Lori Vallow Daybell: The Jailhouse Interview
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Tonight on Dateline... You've been known as the doomsday mom. Good one, Keith. Most hated mom in America. I heard that. I thought we were going to be friends. Well, have you? I'm friends with everybody. I love everybody.

She's the notorious mother tangled in a dark web of murder. Lori Vallow Daybell. It's mind-blowing. The media loves to take tragedies and turn them into crimes. Children, spouses, God. So tell me what happened to Tylee and JJ. Did you kill them? Is that where you're going? Now, the first television interview ever. I'm asking you a question. Did you watch your children die?

That's a really sad question. That's my mom, you know? My siblings are gone. If she would ever tell anybody the truth, you'd think it would be you. That's what she said. She is calculated. You did not kill a soul? Absolutely not. What proof and evidence is there? All these rumors. You've heard a lot of stuff, but what I tell you will be the truth.

Will she reveal her secrets at last? An interview like you've never seen. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with Lori Vallow Daybell, the Jailhouse Interview. Now, as I look back at this scene, I cannot help but wonder...

The one in orange, I need hardly tell you, was, perhaps still is, the most infamous woman in America, Lori Vallow. What was she thinking just here? What was her plan? That she had one would seem quite obvious soon enough. But not yet. Not here. As her jailers led her down a bland white hallway in Phoenix, Arizona's Jail for Women.

And yes, I felt a moral twinge. This would get her some attention. But perhaps half a decade after the events that put her here, she would finally tell us why. Why her children are dead and her ex-husband and her lover's wife.

Why all that death and mayhem? But Lori Vallow, as I was about to discover, had her own unique way of dealing with nosy interrogators. You're the most hated mom in America. I heard that.

And we all know what the media does, and they exaggerate everything, and they make stuff up, and they twist things around, so... I don't know how it became what it is today. It's amazing to me. And I don't really know. And I'm not exposed to what's going on out there. Are you misunderstood? Absolutely. But, yeah. Misunderstood how? I mean, how did they get you wrong? In every way. I mean, how do you know a person if you've never talked to them in five years? How do you know anything about them? How do you know anything about their life?

about how it really is. You remember the case, right? Who can forget it? Hey, Chad and Lori, it's Dateline. How are you? We said nothing? No comment. We began our coverage just over five years ago on the island of Kauai, where in January 2020, we found Lori and her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, just the two of them, seemingly on holiday, without a care in the world. Where are your kids?

Except... There's a lot of people who are worried about your kids. Yes, except... Are you guys worried about them? That this was just months after Lori's children... 16-year-old Tylee and 7-year-old JJ had simply vanished... JJ! From their home in Idaho... Say hi! Vanished from the face of the earth. And by then, police had learned about other suspicious deaths in Chad and Lori's inner circle. What happened to Tammy, Chad?

Chad's wife, Tammy, found dead one autumn morning in Idaho, just a couple of weeks before Chad married Lori. Also recently dead, Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Charles had been shot to death by Lori's brother, Alex Cox. You know no weapons? No weapons on me.

and then not far away in another Phoenix suburb. - Where's your emergency? - Someone just shot my window. - A 911 call from the estranged husband of Lori's niece.

It appeared to him someone was trying to kill him. So I was just pulling in. So, well, you get the picture. I'm getting shot at, so I drove straight. And the two people at the center of all these strange goings-on, the missing kids, the dead husband, the dead wife, the driveway shooting, claimed to be leaders of the gathering of the 144,000 chosen people.

who, according to their own unique reading of the Book of Revelations, would amass in a spot in southeastern Idaho near the town of Rexburg to greet the second coming of Christ, Chad Daybell and his new wife, Lori Vallow. In February of 2020, Lori was arrested in Hawaii and flown back to the state where her children had disappeared, Idaho. Welcome back, Lori. Where are your kids? Where again, she refused to give the police any help at all.

And then, four months later... Police found what they believed to be human remains. The bodies of the two children, JJ and Tylee, were found in Chad Daybell's backyard. They were charged with murder then. And after many delays... Guilty. The jury sentenced Chad Daybell to death. And Lori? Guilty. Multiple convictions. Guilty. Guilty.

at a sentence of life in prison in Idaho. We met Lori Vallow six weeks ago at the Estrella Unit of the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, where she is soon due to go on trial again. Twice. Charged with conspiracy and the attempted murder of her niece's husband. And the murder of her own fourth husband, Charles. Got all that? I'm in trial, coming up, as you know.

Do you know that, Keith? Oh, I know that. Are you keeping track? I'm keeping track. So combative is how she was going to be. Practicing, perhaps? She is representing herself in court now. And she made the decision to meet me for an on-camera interview because she had been telling us she wanted to tell the truth. It's not fun when so many things are not true. Ah, well, we'll get to that, won't we?

Oh yes, we'll get to lots of things. To Jesus in a jail cell. He has a great sense of humor and he's super, super funny. To tall tales you know just can't be true. You're asking me personally, the only person on the earth who really knows, and you're shaking your head no like that didn't happen. To the bizarre claim Laurie laid on the son who lived to tell the story. Did you believe any of that stuff?

To the investigators who speak out for the first time and reveal how they cornered Lori and found those missing children. "Lori, no more!" To a story that got weird the moment Chad laid eyes on Lori. "I've loved him for eternities." "Eternities."

The question hung in the air during our sometimes strange jailhouse conversation. Did for me, at least. And I will love him for eternities in the future. Was the meeting that launched all this the result of pure chance? Or was it what Lori Vallow always wanted? She was born into a large Mormon family in Southern California in 1973 and was a charmer from the very start, but was unlucky in love.

Three husbands by the age of 28 had a young son named Colby who, as a boy, adored his hairdresser mom.

I would say my mom is multi-talented. She's always loved to do different things, sing, dance. And oh, Lori loved the spotlight. Competed on the TV game show Wheel of Fortune. How was the hair in Austin? It's good. Good. Austin's a happening place. Probably thanks to you. Pretty much. And even in the Mrs. Texas pageant in 2004...

during which she offered what now sounds like prophecy. I'm basically a ticking time bomb. But aside from that, she was the neighborhood fun mom. She was always being the one to pick everybody up and sing karaoke at the family party. She just got everybody excited to have fun. By 2006, she'd had a second child, a girl named Tylee.

divorced Tylee's father, and married her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. He was so nice to me. He was so nice to Tylee. He seemed like he genuinely cared about us. And in 2014, Lori and Charles adopted Charles' great-nephew, a little boy named JJ, who was autistic. Hi, JJ. Hi, JJ. Hi, Colby. Hi. I fell in love with him instantly. You're so cute. I would get up in the middle of the night, run up to the room to see if he was breathing, just stand there and just like, is his chest moving? Yeah.

So I loved him so much. What was it about him? He just has such a great spirit. And so it went. Until 2018, when Lori went to a get-together at her church in Phoenix to hear an end-time speaker named Melanie Gibb. She had a lot of the same energy I did, enthusiasm for learning and excitement for the Second Coming.

