Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Bonus: ‘Cult Mom’ Lori Vallow’s missing children remains found? Neighbors say bonfires at husbands property

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

Nate Eaton from East Idaho News and Ellen Killoran from Crime Online update the investigation into property owned by Chad Daybell and the possible remains of JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. The search for seven-year-old J.J. Vallow and his sister, 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, began at the end of November when their grandparents had been unable to reach them for a number of weeks. They called police and asked them to do a welfare check on the grandchildren. When police arrived, they talked to their mother, Lori Vallow, who told police the children were visiting friends and family out of state. Police tried to verify the information that Lori Vallow gave them. Failing at that, they went back to have another discussion about the location of the children.

However, Lori Vallow was gone. That began the search for 7-year-old J.J. Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan. Nate Eaton from EastIdahoNews.com has been covering this story since its beginning. So has Ellen Killoran with CrimeOnline.com. We have both of them joining us today to get us updated on what's happening in this case. We'll start with Nate Eaton. Nate, tell me what has happened this week in the search for JJ and Tylee. So Tuesday morning, dozens of police officers arrived at Chad Daybell's home to serve a search warrant. The warrant was to search the property. He lives on a large lot of property.

You know, police went there in January and seized a bunch of electronic devices. They didn't focus so much on the yard, but this warrant this week was to focus on the yard. Chad Daybell was there at the house when the warrant was served. He went outside. Police immediately went to the backyard. We were able to get in a helicopter right away and fly over the house, and I immediately noticed that they were putting up blue canopies, some blue tarps, and they had kind of a grid area in the backyard near the fire pit. That's where they were focusing their search. And within two or three hours, Chad Daybell was arrested and placed into custody.

We didn't know what that was for. We just knew that he was placed into custody. And then two hours after that, they announced that human remains had been found on the property. And they were able to confirm that it was two sets of remains belonging to children. And according to family members, those remains are JJ and Tylee, the children who have been missing since September. So those remains were taken to Boise for an autopsy, where an autopsy was performed yesterday to get a positive identification. And right now, Chad was arrested. He's being held in the Fremont County Jail on $1 million bond. Lori, his wife, is being held in a neighboring county, Madison County Jail, on other charges. She hasn't been charged in connection to the death of her children yet. That could be coming, but right now they're holding her on the initial charges of abandoning her children. A neighbor who has lived across from the Daybell residence for many years, noted that there were a couple of big bonfires last fall

and then a couple more bonfires in the past few months on the property. So it sounded to me like he was indicating that having bonfires out there was not a regular occurrence and had just started in the fall and then again in the spring. Is that a true assessment of what was going on? That's right. Yeah, that's from what we understand. Chad Daybell's kids moved in with him and were living in the house when Tammy died back in October. And the children started to use the fire pit. They do live on a large piece of property, and they did have an official

fire pit back there. So yeah, they were having fires, and this neighbor did report seeing bonfires out there, and the remains were found very close to that fire pit. They haven't really seen information as far as if the children were burned or anything like that, but one could assume that something happened there. And right now the case is sealed, so the details of how the children died, the condition of their bodies have not been released. What we do know is that during the hearing the other day, the prosecutor said that the concealment of one of the bodies was particularly egregious. Those were his words, particularly egregious. So we do know that there must be something that was disturbing about the way one of these children died or was buried.

They were able to find these bodies fast. I mean, it was in a matter of hours from the moment they served that search warrant to the moment they had the children out of the ground. It was as if police knew exactly where to look. They didn't tear up the yard. They didn't have holes everywhere. They went right to a specific place. And if you were to drive by that house today, you would see nothing unusual. They put the dirt right back. It looks like a normal average backyard. So I heard that within the past week or so, police were able to take a bunch of tiny little clues and tips and put them all together into one big, solid puzzle piece. And that's what led them to the house this week. Well, that was the one thing we noticed is that they only dug one hole just one hole and in covering these types of story from stories for

many many years that just doesn't happen it was as you indicated they knew exactly where they were digging they found what they were looking for and now i do want to point out and you alluded to this earlier the confirmation of the identity of the bodies has not come from any investigatory source. The medical examiner has not confirmed it. We've gotten that confirmation from the family members. And obviously, we are dealing with children. We're dealing with, I mean, it's an easy leap here. Let me ask you, though, Nate, because you have been covering it.

You're right there in the thick of things. Is there any chance that Chad Daybell is going to be able to raise a million dollars bail? Very, very, very unlikely. And we know that because Lori has been in jail on one million dollars bail and he has tried everything he could to get her out. And when her attorney went before a judge weeks ago for a bond hearing, it was a three-hour hearing. As he pleaded with the judge to drop her bond, he was suggesting that they drop it down to $250,000. He said that they could afford $250,000 to get her out. Chad has not been working. He has no income coming in. His books have not been

selling. And so he doesn't really have any money. If he didn't have enough money to bail her out, I don't think they have enough money to bail him out. Now, he does have different circumstances. He has an extended family, several brothers and sisters. He has parents. So they may be able to raise the funds, although his family has issued statements within the past few days expressing their sorrow and heartbreak for the remains that were found in the yard. So it's unclear right now who's standing by him, but we do know that he has not been released from jail. And you've got to think that if additional charges come in the next week or so, once the ME does positively ID these children and they're able to move forward on more serious charges, that bond amount may be raised even higher. CrimeOnline.com investigative journalist Ellen Keller in joining us. Ellen, what have you heard about the bail amount and

