Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Cult Mom Lori Vallow Bombshell: Tammy Daybell Death ASPHYXIATION

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

As Lori and Chad Daybell move closer to trial, Tammy Daybell's death is back in center stage. Tammy Daybell's death is initially ruled natural causes. The seemingly healthy 49-year-old is training to run a 4K race, but Chad Daybell reports that his wife is dead in the bed beside him one morning. The family refuses an autopsy, but as bodies seem to pile up around the newlywed family, Daybell's body is exhumed. Although authorities have not publicly released her cause of death, Tammy Daybell's children say she died of asphyxiation.  Joining Nancy Grace Today: David Leroy - Attorney at Law (Boise, ID), Former Idaho Attorney General, Former Idaho Lieutenant Governor & Former Prosecutor (Ada County), DLeroy.com, Facebook.com/BoiseCriminalDefense Author: "Mr. Lincoln's Book" Dr. Shari Schwartz - Forensic Psychologist (specializing in Capital Mitigation and Victim Advocacy), PantherMitigation.com, Twitter: @TrialDoc, Author: "Criminal Behavior" and "Where Law and Psychology Intersect: Issues in Legal Psychology"  Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan"  Leah Sottile - Journalist, Author: "When the Moon Turns to Blood: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and a Story of Murder, Wild Faith, and End Times, (Twelve Books), Podcasts: "Two Minutes Past Nine" & "Bundyville", LeahSottile.com, Twitter: @Leah_Sottile, Instagram: @leah.sottile Nate Eaton - News Director, EastIdahoNews.com Twitter: @NateNewsNow, Instagram: @n.eaton - Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Cult mom, Lori Vallow. Does it never end with this woman? All right, first we have her two children, JJ and Tylee, ages 7 and 16. Just turned 16. They go missing. And what does mommy do? Put up missing flyers and posters?

Scan the area? Beg for help? Make TV appeals to help find her children? No. She skips town. She first puts all of their belongings into storage that she hasn't thrown away, then skips town with her new boyfriend, Chad Daybell the Prophet. They head to Hawaii for a beach wedding. She wears the dress and the ring that she coincidentally bought just before his wife Tammy Daybell died in her sleep. Either they're guilty of Tammy's murder

or they're clairvoyant. That's just me, my speculation. But now, renewed interest in the cause of Daybell's wife, Tammy Daybell's death. He told police she died peacefully in her sleep. Excuse me? She was healthy as a horse. She was competing in a marathon. She was young. She was in her 40s. Her whole life in front of her. Die in her sleep. Now, the autopsy report revealing she died of asphyxiation. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. Take a listen first to our friends at KTVK. The Daybells told CBS that Chad woke up frantic that morning when he discovered Tammy was dead. They said it was their decision, not Chad's, to bypass the autopsy. They claimed the 49-year-old was in, quote, failing health. She would get out of breath very quickly and would get very tired.

And she started going to bed very early at night. According to newspapers in Idaho, Chad told Tammy's father that she went to bed with a terrible cough. Respiratory diseases are associated with asphyxia. Sleep apnea is associated with asphyxia. So, you know, if you have sleep apnea, many people stop breathing for a little while. Dr. Frank Lavecchio, a medical toxicologist, says that asphyxia is a general term that usually means there's a lack of oxygen. He says it can be caused by something you ingest or inhale, including opiates or from choking. Is somebody going out on a limb and saying that this deeply religious woman

asphyxiated because she was high on heroin? Because I don't really believe that. With me, an all-star panel, but first, let me go to our friend and colleague, Nate Eaton, who's been on the story from the very beginning. He's the news director at eastidahonews.com. Nate, really? Opiates? What's next? A piano fell on her? Well, the other thing, Nancy, that I want to say is that just two weeks before Tammy died, she spent time by herself with her family members, and they have all told me that she was just fine. She was healthy. She was not complaining of being in ill health. She drove seven, eight hours to be with her family members by herself.

So this talk that she wasn't feeling well, that she was going to bed earlier, no one outside of the immediate family was saying anything like this. And I don't get it. I need you, Joe Scott Morgan. Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University,

author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, star of a great hit series I think you have a special episode dropping today Joe Scott Morgan Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan Joe Scott okay wait a minute wait a minute I'm hearing heroin as a possibility you hear Nate Eaton describing a seven to eight hour drive she just took on her own. Family was with her two weeks before. All of that should factor in to the autopsy report decision. But I never really associate asphyxia with being tired when you go up the steps and out of breath. That doesn't compute for me.

