Anatomy of Murder - Doomsday (JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan)

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Two missing children quickly lead to an investigation into multiple murders, including theirs. The world was watching as detectives pieced together this deeply, disturbing case.For episode information and photos, please visit: anatomyofmurder.com/doomsday Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

You look at them, you don't picture evil monsters. That's not what an evil monster is supposed to look like. They look like normal people. So to me, that was kind of eye-opening, too, that not everybody who is evil fits the description of evil. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.

The following story is a wild one, to say the least. When news of this particular crime first broke, many of its disturbing details were widely reported by the national media. However, in today's episode, we are bringing you one of the first candid and comprehensive interviews with the actual case detective who led this investigation. From the first 911 call to the rap of the judge's gavel. Like so many other violent crimes, it all started with what appeared to be a case of marital discord, a domestic dispute that turned violent and then fatal. But the collateral damage

would eventually spread to not one, not two, but potentially as many as five murders, including that of two innocent children. The resulting trial was a sensation, with revelations about everything from the coming apocalypse to zombies to a doomsday cult. But were these 2019 murders really motivated by religious extremism? Or was the path of destruction through a tiny town the result of some of the oldest motives in the book? Love or lust or money or a combination of A, B, and C. That's one of the things we're here to find out. And I'll tell

you right now that most of you know, or at least have heard of this case before, but you've likely never heard it like this. So as you can imagine, there is a lot to cover here. Multiple victims, multiple suspects, and a dizzying number of bizarre twists and turns. So let's get right to it. My name is Ray Hermosillo. I work for the Rexburg Police Department, and I'm currently the lieutenant over investigations. I was the very first call that happened with this case. As you'll come to understand, it's a little hard to pinpoint exactly when this criminal investigation really began. But we can tell you the definite where. Rexburg, Idaho. A small rural community of about 30,000 people, including

the students at the nearby college, BYU-Idaho. It's in the middle of farmland. And so we have, you know, neighboring cities, but you have to drive 10 or 15 minutes through really farmland to get to the next city. So it's really not a big community. In the end, this case would involve local, state, and even federal law enforcement agencies. But Detective Hermosillo was right there from the beginning, and he was the one that would see it through right to the end. So my first knowledge was the very, very beginning. I got a call from a deputy in Fremont County, and he just said, hey, you know, we got a call from Gilbert, Arizona. And he said, well, there's a little boy by the name of Joshua Jackson Vallow who went by JJ, and his grandma's concerned for his whereabouts because she hasn't spoken to him for a while.

And he said, we haven't been able to find JJ. Would you mind just doing a welfare check tomorrow morning to see if JJ's there or where he's at? Seven-year-old JJ Vallow had been adopted by his uncle Charles Vallow and Charles' wife Lori in 2013 when he was just a baby. He joined a household that also included a 10-year-old Tylee, Lori's daughter from one of her previous three marriages. Tylee took her new younger brother under her wings.

Tylee was a great second mom to J.J., if you will. She took care of him. She loved him. She included him. She was a great big sister. She was talking with everybody that knew her. She was just an outgoing teenage girl that loved life and had fun. And, you know, JJ, same type of thing. He was just a little boy riding bikes and playing and making forts out of cardboard boxes. And they were just normal, good kids.

But by the time of this 2019 call by J.J.'s grandmother to Rexburg police, that living situation had drastically changed. And it seems to have all started with Lori's faithful introduction to a man named Chad Daybell. Like Lori, Daybell had been raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But his views soon diverged from mainstream Mormonism and his new wild theories about the end of the world

only intensified after the failed fiction writer found an audience on the fringes of internet culture. He would sell books. He would have social media, Facebook. He would attend conferences. There were podcasts. He would get his name out there and then they would call him and say, hey, we'd like you to come speak at this conference. And it was at one of these conferences where Laurie first encountered Daybell and his quote unquote teachings about the coming apocalypse. Well, Chad had a conference that he was speaking at in St. George, Utah in October of 2018. And we learned that

Lori attended that conference with some friends, met Chad Daybell, and was completely infatuated with his teaching and him, that she would talk about nothing but that. The married former hairdresser fell for the 50-year-old Chad Daybell

and his extremist rhetoric, hook, line, and sinker. I guess Chad and Lori hit it off pretty good at that conference. And on the way home from that conference, she was already communicating with Chad. And according to Lori Vallow's friends, there was a deep connection between the two, and soon they began talking every day, hosting religious podcasts together, and joining forces online to evangelize about their dark vision of the world. Both Chad and Lori were big on prepping for the end of days and kind of fixated and infatuated with doomsday and the end of days and what's going to happen. But their extreme views also ventured into things like visions, prophecies, reincarnation, and even teleportation.

