Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 5 Shocking Updates in Lori Vallow's Arizona Murder Trial

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If he's not done with that information you want, are you still wanting to proceed to trial on the at the end of this month? Yes, Your Honor. The doomsday cult mom is days away from her trial beginning, and she's trying to get the prosecutor kicked off the case and the charges thrown out. I take a look at Lori Vallow-Daybell's request to the judge and why the sheriff says she should have to wear this shock belt during the trial. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Lori Vallow-Daybell is making some waves as jury selection begins in her trial for the conspiracy to murder her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, back in 2019. Lori's brother, of course, Alex Cox, shot and killed Charles and then claimed self-defense. But prosecutors in Maricopa County say that Lori and her brother planned the whole thing because Lori thought she would get a $1 million life insurance payout. That didn't happen. Lori is representing herself and she's filed some motions ahead of jury selection. Judge Boreski has already voiced concerns that she may not be ready for trial. Take a look at this exchange from the most recent hearing. Mr. Dworkin, if you want him to do extractions, you're not ready for trial.

Starting point is 00:01:30 So in order for him to do the work that he's requesting, getting copies of a laptop or a cell phone or whatever the case may be, that's going to take him time to extract and analyze and then prepare a report. Months, maybe. I understand that, Your Honor, and I'm hoping he can do it in an expedited manner. I requested him from OPDS on January 14th. He got approved on March 7th from OPDS. You're the one pressing for your speedy trial, so you kind of have to make a decision on we're set for trial you want to go to trial or you want to have him do that work that you want because I don't think both are going to happen even if you got the laptops today generally those types of things can take weeks even months

Starting point is 00:02:21 to analyze and prepare a report on. I understand that. And I also understand that I've only been given 10 hours for him from OPDS, right? So if he could spend 10 hours this week getting them ready, then he can give us a report with the best that he can do. Well, the report's already late, technically. So that's just a little sample of what's been going on. And this is likely giving us a glimpse of how this trial is going to go. Now, Lori has filed a motion asking Judge Bereski to remove assistant prosecutor Trina Kaye from the case.

Starting point is 00:03:05 In the motion, Lori Vallow outlined several reasons why she says Bereski should consider removing Kay. First, Lori claims that Trina Kay violated her right to conduct an investigation by directing the Chandler and Gilbert Police Departments to refuse to provide records to the defense last year. Then in another instance this year, at the end of January, she accuses Prosecutor Kay of obtaining and distributing attorney-client privileged communications between herself and her appellate attorney in Idaho. Now, Lori's last claim of misconduct occurred earlier this month when she says Kay gave legal advice to Nate Eaton, a defense witness, on how to avoid being served with a subpoena. Now, Eaton is actually a reporter for East Idaho News and has been reporting on the case since the very beginning. In fact, his name came up

Starting point is 00:03:45 during the most recent hearing. Take a look. Your Honor, my understanding is that the state has interviewed every single person on my witness list previously. That's where I got the people from, from the interviews that they had from the state previously. So I understand that they can, they're allowed to do another interview of them, but they have interviews of every single person that is on my list with the exception of one which is who which is Nate Eaton okay when you say the state's done the interview do you mean police or the someone from the prosecutor's office in discovery I have interviews with police on every single one of the witnesses that are on my list. Okay. So I know that they

Starting point is 00:04:27 had their addresses. I know that we were trying to get the addresses to them in the quickest way possible. And where I am at the jail, the communication is very difficult for me to get a hold of my investigator, to get a hold of my paralegal. I'm 23 hours a day locked down. If I don't have Wi-Fi, I don't have a phone. If I don't have battery, I don't have a phone. I don't have access to get to people. So I understand the time constraints, and we're doing the best that we can of getting things answered, getting things put together. So as a threshold question, your assertion is that all these people that you've listed in your notices have relevant information for trial?

Starting point is 00:05:11 Correct. And do you know if the police have interviewed these people? Your Honor, the first listed person is a reporter. So I'm not really sure the relevance of a reporter. He's the only one that hasn't been. So that's what I stated. So, Your Honor, the point is to start with, one, these people, I'm not sure all of them actually have been interviewed. Those that have would have been interviewed five years ago.

