On January 30, 2019, Charles Vallow drove to a Gilbert, Arizona hotel where he suspected his wife was staying with their children. Just a few hours earlier, he had been thousands of miles away on a business trip in Houston, Texas, when his phone rang.
The voice on the other end was his wife, Lori. But the words coming out of her mouth were alien. She claimed he was already dead and his body had been claimed by a demon named ‘Nick Schneider’. Lori also labeled herself a newly appointed goddess chosen to lead the apocalypse.
Before hanging up, she promised that if Vallow ever returned to Arizona, she would murder him and an angel would help her get rid of the body.
Fearing for the safety of their seven-year-old adopted son, JJ, Charles rushed to the airport only to find Lori had already logged into his account and canceled his flight. He purchased a ticket on the spot and landed in Phoenix only to find his truck had also been stolen from the airport parking lot.
When he finally hitched a ride home, Charles attempted to insert his key only to discover Lori had changed the deadbolt locks to bar his entry. He then spotted Lori’s other car abandoned in the driveway and got inside to see if he could find something to help.
Inside, he found Lori’s wallet, phone, and a plastic hotel room key with the branding of the Tru By Hilton hotel in Gilbert, Arizona. Charles then called the Gilbert police department, and officers arriving on scene let him into the home because he was the legal leaseholder.
The house was completely stripped of his clothing, personal effects, and business laptop. Armed with the key card, Charles drove to the hotel and located the room they were in. He knocked repeatedly, calling out to his wife and children, but she kept them quiet inside and refused to unlock the door.
Because the room was registered under Lori’s name and she wouldn’t open the door, Charles couldn’t legally force his way in. He had to return to their house at the Four Peaks Place, in Chandler, to sleep that night.
At dawn the next day, Charles called the Gilbert police again, and they arrived at the hotel parking lot. There, he begged officers to enter the room and serve a psychiatric hold so he could save his children.
The officers declined to assist, saying they lacked criminal jurisdiction to breach a private hotel room over a civil custody dispute. Knowing that Lori had to take JJ to school, Charles decided to stake out the elementary school parking lot.
Once he spotted Lori and JJ, Charles snuck up to the vehicle and snatched Lori’s purse to recover his items and stolen business laptop. Lori immediately called emergency services, saying Charles had stolen her purse.
Gilbert police arrived soon after and separated the couple. According to 12news, Charles frantically told them, “She’s lost her mind. I don’t know how else to say it.” One officer asked, “What makes her a danger to herself or others?” Charles replied, “She’s threatened to murder me, kill me.”
The police ultimately returned the purse to Lori and allowed her to leave with JJ. That very afternoon, Lori drained $35,000 from their business bank account and checked herself into a community health clinic for an hour to ‘prove’ she was sane.
Six months later, Charles Vallow was found dead on the living room floor of their home in Chandler, Arizona. He had been shot twice by Lori’s brother, Alex Cox.
What Charles Knew
In the ensuing months after Lori drained the account, their marriage had collapsed beyond repair. Charles filed for divorce and requested full custody of JJ. KTVB reported the court filing notes that Lori had “become infatuated and at times obsessive about near-death experiences and spiritual visions.”
Lori had also allegedly told Charles that “she is a translated being who cannot taste death sent by God to lead the 144,000 into the Millennium.” She added, claiming “she is sealed (eternally married) to the ancient Book of Mormon prophet Moroni and that she has lived numerous lives on numerous planets before this current life.”
Lori also believed Christ’s second coming would happen in July 2020 and only 144,000 people would survive it. Charles made several references to Lori threatening his life, but all these were largely ignored.
Investigators also later determined these ideas had not originated in a vacuum. Lori got the ideas from Chad Daybell, an Idaho fiction author who fancied himself a visionary after a near-death experience.
Chad and Lori met at a doomsday prepper conference in 2018 and began a religious podcast together. By the time Charles was filing for divorce, the affair was well underway. What Charles did not know, though, was how they used to talk about him.
Later, detectives retrieved text messages referring to Charles as ‘Ned ’ or ‘Hiplos’. These were the names of a spirit that was said to be possessing him at the time. According to the Daily Beast, Lori was convinced her husband was “possessed by a dark spirit by the name of Ned Schneider.”
In text messages, Lori discussed sending fire to Charles and working on Hiplos. She eventually developed paranoia that Charles was hindering her full spiritual potential, saying he was blocking her gifts.
Charles had initially petitioned Community Bridges Healthcare for a 72-hour hold and evaluation of Lori, and the staff called Gilbert police to bring her in for treatment, but it didn’t work.
On June 29, 2019, Charles found a letter Lori had written and signed in his name, asking Chad Daybell to help Charles write a book. He confronted Lori about the affair and said if she didn’t admit it, he would contact Tammy Daybell, Chad’s wife.