He believed that he could see, and he wrote books that he could see the other side of the veil, that he had near-death experiences, and he died a few times and was told about the future, about how the end of days was going to happen. Laurie's husband Charles had been raised a views, not to mention her relationship with another married man, proved to be a huge strain on their marriage. You can imagine he was also concerned for his wife's mental health and Daybell's sudden influence over her, not to mention the effect it might have on their kids. So, citing his fears for the kids' safety, Charles Vallow filed for a divorce. That's when things began to go off the rails. On July 19th, Charles arrived at the house in Chandler, Arizona, where Lori Vallow was living with Tylee and JJ. Also at the house was Lori's hot-headed brother, Alex Cox.

It was reported that Charles came over to Lori's house to pick up JJ back in July of 2019. Got into an argument with Lori over a cell phone. And it was reported that Tylee came out to defend her mom with a baseball bat. And Charles grabbed the baseball bat from Tylee and was aggressive. And Alex came out and shot him in self-defense. Charles Vallow died of his wounds and after a brief investigation, no charges were ever brought against Cox or Lori. However, we can only imagine the trauma experienced

by his children, Tylee and JJ, who had recently been diagnosed with autism, both of whom had witnessed Charles' violent death. You know, Anna Seeger, there's so much to unpack here about this incident itself. And I just want to mention something I personally found troubling when I saw it was the body cam footage of the officers talking to Lori Vallow and her daughter outside of the family home. Well, her husband is lying dead in their home, shot and killed by her brother. And she was smiling, laughing, and joking with the officers right in front of her daughter.

Again, there's so many things that just don't compute to, at least the way I look at, like, rational thinking. And so, again, is that she's so deep into, I don't know, maybe there's some sort of mental health episode going on, or maybe it's just whatever these extremist views and teachings, whatever world she's currently in, what they're doing to her. But absolutely, Scott, I've seen them. And from the beginning, many of her responses just don't sit well, to say the least. And I'm sure the officers were thinking about, you know, what would be the impact on Lori?

And she was displaying being less traumatized in front of them. You know, within weeks, she had already packed up and moved with both kids to Rexburg, Idaho, to be closer to her mentor and her lover, Chad Daybell. By all accounts, Lori and Chad had only gotten closer in the eight months since they had met. The only problem, Daybell was still married, but not for long. On October 19th, 2019, three months to the day of Lori's husband's death, Tammy Daybell was found dead in her home, apparently from natural causes. But then only two weeks later, Lori and Chad were married on a beach in Hawaii. His wife dies October 19th, and he's married in Hawaii November 5th. So for Lori, maybe the fifth time will be the charm. And from the wedding photos she posted on Facebook,

you might think this is a couple of normal, happy newlyweds. But then you realize there's no one else there. Not Lori's brother Alex, none of her friends, or even her family. And you know who else isn't there? Lori's daughter Tylee and her adopted son JJ, which is partly why JJ's grandmother had called the police requesting that welfare check. So on November 26th, 2019, the next morning,

I grabbed another detective and I told him we were going to do a welfare check at Lori Vallow's residence. Lori was reported to be living with Tylee and JJ in an apartment complex in Rexburg. You pull into this little parking lot and there's a garage that faces west. And as I pulled into this parking lot, I could see the garage of apartment 175, which is where she lived. I could see the garage was open and there was a pickup parked in front of the garage and there were two men unloading the pickup truck. And I knew those two to be one Chad Daybell and the other Alex Cox, her brother. Alex, remember, is the man who shot JJ and Tylee's father, Charles. According to friends, Alex was not just living next door, he was also a new convert to Daybell's radical religious views.

And so when I got out of my car, I walked over to Alex, who was on the driver's side of the truck, and I said, hey, is Lori Vallow around? And he said, no, she's not. And I said, okay, is JJ here? And as soon as I mentioned JJ, they both kind of just looked at each other. And he said, no, JJ's with his grandma in Louisiana. And I said, well, that's weird because his grandma is the one who called in the welfare check. And Chad was standing on the passenger side of the truck. And Alex looked over at Chad and Chad kind of looked over at Alex like neither one of them wanted to say anything. You could tell they were nervous

just based on their facial expressions. This is just another example of why law enforcement officers like to do these visits in person, not just call around on the phone because they're able to witness people's facial expressions, their body language,

and that can prove to be critical clues in investigations just like this. So I need to get a hold of JJ. And he says, well, then I don't know where he is. And I said, well, then I need to get a hold of Lori. And he said, well, she's not here. And I asked him, Alex, for her phone number. And he said he didn't know it. And again, a red flag pops up, right?

Because this is her brother. At that time, we knew they were close, and he's at her house with Chad. So I know he's lying to me. But the extent of their lies, Ray could only just speculate. His priority was to locate JJ. We went over to apartment 107, which is where Alex said Lori was. Knocked on the door. There's no answer. Well, as I'm walking back to my car, about the time I get to the front bumper, I look over and

see Chad Daybell driving towards me. And so I stop him in the alleyway between my car and some other garages. And he gets out. And I said, how well do you know Lori? And he said, oh, I hardly met her. I've only met her a couple times through her brother brother, which is again a huge red flag, right? Because we know they've been married for a couple of weeks. In his attempt to deflect suspicion, Daybell managed to only attract more, a clue to Ray that he is definitely hiding something. And then I asked Chad for her phone number, and he says he doesn't know it, which is, again, a huge red flag.