Like Lori, Melanie was drawn to a particular end times theology that their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints considered too extreme. And as of that day, they became fast friends. So like a sister kind of a friend that you just meet suddenly and just like, this girl's a lot like me.

So Melanie listened to Lori's stories about her husband, Charles Vallow, and three kids. By then, Colby was 22, Tylee 16, and JJ was 6. Melanie got the impression that her new friend was struggling. JJ was a lot of work for her. And he was running around, and she was trying to make him happy. And then Tylee did not have a good relationship with her mom.

So, when Melanie Gibbs suggested a road trip to attend a religious conference in St. George, Utah, Laurie didn't need much persuading. I kept getting ideas to write a novel, but when you're... And once there, Melanie discovered that Chad Daybell, a man she knew was one of the speakers, Chad was an author of end-times themed fiction, claimed to have had near-death experiences that allowed him to see the spirit world, see the past, the future.

Lori and Melanie went to hear him speak. And after, Lori met Chad. She was 45 then. He, 50. Do you remember the first meeting with Chad? Absolutely. What was that like? That was amazing. Tell me about it. It was amazing because the veil was once again opened and we remembered each other. The veil? Why, the veil between heaven and earth?

And that, said Lori to Melanie, is how she knew she and Chad had met in past lives. Lots of times. Chad's past lives? How many? 31. And Lori's past lives? How many lives had she supposedly had? 21. And just five on this planet. Both of them had five on this planet. Oh, wait a minute. Just on this planet. Where were the other ones?

other Earths that were located in the universe. My spirit was standing up, looking down at my body. But now, years after that meeting and all the trouble that followed it, sitting here, talking to me in jail, maybe Lori would finally recognize a more normal reality? I mean, it's unlike anything earthly once you're out of your body. No. No.

I recognized him spiritually. He recognized me spiritually, that we had known each other for eternities. Chad, hi. Hello. Soon, Chad appeared on a podcast with Lori and Melanie. Glad to be on the podcast with you. And then, just three weeks after he met Lori, Chad traveled from his home in Idaho to Arizona for a religious meeting at Lori's house.

Well, Lori's husband, Charles, was out of town. Did you see evidence that she and Chad were falling in love? Oh, yeah. I asked her, like, why don't you get a divorce? And she said, well, Chad and I are not allowed to. Lori's reason? She and Chad, she told Melanie, were exalted, God-like, no divorce for deities. Something we asked Lori about, or tried to.

So when Chad came along and, you know, said you're a goddess and you've lived for, you know, since the beginning of time and so is he... Who said that Chad said that? Are you saying that Chad said that? No, I'm... Did you hear Chad say that to me? I'm just trying to remember. You've heard a lot of stuff, Keith, and I'm here to say you've heard a lot of stuff, but what I tell you will be the truth. Well, will it be? Was it ever?

With Chad in the picture, said Melanie Gibb, Lori began saying some strange and disturbing things about husband Charles. Chad calls and says, I just want to let you know that Charles, something happened to him. His spirit is no longer on this earth. It is in

the spirit world. And there was this character named Ned Snyder, and now he was possessing Charles' physical body. So what, he'd become a demon or something? I guess you could call that. They later phrased it as a zombie, but in the beginning they just said Ned. Poor Charles had no idea about any of this, of course, until, well, apparently until Laurie told him.

Because a couple of weeks after that phone call, at the end of January 2019, Charles called the police. I can't get in touch with my kids. After coming home from a trip and finding his truck and his family, gone. I don't know where my kids are. I don't know where my kids are.

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Hey guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with one of the brightest stars in all of music right now, Jelly Roll, telling me about singing those hits that inspire and telling the story of his rise from a difficult past. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts.

She's lost her mind. I would have to say it. We're LDS. She thinks she's a resurrected being and a god. Charles Vallow felt the ground shifting under his feet. His wife, Lori, had, in his words to local police, lost it. Ever since she'd met this guy at a religious conference named Chad Daybell, Charles said, she was different. She said, you're not Charles. I don't know who you are, what you did with Charles, but I can murder you now.

Charles's anxiety was fully apparent on the body cam video. Later, at Charles's request, Laurie submitted to a mental evaluation.

Her visit was captured on police body cam too. Lori told the police that Charles was the problem, said he had cheated on her, and then flew into a rage when she confronted him. Unfortunately, yeah, we've had to leave and go to hotels just so he calms down or something. The cops seemed sympathetic. Just talking to you, I mean, I don't see you being a danger to yourself or anybody else. Thank you.

And that's exactly what the mental evaluation found. I'm gonna go check and see if I can go in there. But Charles seemed to know better. And at the end of June 2019, he sent an email to someone you'll hear a lot more about. Tammy Daybell, Chad's wife of nearly 30 years and the mother of his five children. It read in part, "Tammy, my name is Charles Vallow. I have some vital and disturbing information regarding your husband and my wife, Lori."

Well, surely Charles expected some reaction from Tammy, but... Nobody knows who opened that email, but it had been opened and deleted, and Charles Vallow's email had been blocked.

Here's Nate Eaton of East Idaho News and an NBC News consultant. So it's possible that Tammy Daybell did see the email and think, what is this? This is a weirdo. I'm going to delete it and block him. Or another theory is that Chad Daybell kept an eye on her email, deleted it, and then blocked the email in case Charles tried to contact her again. And so Charles received no answer. He was alone and...

Frightened, perhaps, when he told those officers she was calling him a demon with a strange name. He says, I'm Nick Schneider. I've taken over Charles' body. It wasn't Nick, of course, but Ned Schneider. But what did it mean? What were Chad and Lori up to? We asked her, and...

Here's what happened. Are you saying he became Ned Schneider? Well, that's what he told the police, that you told him he was somebody named Ned Schneider. You know what he told us? I have a video of it. Did you hear it? Yes. Yes. He's on tape saying that to the police. He was terrified that you were going to kill him. Really, Keith? Is that where you're going to go with this? Well, that's what we're here to talk about.

No, Lori wouldn't talk about Charles as Ned Schneider. But of course she knew we had her text messages to her brother, Alex Cox, referencing Lori's belief that she could not move through portals to the spirit world while Charles was alive. Apparently it is tied to Ned being gone, hopefully today or tomorrow. Alex responded, have fun and get rid of Ned already. And that, said the police, seemed to be exactly what happened.

Because on July 10th, 2019, Alex spent the night at Lori's place. And the next morning, after Charles showed up at the house... 911, where is your emergency? I'm in police in an ambulance. I got in a fight with my brother-in-law and I shot him in self-defense. Subject that's been shot. The police in Chandler, Arizona, were wearing body cams when they responded to the 911 call at Lori's house. You know, no weapons? No weapons on me. All right, come on out this way. Yeah.