how other family members are responding to the recent turn of events with regard to Chad Daybell. The fact that the judge ordered him held on $1 million bail at the prosecutor's recommendation, even though the charges that he's currently facing at this moment don't carry that stiff of a penalty, indicates that the judge understands there is something further coming down the pike. So I don't think that we need to worry at all at this point about Chad Daybell being released. I think that he's going to stay in custody, and obviously Lori is too. Now you have been interviewing and talking with many people surrounding the story and people in the area. What have you uncovered recently about Chad Daybell and his wife who passed away in October, Tammy? I have been speaking to someone, it's a YouTuber by the name of Tyson Draper, who we've worked with before on the Suzanne Morphy case. He is on the ground

there right now, and he went to Chad Daybell's home yesterday. He had a brief conversation with Garth, who is one of Chad Daybell's son, and he has that on video. We're going to have that up on Crime Online very shortly. He also spoke to Emma Daybell. Actually, her married name is Murray. He spoke to her. He did not record that conversation, but he relayed to me what she said to him. It wasn't a whole lot, but the impression that Tyson says that he got from her is that she had really been wanting to support her father and believing her father. And he says that he got the sense from her that her position has very much changed. One detail that might be incidental, might not be, is that Emma is actually moving into that home.

She, up until this week, she lived across the street with her husband and their child or children. I'm not sure if they have one or more than one. And she is now moving into the home. So Chad Daybell and the other adult, young adult children that were living in that home that was raided this week have already moved out. And the family says that this was in the works. So that's it. But I haven't been able to get any answers on where was, where did Chad Daybell plan to move? Where was he going? And did the decision to move from that property have anything to do with this investigation? All right, so there was already a plan in the works for them to leave the house, which explains why we saw furniture and other things being taken out the next day.

That's right, the very next day. And I'll admit, when I saw the families saying that this was already planned, I thought that the timing was really coincidental. It was kind of tough to not link it to what's been going on in the home. But this person who spoke to Emma said that this was already on the way and she is actually planning on moving into the house. So the house is staying in the family. But I'm very curious to know where Chad Daybell was planning on going.

I know everybody's a little bit different on this, but to be honest, I don't think I would want to live in a home that was party to having bodies of children in the yard, you know, right by where they were having bonfires. Absolutely, absolutely. And if it's true that this was already in the works, I would love to know. I'd love to speak to her myself. I would love to know if his daughter is having any different thoughts about this now. Nate, back to you, eastidahonews.com.

Nate Eaton, what was the general mood before the remains were recovered? Did people think that the children were being hidden and that we would find them alive and well? Or was there a general thought that we were looking for remains? I think that most people did not believe the children were alive, but the manner in which they were found and the manner in which they were killed or died, it is just heartbreaking. Here you have Chad Daybell walking out the back door of his house every day, and yards away, there are children buried underneath the dirt. I don't know how any parent can function knowing that.

We ran into them in Hawaii in January, and going back and watching that interview now to me is chilling because I said to them, where are your children? Did you do something to your children? And they seem to not have a care in the world as we're walking, knowing that they're buried in his backyard. And they know this while they're on the island of Kauai. It just is so disturbing. I was outside the house all day yesterday, and people were just driving by to look and several people stopped and just

broke down sobbing. One woman had one of Chad Daybell's books, and she said, I came to burn it. But she didn't want to do it there. She's just like, I want to get rid of this book. There's flowers taped to its fence. There's teddy bears. There's signs. There's been vigils.

There's one tonight. There's memorials. So not a lot of people in our community knew these kids. They moved here fast. Then they disappeared fast. They didn't have friends. They didn't have associates. They didn't go to the local church, nothing like that. But the community has come to embrace and love these kids. And I think it's just such a sorrowful way in which they're found. On the other hand, it's nice to know that they have been found, that in five, ten years, we're not saying, I wonder whatever happened to those kids, that there is some sort of closure. The sheriff described it as a wonderfully sad day. It's wonderful that there's some bit of resolution.

It's very sad in the way that it was resolved. We know the one thing that continues to play in my head over and over is that they've got Chad Daybell in jail, million dollars bond, and not accused of murder here. He's not accused of killing the children at this point. And as Joe Scott Morgan has pointed out on the program, that in reality, oftentimes the charge of abuse of a corpse is oftentimes in many states a misdemeanor. But the prosecutor said, Rob Wood said, that it was so egregious that if the facts come out about what happened to these children, at least one of them in particular, that it would give Chad Daybell the incentive to flee. That's the part I can't quite get over. I think it was concerning to him that Chad could take off.

I don't know where he'd go. He does have family down in Utah in a neighboring state. And I think that they just want to be sure that Chad does not leave. The other question people have raised is, could Chad potentially take his life now, knowing that the walls are closing in, that he is now going to have to face some realities when in the past it seems as if they've been living on their own planet, in a way. And we know that his religious beliefs speak to that, that he believes he's a god, that Lori was a goddess, that they are to lead the 144,000 and prepare them for the second coming of Christ,

that the world will end in a month, on July 22nd. And so one would think that maybe he thinks, well, we'll just wait it out, and things will end. And then when that doesn't happen, he'll have a new reality to face. So I think that they just want to be sure that he stays behind bars until he can go before the judge and go before the jury and possibly face the charges. The one question in all of this that we still don't have the answer to is his wife's death, Tammy. We are still awaiting those autopsy results. I imagine that will be coming here in the next few weeks. That's the one piece of this puzzle that still is open. Anyway, I think that that will be interesting, and he could face additional charges for that as well. And then you've got the cases in Arizona concerning Charles's shooting and Alex's death. They did find that Alex died

of a blood clot in his lung, but police were quick to note that their investigation into that death is not over. So this case is far from over, despite the big break that came this week. Just amazing. Thank you, Nate. That's Nate Eaton with EastIdahoNews.com. Also, special thanks to Ellen Killoran from CrimeOnline.com. I'm Dave Mack. Thanks for joining us. This is an iHeart Podcast.