Woman accused in kids’ deaths in Idaho faces Arizona charge

PHOENIX — A woman with bizarre doomsday beliefs that Idaho prosecutors say she and her husband used to justify the killings of her son and daughter was indicted in metro Phoenix on a charge of conspiring to murder her ex-husband.

In an indictment unveiled Tuesday, Lori Vallow Daybell was charged in the 2019 death of Charles Vallow, who was killed in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler months before his son, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow, and stepdaughter, 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, went missing.

Police records show he was fatally shot by Daybell’s brother, Alexander Lamar Cox, when Charles Vallow was picking up his son from his estranged wife. The indictment says Daybell conspired with her brother in Vallow’s death.

Cox told police he killed Vallow in self-defense and wasn’t arrested. He died five months later from what medical examiners said was a pulmonary blood clot.

Lori Daybell is already at the center of a complicated criminal case in Idaho, where prosecutors allege she conspired with her new husband, Chad Daybell, to kill the two children and his late wife, Tammy Daybell. The couple hold apocalyptic religious beliefs that prosecutors claim they used to justify the killings.

Lori Daybell’s attorney in Idaho, Mark Means, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message and email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

That case against Lori Daybell is on hold while she undergoes treatment at a mental health facility. A judge had her committed this month after determining she wasn’t competent to assist in her defense. Chad Daybell has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In the investigation of Charles Vallow’s death, Tylee told police that she confronted Vallow with a baseball bat after she was awakened by yelling outside her bedroom door. The teen girl said she was trying to defend her mother, but Vallow took away the bat, according to police records.