Starting point is 00:05:41 So whether or not their addresses are correct, unclear. It's not the state's responsibility or the defendant to do the defendant's work and find these people. I have an absolute right to do interviews just as the defendant does. So in terms of the witnesses. But Lori doesn't stop with the claim about Nate Eaton. She adds this kicker at the very end. She writes, because this court has ignored the state's conduct, Trina Kaye became more blatant in her disregard for her ethical obligation. This is sadly similar to her longtime boyfriend Juan Martinez's behavior in a high profile case years ago here in Maricopa County. It seems her behavior is not original. Now, that high profile case was another woman accused of murder, Jodi Arias. Arias murdered her boyfriend, Travis Alexander, in 2008, and the trial was a spectacle. Juan Martinez was the prosecutor, and he was disbarred after sexual harassment allegations were made against him. And there were claims that he leaked information about Arias' case to a blogger that he was having

Starting point is 00:06:50 a sexual relationship with at the time. Martinez, instead of having a hearing on these issues, agreed to being disbarred. I want to tell you about a free app I've tried and it's called Upside. It will actually give you cash back on things that you use each day like gas groceries and takeout You can transfer the cash back straight into your bank account When I pump gas or go to Dunkin Donuts for a cup of tea, I always use upside I've even used it when I've ordered pizza Here's how it works download upside claim an offer for whatever you're buying and pay as usual using a debit or credit card Follow the steps and get paid.

Starting point is 00:07:26 To find out how much you could earn, click the link in the description to download Upside or scan that QR code that's right there on your screen and use our promo code CRIMEFIX to get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's promo code CRIMEFIX for an extra 25 cents back on your first gallon of gas. Now, Lori is asking the judge to give Trina Kay the boot, order sanctions, dismiss the charges and recommend she be disbarred. Prosecutor Kay fired back in a response saying that she never advised Nate Eaton on how to avoid a subpoena and that Eaton had reached out to her and that she wanted to interview him since he was a defense witness, Nate Eaton is saying the only knowledge he has of this case came through his investigative reporting. We'll have more on that later with Gigi McKelvey. Now, in her response, Kay counters each argument Lori Vallow Daybell made. So let's get right into the drama. Kay starts off by addressing the claim about the public records request. She says the state disclosed

Starting point is 00:08:25 public records from the Gilbert Police Department to the defense less than a month after they were requested. Kay goes on to explain that the defense requested records from the Chandler Police Department through the crime analyst section rather than the records department. In addition, Kay said ultimately the state had disclosed reports and extractions relating to the download of Charles Vallow's devices to the defense. That was another complaint. Now, Lori Vallow Daybell also wants the case dismissed because she claims that Kay distributed communications that Lori Vallow Daybell had with her lawyers. Kay wrote that she's working on a response to this claim, but acknowledged that Lori's jail calls and tablet communications from last October through this past January were turned over to the defense. So stay tuned for more on that.

Starting point is 00:09:14 Finally, the Maricopa County Sheriff wants Lori to wear a stun belt during the trial. It's called a RAC belt, and there's also a RAC vest. It looks like this. RAC stands for Remotely Activated Custody Control Belt. That means a deputy can simply push a button and send about 50,000 volts into Lori's body to control her if she acts out. Take a look. When the device is activated, you'll see an orange light. It's activated by a transmitter and can be activated at a distance of 300 feet line of sight by depressing these two buttons simultaneously. The duration of the activation is eight seconds. So to break down all of this, I want to bring in Gigi McKelvey.

Starting point is 00:10:05 She is the host of the Pretty Lies and Alibis podcast. She also works for us here from time to time at Law and Crime. And she is going out to Arizona for the first week of the trial once opening statements start. So, Gigi, I want your reaction, first of all, to this motion filed by Lori Vallow-Daybell to have Trina Kaye, the prosecutor on the case, removed from the case. She makes all of these different arguments, including that she instructed the police department not to turn over certain footage. She obtained her communications with her appellate counsel. And then she gets into this whole thing about Nate Eaton, the reporter from East Idaho News. And she's claiming that Trina Kaye gave him legal advice on how to avoid being served with a subpoena. So we have a lot going on there

Starting point is 00:10:55 with this motion. So let's start with the whole issue of telling the Chandler PD to withhold this information that she was seeking these public records. Yeah, this filing was very much a Lori Daybell filing and not a Lori Daybell acting pro se, because there's some snark in there. It got very personal when she was talking about Trina Kaye's partner, Juan Martinez, who was a prosecutor for Jody Arias in the news consistently. There was some drama after the trial with his career based on some things that happened during the trial. And I thought that one little section in the filing was very revealing that it was more of a dig than it was anything relevant.