And that's when I called my lieutenant and said, hey, look, something's going on with JJ. I've been lied to. I've been given the runaround. We need to get people over here to figure out where this little boy is. And at that point, my lieutenant then said, Ray, why don't you go to the prosecutor's office and see if we can get a warrant to search the apartment for JJ.

And we're going to remain on scene to see if she comes home and start knocking on doors. Well, as we're on our way to the prosecutor's office, Lori calls back and says she's home. So we told Lori, look, there's detectives outside your house. They want to talk to you. You need to open the door. According to Lori, who now put herself out there as Lori Vallow Daybell, seven-year-old JJ was safe and sound and staying with her close friend, Melanie Gibb in Arizona. Everything is fine. He's fine.

And she's actually thinking about moving back to Arizona. And so the detectives on scene said, look, that's fine. We still need to make sure JJ's okay. We need Melanie Gibbs' phone number. And thankfully, this is where the multiple law enforcement agencies from different jurisdictions worked together quickly and efficiently, which unfortunately is not always the case. I called down to Arizona and I said,

look, we haven't been able to get a hold of Melanie Gibb. Lori says JJ's with her. Would you mind just going to her residence in Arizona and confirming that JJ's there and that he's okay? And so Arizona police paid a visit to Melanie Gibb, who we should point out was yet another devotee of Daybell's theology. But once again, they got the runaround.

And he says, hey, is JJ with you? She said, no, he was, but he's not now. He's back up in Idaho with Lori. So at that point, the next morning, we went into the prosecutor's office, obtained a search warrant for the apartment to look for JJ. And obviously, Lori Vallow Daybell was hiding something. But what was it? Police still had no idea, but they were beginning to fear that seven-year-old JJ could be in real danger. We had been lied to, all these red flags. Nobody

really wants to tell us what's going on. We have a missing seven-year-old child. So our main focus at that point is to find J.J. Vallow. As they ramp up their search for J.J., they quickly make a startling realization courtesy of Tylee's adult brother, Colby. When we were in the process of looking for J.J., we reached out to family members. And we get a hold of Colby, who is JJ's brother. And Colby says that, you know what, I haven't seen JJ for a while or talked to him. And come to think of it, I haven't talked to my sister for a while either. So at that point, we start asking about Tylee and nobody's talked to Tylee.

So Tylee is now encompassed in this investigation. The ensuing search for the two children will eventually involve law enforcement agencies from across the country and uncover a bizarre and terrifying conspiracy that will shock a nation. A call from a concerned grandmother has turned into an all-out search for 7-year-old J.J. Vallow and his 15-year-old sister, Tylee Ryan. All hands on deck. We were serving warrants. I mean, we were looking everywhere, talking to family. We started digging into Chad, to Lori, to Alex. It became a multi-agency investigation at that point.

And they're doing this digging into Lori and Chad because of their unwillingness to be honest and cooperative with police, which, when there's a child's welfare in question, was raising every bit of police antenna. Which is why police returned to Lori's apartment in Rexburg, Idaho, this time with a search warrant. But when we got upstairs into the bedroom, all we saw in the closet was empty hangers. No clothes, no nothing. So to us, as investigators, it looked like she just grabbed her clothes off the hanger, left the hangers, packed up, and bolted. I mean, the fridge was full, but she was nowhere to be found. It was just more evidence that Lori seemed to be hiding something and that her two children could be in danger.

The priority now was to create a timeline. And for missing children, that starts with determining the last known time and place there was seen alive. It's known as proof of life. So we were able to learn that Tylee's last proof of life was September 8th in 2019 when she went up to Yellowstone with her family, with Alex, JJ, and Lori. We were also able to learn that there was a picture of JJ on September 22nd, 2019, which was a Sunday, of him in pajamas sitting on a couch. We were able to verify that he wasn't in school on September 23rd. So that was JJ's last proof of life was September 22nd. Ray then registered descriptions of both kids with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,

a database often referred to simply as NCMEC. We set up a hotline through NCMEC with any possible tips or sightings of JJ and Tylee. We did the same thing through the police department and a tip hotline through the FBI. So we had three different tip hotlines going. NCMEC put a billboard up for JJ and Tylee missing. They were on news stations. They had advertisements looking for JJ and Tylee. So it gave us a huge national reach to get these names out.