And here they encountered Alex in the front yard. He was just yelling at me. Okay. Chairman, police department, anybody inside? Inside, Charles, age 62, was lying dead on the living room floor. Alex claimed the shooting was in self-defense. Charles is the husband of... And as you can see, he kept touching the back of his head, where he claimed Charles had hit him with a baseball bat.

Another tall tale? Investigators have watched the tape frame by frame, of course, since it happened. The lead investigator up in Idaho, Ron Ball, spoke for most. I find it hard to believe that if Charles would have hit Alex in the head with a bat, that Alex would be up walking around with a minor cut on the back of his head. You know, Charles, he played minor league baseball. He knew how to swing a bat. I find it hard to believe.

The rest of what happened was also hard to believe. Though Laurie was inside the house and certainly heard the gunshots that killed Charles, she promptly left and took JJ to Burger King for breakfast and then dropped him off at school before returning to find the police at her house, where she behaved not at all like a shocked widow. How long have you lived here? Like three weeks. Oh, geez. Yeah, okay. That's why the neighbors don't know us. Gotcha. Like, hi neighbor, sorry.

Alex, Lori, and Tylee were all taken downtown to give statements and largely told the same story, that it was self-defense. No charges were filed. And then, just days later, Lori called the insurance company about Charles' million-dollar life insurance policy. Are you aware of who the primary beneficiary of the policy is? It's me.

Um, not exactly. Lori was informed that the beneficiary was in fact not her at all. She found out within a few days that she was not getting any of the money because Charles had changed the beneficiary months earlier to his sister when he realized that Lori's mental health was not 100% and he was concerned that something might happen to him.

News that Laurie had to break to Chad. She texted him. Quote, So I talked to the insurance company. He changed it in March. So it was probably Ned before we got rid of him. It's a spear through my heart. There it was. We got rid of him, meaning Charles, and upset that his death by gunshot did not produce an insurance payout.

So what would Lori Vallow say about all this? There's certain things that I can't talk about. Oh, because your trial is coming up? I'm in trial coming up, as you know. But in the late summer of 2019, Charles Vallow dead and gone, nobody was keeping track of Lori when she suddenly picked up Tylee and J.J. and they moved to Rexburg, Idaho, so close now to Chad and the unsuspecting Tammy Daybell.

lots of stories to tell you. Which one is the real Lori? Charles Vela worried about her sanity. Her trial for the murders of JJ, Tylee, and Tammy was delayed for months while she was treated for religious delusions. Now, in Arizona, she's her own lawyer and is either serious or not about this. Does Jesus visit you often here?

Jesus visits all of us. He's a very good friend of mine. He loves everybody. I'm just his favorite. You're his favorite? No, I'm just teasing. It was a joke. Can I joke with you, Keith? Can we joke? Yes, yes, of course you can. That's my bumper sticker. I said, if I ever had a bumper sticker, it would say, Jesus loves you, but I'm his favorite. We were well down the rabbit hole now that she dodged combatively from one distracting diversion to another.

almost like a character in Alice in Wonderland. I am a talker, so... Was this the real Laurie? Or is she playing a character? I'm playing a lot, okay? I'm playing me too, or trying to. Okay. By early September 2019, two months after the shooting death of Charles Vallow and Phoenix, one thing was obvious. The characters in this drama...

were settling into their roles. Chad Daybell was the prophet, the leader of the group, the man one investigator described as an unattractive, unsuccessful author transformed into the keeper of the gates of heaven, foretelling the imminent end of the world and dictating with the wave of his hand the worthy and the damned. And Laurie Vallow? Well, she played a sort of nymph, a divine partner for all time,

A heavenly honeypot, if you will. Former FBI supervisory special agent Doug Hart worked the case from the start and knows as much about Chad and Lori as just about anyone. There's kind of a mutual manipulation that these two had going around. Unquestionably, yes. It is absolutely a two-way street. Lori used sex to manipulate Chad, and Chad used his visionary status to manipulate Lori.

But moths and flames can't forever exist 900 miles apart. So, seven weeks after Charles' death, Laurie packed up her kids, JJ and Tylee, and moved them to Rexburg, Idaho, or as she called it, Zion, to an apartment about ten minutes from the rural property where Chad happened to live with his wife, Tammy.

And we should add, there was another migrant to Zion, Laurie's brother, Alex Cox. His character has been described as Laurie's angel of death. He was one who was willing to do anything for his sister and ultimately anything for Chad. Such a supposedly funny, mild-mannered man, according to people who had met him in other contexts, and yet there he was. Yes, but clearly also...

Here in our jailhouse chat, we did get one confirmation at least, the obvious one that, yes, they had moved to Idaho because Chad was there and, well, that was where the righteous would gather before the end times. But something else had happened too, revealed by text messages and a friend's eyewitness account.

Chad had declared that Lori's daughter, Tylee, had turned dark. And dark, in those days, seemed to have a way of foreshadowing death. But as she told her story, Lori fixed on a theme she pursued throughout our talk. Tylee, she said, was sick and in pain due to what she called persistent pancreatitis. She drove up to Idaho and followed me up there. She had to stay in bed for days, right?

But just a week after they arrived, on Tuesday, September 8th, the family, Lori, Tylee, JJ, and Alex, went to Yellowstone National Park, about a 90-minute drive from Rexburg. We were going to go see Old Faithful, and she wanted to go. So she got up out of bed. JJ was running around, and she was smiling, and you have seen the pictures, right? These are the last images ever taken of Tylee. As for little JJ...

Less than a week later, on September 14th, Lori and JJ went on an outing to a wildlife park called Bear World. And a few days after that, Lori's friend Melanie Gibb went to Idaho, where Lori had some shocking news. JJ had just become a zombie.

The reason why I believe he became a zombie is that he was going to stop Chad and Lori from going forward. They didn't want anybody to stop them from being together, basically, and I think he was in the way. September 22nd, the very last photo of J.J., ready for bed, in his red pajamas. That night, according to Lori's visitors, J.J. was acting up. Melanie Gibbs' husband, David Warwick, saw Alex take J.J. outside. A couple hours later...

Alex brings back JJ. He walked in, he had JJ on, it was asleep on him. And he carried him up to bed. By morning, JJ was gone and never seen again. And just one week later... There was some crazy stuff that happened. I would hope that has nothing to do with this. It wasn't over yet. ♪

One thing everyone who's met Lori Vallow knows, the woman loves attention. And she is certainly getting it from all over the world. I hear stuff from my family that's like, oh, somebody does a blog about you every day or something. I'm like, how could they do a blog every day? It's been like five years. It's mind-blowing. It's mind-blowing. A lot happened. Mm-hmm.

Tragedies in my life. So the media loves to take tragedies and turn them into crimes, turn them into horrible things. And I had a lot of tragedies in a row, like a domino effect. Tragic dominoes? Or maybe, as investigators could see as they collected evidence, something far more intentional.

