Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - LIVE FROM CRIME CON 2021: Cult Mom Lori Vallow manipulates Judge?

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

“Cult mom” Lori Vallow has been found incompetent to stand trial after prosecutors charged her with murder and numerous related offenses. Lori Vallow and her husband, Chad Daybell, are facing new charges in the deaths of Vallow’s two children, as well as Daybell’s previous wife, Tammy Daybell. Tylee Ryan, 16, and 7-year-old JJ Vallow‘s bodies were found in Daybell’s backyard in June 2020. Daybell is also facing first-degree murder in the death of his wife Tammy Daybell, who he claimed died in her sleep in October 2019, and declined an autopsy.Both Daybell and Vallow are charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in Tammy’s death.Joining Nancy Grace today: Joe Scott Morgan - Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet" Featured on "The Piketon Massacre: Return to Pike County" on iHeartRadio  Dr. Angela Arnold - Psychiatrist, Atlanta GA www.angelaarnoldmd.com, Expert in the Treatment of Pregnant/Postpartum Women Andy Kahan - Director of Victim Services and Advocacy at Crime Stoppers of Houston, crime-stoppers.org  Ashley Willcott - Judge and Trial Attorney, Anchor on Court TV, www.ashleywillcott.com  Nate Eaton - News Director, EastIdahoNews.com Twitter: @NateNewsNow, Instagram: @n.eaton - Instagram Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert & Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder, ColdCaseCrimes.org Spencer Coursen - Founder and President: Coursen Security Group www.CoursenSecurityGroup.com, Author: "The Safety Trap: A Security Expert’s Secrets For Staying Safe in a Dangerous World", www.TheSafetyTrap.com, nstagram: @s.coursen, Twitter: @SpencerCoursen THIS BROADCAST WAS RECORDED 06/05/21 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. We are live at CrimeCon 2021 in Austin. According to a secret grand jury, cult mom Lori Vallow, and I quote, used her religious beliefs to cover up crime, i.e. murder. Rarely have I seen that written

in a grand jury indictment. Typically, grand jurors who are often taken from voter registration may be, it's called grand because they're 30, 40 members of a grand jury. For a petit or petite jury of 12, here's a particular case. A grand jury, for instance, in the city of Atlanta, grand jury make Tuesday, Thursday. They would have 150 cases a day. They would go just like that, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Usually with one witness. And then you walk out and the grand jury votes. They would go push a buzzer, zzz, and then you bring in the next case. It's really fast. It's not a decision of guilt or innocence. It's simply, is there enough evidence to take this to a petit, small jury of 12? So I've never seen, actually, the detail

added in the indictment, which is usually the jurisdiction, the general date of the offense, the defendant, the victim, the mode of death, if known, and a list, a bare bones list of the state's witnesses on the back. That's what an indictment is. It's signed by the jury foreperson. This indictment I found very interesting, Nate, because it goes to say that she basically cloaked herself in her fake religion as an excuse to commit murder. Let me introduce to you an all-star panel of guests to make sense of the case. First of all, Joseph Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon, and now star of a brand new series on iHeart, Piketon Massacre Return to Pike County. Dr. Angela Arnold,

renowned psychiatrist joining us out of the Atlanta jurisdiction. And you can find her at AngelaArnoldMD.com. Andy Kahn, my longtime friend and colleague, he created the phrase murderabilia and inspired me to write a chapter called Blood Money in my first book, Objection. And after I wrote that chapter, Andy, I destroyed the laptop. It was so horrible. Like people trying to get bloody clothes from crime scenes. It was only a $300, $299 Hewlett Packard, so it was just not that big of a deal. But I thought it was bad luck.

Andy Kahn, Director of Victim Services and Advocacy, Crime Stoppers of Houston. And you can find them at crimestoppers.org. Ashley Wilcott, judge and trial lawyer, court TV, anchor, veteran courtroom advocate, and you can find her at ashleywilcott.com. Nate Eaton. Nate is with the eastidahonews.com, Twitter at Nate News Now, Instagram at n.eaton.

Good Lord, man. Anyway, do you remember when Lori Vallow was located in Hawaii and she was walking off with her new husband and you could see a hand running along with a recorder going, Hey, where are your children? Where are your children? That was his hand. His hand right here. He was chasing her.

