by Chad Daybell was sentenced to death after an Idaho jury found him guilty of killing his wife and his girlfriend’s two youngest children.
Daybell, 55, a self-proclaimed prophet and author of the “hope day cult,” remained emotionless as he learned his fate. District Judge Steven W Boyce issued the sentence. The prosecution sought restitution of between $130,000 and $300,000 to LifeMap Assurance Company and Primerica Life Insurance Company, which the judge allowed.
Daybell was not ordered to pay any fines in the case.
The decision came two days after the jury returned a guilty verdict on May 30, 2024 in the deaths of his wife Tammy Daybell in 2019, and two children Lori Vallow, Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, seven.
The 12 jurors deliberated for just under six hours after hearing two months of testimony that revealed a disturbing story of murders, unexplained deaths, apocalyptic cult beliefs, and the strange claims of zombie children.
The Idaho man was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit murder and grand theft. He was found guilty on all counts.
First degree murder is punishable by death in Idaho but jurors must determine that there are statutory aggravating circumstances and no mitigating circumstances, which would make the death penalty unjust.
In this case, the jurors found the murders to be “heinous, horrible or cruel”.
Judge Boyce said he would not analyze the court’s reasoning, saying the evidence on the record showed the seriousness of Daybell’s crimes.
“Any lesser sentence would devalue the seriousness of these offences, as this life insurance was obtained based on the murders of individuals and the receipt of life insurance payments,” he said.
The investigation into the deaths began five years ago, after grandparents JJ Kay and Larry Woodcock asked police to check on the child. Investigators soon realized the two children were missing, and a multi-state search ensued. The investigation soon took a few unexpected turns.
Daybell and Vallow were dating when both their spouses died unexpectedly, investigators said. Vallow’s husband, Charles, was shot to death by her brother Alex Cox in Arizona in July 2019; the brother told police it was self-defense. He was not charged.
Vallow, her children JJ and Tylee, and Cox later moved to eastern Idaho to be closer to Daybell, a self-published writer of doomsday fiction loosely based on Mormon teachings.
His wife at the time, Tammy Daybell, died in October 2019 of what was initially believed to be natural causes. Two weeks later, Daybell and Vallow married on a beach in Hawaii, raising suspicions among law enforcement officials.
It was only after the Vallow children were reported missing – and the authorities began to crack down on the couple’s strange cult beliefs – that questions were raised about Tammy’s death and the exhumation of her body for an autopsy – which the family initially denied .
She was determined to have died of asphyxiation and Daybell was charged with her murder, as well as the murders of the Vallow children, who were found buried in Daybell’s Rexburg backyard in June 2020, nine months after they went missing.
Prosecutors say the killings were motivated by Daybell’s “lust for sex, power and money” and that he and Vallow justified the crimes by creating an apocalyptic belief system in which people could be possessed by evil spirits and turned into “zombies”.
The only way to save a possessed person’s soul is for the possessed body to die, she said.
“Three dead bodies… and for what?” prosecutor Lindsey Blake told jurors during closing arguments Wednesday. “Money, power and sex – that’s what the defendant cared about.”
But Daybell’s defense attorney, John Prior, told jurors there was insufficient evidence to link Daybell to the deaths.
He said the police only looked for things they could use against Daybell rather than the facts of the case – and claimed Vallow’s late brother Alex Cox had committed the crimes.
Prior pinned the murders on Cox and Vallow and said it was Vallow’s manipulation of Daybell, whom he described in open statements as a vicious and “very sexual” woman, who lured him into making her offer.
“This beautiful woman named Lori Vallow comes up and starts giving him a lot of attention,” Prior said of the couple’s first meeting at a religious convention in October 2019. “She chased him. she encouraged him.”
Last year, in the same courtroom, Vallow was convicted of the three murders and sentenced to life.
Jurors heard that she, Daybell and Cox were, in part, encouraging their strange cult beliefs. Cox died of natural causes during the investigation and was never charged.
Like Vallow, Daybell himself did not take the stand in his own defense. When asked by Judge Boyce if he wanted to make a statement after his sentencing on Saturday, the death row inmate leaned into a microphone and said “No”.