No, it doesn't. You're not afraid to tell me I'm wrong, are you, Joe Scott? Me? Never. Because if I am, tell me so I don't repeat the same mistake over and over. No, I'll tell you you're wrong. I guarantee you that. In this case, you're not. I got to say this, you know, anytime you hear asphyxia, it's got a nefarious undertone to it. But what about a medical examiner? They may not feel that way. Well, what medical examiner in this case? Because an autopsy wasn't performed for a long long time after all the evidence is gone and that's the tragedy in this nancy but ultimately it was decided was it not nate eaton that it was asphyxia as the

cod cause of death how was that determined nate because Because Joe Scott's right. The family, now you hear in that last sound I played for you, thank you, Jackie, the sound said that the family, the children, decided not to have an autopsy on mommy who just mysteriously dies in her sleep. Oh, hell no. I would want to know what happened, but they're not the ultimate decision makers. Isn't that true, David Leroy? David joining me out of Boise, he's a former Idaho Attorney General. Wow, it's not like this is your first murder case. Former Idaho Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, Prosecutor. Wow, you can find him at dleroy.com. Isn't it the husband, the next of kin kin if the husband is deceased or you're divorced then you go to your child but it this was all chad daybell's decision not to do an autopsy i don't

care who's taking the fall this morning well if he didn't make the decision he set up the facts that caused the locally elected coroner to make the decision not all all of our coroners in Idaho's 44 counties are sophisticated in these matters. And whether he made the decision, deferred from the county coroner, or convinced the county coroner, it was Chad's adventure solely. Now, when it looks like a death by natural causes, David Leroy, if it looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. So if the circumstances are told to the coroner who may or may not be a medical doctor, they're elected, I think, or appointed. If the coroner says, okay, yeah, natural causes based on what you're telling me, we don't need an autopsy. Can't the next of kin ask for an autopsy?

Well, anybody can ask for one, but again, it's the coroner's call. And in Idaho, any suspicious unattended death, not under the care of a medical doctor, does get an examination by that coroner. So obviously somebody missed some signals or somebody was grossly and appropriately misled in this case. Okay, hold on just a second. David Leroy, will you say those last three sentences again about an unattended death results in autopsy in your jurisdiction? No, it doesn't result in an autopsy. It results in the coroner making an examination and making a decision. It can result in an autopsy, but it's the coroner's call exclusively. Coroner's call exclusively. Guys, you were just hearing our friends at KTVK3. Now take a listen again to Kim Powell.

Tammy died in her sleep in October 2019, and her kids told police they didn't want an autopsy done, and she was died in her sleep in October 2019 and her kids told police they didn't want an autopsy done and she was buried in her hometown in Utah. Then two months later her body had to be exhumed. Now the five Daybell children told CBS News they were told she died of asphyxia but they're still not convinced their dad had anything to do with it. On October 9th Tammy Daybell posted this on facebook saying a guy in a ski mask tried to shoot at her in her driveway outside of rexburg idaho 10 days later she died in her sleep and was buried without an autopsy and two weeks after that her husband of nearly 30 years chad daybell married lori. Eventually, investigators revealed they believed Alex Cox, Lori's brother,

was that masked gunman at the end of Tammy's driveway. You know, the masked gunman at the end of the driveway, that's a whole other can of worms, which we are going to get into. Nate Eaton joining from EastIdahoNews.com. Tell me about the whole exhumation process. Why did that happen? Was there an autopsy after the exhumation process. Why did that happen? Was there an autopsy after the exhumation? And that's how we know the COD was asphyxiation. Then I'm going to go to you, Joe Scott, so you can tell

me what that means in regular people talk. Hit it, Nate. Well, Tammy died October 9th, 2019. Three months later in December in Utah, it was an early, early Saturday morning. The investigators went in. They exhumed her body. She was back in the ground within a matter of hours. An autopsy was completed. They did not release the information that the autopsy was done for a year and a half. Now, I want to make it clear.