Just three weeks after Tylee was last seen alive, and a week after JJ's disappearance, a frightened man called 911 in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Arizona. Someone just shot my window. I was pouring in my house. The voice on the line belonged to this man, Brandon Boudreau. At the time, he was going through a nasty custody fight with his wife, Melanie Boudreau, the niece of Lori Vallow and her brother, Alex Cox.

The police arrived quickly, captured the scene on body cam and released this blurred video. Yeah, so I was just pulling in. I noticed a green Jeep Wrangler. They lifted their, like, back window. Brandon told the officers that the Jeep's back window opened. Somebody hunkered down where the Jeep's back seat should have been, stuck out a rifle where the missing spare tire should have been.

And a bullet whizzed by Brandon's ear shattered the window of his car. Okay, so they shot, then what happened? It hit my window, and it started turning in. It scared me really bad. And then, he said, the shooter took off. The Jeep was green or gray, said Brandon later, and had Texas plates. And what do you know, it didn't take long for police to identify it. The Jeep belonged to Tylee.

Her now deceased stepfather, Charles Fallow, bought it for her. And the guy driving the Jeep? Later, Brandon told the police it looked like Lori's brother. Remember, Alex had already killed his sister's husband, Charles, so was he trying to shoot his niece's estranged husband, too? There is some crazy stuff that happened. I would hope that has nothing to do with this.

A lot of crazy in Brandon's life. His wife had run off to join Laurie and Chad and Alex up in Rexburg before launching a custody battle for the couple's four children. And as text messages have since revealed, Brandon was very much out of favor with Chad and Laurie who were condemning him as a "gadianton" a criminal in Mormon lore. And then, weeks after a quick divorce, Melanie married a guy she had just met named Ian.

So what would Melanie and her new partner Ian tell us about the attempt on Brandon's life? They sat with us in the spring of 2020. Did you ask Alex if he tried to shoot Brandon?

I did. And he made some jokes about it, and then we both talked about how insane that would be for him across the street with a rifle in broad daylight in a recognizable car. He denied it many times. That was hardly a surprise, but investigators thought this might be a pertinent point about Brandon and the attempt on his life.

Charles's death hadn't paid off in insurance money the way it appeared Chad and Lori hoped it would, which probably meant they needed cash. And Brandon? There was the belief among them that he had a big life insurance policy. He made good money, he had a good job, so they knew that he had access to money. And then there was also this fascinating piece of evidence. On the day of the shooting, here was Lori on surveillance video at her rented storage unit.

joined by the still very married Chad Daybell. Here police watched them bring in a tire, just like the one that was missing from Tylee's Jeep when Brandon was shot at. And then they lugged in a folded back seat which would have created space in the back of the Jeep for a shooter. On the way out, Chad gave Laurie a hand in a more intimate sort of way.

And then the day after the shooting, Alex showed up at the same storage unit in Idaho and as you can see, he carried out the tire Chad had put in the day before and then also carried out the folded back seat

And meanwhile, two days after the attempt on Brandon's life, as then-FBI agent Doug Hart learned when he combed through text messages, Lori was getting antsy. She and Chad had planned a real date, but had to cancel because... I mean, you've been to Rexburg. It's a small town. And Chad's, you know, the chances of him being spotted while on a real date with Lori are pretty significant.

Tammy wouldn't like that. Then, the very next day... Chad sends a message to Lori. Big news about Tammy. Tammy's been possessed by this entity, Viola. I don't know the timing for, quote, removal, but once it's been affirmed, I don't want to wait. Something would have to be done. Oh, and it would be. ♪

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Everyone has a time when they live and everyone has a time when they're going to go back home to heaven. So it's kind of the idea of like, you go off to college, learn a bunch of things, have experiences, that's what life is, and then you go home. As Lori sat and explained, it all seemed so benign, as if she were in a temple wearing robes instead of bright orange and blue handcuffs in a high security jail. I'd almost forget what she was here for.

Things like this. On October 9th, 2019, one week after police suspected Lori's brother Alex Cox tried to kill her nephew in suburban Phoenix. And three months after Alex did kill Lori's husband, Charles. I got in a fight with my brother-in-law and I shot him in self-defense.

A 911 call came in to an Idaho Sheriff's Office. Okay, what is your name? My name is Tammy Daybell. Tammy Daybell. Calling on a cold autumn night to report that when she returned late that evening from a church event, a man with a gun confronted her outside the home she shared with Chad Daybell. What was he wearing?

He was all dressed in black and he had a mask on. I pulled up into our driveway and he didn't step out of the backseat of my car. And suddenly he was there and he had a paintball gun and he was going to shoot at me. So I yelled for my husband and then he took off running around the back of my house.

Who was that masked man? The FBI ran a cell phone geolocation search, which revealed that Alex was near, and then his phone was shut off just at the time of the attempted shooting. He was, you know, had a rifle and was shooting at me, so... But nothing came out of the gun either.

It was months later when Detective Ball sifted through Alex's digital trail and concluded that what Tammy Daybell thought was a paintball gun was not that at all.

That paintball gun incident, what was that really in your mind? I think that was an attempted assassination of Tammy. That was planned out by Lori, Chad, and Alex. And after the failed attempt, said investigators, Alex went on an internet search for AR-15 cold weather operation. So was it the cold weather that saved Tammy Daybell that time? Maybe. Maybe.

Added to this, Tammy didn't park in her usual spot. And so when Tammy Daybell pulled in the driveway she normally didn't park in, it likely threw Alex off. He had to run further than he would have, and it could have shaken that gun. Thus, the gun misfired or didn't fire at all. And she may have heard like some sort of semi-pop and thought it was paintball. Exactly. Exactly.

So, plan A having failed, apparently it was time for plan B, ten days later. 911, where's your emergency? We just found my mom. She's on the ground frozen. She's dead. I'm Chad, the husband. She's clearly dead. I'm...

Oh, I'm so sorry. Chad and his son called to report that Tammy had died in her sleep. Okay, Chad, I'm going to get somebody up to you right now. Okay. Later that morning, Chad notified Tammy's sister, Sam. I got a phone call from Chad telling me that she had passed away in her sleep. How do you process something like that? You don't. Because I had just seen her, and it just didn't feel... She was fine. It didn't feel real.

Tammy was buried without delay in her hometown in Utah. There was no autopsy. Chad's choice, the sheriff said, because back then it just didn't seem suspicious.

It was later when the story began to emerge that they exhumed Tammy's body. And the ME found bruises on her arms as if she were held down. And the cause of death was asphyxiation. Just what lead investigator Ball suspected. I don't think I'll ever forget that moment when he said, I have the results of Tammy's autopsy. They were ruling it a homicide. And, you know, we all knew it.

And when looking for suspects, once again, detectives did not have to look far. When Tammy did die, did the evidence show that Alex was there? No, close by. It's my belief that Chad went and picked him up and brought him back to the house and that the two of them did that together and then Chad took him back to where his car was parked. But that was a two-person crime? I don't see how you could do it otherwise.