Starting point is 00:11:40 It's a filing, very personal. And I think that's going to be the problem with Lori in this trial. I totally expect at least once she is going to lose her mind when she hears something she doesn't like. We've seen it in hearings where if she doesn't agree, her voice starts to project. It gets very forceful as if if I say it loud enough, you're going to believe me. And I think that's coming. But as far as accusing the prosecutor of instructing law enforcement agencies to not turn over discovery, it seems to me she's really grasping at straws any way she can to get the prosecutor on a

Starting point is 00:12:18 technicality or a violation. Like she has tried to have this case thrown out so many times. And this is the last ditch effort to me. I don't see any reason why the prosecutor would want to play dirty in this case. It's a very straightforward case with the evidence that we've learned about over the last five years. I think it's actually just a lot of desperation. And I think maybe it's becoming clear to Lori as trial gets closer. This doesn't look good for her. And she knows it. You know, she also I want to touch on this part about Nate Eaton. You know, the state wanted to interview her witnesses. And so he they you know, Nate Eaton, she claims Trina Kaye claims Nate Eaton called her. They had a conversation. He has not been served with a subpoena yet.

Starting point is 00:13:09 Nate Eaton has now filed for a protective order to strike him from the defense witness list. He filed this on his own and he's like, look, I want to be in the courtroom. He because if he's on the witness list, he can't cover the trial and be in the courtroom because there's, you know, this separation of witnesses order, which is very common in trials and criminal cases. So talk to me a little bit about that aspect of this, because, I mean, she's making a lot of allegations about this prosecutor. And so, you know, this is it seems like classic Lori Vallow Daybell to me. Of course. And I think that her problem with Nate Eaton goes way back to Hawaii when Nate was there with a microphone in her face when she was on her honeymoon with Chad Daybell. They were out for Dateline. Nate Eaton was the first person to put a microphone in Lori's face. And very famously, where are your kids, Lori?

Starting point is 00:14:06 Where are your children? Why won't you tell us where your kids are? Lori doesn't like to be questioned. And so I think she probably had an issue with Nate Eaton from way back in the Hawaii days. Nate was there for six weeks in Boise covering this trial. I saw him every single day. And I think she just doesn't want him at this Arizona trial because for whatever reason, Lori doesn't like Nate, which is interesting because

Starting point is 00:14:32 on Nate's YouTube channel, he said he and Lori have been communicating through gel email for quite some time. It goes to show you that Lori will cut you at the knees when she needs to, to benefit herself. I hope that Nate is allowed to be in there. He has been amazing covering this case. Very, very clear why she did what she did, though. So you think that she put Nate Eaton on the witness list simply to keep him out of the trial? One hundred percent, because here's the thing. Nate Eaton was not on this case until much later. Charles Vallow was shot and killed July 11th, 2019. Nate didn't get involved in this case until November, December, when it was clear that Tylee and JJ were missing and Tammy Daybell had been killed. He wasn't there for months on the case. Why would he have anything relevant to say about Charles Vallow's murder when in his filing he said, everything I know is from investigative reporting

Starting point is 00:15:38 and not firsthand knowledge. So I think it is a shot in the dark for Lori. Hopefully the judge lets him stay in the courtroom and takes him off the witness list. But the bigger issue here, none of her witnesses have been interviewed by the state and the state has filed a motion asking all witnesses, including her expert witness, be precluded from testifying because they have not been able to have a deposition with any of these people and haven't seen a report from the expert witness. No clue what he's going to claim in his report. It doesn't give them time to get their expert to rebut whatever he may bring in. So it could be the only potential witness on the defense case would be Lori Vallow herself. And yet, you know, the expert is sitting there right next to her and there's still work he hasn't done that she wants done. And the judge even pointed this out at the last hearing that you're not ready for trial. If this work hasn't been completed, this could take months and she wants it expedited, which what she's asking for could take a really long time. So it's

Starting point is 00:16:42 a little crazy. And we both agree she's probably going to testify. Let's move on now to Lori wanting Christina Atwood and Kay Woodcock removed from the state's witness list. So your thoughts on that, because Lori Valedaibau says they have nothing but speculation and hearsay to offer. Well, she's wrong because Kay Woodcock was working hand in hand with Charles

Starting point is 00:17:06 when Lori up and left Charles and JJ for all that time. And she helped him pack up his belongings. She was watching JJ. Kay was there when Lori came into the house after she had been gone for over a month. She she firsthand saw that interaction between Lori and Charles. The problem with Kay is that Kay knows too much and Kay will tell the facts on that stand. And those facts do not line up with Lori's version of events that this was self-defense. And I think that's the reason she wants. I think that's the reason she wants Kay off. And I honestly think she is a little afraid of Kay Woodcock. Kay does not mince words. Kay is all for justice for her brother.