They have not officially released the autopsy results. Chad's kids have gone on television and said what they've been told and I have sources close to the investigation that confirmed that confirm it was asphyxiation. A lot of people thought she was poisoned that there was some other you know nefarious way in which she died but but multiple sources are saying it was asphyxiation and that's what the children say investigators told them so yeah she was in the ground for three months before they exhumed her body and did the autopsy nate eaton do we have any idea um about the manner of death she died of asphyxiation lack of oxygen was it manual or ligature strangulation was there uh the popping of the particular eye in the eyeball? Were there marks

on the neck? Was a pillow put over her head? And Joe Scott, you've got to explain to us all how we will be able to tell the difference from a dead body. So is there anything in the autopsy report you can tell us about Nate Eaton as to manner of death? No, they have not released any of that, but what I can tell you is that the night Tammy died, Alex Cox was parked at a church two miles from the house. They have pinged his cell phone. He was in that church parking lot, so I

believe that they're going to focus on the fact that he was somehow involved with Chad and Lori and making this happen. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I love to say, when you don't know a horse. Look at his track record. There is Lori Vallow's brother, Alex Cox, appearing at so many deaths. He's the one that took JJ out of the home.

Everybody correct me if I'm wrong because there's so many facts to digest. He's the one that took seven-year-old JJ out of the home in his PJs. His body found later wrapped in duct tape in the same PJs. I pray to God they can get some type of fiber, hair, or epithelial cell evidence off that duct tape linking back to Alex Cox. So you've got him connected to JJ. You have him, Alex Cox, as I recall, in the photo, the last known photo of J.J. entirely,

where they're taken to a national park just before their death. You also have him gunning down in a false case of self-defense, one of the many husbands of cult mom Lori Vallow. So somehow he mysteriously appears when people drop dead. And here he is pinging two miles away in an empty parking lot. The same night, Tammy Daybell mysteriously dies in her sleep by asphyxiation. Before I go to you, Joe Scott Morgan, hold all those medical thoughts, all those death investigator thoughts. I want to go out to special guests joining us in addition to David Leroy, Dr. Sherry Schwartz, Joe Scott Morgan, Nate Eaton, Leah Satili. Leah is journalist, author of When the Moon Turns to Blood, Laurie Vallow, Chad Daybell, and a Story of Murder, Wild Faith, and End Times.

But that's just one of her 12 books. You can find her at LeahSotili.com. Leah, avenging angel Alex Cox. I call him a mass murderer, but what do you make of it well when you were just speaking about him I was just thinking don't forget that Alex Cox also tased Lori Vallow's third husband who then was found dead later thank you investigators have looked into that death again but yeah I mean he he was... Joseph Ryan. Joseph Ryan, exactly. And, you know, Alice Cox and Lori Vallow have a really inordinate and not normal amount of dead people around them. And it's

very strange. What do you make of the determination of asphyxia as a COD cause of death for Tammy Dayball? I mean, please, I don't have to be a medical examiner to figure out that Lori Vallow, using her husband's credit card, hello, his Amazon account, buys her wedding dress. Wait, wait for it. And she types in beach, B-E-A-C-H. Correct me me if i'm wrong nate eaton i'm sure you will beach wedding dress and then they go to hawaii and they have a beach wedding two weeks after she orders a dress after tammy daybell dies in her sleep i don't need a medical degree to figure that out your turn leah well i think it's really interesting because i think the story of what happened to Tammy, you know, starts fracturing almost immediately after after she died. You know, you have this sort of what I like to call the thump in the night story that the children have told that, you know, all of a sudden there was a thump in the other room and then she was half in the bed, half out of it and just died suddenly.

So strange. But then, you know, Chad was also telling a story on the website, Another Voice of Warning, saying she died peacefully in her sleep. She had sort of a smile on her face. I can't believe I didn't wake up in the night to hear her. So these tales of what happened to her almost immediately were not gelling up. I want to follow up on something you just said. Dr. Sherry Schwartz is joining me, forensic psychologist. I know, David Leroy, you're going to want in on this.

Dr. Sherry Schwartz, as I said, forensic psychologist specializing in, and this is the name of one of her books, Where Law and Psychology Intersect. She's also the author of Criminal Behavior. You can find her at panthermitigation.com. Dr. Sherry, I love it when someone changes their story. I don't mean adding facts because when I would have a witness on the stand and they would add a fact, I would blame that on the prior questioner. They didn't ask the right questions. They didn't ask enough questions. They didn't know about the enough about the material to ask detailed questions. So it's like, yeah, I saw the wreck.

