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Chad Daybell has been found guilty of killing his wife and two young children of his girlfriend almost five years after the strange and tragic case first captured the nation’s attention.
Daybell, 55, the self-proclaimed prophet and author of the “doomsday cult” remained emotionless as the verdict was read on Thursday evening. He was found guilty on all counts.
12 jurors have deliberated only in six hours after closing arguments on Wednesday after listening to two months of testimony that was revealed in the first disturbance of murder, unexplained death, apocalyptic cult beliefs, and strange claims of zombie children.
Now a jury will be tasked with deciding whether Daybell should be sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty for the crime.
The Idaho man is charged with three counts of first-degree murder, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit murder and grand theft in connection with the 2019 deaths of his wife Tammy Daybell, and their two children Lori Vallow, Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow , seven.
Just two weeks after Tammy Daybell died in October 2019 of what was initially believed to be natural causes, Daybell and Vallow got married on a beach in Hawaii, raising suspicions among law enforcement officials.
Only after the Vallow children were reported missing – and authorities began investigating the couple’s strange cult beliefs – were questions asked about Tammy’s death and her body exhumed for an autopsy – something the family denied.
It was determined that she died of asphyxiation and Daybell was charged with her murder, as well as the murder of Vallow’s children, who were found buried in Daybell’s Rexburg backyard in June 2020, nine months after she disappeared.
Prosecutors said Daybell’s “lust for sex, power and money” drove the murders and that he and Vallow justified the crime by creating an apocalyptic belief system that people could be possessed by evil spirits and become “zombies”.
The only way to save the possessed person’s soul is for the possessed body to die, he said.
“Three corpses…and for what?” prosecutor Lindsey Blake told jurors during closing arguments Friday. “Money, power and sex – that’s what the accused cares about.”
But Daybell’s defense attorney, John Prior, told jurors there was insufficient evidence to link Daybell to the death. He said police were only looking for things that could be used against Daybell rather than the facts of the case – and he claimed Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox, committed the crime.
Before he pinned the murder on Cox and Vallow and said Daybell was deceived by Vallow who was described in open statements as a greedy and “very sexual” woman who lured him to do her bidding.
“This beautiful woman named Lori Vallow showed up and she started giving him a lot of attention,” Prior said of the couple’s first meeting at a religious convention in October 2019. “She was chasing him. She was encouraging him.
Last year, in the same courtroom, Vallow was convicted of three counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Jurors heard how he, Daybell and Cox were motivated, in part, by the beliefs of a strange cult. Cox died of natural causes during the investigation and was never prosecuted.
“Alex Cox is a killer, and he’s not shy about shooting people,” Prior said Wednesday, noting that Cox had previously killed Vallow’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in Arizona and that the two children were the only witnesses to the shooting.
They said Cox tried to discredit Daybell by burying the remains of a murdered child in Daybell’s yard in Rexburg, Idaho.
Over the past two months, prosecutors have called dozens of witnesses to support their claims that Daybell and Vallow conspired to kill the two children and Tammy Daybell because they wanted to get rid of any obstacles in their relationship and get money from the benefits and lives that are still alive. insurance.
Prosecutor Blake said Wednesday that Daybell considered himself the leader of the so-called “Church of the Firstborn” and told Vallow and others that he could tell if someone was a “zombie.” Daybell also claims to be able to determine how close a person is to death by reading what they call their “percentage of death”.
With these elements, Daybell followed a pattern for each person he killed, Blake added.
“He will be labeled as ‘dark’ by Chad Daybell. The ‘percentage of death’ will go down. Then he will have to die,” he told the court.
Blake also said that Daybell tricked Vallow and her brother, Cox, into helping with the plan, sometimes giving Cox a ‘spiritual blessing’ and warning Vallow that the angels were angry at him for ignoring him.
“He had money, power, sex, and no obstacles and, in particular, no relatives, no burdens. However, he left behind destruction and tears for those he had trusted,” said Blake.
Before rejecting the prosecution’s explanation of Daybell’s conviction. He described Daybell as a traditional member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a deeply religious man who spoke about his spiritual beliefs every chance he got.
Before saying that it is not “a plan to kill, but it is a plan to gather,” the couple shared their belief that the world will end in July 2020 – and that they will lead a group of 144,000 people who will be saved during the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, according to testimony previous witness.
“Do you agree with light and dark, it doesn’t matter. Whether you believe in the percentage of death, it doesn’t matter,” Prior said.
“They have a right to a belief.”
Over the course of two months, there were 67 witnesses called by the prosecution, six of whom were called, while the defense called 11 witnesses, including two of Daybell’s adult children. Six rebuttal witnesses were also called.
Daybell’s son Garth Daybell and daughter Emma Daybell Murray both came to their father’s defense. He testified that his mother had been exhausted and sick before her death.
Garth told jurors he was there the night his mother died and he didn’t hear any noise from the bedroom next to his parents’ room, but later he heard Daybell snoring.
He told the court that if there was a struggle or a fight, he would have heard it. But he said he didn’t hear anything.
Like Vallow, Daybell himself never took to his own defense.