The response was immediate and overwhelming, which, as we've discussed, comes with its own challenges. There were hundreds of tips that came in on these three hotlines that we had to vet each and every tip. And this was just so time consuming because there were so many tips, but we needed to cover every one. And we did. Meanwhile, the children's mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, and her new husband, Chad Daybell, they were doing their best to also dodge police. They were in the wind. We had no clue for a little while

where they were at. We would call cell phones, talk to Chad's kids. Their cell phones were off so there was no way to get a hold of their cell phones. And it wasn't until December 3rd when I interviewed Melanie Boudreau at the police department that we kind of gained some more knowledge. So I had her in for an interview on December 3rd of 2019. Bear with us because I know that we're throwing a lot of names at you. But just know that this Melanie first is a different Melanie than the friend in Arizona. This Melanie, Boudreau was her last name, was Lori's niece who just happened to live next door. And I'm quizzing her like, what's going on? Lori's gone. Chad's gone. Tell

me what you know about Lori. Tell me what you know about Chad. Your uncle Alex is in the mix. He's now in the wind too. Where is he at? Because Alex is now gone. And so of course I'm getting lied to. Every word out of her mouth was a lie to me. She says she hasn't seen JJ since she moved up there. She tells me that JJ was with Melanie Gibb and I'm like, you know, Melanie, that's a lie. Why are you lying to me about it? Well, that's what I was told.

Well, who told you? Well, Lori told me. Well, I thought you hadn't talked to Lori. So it was just a circle. Clearly Lori's niece was covering for her. But the question was why? Why was so many people in Lori's life circling the wagons and not cooperating with the search for two endangered children? The answer would come from Melanie's new husband.

And it was shocking. We knew she just had gotten married to a man by the name of Ian Palowski. We knew she had just dated him for a couple weeks before they got married. And we knew Ian had an ex-wife and a couple children. The next day after that interview is when Ian Palowski comes into the police department with his ex-wife. And then that's what broke this thing into some of the craziest things I've ever heard. The first bombshell? That Lori's niece was yet another member of what Chad Daybell called his Church of the Firstborn. And as police were about to learn,

his teachings went far beyond what anyone could ever have imagined. So Ian comes into the police department with his ex-wife and he starts to spill this religious teaching that Melanie Boudreau had told him the night of their honeymoon. And Ian tells us that they believe in zombies that walk the earth. And in order to get rid of a zombie, you have to kill the physical body to release the spirit. In addition to Daybell's claims that he experienced visions of the future, he also claimed that only a select few would survive the coming apocalypse and the rest were considered dark forces that needed to be destroyed.

What's even more frightening, how many people, including Laurie, who believed him and according to Ian, were committed to doing his bidding. He's given this information. He says, look, I'm in here because I'm in fear for my children. With these crazy people I just got myself wrapped up in, I fear for my children, my ex-wife, because they're telling me my kids may be dark, my ex-wife's dark, JJ was dark, Tylee was dark. And so when we're hearing that, it's like, what in the heck are you talking about? It just took such a dramatic turn from two missing kids to now we have a group of people believing that some people are zombies and those zombies need to be killed. In Daybell's dark vision of the end of days, not even children

would be spared the wrath of the chosen. And now our urgency is even more because if they're believing this and they believe the kids are dark and they believe that you have to physically kill dark people, are the kids alive? Are they dead? Are they holding them? Like there were so many questions going through our mind. The priority, of course, remained to locate JJ and Tylee. But it became clear that investigators didn't know who they could trust and who was a potential accomplice in what appeared to be, at this point, a coordinated cover-up. No one would talk to us. We tried to get a hold of her parents. They wouldn't talk to us. We tried to get a hold of her sister. She wouldn't talk to us. We tried to get a hold of her sister. She wouldn't talk to us.

Family members, their only response was, I know Lori. She's a good mom. And that was the other thing we heard from a lot of people that knew her. She's a good mom. She would never, ever do anything to those kids. Those kids are safe. If you can't find them and she's telling you that they're safe somewhere, they're safe. In the meantime, the news story of the missing children were breaking

nationwide. Their images on billboards is an unforgettable sight. So, you know, the press was covering it because you have these two missing kids and their mom and new stepdad are completely vanished in the wind. Investigators in Idaho were still withholding any mention of potential homicides, zombies, or Daybell's doomsday cult. But detectives were growing suspicious about some of the other mysterious events that seemed to surround their suspects, including the recent deaths of Lori's ex-husband Charles Vallow and that of Daybell's wife Tammy. We knew Chad's wife Tammy had died back in October of 2019. Fremont County didn't find it suspicious at that point, the coroner. But now with all these other circumstances surrounding Chad and Tammy and Lori,

now Fremont County is looking at it different, like, okay, maybe there is something suspicious. After an exhumation of her remains, an autopsy was conducted, revealing suspicious tissue damage around her neck. Not definitive proof of a homicide, but enough to rethink how she died. At that time, it was ruled a suspicious death, not natural causes. And in another of what would be many bizarre coincidences, the very next day, Lori's brother, Alex Cox, the one who shot and killed Lori's first husband, Charles,

now it was Alex Cox who died suddenly at his home in Arizona. It's just hard to believe that the day after Tammy's exhumed, he dies of natural causes. It's too much of a coincidence, you know? I mean, the question I'd be asking here was, how do you become a devout follower of Chad's ways? Clearly, there's some influence going on here, but what exactly happened? The possibilities are endless.