Later at Chad's trial, experts testified it would have been difficult for one person to complete the task. That is, difficult for Alex without Chad's help. But sitting here with me, Lori simply dismissed all that.

No foul play at all, she said. Perfectly innocent. Tammy died of natural causes. Tammy knows the truth. I love her and she loves me. We've been friends for eternities. Yes, and nowadays, Tammy comes to visit her in jail, said Lori. Anyway, the funerals weren't over. Another one coming soon. I remember a sense of relief.

Like, okay, the guy who was in charge of this stuff is gone. But first, it was time for a wedding. You're going to have to break these questions down, Keith, and I'm going to have to answer them one at a time. Because I thought we were going to be friends. Well, I think we are, aren't we? I'm friends with everybody. I love everybody. I'm all about the love. We had raised the subject of love in our conversation with convicted killer Lori Vallow. Because...

Well, people do lie about love and death and what happened when. But what's the title of that old song? Facts Don't. So, facts are what we spoke of now. Our questions took us back to November 5th, 2019. Exactly 17 days after Chad Daybell's wife Tammy was murdered in her own bed. There was a wedding.

3,000 miles away from Idaho, on the island of Kauai. The happy couple? Who else? Chad and Lori, now Daybell. What was the relationship with Chad all about, anyway? My husband? Yeah. My husband that I've been married to for five years? Sure. And everybody calls you Lori Vallow. Does that bother you? It doesn't bother me, but I'm Lori Daybell. It was often difficult to keep Lori on point.

But on this subject, the wedding and preparations for it, she seemed willing to talk specifics. We had to ask because, again, facts. The evidence clearly shows that Laurie searched for wedding dresses and rings and then bought a Malachite gemstone ring on October 2, 2019. The ring was delivered to her five days later, October 7th.

But there was a hitch. At the time, Chad's wife Tammy was as alive as a person can be and quite unaware of the fate that awaited her. She was murdered on October 19th, two weeks after Lori's wedding ring was delivered. In journalistic terms, this would be called a gotcha. And you bought the wedding rings? That is an untrue statement. You don't know what you're talking about on that one.

It's online. The purchase is there. And then we see the video of those very rings on your fingers in that ceremony on the beach. Those rings were not initially bought for us. So get your facts straight, Keith, before you start making accusations. See, you don't know. Who were they bought for? You don't have any idea because you've heard all these rumors. You're going to tell me who they were bought for. Rumor has it. Who were they bought for, if not you? Alex and Zulema, initially.

That's Lori's brother, Alex Cox, and the woman he would later marry, Zulema Pastinas. Lori's version? After buying the rings and dress for Zulema, Lori and Chad borrowed them. We used them in our ceremony, and then they were given back to Alex. The problem with that story? Well, investigators have many...

First, former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Doug Hart, who examined tens of thousands of items from Lori's electronic devices. We certainly don't see any communications between Lori and Zulema.

which we would have seen saying, "Hey, I'm shopping for a dress for you," or "I found this wonderful wedding ring for you." So that is conspicuously absent. Former lead detective Ron Ball. Come on. It's Lori trying to direct the details the way she wants them directed. Those rings were for her and Chad.

So anyway, Chad and Lori, happy honeymooners after their island wedding and also $430,000 richer thanks to life insurance policies that paid upon Tammy's death, returned to Lori's apartment in Rexburg, Idaho, where, as it just so happened, police detective Ray Hermosillo had just received a call from Gilbert, Arizona. Detectives there were investigating an attempted murder. Okay, so they shot, then what happened?

It hit my window. Remember? That shot was fired from a Jeep at Brandon Boudreau, the estranged husband of Lori's niece. And the Jeep, detectives discovered, was registered to Charles Vallow, whose widow, Lori, records revealed, had moved from Arizona to Rexburg. So what did they want you to do? They wanted me to do some intermittent surveillance, kind of watch the place.

The place was Laurie's apartment complex, where she and Chad and Alex and Laurie's niece Melanie, a.k.a. Brandon's estranged wife, had all set up shop.

While keeping watch, Detective Hermosillo read in on Alex Cox, who was suspected of trying to kill Brandon and who, a few months earlier, did kill Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallow. So, what are you thinking about him at this point? He's kind of a dangerous dude, right? At the same time, Hermosillo and his lieutenant, Ron Ball, started hearing even more chatter about Chad and Lori.

Like how Chad's first wife, Tammy, had suddenly died just a few weeks before. The common denominator in this whole thing is Lori. And it was at this point, when police from Arizona traveled to Idaho to seize that Jeep, that investigators started to focus on the question, where are the children? They asked about J.J.,

JJ as in JJ Vallow Lori's seven-year-old autistic adopted son who along with his sister Tylee at this point had not been seen for weeks What did they want to know about him? They just asked through our surveillance if we had seen a little boy outside playing outside the residence and we told him we hadn't he said okay well his grandma hasn't seen him for a while and

and I may need your assistance to go knock on Lori's door and see if JJ's with Lori. So on November 26th, 2019, the detective did just that. But at Lori's front door, there was no answer. We went around the back, and that's where I finally met Alex and Chad for the first time. What were they doing, just hanging outside the back door? They were unloading a pickup truck. I asked Alex where JJ was at. You know, he kind of looked over at Chad,

Chad looked back at Alex and then he said, "I think he's with his grandma in Louisiana." The detective felt a weird vibe from Alex. What was he like? Nervous. Especially when I told him that that was unlikely because grandma in Louisiana was the one that called in the welfare check. He gave me that thousand-yard stare and based on his reaction, I knew there was probably something more going on. Something more, all right.

The detective asked for Lori's phone number. Alex said he didn't have it. So, did Chad have Lori's number? He said he didn't know Lori's number. He was married to her, but he didn't know her number. He didn't know that I knew he was married to her, right? Oh, no. Of course not. Yeah. I asked him again for her phone number, and he finally gave it to me. But at that point, I knew something was up, for sure.

Perhaps few detectives in the history of law enforcement have ever been more right. Something was up, indeed. The looming collapse of Chad and Lori's house of cards.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with one of the brightest stars in all of music right now, Jelly Roll, telling me about singing those hits that inspire and telling the story of his rise from a difficult past. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts.

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I'm here to tell you the truth, and you don't even want to hear it. Of course I want to hear it. I don't think you do. But I want to hear the truth about all kinds of things. Time and again during our interview, Lori assured us that while others lie about her, she was telling us the absolute truth. I'm...

Trying to give you the truth and you really don't want to hear it. So you want the truth that you already think you know. I'm the person it happened with. I'm the only one who knows the truth. And I'm trying to give it. But if you don't want to hear it, I will be happy to be quiet. Of course, it would have been easier to believe that were it not for all the lies she has told before.