Right there. He was chasing her. Of there. He was chasing her. Of course, Cheryl McCollum, my longtime friend in the trenches. We prosecuted together. We have completely different stories about how she met, how we met, but that's for another day. Forensic expert, the founder and director of the Cold Case Research Institute, and you can find her at coldcase.org, coldcasecrimes.org. And Spencer Corson, founder, president, Corson Security Group

at corsonsecuritygroup.com, author of The Safety Trap, which is really good. A security expert's for staying safe in a dangerous world. You can find that at safetytrap.com. Good Lord, man, I don't even have time to read all this about Spencer Corson. Well, let's just get right down to it. The very latest in the cult mom Lori Vallow case, and let's don't leave out our conniving fifth husband, Chad Daybell, the cult leader. She has just been declared incompetent to stand trial, which is just burning me up. She kills, allegedly kills, J.J., who was seven,

Tylee, who was 16 at the time. Then she's got a dead husband, Joe Ryan, who died in his sleep. Then she's got Tammy Daybell, her husband's wife. I love this. Tammy Daybell dies in her sleep, but before she died, Cult Mom had already researched beach wedding dress and bought it on Google and bought a ring and bought her husband's outfit that they wore two weeks later to their beach wedding in Hawaii. So either she's a killer or she's clairvoyant. But now has been declared incompetent. Now to the lawyers, Ashley Wilcott, incompetent is a lot different from being declared insane.

Explain. Right, absolutely. So incompetent means, is that hopefully loud enough? Incompetent means at the time they cannot assist in their trial, in their defense, as you well know, Nancy. And so if someone is not able to assist in their defense, they're declared incompetent. But let me suggest it's a moment in time. And it's very different. It doesn't mean they have a mental health diagnosis, for example. It means at the moment in time. And so you said earlier, and it really struck with me, Nancy,

that they could say, for instance, oh, my child was possessed by zombies and appear to be very not capable of assisting in their defense. And at that moment, they will be declared incompetent. It can be reassessed, which is very important to know. And I noticed, Nate Eaton, that's exactly what the judge said in his order. Can you imagine all these people dead? Oh, wait, I left out another husband. Charles Vallow, who was JJ's dad, came to visit. He got shot dead by a cult mom and her brother, Alex Cox.

Now Alex Cox is dead. Have I left any dead people out? I mean, don't you think that's suspicious that nobody noticed until there were six dead bodies? I saw you counting. But incompetent and insanity is very different. Tell me about how Oh, I noticed the judge. That's what I was going to ask you, Nate. The judge said she may be incompetent right now, but let us rehabilitate her and we'll revisit.

Yeah, so the psychiatrist went in and spent hours with her. Who? What psychiatrist? An independent psychiatrist hired by the state. So the state went in and her defense attorney requested the psychiatrist. They got an independent psychiatrist. He goes in and says, she's not competent right now, but we believe that with rehabilitation or medication, she may be able to become competent. So the judge still needs to rule on this.

Oh, I just thought of a good comparison. Wanda Barzee. Do you remember that perv that stole Elizabeth Smart and his freaky wife, Wanda Barzee? Yeah. They said she was incompetent and they got her stabilized on drugs and so forth and she stood trial and was convicted.

Exactly. Yeah, people have referenced that. So there's a chance that in three months, six months, in three months, they'll review it in 90 days. They'll come back and they could say, okay, she's competent or she's not. They then have 180 days to get her to the point of competency. If not, she then goes to the point. They just wait. They wait until she's competent.

She's not released. The case isn't over. It could take six months, six years before she becomes competent. Oh, it won't be six years. Well, there's no insanity defense in Idaho. Come on, I mean, really? Cheryl, this is a woman that was trying to get her hair and her mermaid curls to come to court and paint her toenails bright, what was it, turquoise, and was trying to make homemade lip gloss behind bars. She's no more incompetent than we are. She's incompetent to be a mother. Straight up. The problem with her, to me, and Nancy knows this but the way nancy and i used to work cases back

in the day is you break it down to its most elementary form and you have got a woman that could plan on how she's going to murder her children how she's going to plan a wedding how she's going to plan an escape how she's going to stay on the lam she's confident to plan a wedding, how she's going to plan an escape, how she's going to stay on the lamb. She's competent to stand trial. She can participate in all of those things. She can damn well participate in her trial. You just gave me a flashback. Okay, so they took the children's items, their possessions, and put them in storage and part, they're dead and part of that was caught on video and isn't there a part nate eaton where it shows cult mom laurie valo and i guess daybell and they pause to kiss or he grabs her booty he grabs her butt and and nancy these were items that

you would if your house was on fire, you would leave the house with. A blanket covered in photos of JJ. A blanket covered in photos of Tylee. His jerseys, you know, their first sports jerseys, framed photos of their baby books. David, what is it, my husband, what does it mean to you if I say, this goes in sentimental. It's clothes. What is it, my husband, what does it mean to you if I say, this goes in sentimental. It's clothes that I keep, like one of their favorite shirts or a PJ, and I don't want to give it to Goodwill. I don't want to give it away. And we have a bunch of those plastic bins in the basement that I fold it up, well, and then give it to him.