And then upon further questioning, yeah, I saw the wreck, but this guy was speeding and cut in front of the other guy. And then the next time, yeah, this car was red and that one was blue. And upon next questioning, yeah, I went to the scene, I walked over and the driver was drunk as a skunk. See, if you don't ask all that the first time, the story is embellished. But here we've got two very different stories. She died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face. But the children say there was a big thump and she was half in and half out of the bed. That doesn't go together, Dr. Sherry.

No, it certainly doesn't. This is inconsistent. And it's also very troubling to me that he feels the need to say, oh no, she went peacefully. She died with a smile on her face. Almost like, you know, don't look too closely at this because there's nothing to see here.

Everything is good. She's gone. Now my life is good. You know, and wasn't there over $400,000 life insurance policy that he cashed in on? What about it, Nate? Aiden, jump in. Yeah, the same day that Tylee was last seen at Yellowstone,

Chaz signed an application to increase Tammy's life insurance to the maximum amount allowed under the policy, $430,000. He then tells Tammy that he had a vision that her grandfather came to him while he was working outside, that she needed to go see her family by herself and that they needed to spend time together and meanwhile he's telling the other group that are in you know his little religious group that tammy's going to die in a car accident so they got the life insurance policy he sends tammy to go see the family he's telling people she's going to die in the car crash she returns home safe and sound, then dies in her sleep two weeks later. Okay, right now I could just go ahead and make my summation to the jury. David Leroy. David Leroy is no stranger to a courtroom. Attorney at law, Boise, former Idaho

Attorney General, former Lieutenant Governor, blah, blah, blah. I mean, there's so much about him. I can't even read it all. David Leroy could just, when a criminal defendant turns clairvoyant, nothing could make me happier. Nothing. Well, Nancy, you may be a little premature in your summation because you must anticipate that the defense will argue that a certain amount of inconsistency is a hallmark of human truth and testimony. Sometimes little defects of recollection jump in there. Sometimes

thumps in the night have no relationship to what is actually going on. But you certainly have an argument that clairvoyance is going to be problematic for the defense in this case. And we have seen it before. Do I have to say it actually makes my mouth hurt? Scott Peterson, because just before Lacey Peterson goes missing with her unborn son, Connor, later, they wash up at the San Francisco Bay where Scott Peterson was fishing the day they go missing. Remember how he told Amber Fry, his then mistress, who I've met, and it's a really nice person, P.S. He tells Amber Frye, yeah, this is going to be my first Christmas without my wife. She died. And then poof, she died. So either he was clairvoyant or he is a killer. And here we've

got Nate Eaton. Coincidentally, on the day he ups his life insurance policy to nearly half a million dollars on his wife he makes multiple clairvoyant predictions that she's going to she needs to go visit her family now before it's too late sending her on an eight-hour drive by herself and then reveals she's gonna die and it all came true what about it nate well not only that uh you mentioned earlier in the show nancy that the the gunman that showed up at her driveway that police later say was alex cox she thought it was a she thought it was a paintball gunman shooting at her well it turns out that around that time investigators have alex cox practicing how to shoot a gun at a gun range and going to sportsman's warehouse and buying specific type of ammunition and researching excuse me how to shoot these guns so they've got all of this this evidence they've got all of this, you know, things on camera, things like that, that lead up to these critical weeks up until Tammy's death.

I can tell you what's going to happen. He's going to be the scapegoat at trial. They're going to blame Alex Cox because he's dead. To Leah Sotili, journalist and author of When the Moon Turns to Blood, Laurie Vallow, Chad Daybell, and the Story of Murder, Wild Faith, and End Times. Can I talk to you about the thump in the night and Tammy Daybell half in and half out of her bed? Could you elaborate on what you know? Well, it's a bizarre, it's a very bizarre story. I think that just sounds strange when Garth Daybell and his siblings

told the story on 48 Hours. It struck me as very odd that all of a sudden he tells a story that he hears a thump in the other room and Chad yells for him to come in and help. And he sees his mother, you know, half in, half out of the bed, and Chad pacing around the room, supposedly pointing at pictures on the wall of their family saying, how is this? How could we, you know, lose her? How is she gone? I can't believe it. It's just a very odd story. And it's never quite set right with me and I think anyone covering this case. But then to compare that with Chad's own words, saying that, you know, she just died so peacefully. These are just such disparate stories being told that you can't help but question it right away. So Leah Satili, is it correct that the children go in the room,