Like? Well, for example, this body cam video of very poor quality showing then-Detective Ron Ball and a colleague approaching Lori's apartment in Rexburg. This was just minutes after Detective Hermosillo had that strange encounter with Alex and Chad in the alley. Lori, I'm Lieutenant Ball from the police department. How are you? You got a minute? This time, Lori answered the door and, as if she had a choice...

Welcome detectives inside. Sort of. From the start, Lori lied like a sidewalk when faced with questions about her seven-year-old adopted son. JJ was not, of course, with a friend. More on that in a minute. But as detectives asked more questions...

Lori acted as if she had no clue. What could possibly be attracting so much attention from law enforcement? What is all this? We're a little concerned. What is it? Why? Well, the officers who were here earlier were checking, and they got a bad vibe that something was going on here because nobody knew anything about a child. They weren't talking.

It's because a lot of stuff has gone on. If you're on, no, it's a lot of stuff.

Well, that's why we're concerned, because it just was kind of weird. It is very weird. I've had to move around a lot. One of my brothers is trying to kill me. Kill her for life insurance money, she said. Wasn't true, of course. Projection, perhaps? Lori herself, remember, tried to claim Charles' life insurance after Alex killed him. She went on, then, about why things appeared a bit dodgy. So I don't tell people the truth about...

Then Detective Ball got the idea to ask her about those two guys in the alley. Who were they anyway? Lori's brother, Alex, and a friend, Chad Daybell. At this point, we knew that they were married. She didn't want to get into too much of a conversation with us.

about Chad for obvious reasons at this point. Before long, the detectives left. And as soon as they did, Chad and Lori got busy. Calls were made to Melanie Gibb in Arizona for one.

The friend Lori had just told police JJ was staying with. I get this phone call out of the blue. And Chad said, hey, Melanie, I just want to let you know that the Rexford police are going to call. Don't pick up. How did he seem? Calm? No. No. Nervous.

As her head spun, there was a second call. Lori calls and says, hey, everything's fine. Oh, I told them that JJ was with you. It's like a bomb drops on you. What do you do? You just are in shock a little bit. Was that the moment this all changed for you? The bottom fell up? Oh, absolutely. I can't even begin to tell you how horrible that moment was for me. Were you betrayed by these people? Oh, yeah. They tried to use me as their way of escape.

Melanie quickly got her head on straight, and when police called to verify Lori's story... She said that she had JJ at one point, but he was back in Idaho with Lori. Right. At that point, did you think something bad had happened to JJ? Not at that point. I knew something was up. At that point, we were bound and determined to find JJ. And the next morning, when police showed up again at Lori's apartment to execute a search warrant...

We went over there and everybody was gone. There wasn't a soul in that place. There was furniture, food in the pantry, food in the fridge. It looked like they just pretty much walked out. You must certainly have hit a nerve with your questions. They just disappear afterwards. And I think that

Those questions that we're there asking about the kids, absolutely, it triggered them to flee response, and they know that we're hot after them. What started as surveillance on a Jeep had certainly taken a turn. The chase was on. I never spank my children. I don't yell at my children. I only use love and logic with my children, right? I want to build them up. I want to help them because of what I learned in heaven. Knowledge.

As Laurie Vallow continued to explain the finer points of parenting, it was not lost on us that more than five years ago she had gone on the run. When detectives asked her one simple question to which every parent of a seven-year-old child should have an answer, where's your child? Where was JJ? For that matter, where was his sister, 16-year-old Tylee?

When Lori and Chad Daybell disappeared from their apartment in Rexburg, Idaho that day in November 2019 and returned to Hawaii, did they understand how quickly the law would catch up to them? They couldn't have known, really, that within 24 hours, the FBI had been called in. One of the investigators would soon contact her son, Colby.

I called her because I was freaking out and I said, the two detectives are looking for Tylee and JJ. What is going on? She said, I got it. I'll take care of it. I love you. Have a great day. Something like that. Detectives in Idaho entered JJ's name into a database of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Through our investigation up to that point, we learned nobody had seen Tylee either. So we also added Tylee to the missing persons report.

And when they asked that great detective, the public, for help? Tonight, two Arizona kids are missing after vanishing without a trace. After going public, we started receiving tips on where Chad and Lori could be. And some of those tips came from Hawaii. Enough to make you think that's where they are? We were able to confirm that through cell phone data. Okay. From Lori and Chad, yeah. But were the children with them?

Were they being kept somewhere else? Detective Ray Hermosillo didn't know what to think. You kind of wondered in the back of your head, are these kids okay? Are they stored in a bunker somewhere for crazy religious beliefs? And then, in the middle of all those questions, a brand new shock. Okay, what is the emergency? Something happened to Lori's brother, Alex Cox, her angel of death.

Something bad. He'd collapsed in an apartment in Gilbert, Arizona. Alex was rushed to a hospital, but it was no good. Later, police interviewed the woman Alex had married just two weeks before, Zulema Pastinas. I remember them taking us to the hospital, and I don't remember much of what happened between that and until the time that they brought me back to the room.

for me to turn off the machines. Then I remember somebody came saying that I couldn't touch him anymore, that he was considered a crime scene and that I needed to leave. It will surprise no one there was considerable suspicion early on of foul play. I remember a sense of relief like, okay, the guy who was in charge of this stuff is gone.

But then it was immediate with, now we have another body. It was so overwhelming, Keith. We didn't know what to think. And here is the designated killer, apparently killed, or at least dead. And you didn't know why at that point, right? Didn't know why at that point. But when the autopsy was done...

The M.E. concluded that the death of Alex Cox was no crime at all. Alex Cox had been killed by blood clots in his lungs. He was 51 years old. I would have liked to have been able to arrest him and charge him for the crimes he committed. I think he got out of this world too easy. Meanwhile, detectives and special agents decided enough was enough. They'd patiently worked the case for eight weeks.

It was time to confront Lori and Chad in Hawaii. And it didn't take long for law enforcement to find them. Here they were, sitting by their hotel pool on a warm sunny day in January 2020. What they gave her was a court order demanding she produce JJ and Tylee within five days. The next day the police pulled them over, searched their car, seized their car,

and thus forced them to walk a gauntlet of reporters back to their hotel. Reporters including our NBC News consultant, Nate Eaton. Did you do something to your children? Are your children still alive? Are you guys innocent of any crimes? Have you committed any crimes? But four weeks later, Lori still hadn't produced the children, and so she was arrested and flown back to Idaho.

Welcome back, Lori. Where are your kids? All right. Her first court appearance filled the room, the hallways, the streets outside with the curious citizens of Rexburg. But she still wouldn't answer the question, where are those kids? I remember walking out of the court at that time and talking with some guys. I'm like, these kids, they're not alive. We're now looking for bodies. Indeed, they were.

Hundreds of agents and officers had been working the case in multiple states for months, combing through every electronic device ever attached to Lori, Chad, Alex, and the others. It had to be done manually. And in the end, the search for the children would come down to one unlikely text message.

containing one odd word. You can't do a keyword search and if we did a keyword search, you know, raccoon certainly wouldn't have been a keyword that we were looking for.