You know, when I've looked at this case, and yes, that's always what people are focused on, and rightly so, like all these views that so many people just can't even imagine like going down that path. But also just look at the coincidences here, right? I mean, starting with that he is the one who physically causes Charles's death, you know, forgetting at this moment whether it is self-defense or something more sinister. He is there when now police show up at the home to speak with Lori initially,

looking for her kids, that welfare check. And now he all of a sudden, as these things are slowly coming to light and, you know, investigators starting to question more and more what's really going on, that he just up and mysteriously dies. It just seems too coincidental on multiple levels to me. Yet at the same time, as we know, that doesn't get you into court, at least not yet. We've all heard the saying that dead men tell no tales. So the question is, was he a murderous hitman on behalf of what Chad and what Lori were believing in,

and that he was doing their bidding, and their bidding was committing murder? But at this point, whatever it was that was going on, this investigation was quickly growing beyond the search for two missing kids. I would say initially, probably for the first month or so, it was nothing but the kids, JJ and Tylee. But once we figured out these kids aren't anywhere, we can't find these kids anywhere.

And then you have all this other stuff surrounding Chad and Lori. All these other deaths, suspicious deaths or homicides. You start to put pieces together and it encompasses not just JJ and Tylee, but everything else. Not the least of which was tracking down Lori and Chad Daybell, who, as it turned out, had returned to their honeymoon spot in Hawaii. We were able to track and figure out through cell phone data that they were in Kauai. We also received tips from people in Kauai of sightings. But here is where law enforcement ran up against a problem. They didn't really have enough evidence yet to charge either of them with the crime. And without charges, there was little leverage that they had to do anything to hopefully

entice them to cooperate. We were running out of options quickly, dead ends, because we were months behind all this stuff, right? All this stuff happened and we really didn't get involved to the end of November. These kids had been missing for quite a while. We figured out that Tylee's last known proof of life was September 8th and JJ's was September 23rd. So we're months behind. We're running out of options. Rob, Prosecutor Wood, finds his statute. And it's like, you know what? Let's give it a shot and see if we can get her to at least show us or produce some proof of life for these kids. And so detectives from a small police department in Rexburg, Idaho, hopped on a plane to confront their suspects in Hawaii.

So we get to Hawaii. Of course, the media is already there because they had probably gotten some of the same tips from people that had seen Chad and Lori. In fact, there were even reporters that were confronting Lori in public and in at least one instance eliciting a very telling response. When he says, hey, Lori, where are your kids? People are praying for your children. And her response is, oh, well, that's nice, and continues to walk away. You see that side and that arrogance and the way she was just cold when you're talking about her children and how everybody's looking for her children and concerned

and she's not concerned, that was huge too. Armed with a search warrant, investigators entered the residence where Lori and Chad were holed up. There was no kids toys, no nothing, just like two adults. So we knew the kids probably hadn't ever been there. But their car told a whole different story. There were a lot of belongings in the vehicle that belonged to JJ and Tylee. And that was kind of a red different story. There were a lot of belongings in the vehicle that belonged to JJ and Tylee, and that was kind of a red flag, too.

Social security cards, debit cards, JJ's iPad that he never went anywhere without. And still, unbelievably, despite cops at their door and national media attention, Lori and Chad Daybell refused to cooperate with investigators. We attempted to talk with Chad and Lori and let them know that, you know, if they want to get an attorney and speak, we'll be here for a couple days. And we were met with nothing.

They didn't say a word. Lori glared. Chad was quiet. They didn't want anything to do with this. On January 25th, 2020, authorities served Lori Vallow Daybell an order requiring her to produce her kids. And then after failing to comply, she was arrested in Hawaii and extradited back to Idaho. But still, she wouldn't talk. And we kept thinking, okay, well, time's ticking. The clock's started.

She's not going to want to sit in jail. She's going to produce these kids. And when that five days was up, no sighting of JJ, no sighting of Tylee, I think that's when a lot of us switched gears. Like, I don't think this is going to be a rescue mission. I think it's going to be more probably of a recovery mission. No one had heard or seen from JJ or Tylee in over four months. And investigators like Ray, who had been on the case from the beginning, they began to fear the worst.

You always hold out hope for the best. And in the back of your mind, you're thinking these kids are alive and you want them to be alive. And you have that positive attitude. But when a mom doesn't produce her kids and she would rather sit in jail and be arrested than just show any type of proof of life, a FaceTime video, photographs, these kids holding up a newspaper with a date on it. She doesn't even have to tell us where they're at necessarily. Show us proof of life. Hold up a newspaper with today's date and show me Tylee or show me JJ. And she doesn't do that.