And he takes it down there and puts it in there no way would I throw away a blanket with all their pictures on it crime stories with Nancy Grace can we get back to the booty grab? If you'd like. She's leaving her children's clothes, her dead children's clothes at storage. And that booty grab was when Tammy was still alive. So Chad was visiting that storage unit with Lori when his wife was at home. You know how I hate it when you call them by their first names.

You're right, Daybell. And now, Nancy, we know that that was happening when the kids were buried in his backyard. Those visits to the storage units, they were taking those items as they were buried in his yard and his wife, Tammy, was inside the house, likely not knowing that they were out there. Okay, Spencer Corson and Joe Scott Morgan

are just chomping at the bit. Go. I would, and I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a judge. I'm just curious, when counsel mandates that these people go in for an independent psyche vow, what's the ratio on the time that people are declared competent versus incompetent? Because if incompetent is, it sounds to me like a cover your butt quote. Like when I was in the military, we would always go on these operations.

The intel community would say, at this time, there's no bad guys there. I want to know what that means. They were sending us into a trap because by the time we got there, there could be bad guys there. But by them saying at this time, there is no intelligence to support bad guys

coming at you is this is incompetent because it's so at this moment is that a cya for the psychiatrist for the evaluator actually you're very astute and it's not a bad thing not to be a lawyer or a judge i specifically married a non-lawyer. You're so right. I think this is a little bit of CYA because the judge, come on, she's saying my children are zombies. They had to die. His wife was possessed by the evil spirit Viola. She had to die. That sounds a little crazy, right? But she knew it was wrong because they buried the remains and, as Cheryl McCollum said, took off on the lamb to hide out, which is evidence of guilt. I think this is the judge saying, okay, you think she's incompetent defense?

Fine. Let's go have an exam. Let's give her time to get rehabilitated until she is competent. So he is now, or she, has covered their rear ends on appeal if there's a conviction. That's what I think is going on. Uh-oh, Joe Scott's face is contorting. I usually don't get to see this because I'm in a studio with just Jackie. But, okay, what? You know, having worked as a death investigator in Atlanta and New Orleans,

all right, the idea, I think, the real hard thing to get your mind around as an investigator, you begin to think about, well, what are the odds that someone, that one individual is going to be in the presence of multiple victims on this kind of linear timeline that you're thinking about with all of these people falling over dead. I've been around a lot of dead bodies in my career and a lot of people that have experienced death, but I've never seen a case that's like this where you can kind of mark the time. As time goes by and you've got this literally string of corpses that kind of are little benchmarks along these two people and specifically Vallow's, you know, life, you know, where these people are falling over dead. And you're thinking, well, what are the odds that this could actually happen to just the random person that's out there living among us. I want everybody in here to think

about just for a second, as sad as this is, think about how many people in your life you've had that have just passed away. You know, and there's no way that someone on average is going to match this number. And we're not talking about people that are greatly infirmed, that are up in age. The one case for me in all of these that has kind of stood out is Tammy Daybell. You know, how does this perfectly healthy woman. About to run a marathon. Yeah, about to run a marathon. She's 39 years old. You know, the picture of health and suddenly she just dies. And then the authorities, I'll say it, I don't care. Don't have the good sense to go out and examine her body and then release her body without ever drawing any blood at all. They can't do talks.

So once she crosses state lines and when you take a body across state lines, it has to be embalmed. So guess what happens? Anything from a chemical perspective, if you're looking for foreign substances, anything, it's gone. Because the blood's been drained out, they've been involved. And now she's in the ground for, I don't know, 11 weeks, 10 weeks before they disinter her. It's a major problem along this. And anybody that actually thinks that this is norm, that this is the norm, is off the rocker. And so, wait a minute, Joe Scott, before I lose this thought.

Yeah. It says they cannot prove it from the exhumation, digging up her body, because the tissue and the blood is no good anymore. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And, you know, she was not autopsied, just so that everyone understands. We're talking about Tammy, okay? She was not autopsied. She was just sent to Utah,

where she was buried at a family plot. So unless she had, if everybody will kind of feel along their neck right here, you have what are referred to as strap muscles that are in here. And say you've got a choking event like this, you might have little focal areas of hemorrhage here. And of course, you've heard Nancy for years and years talk about petechiae. Those are little blood vessels that pop due to this kind of, this indwelling pressure that's created as you do this, these vessels. And if you're absent that, where are you going to look? Because there's nothing else. To our knowledge, there's no evidence of a gunshot wound. There's no evidence of stabbing, beating, anything like that. And forever- So it's got to be asphyxiation or poisoning.