Every morning, we choose how to begin our day. I think about the people at home. They tune in because they are curious. They care about their world and they care about each other. There's always something new to learn, whether a news event or a new recipe. And when we step through the morning together, it makes the rest of the day better.

We come here to make the most of today. We are family. We are today. Watch the Today Show with Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin, weekdays at 7 a.m. on NBC. Tylee's very smart, very sassy. She knows how to push your buttons. She knows what to say. Gotcha. I was able to be very peaceful with Tylee. I was able to be patient with Tylee because I watched her suffer so much. All right. Okay. And I knew...

She was not going to live forever. Because you know that you can die of pancreatitis any time you have it. Of course, yes. As I listened patiently to Lori Vallow's long and winding discourse about her daughter Tylee, my mind kept going to those strange days in the spring of 2020 when details emerged about the search for Tylee and J.J.,

Over the previous six months, thousands of man hours had gone into the investigation. Searches of Google, Amazon, Facebook accounts, phone calls, text messages, geolocations for Lori, Chad, and Alex. Just to give you an idea, one of the phones had 54,000 text messages in it. Wow. Yeah, so it's days and weeks and months of just hard, detailed investigative work.

And all that work painted a picture, confirming the September 8th, 2019 trip to Yellowstone and revealing that Tylee must have been killed when they returned home that very night. We have geolocation that Alex was in Lori's residence the night we believe Tylee was killed. Early morning hours.

And then a sharp-eyed FBI analyst found the text that broke the case. It was sent later that same morning, 10:53 a.m., from Chad to his wife Tammy. It read, quote, "Well, I've had an interesting morning. I felt I should burn all of the limb debris by the fire pit before it got too soaked by the coming storms. Well, I did so. I spotted a big raccoon along the fence. I hurried and got my gun, and he was still walking along.

I got close enough that one shot did the trick. He is now in our pet cemetery. Fun times. End quote. What that text message did for us is that it represented a communication from Chad Daybell to his wife Tammy to explain why he was burning and digging on the property on that date. When, in fact, investigators felt sure...

They'd been burning and burying Tylee. And ultimately, we're able to piece all of these critical things together into an affidavit and seek a search warrant for the property. The date was June 9th, 2020, nine months since the kids disappeared. Ron Ball, Ray Hermosillo, and their teams drove out to Chad's property, a nearly four-acre lot a few miles from Rexburg,

They woke up Chad and served him with a search warrant. And I said, you know what? We're going to see if these kids are here. Based on his expression when he's sitting there reading that search warrant, there's going to be some type of change of behavior. Was there? No. And I just remember looking at Ron like, are we in the wrong spot again?

The detective may have felt differently if he'd heard the tension in Chad's voice when Lori called him from jail that same morning. Hi, Dad. Hello. Are you okay? So, they're searching the property. Chad was right to be worried. The FBI's evidence response team zeroed in on two places where Alex's cell phone spent time, hours after Tylee and JJ disappeared.

Under a tree, searchers soon found ground that had clearly been disturbed. There's about maybe a four by two section that didn't fit. Evidence texts removed a layer of white rocks. There were some boards underneath the white rocks. And as soon as those boards were removed, you could see the difference in soil. And you could see a round piece of plastic. And then they cut into that black plastic. And then you could see brown human hair.

That whole experience had to be just, I mean, that lives with you even now, doesn't it? Absolutely. It was, of course, the body of 7-year-old J.J. Vallow, still dressed in the red pajamas he was last seen in. A plastic bag over his head. Duct tape over his mouth. The M.E. said he'd been asphyxiated. That was a very emotional moment. Did it number on you? Yeah, those aren't...

Those are memories that, you know, don't go away. They found Tylee 25 or 30 yards away. It was Tylee who was burned, her body dismembered. Chad, who'd been watching all this, suddenly got in his car, started driving away. So they got chasing down the road just a little ways, and he pulled over, and they went and pulled him out of the car and detained him. So I asked, do you want me to tell your kids anything? And he says, no, I already told them I'd probably be going to jail today. I went, oh, okay.

Well, you're right. They put Chad and Lori in separate jails and gave them separate trials. Chad for three counts of murder for killing Tammy, JJ, and Tylee, and for several counts of conspiracy to murder and insurance fraud. Lori faced two counts of first-degree murder, JJ and Tylee, conspiracy to murder Tammy, and grand theft. Madison County Prosecuting Attorney Rob Wood.

Our theme was, this is about money, sex, and power. There were all these tangential religious issues, but it really was about money and sex and trying to control people. People who were in the way that they called obstacles, they got rid of them and profited from that. Both Chad and Lori were convicted on all counts. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

How involved do you think Lori was in the deaths of her own children? I think the evidence suggests she was involved at some level. JJ's body showed signs of a struggle, and looking at how he was found, I think it suggests that more than one person was involved. And entirely, you know, I would tend to think it was probably a two-person thing. The jury sentenced Chad Daybell to death.

The defendant would be sentenced to death on those counts. And Lori? Jesus knows me, and Jesus understands me. Before her sentencing to life imprisonment, she said something rather curious. Accidental deaths happen. Suicides happen. Fatal side effects from medications happen. What on earth was she talking about?

Her surviving son wanted to know. And so did we. When we met with Laurie Valadabel in jail, we were given 90 minutes to speak to her. 90 minutes, no more. She seemed determined to fill the time with tales about Tylee. She claimed that giving birth to Tylee actually killed her, briefly. Sent them both straight to heaven before Jesus asked her to return to life on earth.

When I saw Tylee in heaven before she was born, she knew she was going to come have all these difficult things. And she was still giddy with excitement about coming to Earth and fulfilling her mission. Meanwhile, Lori dodged questions about the wreckage in her own life. We have Tylee. We have JJ. Yes. We have Chad's wife.

We have the attempted murder on Brandon. We have, you know, there's a lot of mayhem. There's a lot to my life. If you want to hear the actual explanations, I'm here. But it doesn't sound like you really want a lot of the actual explanations. I do, I do, but I don't have all week to hear all these explanations. Well, it's going to take a long time, so it's probably going to take more than one session. That, the sheriff's office told us, was not the possibility. This visit with Lori, they said, was a one-time thing.