there's a thump, she's half in, she's half out of the bed, and she's dead at that point? That's what, from what they discussed, that's what it sounded like. And then he goes off into a Shakespearean soliloquy, David Leroy, you're the trial lawyer, but what are you going to do with a case like that? Because I had a case like that, FYI. A millionaire in Atlanta totally murdered his wife, and he bashed her in the head, then tried to burn the house down. When the cops got there, he was lying, Romanesque, lying on the lawn across the street. The cops, the fire people race up to him. He starts talking about what he thinks started the fire. And then he goes, oh yeah,

my wife's in there. Anyway, at the hospital, he has this big soliloquy, a monologue that he preaches out over her deathbed. I was so happy. Anyway, sounds like the same thing here. Don't you love the soliloquies and the dramatization over somebody's deathbed? Well, we all know that people experience things differently and react and emote differently. Oh, please. Quick. I'm sure that there'll be some attempt to distinguish the two stories.

Perhaps she just slipped out of bed while she was having trouble breathing, was put back in, et cetera, et cetera. Somehow these two stories got disconnected in time. Yeah. Okay. Good luck with that. Guys, of course, the whole family blames Lori Vallow. But before I get to call up Mom Lori Vallow,

I want to talk to you, Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator who has researched and studied the death of Tammy Daybell. Don't you remember at some point Chad Daybell claimed that there was a froth mixture, a liquidy, airy froth coming from her mouth? What do you make of that? And what do you make of COD, cause of death, asphyxiationiation and how are we going to tell if it was manual ligature smothering or she just choked in her sleep on what her tooth yeah we we got to go back to october 19th that morning when she was found and it it actually and this even makes this even more intriguing uh it wasn't actually Chet that made that assessment. It was the daughter that witnessed

her mother there and said that she had froth coming either from her nose or her mouth. She actually related this to neighbors. And I think this is quite fascinating because this is something that we see. And many times folks at home can look this up. It's referred to as a frothy edematous cone. And we see this in cases of heroin OD, anything that suppresses the respiratory system. We see it in drowning many times. You actually see this present when you take the body out of the water. It's quite fascinating to witness. And then we'll also see it in various asphyxial deaths where you're talking about manual strangulations. You see a lot in hangings. And what it's an indication of is that the lungs are heavily congested. That means that they're being compromised, their ability to uptake oxygen. And so, and it's pink many times. It's a pink color. And I'm really wondering in this particular case. Was she drugged? Is that what you're about to say? No, no, no. We've heard

this thing about asphyxia and it's kind of, you know, kind of seeped out, you know, into this narrative, even though the ME down in Utah has yet to make this comment. I'm wondering if they're correlating their data that they're finding there at that exhumation with this comment that was made by the daughter. Did they actually, because let's remember, let's remember, this as

our colleague mentioned just a moment ago, this was the coroner's decision. Nobody else's. She could have easily have gone and drawn blood and not done an autopsy. But she failed to do that. Okay. And you could have had tox. You ain't got tox to fall back on now because the body's been embalmed.

The body's been on the ground. What you're looking for are physical findings. We're talking about petechiae. It's a little ruptured. But aren't the eyes removed as part of the burial process? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're not removed. They are not.

Now, they're glued shut many times, but that doesn't inhibit our ability to examine the soft tissue. So we can look at the petechiae, the tiny blood vessels in the eyeball. Yeah, and also the strap muscles of the neck, Nancy. You can look in those areas around the neck. If there's any focal areas of hemorrhage there, you can pick up on that. Whether they are visible to the naked eye or not, the bruising can be under the skin. Yeah, and if they are. But, you know, the thing about embalming, what's really cool is it freezes all that stuff in time.

You've lost the blood. But, you know, these physical manifestations that we look for as far as trauma, this stuff doesn't go away. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I want to talk about the possibility. I'm getting this from one of the children stating that there was a type of foamy substance coming from either her mouth or her nose. That can happen when you have a suppressed respiratory system. What does that mean, suppressed respiratory system? Could she have been given an OD of Benadryl, an OD of NyQuil that suppressed her system that made it easier for her to die?

What about that, Joe Scott? Yeah, there's any number of agents that can be applied. There are actually certain rape drugs that can be applied. Things like Rehoboenol and GHB and those sorts of things. Gamma-hydroxybutyrate, yes. Yeah, and anything, any kind of opiate, whether it's kind of a naturally occurring, like a morphine type thing or a synthetic opiate, you know, that's out there.

