth headset at the mall. People are convinced that crime is everywhere, despite that not really being the case. Crime is complicated. There is a moral panic that merged with QAnon conspiracy beliefs, and they feed into one another in a vicious ouroboros that consumes itself as we consume more content.

True crime content is not going away. People have always been drawn to true crime for one reason or another. The more recent explosion in true crime podcasts may make it seem like a new phenomenon, but it isn’t. In days long gone, the courthouse was a place of information and entertainment as much as any other media is today. For example, at the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping Trial in 1935, a crowd of over 10,000 were outside the courthouse waiting on a verdict, according to true crime writer and historian, Kate Winkler Dawson.

Reader, this may not be worth anything, but I did wrestle with this decision. I thought perhaps I could cover other cases, and this one was just too horrid. However, this case is not just, as the prosecution said, about “money, power, and sex.” It certainly involves those elements, but it also, as Leah Sottile writes in her highly recommended book When the Moon Turns to Blood, is about religion, particularly about splinter groups of the Mormon church and apocalyptic sects and beliefs.

I believe it is also a story about radicalization and how radicalization allows someone to become their most narcissistic self, convinced they see through everything and are even the chosen one, they are special, the main character of the universe. They see a reflection of themselves that allows them to have a distorted view of themselves. For better or worse, I have become an expert in the area of radicalization, disinformation, and extremists, particularly when it comes to the legal battles and maneuverings of those people and the propogandists and profiteers within that space. So, I could not let this case collect dust forever. I saw podcast after podcast covered this case. YouTube channel after YouTube channel. Blog after Blog. But I felt there was not so much focus on how we got here. Just lurid detail after lurid detail. I’ve decided to jump in. Consider this my true crime debut.

I do not wish to induce a panic that you will be murdered by radicalized cultists. It is more likely that you will see the more subtle consequences, whether that be family members lost in a reality of their own making, political consequences, and reckoning with the fact that many people in this country do not share our reality. I cannot foresee all those consequences. Some of those consequences will involve violence. That is already happening. We have seen murders by radicalized people before. We will see them again. But you cannot let that keep you from living your life. So be aware, but do not become paranoid. Studying these kinds of cases and kinds of people has had its personal toll. I realize now I became disillusioned, but we must hold onto hope, even as I explore this abyss. Now I know I must act as a diver, carefully gauging when I need to come back to the surface, lest I get lost in the depths below. Carried and then lost in the undertow, different from the undertow of radicalization itself that Jeff Sharlet discusses in his work, but an undertow from that same current nonetheless.

Forgive me, reader, for the long introduction, whether you find it too lengthy or navel-gazingesque. Perhaps my moral wrestling and struggles in the abyss are meaningless and you find it all to be self-justification. Perhaps a distraction from the main event you want to get to. But I felt this all weighing on me, and I have now released that weight. Maybe my good intentions are worthless. After all, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and the case of Lori Vallow Daybell is certainly a road to Hell.

Tylee, JJ, and Tammy

First and foremost, I want to talk about the victims in this case. Tylee Ryan was a witty teenager, always ready with a comeback. She got her GED to graduate high school early and because she suffered from pancreatitis. She suffered a lot of pain throughout her too short life. She should not have had to endure that pain, but she still managed to be a fun-loving teen. She was responsible with her money, but she liked to have fun. She drove a Jeep Wrangler. I imagine she was proud of it. Tylee was tough, but also caring and generous. She would send money to her older sibling, Colby Ryan, in Hawaii.

She witnessed a bitter divorce between her parents, Joe Ryan and Lori Vallow Daybell. Tylee later did not have a good relationship with her father. He later passed away after he mother remarried. As a result she received Social Security payments every month. She wanted to share that with her brother, who was by then an adult, which shows Tylee’s generosity. She also greatly cared for her adopted brother, JJ Vallow. Tylee was protective of JJ when he came into her life, and she loved him dearly. Tylee was also fiercely loyal to her mother.

As soon as JJ Vallow arrived into this world he had obstacles. He was born ten weeks premature with many medical problems. The hospital found drugs in his system when he was born, so JJ was taken care of by Kay and Larry Woodcock, JJ’s paternal grandparents. Kay and Larry loved JJ dearly. They took him to his many doctor’s appointments. JJ loved to give concerts for his stuffed animals, loved to climb, and would read out the ingredient names on medicine bottles. He also could do calculations very easily. JJ was also autistic and had ADHD. His grandparents sought to support him the very best that they could. However, they thought that the resources in Lake Charles, Louisiana were not as sufficient as the resources available in Arizona, where Kay’s brother, Charles Vallow lived with his wife Lori. Plus, Charles and Lori were a younger couple, so although it was difficult decision, custody of JJ was given to Charles and Lori.

Charles Vallow played baseball in college at McNeese State University and then played in a minor league. He always stayed athletic, but later became a managing partner at an investment firm. He was described as energetic, in fact possessing the energy typical of a much younger man. Charles had two sons from a prior marriage before he married Lori Vallow, who many say he was madly in love with.

Tammy Daybell was a librarian in Rexburg, Idaho. She was devoted to her children and the publishing company she ran with her husband, Chad Daybell. Chad mostly wrote, but Tammy did the marketing, the cover art, and essentially ran the business. She was the breadwinner, and she was active in her community. She participated in a clogging class and had many friends. Tammy was described as warm and loving. She was embracing new challenges as her children grew older. A new stage of life that was cut all too short.