It turned out, by the way, that we weren't the only ones searching for answers from Lori. And perhaps no one on earth has been more affected by her crimes than this man, her son, Colby. I've been working in therapy on unpacking a lifetime worth of stuff. I mean, it's an ongoing process. In the past half decade, Colby has lost his brother, his sister, his stepfather Charles, the most stable male figure in his life, his uncle Alex,

And of course, his imprisoned mother. How did it change the way you view the world? I guess I always was like a very positive, see the best in people kind of person. And then I watched someone that I knew my entire life, you know, do what she did. And it just changed the way I view people. And all the craziness and death? There's just no way to like explain to anybody what it's like to go from, you know,

let's call it normal life to something this big happening. And then I have to deal with the complexity that that's my mom, you know, that's someone that I don't even recognize anymore. You know, there's a microscope on your life too. Yeah. Do you get the feeling of being watched as you progress through life? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the thing I think I finally somewhat embraced is people are going to

have questions. Welcome to the Scar Wars podcast. And so in the past year, Colby has decided to use his YouTube channel, he calls it Scar Wars, to help with his own healing. And then a few months ago, Colby, who hadn't spoken to his mom in more than four years, began to worry about this. I thought, well, what if she passes away, right? And I think asking myself that question

Kind of brought me to a point of, you know what, if I ask her for an interview, maybe I can at least keep myself emotionally in check while I ask the biggest questions I've always had. You sound good to me. I don't know if you can hear me very well. Yeah, I can hear you pretty good. And so five months ago, Lori called Colby from jail and it gave him the chance to ask her how Tylee and JJ really died.

But then, Lori spun a story, which investigators have told us simply could not have happened, based on the evidence.

It was evening, she told Colby, and she asked Tylee to put JJ to bed. What if Tylee holding JJ down for too long, trying to get him to not scream and be loud in the apartment, which she was always upset about, and what if she held him down too long and realized afterwards what she had done? Her implication was perfectly obvious. Tylee smothered JJ, saw he was dead, and then took her own life in a fit of remorse.

It was hours later, said Lori, when she walked in and found their two bodies. Quite a story. Colby was not having it. You're telling me Tylee took JJ's life, then took her own life, and then someone cremated her by dismembering her and burning her and throwing her in a pet cemetery, and then somebody bound JJ, put him in a trash bag, and threw him in the backyard.

Someone else could only mean Alex and or Chad. And somehow it's all Tylee's fault. Yeah, it must be nice and easy to blame my dead little sister for everything. Must be really convenient for her. Did you believe any of that stuff?

Absolutely not. All BS. That's all lies. None of it ever added up. And so Colby made the decision to tell his mom his truth. This situation does put us at odds. And I can't sit here and say that I agree with you.

I don't, I can't even really understand where this side's coming from. I don't wish pain or anything on you. I have no malice towards you. Zero. And I do 100% forgive you. I forgive you. But you and I can't even be a part of each other's lives because I don't feel like I know you anymore. This is my mission and my mission will be

And after, Colby spoke directly to his viewers. It's so unfair. It's so unfair entirely. She would never do that.

Did she understand what she was doing to her only surviving son? Would she finally face up to what she did to the others? Attitude. Attitude here.

And here... Do you want to take a break? As we neared the end of our jailhouse interview with Lori Vallow, I was struck by the contrast. I think that's kind of the place I'm at now. It's just acceptance. Just full acceptance of the situation. Son Colby, reflective, anguished, a serious man. The way that my sister was treated was with hate. That's not even human to do what they did to her after. And Lori...

Not quite sure what this was. You want to go on later and say, Lori told me this in your ominous voice, but really this is what happened. Are you going to do that to me, Keith? Ominous voice? Yeah. You mean that one? Yes. That's the exact voice that I'm talking about. Lori danced. Verbally, that is. Danced away from questions she seemed determined to avoid.

She tried to fill our allotted 90 minutes with a long and rambling story about Tylee, clearly leading up to the same one she told son, Colby. Well, we tried to finally pin her down on the established facts that had convicted her of multiple counts of murder. Why did Chad label your children dark and then, you know, call them zombies? You're saying that didn't happen? Did you hear him say that? Well, no, but others did. I didn't.

Oh, I see. I see. But that would be a pattern that he would label people dark and then they would either die or somebody would have an attempt on their life. No, that's the narrative that you've been running. The evidence shows that Tylee was killed the night they returned from Yellowstone, September 8th, 2019. And JJ was killed 14 days later. No, that's not accurate.

Sorry, it's not the truth. You asked me for the truth. You're asking me personally. The only person on the earth who really knows. And you're shaking your head no like that didn't happen. Did I shake my head? Yeah, you're shaking your head. A little bit. No, I'm just looking at you. The evidence presented at Lori's Idaho murder trial left her jury in no doubt whatsoever. I'm quoting what the court said about you and Chad. Go ahead and quote it. That you actually conspired to kill these people.

Were you there when... I was falsely accused. I was falsely convicted. Let me ask you directly. And I will be exonerated. All right, fine. Were you there the night that Tylee died? Were you there the night that J.J. died?

Was I where? Was Alex in these places when they died? In the place where they died. Were you there? What place was that? Did you watch? What place was that? Do you have any idea? I'm asking. Well, I'm the only one that knows. Do you know? You're pretending like you know. It doesn't matter. I'm not pretending I know. I'm asking you a question. Did you watch your children die? That's a really sad question. It's a terrible question. And it's one I hate to have to ask. But, I mean, we've been talking about all of these. I was not there.

As you know, I told Colby. His response, remember? Did you believe any of that stuff? Absolutely not. But for Laurie, it's as if the evidence, the trial, the conviction don't exist at all. You did not kill a soul. Absolutely not. You didn't participate in killing a soul. No. You didn't conspire to kill a soul. Correct. You didn't do any of those things you've been convicted of doing. Correct. What to make of Laurie? Soon she will have to enter a whole new world, not heaven.

But her upcoming trial... I have two motions that I'd like to file at the court today. All right. She will be representing herself as she has tried for the murder of her husband, Charles. She's pleaded not guilty and not guilty of conspiring to murder her nephew, Brandon. What's it like acting as your own lawyer? It's great, actually.

It's a difficult thing to do. You have to have your arguments, you know? I think this judge in particular has been pretty patient in letting people get their whole argument out. I can see where he might need to be. Yeah. It will certainly give her a bigger slice of the limelight she seems to crave. And, she assured me, will get her ever closer to the final result she fully expects. She and Chad will go free.

Chad was convicted and he's on death row now. I understand that, yeah. They have some fascinating stories. How could you possibly think that Chad would be exonerated after what happened? The same way I will be exonerated, we will both be exonerated in the future. Because? I have seen things in the future that Jesus showed me when I was in heaven. And we were not in jail. And we were not in prison. And they were still in the future from now. Her own little world.

Well, something like that. Outside in the real world, our only surviving son works hard to build a good life in spite of all of it. I felt really guilty for even being the only one that didn't get killed, I guess, for a long time. But yeah, I mean, you know, you try to put a brave face on, you try to be there for your kids, you try to make it about them, but there's always a loneliness there.

Well, his mother dances and dodges his questions and ours. And you're very good at dancing. And we should. We should do a little jig. You've already done a mental jig with your stories. After I get exonerated, maybe I'll go on Dancing with the Stars and you can come. Sure. Okay, fine. And then... All right, I guess our time is up. Apparently it's up, yep.

Lori Vallow Daybell went back to her cell. That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Keith Morrison and Andrea Canning will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode. Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.