Those types of things, if you're OD'd, but how are you going to apply it? What we were saying earlier, and everybody, please jump in with your thoughts. This is exactly how cases are created and presented if the attorney is worth their salt. They discuss it with other attorneys or their investigator before they go up in front of a jury. Guys, this is a story as old as the Garden of Eden, where it's all Eve's fault. Well, I can't necessarily say that's entirely wrong in this case. Take a listen to our friend Les Trent at Inside Edition.

How did the kids feel when their father remarried so soon after their mother's death? They were like everyone else that was closely following this story, shocked. They had never heard the name Lori Vallow until she went by another name, Stepmom. They were very upset at first, but they have spent time with Lori. They spent time with her, in fact, celebrating Thanksgiving, but they said at no point were they aware of her two children. Yeah, because they're dead. And also our friend Jonathan Vigliotti at Secrets of Chad Daybell's Back Yarn on 48 Hours. Looking back, was your father meeting Lori, marrying her, the worst mistake of his life?

Absolutely. None of this would have happened if Lori Vallow had never come into my family's life. It's all her fault. I can't disagree that she had a heavy hand in it. But, you know, what do you make of that, Dr. Sherry Schwartz? The children insisting none of this would have happened if she hadn't masterminded it, if she hadn't made him do it. That's BS. Yes, it is, Nancy. But I have to tell you from a victim advocacy point of view, people, I think, need to really give these children some grace. They have lost their mother, right?

Shockingly, she's young and healthy otherwise. And now she's gone. Two weeks later, dad marries this woman that they've never heard of. They've never met. They don't know anything about the kids. And then bodies of children are found on their property, right? You know, they, I'm sure, were not immune to the news coverage. And this is just a defense mechanism to trauma, the denial.

I agree. Nancy, this... I completely agree with you. Go ahead, jump in. Nancy, this foreshadows the finger pointing that's going to occur during the trial, back and forth, his fault, her fault, et cetera, if they both go to trial. This is simply perhaps the first round of that. Guys, it gets deeper.

Take a listen to, again, Jonathan Vigliotti at Our Friends 48 Hours. How did you process all of that? That was really hard, and it really surprised us and it was clear that he already had an emotional connection with her. I know this is a difficult question, but was your father having an affair with Lori while he was married to your mother? That depends on your definition of affair. Emotionally, I would say yes but physically I think my father thought he was in the right because I haven't had sex with her so I'm being faithful isn't it true Nate Eaton and you and I discussed this on and off the camera one of Chad Daybell's pickup lines I can't say that it would appeal to me is that we lived in another life.

We've both been reincarnated, and I was your husband in a prior life, so we've already had sex, so might as well do it again. Yeah, he talked about multiple probations, different states. Okay, could you please talk regular people talk? Multiple what? Multiple probations. Are you saying probation, like your sentence to five to do three, three to serve, five on probation? Yeah, meaning period of time that we all, his teachings, we all have multiple probations. And one of the first things he said to Lori when they met is we were married in a previous life.

Oh, dear Lord in heaven. And you were a goddess. you were a goddess you were a goddess and and by the way you and i were supposed to lead uh the return of jesus christ with 144 000 people please do not drag christ into a serial murder case but i guess you already have what What did you just say about Christ, the return of Christ and the 144,000 saved? They believed that they were going to lead the return of Jesus Christ and that there would be tents, that they would live in the middle of a village, I guess you could say, and there would be tents surrounding them and that Christ would return to their village, their town, and that they would be part of the second coming.

They would play a critical role in Christ's return. May I ask you what that has to do with the murders of J.J. and Tylee? Well, I would imagine that the prosecutors are going to argue that they needed to get rid of J.J. and Tylee, and they were telling others that they could fulfill their mission so that this was part of it, that this was all part of J.J. and Tylee and they were telling others that they could fulfill their mission so that this was part of it, that this was all part of it and that because we all have these multiple lives J.J. and Tylee's lives would

continue on and they would see them again according to their teaching. You know to Nate Eaton, before I move further into their bizarre religious beliefs I'm convinced that a prior attempt had been made on Tammy Daybell's life. You alluded to it earlier. A couple of weeks before she finally did die of asphyxiation in her own home in bed with her husband, Chad Daybell,

someone took a shot at her. A couple of shots. She thought it was a prank and that they were paintball bullets, not real bullets. We now know for sure that the prankster was the so-called avenging angel, Lori Vallow's brother, Alex Cox. In fact, Tammy Daybell posted about the incident, not connecting any nefarious intent to it, on her Facebook. Correct? Do you remember that? Yeah, it was October 9th.