There's a reason. And I think that's where a lot of the investigators kind of switched. There were some that still held out hope, but the majority is like, okay, those kids are probably gone. And so investigators forged ahead without her, turning to technology for clues about what may have happened.

Using digital forensics, they began to piece together a grim story. We had a lot of people working on this, and there are so many names that worked tirelessly on this case. But one was Agent Ben Dean. He works for the FBI. He was tasked with going over some of Chad's devices, and he was going over Tammy's devices, and he located a text message from Chad to Tammy on September 9th, and he's talking about how Chad is texting his wife Tammy and saying, you know, I was out in the backyard. I had to start burning some limbs.

I saw a raccoon walking along, so I shot it. And one shot did the trick. The raccoon is now buried in our pet cemetery. So to me, that's just the kind of strange, out of the blue story that sounds a lot like someone covering a lie or trying to establish an alibi. And it's made especially creepy by the mention of a cemetery right on the Daybell property. He found that odd. And so when he called, Agent Ricky Wright had been keeping track of all of the geolocations that were associated with Alex Cox on his device. For a while, Lori's now dead brother Alex had been considered a suspect or potential accomplice. And that was still the case, right, in the kid's disappearance. So police had already gone ahead and gotten a warrant to search his cell phone records. They go back and they look at September 9th, that text message to Tammy from Chad, and then they look at the geolocations for Alex.

And it puts Alex in the backyard on September 9th in the Pet Sematary fire pit area. It also puts Alex Cox in Chad's backyard on September 23rd in the backyard under a tree. And so you have Alex there the morning after each last known proof of life for JJ, last known proof of life for Tylee. So with those geolocations and the text message, we were able to obtain a search warrant for Chad Daybell's property. And that's what we executed on June 9th. In other words, it was time to dig, which any cop will tell you it's an experience that is full with mixed emotions, eagerness that you may be getting closer to solving a mystery, and at the very same time, fear that the worst possible conclusions were about to come true. I mean, we were coordinating this big, huge, massive search,

and we had a briefing that night before. And I remember after the briefing, talking to my lieutenant at the time, we were just leaned up against my car. And we were both feeling like, if the kids aren't out there, we don't know where to go at this point. Because we had exhausted everything. All the leads we had, we had exhausted it. We were running into dead ends everywhere we looked. On June 9th, 2020, the FBI, Rexburg Police, and Fremont County Sheriff's Office descended upon Chad Daybell's home and property. That next morning, a couple of detectives knock on the door. Hey, Chad, we have a warrant for the house and the property. We give him the copy of the search warrant. He starts to read over the search warrant. And I remember telling Ron that night before,

we're gonna know real quick if those kids are here. When he's reading that search warrant, we're gonna see something. Some type of visceral response, some type of carotid artery beating, or his face gets red, or he starts to sweat, or we're gonna see something, some type of behavior. And he starts joking with his kids.

His kids are on the couch next to him and he's joking with his kids. And, you know, like, this is no big deal. And I remember being completely discouraged at that point. Like, we're in the wrong spot. The kids are not here. We're in the wrong spot. Could digital forensics be the answer? Investigators began to rope off areas in the backyard where Alex Cox's cell phone had pinged back in September, just hours after each child was last seen.

Meanwhile, Chad Daybell showed no signs of concern, but Ray had a hunch that he just might slip. And then he asks, hey, can I go make a phone call? So I said, yeah, I'm just going to escort you. So I walk him outside. He goes and sits in his car. And I remember standing in the front yard looking at him, and he keeps looking over his right shoulder pretty intently. And when I looked in that direction and put myself so I could see where he was looking, there was the FBI team that was kind of marking off sections under this tree, and he would not take his eyes off what they were doing. It seems that even with all of his talk about being able to see behind the veil and into the future, Chad Daybell was unable to predict what would happen next. And somebody yells, hey, come over here. And so I went over there

to the tree area and they start pulling back topsoil. And as soon as they start pulling back topsoil, you could smell the odor of, you know, a decomposing body that I've smelled

too many times. And we knew right then, this is it. In Rexburg, Idaho, authorities had made a terrible discovery. A shallow grave containing human remains. And at that point

we knew we had JJ because it was only like a four by two section of earth that was uncovered. They wouldn't know for sure until an autopsy was conducted. But Chad Daybell, who had been allowed to wait inside his daughter's house next door, decided he didn't want to wait for the verdict. Somebody gets on the radio and says, hey, Chad Daybell just left his daughter's residence at a high rate of speed. And at that point, me and Ron, my lieutenant,

sprinted across this backyard and we're like, put him to the shoulder, put a traffic stop on him. We got in my car, jumped in and went screaming down the road trying to catch up to him. And he had already been pulled over. Both Lori and Chad Daybell were now in police custody, but there were still too many questions to count.