True to his word, he emailed Chad and his wife separately. According to Local News 8, Charles wrote an email to Tammy saying, “Your husband and my wife are having an affair. It’s devastating, I know.” Tammy opened the email, read it, and immediately deleted it, blocking Vallow’s email address.
July 2019 in Chandler, Arizona
Charles arrived at Lori’s rental home early on July 11 after flying in from Houston the night before. The plan was to pick up seven-year-old JJ for school.
When he walked through the front door, Charles was instantly met with hostility. Lori confronted him and demanded to see his cell phone. When Charles refused, they erupted into a loud, screaming argument.
Hearing the chaos from her bedroom, 16-year-old Tylee grabbed a baseball bat and rushed into the living room. She stepped between her mother and Charles, brandishing the bat, but Charles wrestled it away, and Tylee ran out the back.
What happened next became the center of a conspiracy, as Alex Cox later claimed Charles swung the bat, hitting him in the head. This forced Cox to run to the bedroom and retrieve a .45 caliber handgun and fire in self-defense.
Lori then provided a contradicting account, telling police that Charles had actually gone after Tylee with the bat after taking it from her, and she believed Charles was going to bash her with it before Cox intervened by grabbing him from behind.
In the interview, she claimed Charles turned his anger on Alex, and she grabbed the children and fled out the door. Lori said she had her back turned or was around the corner when she heard a physical scuffle followed by a loud pop.
When she walked back, she saw Charles lying on the floor. She and Cox just looked at each other in shock.
The next hour baffled investigators, as neither of them called 911 for almost one hour after Charles was shot. During that time, they did nothing to render life-saving aid, including CPR. Instead, Alex spent the time pacing the house and cleaning himself up.
Finally, Cox dialed emergency services at 8.32 am. Fox10Phoenix reported the call where Cox said, “I got in a fight with my brother-in-law. and I shot him in self-defense.”
When the Chandler police arrived on the scene, Cox walked out with his hands in the air. Lori had taken JJ and Tylee and fled the house. She dropped JJ off at school and went to the local store to shop for flip-flops before coming back to the scene.
Responding officers doing interviews noted a disturbing lack of grief. Bodycam footage also captured Lori briefly smiling, laughing, and casually fixing her hair within sight of the home where her husband’s body was being loaded into a body bag.
Charles’ family immediately felt there was foul play involved. A day after the murder, his sister-in-law sent frantic emails to investigators warning them about Lori. She told them Lori had been telling relatives Charles needed to die because he had been possessed by a demon.
Charles’s sister, Kay Woodcock, was also deeply distraught and immediately suspicious when Lori refused to let JJ attend the memorial service in Louisiana.
Cox claimed it was self-defense, and no charges were filed at the time. According to East Idaho News, two days after Charles was killed, Chad Daybell texted Lori saying, “I got the inspiration to go back to my original death percentages that helped us track Charles, Ned, etc. Tammy is very close. Her percentage has fallen steadily since Hiplos left. It is encouraging.”
According to Post Register, on July 18, a week after Charles’ death, Lori texted Chad, saying, “So I talked to the insurance company,” Lori texted. “He changed it in March. So it was probably Ned before we got rid of him. They can’t tell me who, of course, but it’s done. I’ll still get the 4000 a month from SS.”
At this time, the local police had initially accepted Cox’s claim of self-defense, so they did not track the texts. They read them in court after later incidents.
The Children Disappear
Within weeks of Charles’s death, Lori moved to Rexburg, Idaho, taking Tylee and JJ with her. She enrolled JJ in Kennedy Elementary on September 3, 2019. Five days later, Lori, Cox, Tylee and JJ took a day trip to Yellowstone National Park.
A photo later recovered from Lori’s iCloud account showed Tylee smiling while holding her brother at the park.
Phone records also show Alex Cox on Chad Daybell’s property, which was ten minutes away from where Lori now lived. JJ continued to attend school for three weeks but was last seen alive on September 23, playing on a neighbor’s doorstep.
The following day, Lori contacted Kennedy Elementary and abruptly unenrolled JJ, falsely claiming she was moving him out of state to homeschool him.
Unfortunately, on October 19, 2019, Chad Daybell’s wife Tammy also died at their home. Her death was initially ruled to be from natural causes.
With no one to stop them, Chad and Lori flew to Hawaii and were married on a beach.
The official investigation into the odd sequence of deaths and disappearances was triggered by JJ’s grandmother and Charles’s sister, Kay Woodcock. Kay and her husband, Larry Woodcock, essentially raised JJ during his first year of life.
When Lori relocated the family, the Woodcocks grew increasingly concerned because they hadn’t spoken to or seen JJ in months, so they contacted the Rexburg police department. Officers then arrived at Lori’s townhouse for a welfare check.