Or poisoning. And one of the things that kind of came to mind, you know, half the world is utilizing some form of insulin now. You know, what's to say he couldn't have got his hands on insulin and injected her and she just went into a coma and died. And what if he got her his hands on rehibanol, GHB, date rape drug, OD'd her? You know, those sorts of things. So you've got all these permutations that are working, and you're thinking, how in the world, how in the world did they just allow her to slip away without ever examining her? Well, I'll tell you how. Because the next of kin decides that there's going to be an autopsy, so they ask Chad Daybell.

He went, oh, no. Then they ask, we're good. So how are they going to prove it is that you believe there were a lot of texts and phone calls and emails. Terabytes. Oh, okay. Explain to everybody that's not a computer whiz what that means. So a gigabyte is a lot of information. Terabytes, it could take months and months, literally months and months, to go through all of the text messages between Chad and Lori and her deceased brother Alex, who was parked at a church parking lot less than two miles from Tammy's house the night she died. They've tracked his phone to that parking lot, and they mentioned that in the indictment. Just sitting there like a vulture. And maybe it was his car there there and he was at the home

was what was he doing that night they also were able to track down his exact pinpoints in chad daybell's backyard where they found the bodies and and where they know the times that those bodies were buried alex's cell phone pinged there so uh through you know, GPS coordinates, his GPS was on on his phone. So they didn't talk about Tammy, how she died in the indictments, but they know how she died because it's, it's come back. The autopsy has come back and I think they're saving that for trial. And they know, I think they have a very strong timeline down to the minute, the night she died, who was where. And I mean, let's get real, Andy. People cannot change who they are.

There was a story I would tell the jury about Mr. Tortoise and Mr. Scorpion. And the scorpion kept begging, please carry me across the river. And the turtle said, no, you'll bite me and we'll both die. And the scorpion said, I promise I won't. So he said, okay, hop on. Halfway across, Mr. Turtle feels a pain go down his arm. And he said, why did you bite me? Now we'll both die.

And the scorpion said, it's just my nature. My point is, you know they were texting and calling. There's going to be reams of digital analysis. You know, let's cut through the crap. Let's cut through the BS. Let's cut through the red tape. And let's just be real here in a dose of common sense about VALA. You know, the last execution that I attended, we execute people in

Texas, they gave a guy a 90-day reprieve. And I said, you know what? He bought himself a little bit of time, but eventually it's going to happen. And it did happen. And the same thing's going to happen in this particular case. You're going to buy a little bit of time, but eventually she is a cold-blooded, diabolical, cunning, premeditated murderer. And when you look at some of the stuff that's come out on her, particularly from the money angles, trying to get life insurance, why did she kill, what was the motive for her killing her children? Their liabilities, right? Eventually it's going to happen.

So I know it's hard for people and as someone who has served on the board of parents of murdered children and surviving family members of homicide for 30 years I deal with homicide survivors Lori Vallow is not a homicide survivor she's a homicidal maniac and eventually it's going to catch up to her why do do you say Lori Vallow is not a victim when both of her children were murdered? It's kind of like Darlie Rudier. You remember her in Dallas, the silly string lady right here? Yeah. You know, with her two kids.

You know, it would be kind of like calling Andrea Yates a victim as well. No. Well, I agree with you. I was just interested in your analysis because she did not act like a victim at all. No. In fact, when the cops came. No grieving mother who's gone is going to act the way she did. No one's going to take off and go to Hawaii. No one's going to pretend that this isn't happening. And we just had a case right here

that you and I are going to talk about next week of a six-year-old that disappeared. And the body was just found right here. And no one seemed to, no one even bothered to report a missing. Normal families, parents, and mothers don't act in this form or fashion. It's going to cash up to her. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Okay, jump in, Doctor. You know, I think in all of this, Nancy, I think it's so hard for people to believe that someone is capable of this,

to believe that a mother is actually capable of killing her own children and killing all of these other people that were in her way. And that's why we keep talking about it. We really cannot understand what in the world was going through her head. Is she's why we keep talking about it. We really cannot understand what in the world was going through her head. Is she mentally ill? Is she delusional? Is she just evil? Does she want money?

I don't know if we're ever gonna know the answer to all of those questions, but the most important thing is it appears she killed a lot of people and she needs to bear the consequences of that, doesn't she? And I don't, you know what? If she doesn't she and and I don't you know what if she's if she's mentally ill somehow I don't know I'd love to have the opportunity to talk to her

if you want to know the truth mentally ill after she took off and hid out in Hawaii right I'm not saying she's mentally I think you are no no I'm not no I think that I I think that there's a possibility that she may have been living under some delusions, maybe. What delusion? The delusions that came from her church that she was associated with. If she was so in tune with the Lord, why was she sleeping with another woman's husband? Well, you know, a delusion is a fixed false belief. Okay. And you can, you can make up anything in your head and believe it, Nancy.

