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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Graeme Massie

Lori Vallow trial hears devastating call with sister saying she treated children’s bodies ‘like garbage’

AP

The trial of “doomsday cult mom” Lori Vallow has been played a devastating jailhouse call in which her sister accused her of throwing her murdered children “away like garbage.”

An Idaho court heard Summer Shiflet sobbing uncontrollably in audio of a video call she made with her sister as she sat behind bars on 24 June 2020.

In the call, Ms Shiflet told her sister that Tylee and JJ’s bodies had been found in Ms Vallow’s backyard, with Tylee’s being discovered in a pet cemetery.

“Did you know they were there?” Ms Shiflet asked her sister, to which she replied, ”I can’t talk about it.”

Ms Vallow then asked her sister if she believed she would allow her children to be killed, and Ms Shiflet replied she did because she had gone to Hawaii to get married while her children were missing.

Ms Vallow then told her there was another explanation but that she “can’t talk about it.”

“I want to believe the best in you, I love you with all my heart. They were just little kids, I don’t understand,” Ms Shiflet could be heard screaming at her sister.

The 49-year-old is accused of killing her two children and the first wife of her new husband Chad Daybell.

She is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, and grand theft over the deaths of her daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, son Joshua “JJ” Vallow, seven, and Mr Daybell’s first wife Tammy, 49.

Later in the call, Ms Shiflet questioned why her sister had not called her after the children died in September 2019, with Ms Vallow later telling her that “You have no idea what happened.”

Her sister replied by telling Ms Vallow that there was “nothing in scripture that is godly about hurting a child.”

“[JJ and Tylee] deserve a proper burial with their family that loves them, at the least,” she said as she told her she was not the sister she knew and loved.

“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 Shiflet was heard shouting angrily.

Ms Vallow raised her own voice in the recording, replying, “I took care of them their whole life. Me, me.”

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