Lori Vallow’s high-profile trial took an unexpected turn this week when jurors heard a dramatic jailhouse phone call in which the “doomsday cult mom” appeared to make a key confession about her children’s murders.
The distressing call between the accused killer and her sister Summer Shiflet on 20 June 2020 was played in Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, on Tuesday, where Ms Vallow is on trial for the murders of her daughter Tylee Ryan, son JJ Vallow and new husband Chad Daybell’s first wife Tammy.
In the call, an inconsolable Ms Shiflet is heard confronting her sister about JJ and Tylee’s deaths – just days after the children’s remains were discovered in a shallow grave on Mr Daybell’s property in Salem, Idaho.
Ms Shiflet questions how her sister could have gone to Hawaii and married Mr Daybell in a fairytale wedding on the beach knowing that her children had been killed, that their remains were buried in a pet cemetery on his property and that their family was desperately searching for them.
“You were dancing on a beach with a smile on your face taking wedding photos,” she shouts.
At this point of the call – where she repeatedly dodges questions about what she knew – Ms Vallow appears to unwittingly slip up.
“Yeah, months later,” she says of the gap between the deaths and her wedding.
“Trying to go on with life, trying to be happy, trying to find some kind of happiness. You think I want to be alone?”
In her brief retort, Ms Vallow appeared to confess that she knew all along that her children were dead – and where their remains had been left.
Ms Vallow has never admitted to having any knowledge of or involvement in her children’s murders to authorities.
The children were last seen alive in September 2019.
The last proof of life of Tylee was on 8 September when she, JJ, her mother and Ms Vallow’s brother Alex Cox were photographed together at Yellowstone National Park. JJ then disappeared weeks later on 22 September 2019, when he suddenly vanished from his mother’s house overnight.
Two months later – on 5 November 2019 – Ms Vallow jetted off to Hawaii and married Mr Daybell on a beach.
For months, authorities and the children’s families desperately tried to find JJ and Tylee.
But Ms Vallow refused to reveal where the children were or what had happened to them, repeatedly claiming that they were “safe”.
On 9 June 2020, the children’s remains were finally found during a search of Mr Daybell’s property.
JJ, seven, was still wearing his red pyjamas and a pull-up nighttime diaper when his remains were pulled from the earth.
His arms were wrapped in duct tape and his head was wrapped in a white plastic bag with thick layers of duct tape around it. He had been partly covered in a blue children’s blanket before wood panelling and three white stones were placed on top of him in the shallow grave.
Tylee’s remains were found not far from her younger brother’s, close to a fire pit in the pet cemetery. The 16-year-old had been dismembered, burned and her body parts were dispersed around the grounds.
Eleven days later, Ms Shiflet called her sister in jail – where she had been held since she failed to meet a deadline to present the children to law enforcement.
For some of the call, Ms Shiflet is so distraught that her words are inaudible as she breaks down speaking about the horror discovery and accuses her sibling of throwing her murdered children “away like garbage.”
“Did you know they were there?” she asks her sister, to which Ms Vallow replies, ”I can’t talk about it.”
Ms Vallow continues to refuse to reveal what happened to her children in the call, telling her sister “you have no idea what happened” when asked why she did nothing after the children died.
“[JJ and Tylee] deserve a proper burial with their family that loves them, at the least,” Ms Shiflet shouts.
“You threw Tylee in a pet cemetery like a piece of garbage. That is not Christ-like. There is nothing good in that. They were innocent and they were loved.”
Ms Vallow responds by saying: “I took care of them their whole life. Me, me.”
In another heartbreaking moment, Ms Shiflet chokes up as she tells her sister the family would have cared for Tylee and JJ if Ms Vallow couldn’t or didn’t want to.
“We would have taken them,” she weeps.
Ms Shiflet also hits out at her sister for lying about the children’s whereabouts saying that she even “went on tv and defended you” from accusations that she could have harmed Tylee and JJ.
Prosecutors allege that Ms Vallow, Mr Daybell and Cox conspired to murder Tammy, JJ and Tylee as part of their doomsday cult beliefs – as well as for financial purposes so that they could collect Tammy’s life insurance money and the children’s social security and survivor benefits.
As part of their cult beliefs, the couple believed in a “rating system of light and dark” for how they ranked the spirits of the people around them.
Over time, this evolved into the belief that some people – including the children – were “zombies” and the only way to get rid of the zombies was for the human body to be destroyed.
Ms Vallow is now facing life in prison charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and grand theft in the deaths of JJ and Tylee.
She is also charged with conspiracy to murder Tammy.
Tammy, 49, died suddenly on 19 October 2019 – just one month after the children disappeared and weeks before Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell married.
At the time, her death was ruled natural causes before her body was exhumed and an autopsy determined she died by asphyxiation.
Mr Daybell is due to stand trial at a later date over all three murders. Cox meanwhile mysteriously died before he could face charges.
Ms Vallow is also charged in Arizona in the murder of her fourth husband Charles Vallow.
In July 2019 – two months before the children’s disappearance – Vallow was shot dead by Cox.
At the time, Cox claimed Vallow attacked him with a baseball bat and it was ruled self-defence. Now, Ms Vallow is also facing charges in Arizona of conspiring with Cox to murder Vallow.