Okay. I had a woman come into the psychiatric ER one time covered in soot. This, she had been living like under the baseboards of her house. And by God, she came in and told us that she was Elvis Presley's wife. And she believed that with all of her heart. And we could not break her of that. We were never going to break that delusion.

So I don't know if Lori Vallow was delusion. I'm also not saying that it's an excuse. I would also add that throughout human history, religion has very often been a scapegoat. It's been an excuse for atrocity. Oh, yeah. And when people... I bet you saw that overseas. What I see is someone who believes that her actions were righteous.

And therefore, she has no guilt. Therefore, that's why there's so much information. Because they weren't trying to hide it. Because they believed what they were doing was God's will. And so when you have... That's a really good point. When you have that kind of delusion, which was, and especially from her husband, who saw her as a fan. So she already had a predetermined, I mean, we saw this with the Tom Cruise, Kitty Holmes thing.

He picked her because she was a fan of his. And when you have those people who pry on the inherent weaknesses, when they find what you're emotionally attached to, and then exploit it for their personal gain, that person's identity gets directly tied to that individual. And then when they are convinced that what they are doing is righteous, they have no guilt about that act, no matter how atrocious it is. And so if you don't see those behavioral anomalies, which are self-evident and obvious and present and recognizable, if you are a family, a friend, a citizen, whoever, and you do not reach out to help those who are obviously hurting, then you are just as guilty as shirking your responsibility.

I don't know how you got to that from Lori Valle. I was with you up until the point where you said, if you don't reach out and help. Help her what? Bury the children? No. Help with what you see. She was going out and openly telling people that she thought her children were zombies.

Right. If your neighbor had two kids and your friends and she came over to your house and said, I'm pretty sure my child is Satan's spawn. Would you not reach out for help for that child? I absolutely would. Exactly. You absolutely would. But her husband tried to, Nancy.

Remember, he tried to. And what happened? Oh, yeah. Her brother shot and killed him. But he's on video with the police saying, I'm very worried for my life, for my children's life, because she's saying this. And then the brother shot and killed him. So he did try. He did try.

He did. He was Alex, or Alex, I think, along with Lori, with Lori being the mastermind behind it, lured, lured Charles Vallon to that home and eradicated him. That's precisely what happened. And Nate and I were talking about this earlier. Lori, she's got to be one of the luckiest people in the world because Alex falls over graveyard dead from multiple pulmonary emboli, which still in my mind, there is no specific answer as to why this actually occurred. So you've got the guy that's the trigger puller in this that just, he's gone. So it's the only living witness to Charles Vallow's murder.

And yeah, and I'm, you know, for me, I'm thinking, how does this even happen? She's the only one. The husband comes over and gets into a confrontation and Colton Mom's brother, Alex, shoots him dead in front of JJ and Tylee. So JJ's dead. Tylee's dead. Now Alex, the trigger person, is dead. The only person still standing from that is Lori Vallow. And one more thing about this, and this goes to, forgive me, but the condition of the children's bodies.

And they are very different, very, very different in how they were treated. And you really need to keep this in mind. JJ, when he was buried, he was buried separate from Tylee. And he was cocooned. I'm not saying it was a loving event, but he was placed in a specific event adjacent to this dried-out pond bed or whatever it was, Nate. Wrapped. Yeah. Wait, he had on his red PJs.

He was wrapped. He was wrapped. In duct tape like a mummy, and then placed, as opposed to Tylee. Yeah. And she was, I don't really know how to say it other than the fact that her body was desecrated in a multiplicity of ways that we're not going to go into completely. Wait, wait, no, what? Well, there's dismemberment involved. There's burning involved. And I still think if you take a look at those overhead, the drone images that they had from the scene, I saw this from the beginning.

And when I saw the fire pit, I was on air when this occurred. I saw the fire pit there. And I'm thinking the FBI guys are moving logs around there. There's something that's going on there initially. This is before it was actually reported. I think that part of this dismemberment event, I think, probably took place in the large barn. It was immediately adjacent because, you know, you can go down this road, Nate, if I'm correct. There's this road that's immediately adjacent, and you're not going to do this in an open area.