Starting point is 00:17:51 And Lori knows that. As far as Christina Atwood, she was in that group in the very beginning that was hearing about Charles being possessed. But what Christina did is start to question Lori's beliefs. And so Lori tossed her aside. But her importance to this trial is she has firsthand knowledge from Lori about Charles being possessed and being Ned Schneider and all the things in the very beginning that set the framework ultimately for Charles's murder. And Christina was there in the very beginning to hear it all and actually had meetings with Alex and these groups of people at these homes. Both Kay Woodcock and Christina Atwood have testimony that is very damning to Lori Vallow. She knows it. That's why she wants them out of her trial. Really interesting. You would think that she'd want to

Starting point is 00:18:42 maybe confront them, but maybe she's actually afraid of these two people. 100 percent think she is nervous to have, you know, for the very first time, Anjanette, she is going to have to look Kay Woodcock in the eye and have a conversation with her. Ask her questions. This has not happened since any of this started. It's that she had defense attorneys in Idaho who questioned Kay Woodcock. It's going to be these two women squared off, making eye contact. And I think as tough and immortal as Lori wants to project herself, I think she's scared of Kay. That is my theory, 100 percent, because she knows Kay knows what happened. And don't forget, Kay was the beneficiary of that million dollar

Starting point is 00:19:26 life insurance policy that Charles had. Lori thought it was hers. And so she texted Kay, hey, no money left for JJ or his kids. So she's still very salty about that. That really threw a big wrench in her plans after Charles's murder. By not having that money, it messed her up. And so I think she's still to this day, very bitter that Charles had the good sense to know Lori wasn't right. And Charles thought Kay would end up with JJ. And that's why he did it. But ultimately, we know what happened with JJ. A lot of history there. I do think Lori is scared of K. All right. Last thing I want to talk about is this stun belt. You know, and this is pretty common. The sheriff of Maricopa County says she needs to wear a stun belt if she's going to be in plain clothes and she wants restraints

Starting point is 00:20:19 removed. Obviously, she wants to be able to be in front of the jury and enjoy the presumption of innocence in this case. She's going to be in plain clothes. And if she has the restraints removed, there's there's got to be a way for them to be able to control her if she acts up or if she gets out of line. And so they said they want her to wear this belt and that if she acts up, you know, they've got a remote control, the deputies in the courtroom and they can zap her. And there have been a lot of cases I've covered where defendants have worn these, have been told they have to wear these, and they're notified that they can be shocked with 50,000 volts if they act up. And this is not any small thing. I mean, it can cause you to lose control of your

Starting point is 00:21:06 bodily functions. And I don't think you want that to happen. So I'm wondering how she feels about that. I can't imagine you're going to be able to fully relax knowing you have that on your body. And thank goodness I don't have that remote because my impulse control is not that good. I press buttons. But, you know, in the back of her mind, she has to be wondering what if it malfunctions? What if he accidentally presses it? You know, I have read interviews with inmates who had to wear those in the courtroom. And everyone says you cannot fully relax for even a second because, you know, you are wearing essentially a taser around your waist or a vest or however they do it. I think that's definitely going to add some nervousness to Lori at least

Starting point is 00:21:53 in that first week until maybe she gets used to it and forgets she has it. But I can't imagine you throw that thing on and then you feel great about having it on. But it is needed because here's the thing. She is a three times convicted murderer and she is representing herself. But at the end of the day, the safety of the witnesses, all the court staff and even the people sitting there watching these these proceedings in real time, everybody's safety has to be ensured. It's been two thousand and ninety days since Charles Vallow was shot. And we had the Idaho cases first. But I think everybody who's followed this case for the last almost five years is so ready for this day

Starting point is 00:22:32 to come where finally there's justice for Charles Vallow and then later Brandon Boudreau. And then she's done. She goes back to Idaho. We probably won't hear much about her again. And I think we're all ready for that. Well, Gigi, I think it's going to be an interesting trial her again. And I think he's basically taken the position that she's made her bed and she can lie in it because she has counsel that could have represented her. And this is the route she has taken. So Gigi McKelvey, you will be out there in Arizona for that first week. We'll be doing some live stuff every morning for the viewers. And I look forward to it. Thank you so much. Me too. Thanks, Anjanette. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 5 Shocking Updates in Lori Vallow's Arizona Murder Trial

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 5 Shocking Updates in Lori Vallow's Arizona Murder Trial

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