She got home. It was dark. She said she got out of the car and someone started firing at her. They were wearing a ski mask. She said, what are you doing? And the person took off after she yelled for help from Chad. She went on Facebook to warn the neighbors i mean this is a very rural area but she said hey just so you know this weird experience happened she actually called the police they took a report they chalked it up to a prank and then two weeks

later she was dead question to you leah satilly journalist and author of when the moon turns to blood how many deaths can we link to Alex Cox, Lori Vallow's brother? I mean, it's a range. We've got the information from his cell phone that puts him in the Daybell backyard, obviously when the children were likely buried there. You have Charles Vallow, Lori's ex-husband in Arizona in his so-called self-defense shooting of him. You've got potentially a connection to the death of her third husband,

Joseph Ryan, who he had aggressively tased and had gone to jail for that incident. You've got this incident that we're discussing with Tammy Daybell. So there's a number of people who are around this brother-sister duo. Did you mention JJ entirely? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was found in the backyard.

Now, I want to circle back to something David Leroy said earlier about the decision not to perform an autopsy on Tammy. We now know her death was by asphyxiation. Take a listen to our cut one, our friend Spencer Blake at 3TVCBS. Not long after Tammy Daybell died in her home in Salem, Idaho in mid-October, the Fremont County Sheriff's Office received a call from a detective in Arizona. The decedent's going to be a Tamara Daybell? Oh, yes. I was the one that actually took that call. So why is someone from Arizona wanting to know? That's crazy. Yeah, isn't it funny how everything ties together? We just have some cases down here that got our attention with this Daybell.

The cases he's talking about could include the attempted shooting of a relative of Lori Vallow Daybell in Gilbert in October, or the July shooting death of Lori's late husband Charles Vallow in Chandler. Lori married Tammy's husband, Chad Daybell, less than two weeks after Tammy died. At the time, the sheriff's office investigated and said they found nothing suspicious. The coroner ruled the death was due to natural causes. The dispatcher explains to the Arizona detective it wasn't just the coroner who didn't want to press the investigation any further. The family did not want an autopsy, so they just went straight to the funeral home, and the family refused an autopsy.

The family said they don't want an autopsy, therefore the coroner just signed off and I'm there. And then the funeral home took a stay-ville? Is that how that works? Yes. Yeah, I got a problem with that. The family, as I said earlier, made it clear they did not want an autopsy on Tammy Daybell. Why?

Because when her body's exhumed, we find out the cause is asphyxia and to you, are we going to ever be able to tell do you think, Joe Scott Morgan, whether it was manual, ligature, suffocation, what? Just a simple yes, no. Yes, I think we will.

I got a question for you. Leah Satili, journalist and author, how do you believe that their religious beliefs played into this scenario? Well, I think that's what drew my interest in the case is that my journalism is about extremism. And what I saw in this case were extremist ideologies that were playing out throughout. I mean, just look to Chad Daybell's fictional books. He had years and years before he ever met Lori Vallow of entertaining conspiracy theories of, you know, teachings that are absolutely fringe of the fringe of the LDS. Like what? Well, things like what we were discussing earlier, multiple probations.

I mean, the word zombie comes up in this case, and that never comes up in anything related to the LDS church. So there's this long history of him entertaining ideas that the leadership of the LDS Church has said, this is not what we believe. Chad Daybell was holding meetings and small study groups about these ideas that are kind of around the very edges of this faith. That jury might as well settle in. This is going to be a long and tedious trial when it ever happens. And when will that be, Nate Eaton?

It's scheduled to begin January 9th, and it's scheduled for 10 weeks. So who's going first? They're being tried together. Oh, I'm so happy. Then we can watch them point the finger at each other or their lawyers. These two, once they start making lovey-dovey eyes at each other in court, may not point the finger. I think they're going to both point the finger at Alex Cox because he's dead and can't respond. Well, Nancy, of course, there's some possibility that the defense lawyers intersese as between themselves and with the prosecutor are exploring the possibility of having

one of them turn state's evidence against the other. Theoretically possible, but perhaps not entirely consistent with their religious and extreme beliefs. Well put, David Leroy. Nate Eaton, just yes, no. Is there a death penalty in that jurisdiction? There is, and prosecutors are going for death on both cases. We wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Gray's Crime Story signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.