And for investigators, the grim reality of the case was starting to sink in. But I remember coming back from him being placed into custody and driving back to the backyard. And just a sense of emotion, like relief that we finally found JJ and we had put forth all these man hours and finally got Chad into custody and found JJ. But then you have the dad side of it too, where, you know, I have kids and, you know, that's a little boy laying in the ground. And so, you know, like you said,

you kind of process that for just a split second, bury it down and get back to work. The human remains, which were tightly wrapped in plastic, were transferred to the coroner's vehicle and driven directly to the morgue. The subsequent autopsy would prove to be the most harrowing of Ray's career. And we do want to warn you that the following description is very disturbing and raw. I ended up going to the autopsy the next day of JJ's. We're sitting in this room with a medical examiner. They cut down the black plastic bag and kind of expose what's inside.

And this little boy wearing red pajamas, his arms were folded across his chest, and they were duct-taped from elbow to elbow, like mummy style. And then he had a duct tape around his ankles. He had duct tape from his chin to his forehead, just several layers of duct tape that were wrapped tight around his head. I don't think anybody even spoke or was breathing at that point. It took us by surprise. You know you're going to see a dead little boy, but not in that condition. We have left out some of the details here, but what we've given, we feel, is more than enough

to understand that this was absolutely horrific. And the autopsy would ultimately conclude that JJ was intentionally asphyxiated. Even more disturbing, it appeared there was evidence that the seven-year-old was alive and aware in the moments he was being murdered. And we will just leave it there. You could see scratch marks on the left side of his neck where he was trying to get the tape and bag off before his arms were duct taped. So he was awake when that happened, unfortunately. The fate of JJ's sister Tylee was still unknown. But after more careful digging around the Daybell property, investigators soon made another terrible discovery.

In the pet cemetery, somebody says, hey, I think I have something. And so we went over there. And at that point, you want to maintain the integrity of the scene and the evidence. And so you go from using shovels to hand tools, little trowels and brushes. And so we get on our hands and knees

and we start kind of digging around this wet ground. And then slowly you start to see chunks of burnt flesh, burnt pieces of bone sticking up. And at that point you can tell she had been chopped up and mutilated. Authorities later confirmed the remains were those of Tylee Ryan. An autopsy concluded that she had been burned and partially dismembered. Because of how she'd been found, her cause of death couldn't be specifically determined, but was ruled unspecified by homicidal means. Two innocent young lives cruelly taken. And as the public raged with sadness as the news of these murders spread,

investigators were still focused on one more question. Why? Were JJ and Tylee murdered to clear a path for Lori and Chad Daybell to start a new life together? Was there a financial motive? After all, JJ had been receiving social security benefits since his father's death. Or was the motive something much darker and even harder to comprehend? Was it possible that everything they had heard about the Daybells doomsday cult was true, and that it was their extremist religious beliefs that had told them to murder?

You're sitting there thinking, there's no way this is real. There's no way these people believe it. But then you go back to, okay, well, they said Charles was dark and now he's deceased. They said Chad's ex-wife was dark, Tammy. She's now deceased. And now the two kids are dark. It was just a whirlwind of emotion and urgency and trying to figure out where to go from there. It seemed like every day we were getting further and further down this rabbit hole of death and destruction and more people, more players. It was crazy. What began as a missing child case had potentially expanded to include the homicides of JJ and Tylee, and if they can prove it, the murders of Charles Vallow, Tammy Daybell, and perhaps even Lori's brother, Alex Cox.

All of those deaths were now considered as suspicious. Just trying to summarize the entire case and all the moving parts and players for an indictment or for discovery in preparation for trial would be a huge challenge for any prosecutor, not to mention trying to keep the more outrageous elements of the story out of the press. Details like the Daybells' alleged beliefs that their victims were in fact zombies and in murdering them that they were merely doing God's work. You want to maintain the integrity of the case. And there's so much attention and there's so many people involved that you don't want things to leak out, right?

And with all the nation and the media watching, we had to do this right. I think we did it right. And we did it by the book. Prosecutors in Idaho assembled their evidence and convened a grand jury. Based on JJ's autopsy and how we found Tylee, we had a grand jury and Chad and Lori were both charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. After a court-ordered mental health examination, Lori Vallow-Daybell was eventually determined mentally competent to stand trial. When she refused to enter a plea, the judge entered a not guilty plea on her behalf. On April 10th, the prosecution made their opening argument to a jury in Boise, Idaho.