And I think that part of this dismemberment event took place in the barn. Hey, just let me tell you another thought. Y'all jump in, please. Don't wait for me. But you know what I was thinking about, about motive to kill Tammy Daybell? Not only did Daybell want to marry Vallow, but I think Tammy Daybell was like, wait a minute. This girl you've been flirting with, now both of her children are missing, and there's two disturbed areas of dirt in our backyard.

I think she figured it out, and she had to die there. One more thing, and to my point earlier, Tylee, her body, there's a lot to be read into how her body was treated. There's a lot of anger involved in this as opposed to JJ's body, I think, you know, and when the tale is finally told, I think that we'll learn more. That's just my opinion and everybody's got it. Well, I agree with his opinion and I'll tell you a little more. And again, when you've got two children that have been murdered in completely different ways, and then the way they're hidden, not buried, they were hidden,

which again tells you she knew what she was trying to get away with. Tylee took a lot more time, and that level of anger was maintained throughout harming her skull, dismembering her, putting her in that hole, which incidentally was in the pet cemetery, then covering her, burning her. To burn a body takes a lot of time, y'all. You got to get up to about 1,200 degrees and you got to spend hours. This was not quick. Do you understand? What happened to her was so different than what happened to JJ that goes I've read in these reports that he, the husband, viewed the son's autism as this. The only way we can save his soul is to is to end his life.

The reports also indicated that the daughter who's 16 heard them and was going to rat them out it would make sense for them to one take her out of the equation two she fought back so that they could then have the time to make the son's death ceremonious Oh. That is scary and it has the ring of truth to it. OK, Nate, jump in. Well, and in all of this, we know that just weeks before Tammy died, the life insurance policy was raised quite a bit. Chad signed it and Tammy signed it. But we also know that Lori and Chad have both been indicted for crimes related to money, grand theft. And she was using Tylee's Social Security money that she was getting because her father died. And Lori was a single mother legally at one point, several points. And so she was getting the money from there.

So somebody mentioned earlier, was money a factor in this? I think when it all comes out, it'll be money and sex. Absolutely. I don't know how. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Can we talk about the sex part? Because I love this part. I learned this from a friend of Chad Daybell's and Lori Vallow.

He had a pickup line. David, don't get any ideas. The pickup line, and in total seriousness, they thought that they had been biblical figures in the past and kept getting reincarnated. And he would tell women he was married to them in a past life so obviously they've already had sex so why not no is this not true that is that is true and you i'm sure he'll say it much better than i did you take someone who's narcissistic like laurie and

we had sex in a previous life when I was Moses and you were who Sarah your mother Mary for two um so you have you have a narcissist like Lori and you have Chad Daybell who comes up and says you're our goddess you're beautiful you we were married in a past life you've been chosen to lead the 144,000 back. You feed that, as you mentioned, and you prey on that vulnerability or whatever the mental condition that you have. And you end up at the motel. That's how that works. It's a fire and gas and fire, you know, gasoline and a match right there. So, yeah, money did play into it.

And you mentioned the indictment, too, Nancy. The thing I find fascinating is the very first point that the prosecutor put in that indictment is they use their religious beliefs to justify homicide. So if there's any sort of defense around the religious angle, which there probably will be, I think they're ready to, the prosecutor's ready to take that challenge on, take that argument on. Nancy, can I add, I think the sex part comes in somewhere else. I think jealousy, I think there's something to do with that entirely. And the rage and the dismemberment, and I hope I'm wrong, I pray I'm wrong, but as a judge I see it all the time. I think there's an element of inappropriate or sexual and jealousy and rage that had to do with Tylee. I pray I'm wrong. You know, I think part of it is Tylee is 16, almost 17, right?

So she is growing up and starting to say things like, no, or I won't do that, or fighting back with mom. And they hated the fact that JJ was hyperactive. Remember at the end, she said, JJ's going crazy. He just was crawling all over the cabinets and knocked over a picture of Christ. And that infuriated her. So I think as you were talking about, Spencer was talking about his autism, his learning problems feeding into it. She was now facing real issues in parenting and didn't want to be bothered. I really believe that. Okay, I can't believe you. You know what I want?

Here's what I want the media to start calling her. And again, let's be real here. She's now attributed to what? Six deaths? What do we call someone who's now accused of killing six people? A serial killer. We call them a serial killer, right? Has she been called that? No. Well, let's start today calling her for what she truly is. She is a serial killer. End of story. Right.