By that time, Lori and Chad had already returned from their honeymoon. She lied to police, claiming JJ was in Arizona staying with their friend, Melanie Gibb. Realizing law enforcement was closing in, Chad and Lori abruptly left their townhouses when the officers left and flew back to Kauai, Hawaii.
Back in Arizona, Alex Cox suddenly passed away from what medical examiners determined was natural causes. With Cox dead and the couple hiding out in Hawaii, the physical trail of the crimes went cold for months. However, the FBI was quietly building a case against the couple.
Investigators Pick Up the Pace
By January 2020, the media storm surrounding the missing children had escalated, and in January 2020, police officers intercepted Chad and Lori while they were driving a rental car near their beachside resort.
They served Lori with a court order giving her five days to physically produce Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Lori ignored the warnings, and on February 20, 2020, she was arrested on charges of child desertion and non-support.
She was extradited to Idaho, and the bail was set at $1 million. Even from her cell, she refused to tell attorneys or family where the children were, relying on her belief that the world was coming to an end in July 2020.
While Lori was in jail, Chad was free at home in Idaho. At that time, the FBI was also conducting a deep dive into Alex Cox’s Google account. It revealed that Cox’s phone pinged in Daybell’s backyard for two hours on the morning Tylee was last seen alive.
That day, Chad had sent a message to Tammy saying he had just shot a big raccoon and buried it in their backyard pet cemetery. Cox’s phone then pinged again on Chad’s property on the 23rd, after JJ was last seen alive.
Excavations Reveal Treachery
Armed with GPS coordinates, a convoy of FBI agents, local police, and anthropologists raided the Daybell home in Salem. They started digging up the backyard and eventually uncovered the remains of 7-year-old JJ Vallow.
Chad, who had been anxiously sitting in the SUV in his driveway while the police conducted the exhumations, suddenly put his vehicle in drive and fled down the highway. Police cruisers immediately pulled him over and took him into custody.
The police also found the remains of Tylee. Her charred bones and body parts were scattered in what had been used as a pet cemetery on the property. The cause of death was undetermined due to how badly her remains were burned, but they assessed JJ’s cause of death was asphyxiation.
The FBI subsequently uncovered text messages showing Lori and Chad discussing Tylee and JJ’s as being possessed, mentioning a perfectly orchestrated plan to take the children out. Shortly before their deaths, Lori even texted Chad that she was so tired of taking care of demons.
Investigators then moved on to Tammy and exhumed her body from a Utah cemetery. Her autopsy determined she had been asphyxiated by suffocation, which likely took place in her own bed.
The Legal Reckoning for Lori and Chad
Lori’s trial was paused multiple times after being declared unfit to stand trial, and she spent a year in a state psychiatric facility before they ascertained she was competent to stand trial. Her trial began in April 2023, and the prosecution set up a case around sex, money, and power.
They also presented text messages in which Lori and Chad described family members as dark spirits or zombies. The prosecution paired the religious extremism with financial information showing Lori continued to collect and spend the children’s Social Security survivor benefits.
Lori’s defense argued that she was incredibly misled and fell under the spell of Chad and that her brother, Alex Cox, acted on his own. In May 2023, after seven hours of deliberating, the jury found Lori guilty of all counts. The jury sentenced her to three consecutive life prison terms.
During her sentencing hearing, she read a statement in court, as reported by KUTV News. An excerpt read, “Jesus Christ knows the truth of what happened here. A wonderful heavenly plan has been depicted for us. No one was murdered. Accidental deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal medication side effects happen.”
According to Boise State Public Radio, Judge Steven Boyce told her, “You killed those children to remove them as obstacles and profit financially. You justified all this to go down a bizarre religious rabbit hole, and clearly you are still there.”
Armed with the momentum of the conviction, the prosecution moved to frame Chad as the architect of this doomsday cult and proved that he used his self-proclaimed position to manipulate Lori and Cox into eliminating their spouses and the children.
In May 2024, the jury found Chad guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and insurance fraud. During the penalty phase, he waived his right to present mitigating arguments to save his life and was subsequently sentenced to death. Chad Daybell is currently on Idaho’s death row.
After receiving life in Idaho, in 2025, Lori was extradited to Maricopa County to face charges for the crimes done in Arizona. Lori then stood trial for conspiring with Alex Cox to kill Charles Vallow. The jury found her guilty.
She was again tried for conspiracy to commit the murder of Brandon Boudreaux, her niece’s ex-husband, and was again found guilty. An Arizona judge then added two more life sentences to Lori’s count, bringing the total to five.
The convictions and sentencing of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell brought a definitive end to a saga that horrified the nation, but the resolution offers little comfort to a family that has lost so much. Driven by a toxic combination of greed and delusion, the pair left a devastating trail of blood in Arizona and Idaho.
If you want to read more stories about missing children, check out our articles on Amber Hagerman and Etan Patz.