They would stick to the facts of the case and the evidence that clearly proved that Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill both Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow. Prosecutors conceded that their religious beliefs may have been behind their motive for murder. But much like the Manson family and other pseudo-religious cults that have brainwashed members into performing atrocities, Lori and Chad Daybell's extreme views could not excuse them for

their actions. And in fact, there was also the possibility that their real motives might have been something much more mundane. Neither one of them could show any income for the years they had been together. And it was apparent that they were living off of the Social Security benefits J.J. was receiving from his deceased father, as well as the life insurance policy on Chad Daybell's dead wife, Tammy. The fact was that two married adults had fallen for each other, had an affair outside of those marriages, and then gone to violent lengths to be together. And during their trials, neither showed an ounce of remorse. They would give each other googly eyes looking over at each other. You know, it reminded me of just two junior high kids crushing on each other.

On May 12, 2023, an Idaho jury found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty of murder in the deaths of her two children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua J.J. Vallow. In her sentencing statement, Vallow Daybell doubled down on her rhetoric, which she believed, at least from what she said, absolved her of any wrongdoing. The judge disagreed. On July 31, 2023, Lori Vallow Daybell was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. And there are still more charges pending that are related to the attempted murder

of her niece's husband and her own ex-husband, Charles Vallow. So after she was sentenced to life in prison here, Maricopa County brought forth charges on the attempted shooting of Brandon Boudreau and the homicide of Charles. As for the mastermind of this nightmare, Chad Daybell,

he too would pay dearly for his crimes. Chad went to trial and the jury found him guilty on all charges and he was sentenced to death. I think he has five or six death sentences on those charges. For the nation that was glued

to this sensational trial, the revelations about zombies and the end of days were almost as shocking as the murder themselves. But for those members of law enforcement that were involved in the case from the beginning, the takeaway was something a bit more profound. You look at Lori and you look at Chad and you don't picture evil monsters. That's not what an evil monster is supposed to look like. They look like normal people. Lori looks like a soccer mom. When you think of evil, you don't think of those two. And so what's scary is how well they blend in, how well they blended in, how well they were able to manipulate a lot of people and kind of get away with this stuff for quite a while. So to me,

that was eye-opening too, that not everybody who is evil fits the description of evil. A complicated case like this that involves multiple victims and crosses jurisdictions takes an incredible amount of cooperation. And in this case, between local police, state police, the FBI, and even federal agencies like the Social Security Administration and the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children. And as Ray told us, that successful cooperation is no small feat to take for granted. Sometimes when you work with other agencies, they get that ego and, well, I got this information. I'm not going to share it with you because it has to do with my case. There was none of that. If I obtained a piece of information that could help those guys down in Arizona, it was shared and vice versa. Everybody worked so

well together. I've never seen that many agencies work well for that amount of time and have there not be any issues with communication or sharing of information. But a case like this also takes a huge emotional toll on investigators, especially because it involves the murder of children. You know what you're looking at, you know what you're doing, but you're really not thinking about it, right? You're just, you're doing your job. It's not until you get home and it's a quiet house and, you know, you see your kids or you're driving home and you start to really process what just happened and what you just saw. differently some people do it healthy some people drink some people go to the gym and work out you know you put your earbuds in your headphones on and you just go to the gym and work out that

frustration that anger that sadness the how you felt that day because at the end of the day you come home and you have a family that's excited to see you to me me, the biggest irony in the Lori Daybell case is the clear difference between her stated beliefs and the terrible things she did. Daybell, who had strong religious views and said she was a dedicated mom, planned the killings of her kids. JJ entirely. She used a warped view of her faith to explain her actions, saying her children had evil spirits in them and needed to be rescued. This awful contradiction that a mom thinking she was spiritually aware and protective could do such horrible things to her own kids shows how deep her confusion and betrayal went.

It points out the scary truth that at times, the worst threat could come from those who say they're our protectors, pushed up by their mixed-up beliefs to commit the most unthinkable crimes. This case captured the attention of millions. Words like doomsday and zombies appeared over and over in the headlines. But it began as the search for a missing child. And by the time it was done, there were at least four murders, maybe more, uncovered. I met JJ's grandparents before JJ and Tylee's bodies had been discovered. They told me that JJ's scooter had been found inside the Daybell storage locker, and that that's when they knew for sure that he wasn't okay. They said that their seven-year-old grandson loved that scooter,

rode it all the time, and he wouldn't have gone anywhere without it. That may seem like a tame story, but it is so painful in what it means. JJ should have been riding his scooter today and for as many days as he wanted. His mother and her new husband took his life mercilessly and brutally. Whether it was at their hands or their direction doesn't matter. The same for Tylee. She should today be on the phone with her friends or whatever that 16-year-old wanted to be doing with her time. But she too is forever gone at the hands or direction of the one she should have been able to trust the most. So many lives forever altered because of narcissism, whether relying on what their

beliefs may have been, or the want to be together and free from their families, or whether they wanted the money these deaths might bring. They took lives, many of them, for their own selfish motivations. There are multiple lives taken in this case, but we'll leave it with the focus on the two youngest that started this investigation down its road to uncovering the awful truths. JJ, Tylee, we remember you and feel pain for the lives you should have had. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?