Okay, Cheryl, I see you trying to jump in. I am all about that. It needs to happen. But before we go any further, I just want to say I loved the hashtag that I'm going to start tonight. Nancy Grace said, oh, the sex part. I love this part. I met you

and we were married in a previous life, so let's go to the motel six now. We've done it before. I love that. I was Moses, Cheryl's nefeturi, and who else we got down here? crime stories with nancy grace so how much longer till we get a decision on her

mental state there's a competency hearing week after next where the judge will, I predict the judge is going to say, all right, let's give it 90 days. Let's pause everything because everything is on pause now. We'll see what the mental state hospital says. And he could then say, okay, she's competent. And then everything picks up and moves forward. Or they could say she needs more time. Chad's proceedings move forward he's in court on tuesday where he will plead guilty or not guilty to the charges i think i know which one he's going to pick yes they're both in jail yeah yeah they're both in jail anybody got questions because this those these are the experts yes um what does the panel think that everything will

be turned back on and blame will be placed solely on Alex? I definitely think that's going to be the defense because Alex is in the middle of everything. Oh, which reminds me, shortly before Tammy Daybell died, she put it on her Facebook that someone took a shot with her with a paintball gun. It was Alex Cox with a real gun, and he missed. He even Googled, how do I shoot a gun out of a something? He Googled specific ammunition. They know that he visited a sportsman's warehouse and that he had been target practicing with a gun in the weeks leading up to this. So they likely will blame it on Alex,

but those kids were buried in chad daybell's backyard yeah they're the one more chilling part to this too may please correct me on the last person jj was seen alive with or passed out unconscious with was alex and he had j. But wait a minute. Also in the room, there was the friend, Alex Cox, with JJ. Right. And called mom. Saw Alex Cox leave with JJ on his shoulder. He'd been crawling on the couch. And he was found in the same red pajamas he was wearing.

But wait a minute. Here's another thing that I find incredible. If my husband called me on the phone and went, the cops are here and they're in the backyard. I say, why are the cops at the house? Why are they in the backyard? Remember on that jail phone call, he calls her and says, the cops are here. She goes, did they find anything yet? I mean, I would not say, did they find anything yet? I go, why are the cops in the backyard? Chad, Chad Daybo and the police arrived. They said, you can stay here at the house, but you will need to be with you at all times, an officer.

And so he went outside, went in his car. They said that as he was making phone calls, he was like this, looking over his shoulder. And the minute they found JJ, he took off in his car and they radioed to each other. The officers, Chad Daybell, just left. They said, go get him. And the detective who has been on this since day one said, I'm going to get him, went down there, put the handcuffs on him. So he knew what they had found. I mean, I think there's going to be a lot of circumstantial evidence. Even though Tammy Daybell was, you know, what do you say?

Tammy Daybell. Serial killer? No. I do like serial killers. No, but they do to your body. Embalmed. She was embalmed. Even without that toxicology, I think that they're going to have so much of those two yakking back and forth.

Got a question? I don't. I don't, because I don't think she ever thought she was going to get caught. I really do think that she was using that. And maybe, like, if you ask O.J. Simpson, did he do it, he'll say no. Okay. He really thinks that at this point. But I think that she knew what she was doing.

You know, it's very interesting because what I see a lot in my practice is you can follow, I mean, literally people that are very sick will come in and say about the same thing, and it always at the end of what they're telling me ends up something about God. God always comes into that picture at the end of it. I think they're trying to protect themselves or something or make it seem like everything they were saying was okay. That's some kind of justification. Those ideas came from Chad Daybell. He called her before Charles, her husband was shot and killed and said, Charles has been possessed by a spirit named Ned Schneider. And she had a problem with that, according to her good friend.

A guy named Ned Schneider. That was his... No one knows where the name came from? And Viola is the spirit that possessed Tammy. Nobody possessed Tammy. Stop saying that. According to the indictment. According to the indictment.

You act like it's real. And then you follow up. So Chad planted the, according to the indictment. According to the indictment. So Chad planted the, according to the investigators, planted these ideas in her head and they said that a big earthquake was going to happen. The world

was going to end and no one would be focused on them. Last July. Last year. No one would be focused on them and their missing kids. Everyone would be focused on this calamity that was happening. And they would go and build their lives and prepare for Christ to return. Nancy, I got to jump in. I don't know how many of y'all know my background, but when I was assigned to the major case division,

I was assigned a prosecutor that was just a spitfire named Nancy Grace. And so I've worked with her a long time. When we were in our 20s, we had a good time in Atlanta, y'all. But my question, and this is something Nancy and I guarantee you would have brought out in court, if she believed that zombies were going to kill her children when her children were found dead, why didn't she call 911 and say the zombies finally killed them? I mean, I just wonder, I wonder what JJ and Tylee went through at their death.

Did they know their own mother orchestrated their murders? I think Tylee knew it was going to happen. I do. I think Tylee knew it. I think she had been vocal, and I think she was trying to protect her brother, and that's the reason she disappeared first. I absolutely believe it. And again, she will tell you, I don't know what happened to the children.

Well, why the hell don't you know it now? You tried to set up and tell everybody it was going to be a zombie, but you ain't talking about zombies now. And I think a good question is, are they going to, I'd love to know it, Nate, are they going to turn on each other? You know, remember, Chad Daybell's going to trial. She's allegedly incompetent at the moment. Are they ever going to?

That's why she wanted to marry him. He can't testify against her oh wait a minute isn't there an exception when it comes to children i believe i believe they can and i that's the question of will lori turn on chad will chad turn on her well maybe they'll both turn on each other will they go all the way to the death chair and think they're dying as martyrs did you want to answer this share on the column just keeps just just what I just I just the originator of the idea when they when they indoctrinate those of those who are under them there's a time like I'm thinking like to the Keith Raniere case all of those

people eventually turned against him in the end. Once they got to look out and see, you know, once they... He's talking about the sex cult. Are they branded women? You're still under the indoctrination of that cult mindset. It's very easy to not break free. But as soon as you are separated from that influence through time and space and your primary influencers are no longer that person, you start to... Well, I really think this religious indoctrination should be treated as voluntary use of drugs and alcohol, which are not a defense at trial. Oh, I got drunk and I killed so-and-so. Well, I'm not guilty.

I think it this your decision oh no I I 1000% agree with you but I see what you're saying so at this point she should have been the the takeaway was she's going to turn on him ah yes sorry let's just cut to the chase yeah yeah she's going to turn on him as we like to say, just break it down. At this point, I can only think in sound bites. That's why I needed an editor for my book. Yes, question? Oh, my question was, what was the cause of death for Tylee and JJ? I just couldn't remember that.

How badly damaged they don't know. Homicidal violence. You know, I'm a little surprised we don't have a cod on uh jj though because his body was still intact yeah they haven't released it sorry there's five manners of death they've ruled it as homicides that's why they're able there's a cod cause of death but it's nonspecific as a cause of death then there's manner of death and so that's still to be determined

again we're waiting with bated breath for Tammy I don't think we'll ever know how Tylee was killed I think it would be very difficult if her body is in the condition and one other thing that I'd like to know about her is how much antemortem, which means before death, trauma did she sustain and was there any kind of torture

involved in her death? That's something that I'd be very keen to find out. So my question is about autopsies and why they're just not automatically performed. Because you hear about all these bodies being exhumed and all these things being overlooked and all this money spent on all of this. But why don't they just autopsy everybody that dies? Every state is different. Idaho is a corner state that is an elected position. The corner in that particular jurisdiction in that little county where Tammy Daybell died, elected, and everybody says the husband said he didn't want an autopsy.

Her authority by law can trump anything that the family says, or her, the coroner, her, she can trump anything the family says at that point. She's the certifier of death. Tammy did not have a treating physician. The coroner has to sign the death certificate. Now, I don't, and again, I don't know how in the hell a coroner feels comfortable enough to release the body of a 49-year-old healthy woman and say it's a natural death and doesn't do anything else about it. And that brings me to a bigger question. What kind of connection does Chad have in that that community if any to the corner and a corner does not have to be a doctor a corner can be the bus driver if you get elected you're the corner question um yes i actually don't remember the timeline very well but i was curious when she

put her her kids clothes into storage which by the way I find very weird because if they're dead and if the zombies took them you don't either you know they're not coming back so why not sell them or if she knows that they're missing you don't know if they're going to be brought home like within a day or two why would you make all of that time to go to storage and do that and was that a reason that they knew that she kind of did something because i would think so she put it into storage and then they took off for hawaii and then the bill never got paid and then the owner of the storage facility saw our video of me chasing her down and called me the next day and said, I have something you might want to see. This woman has not paid her bill.

You're totally going to be a witness. I've tried to reach her. Well, they did subpoena me, but we got that taken care of. And so we went over and he showed everything in there and then it was all collected as evidence. So I think that I think it was probably put there as a way to abandon it. What other kind of things were in storage? There's JJ's scooter that he loved, that he rode everywhere. His scooter that he just adored.

There was the baby books, all their baby photos. There was toys, bikes, everything that it appears related to these children that they had brought with them to idaho because they had just moved from arizona seemed to be in that unit because the townhouse was empty there was nothing in there when the police got there beds and that was it question uh yes question if the defense will likely if they decide to pin everything on alex now that he's dead and the kids were actually buried in chad's backyard how much of this is actually going to stick on cult mom is it mostly circumstantial and then my second question is what other members of this cult are there i haven't heard anything else about the cult itself.

Very small group that we know of. Chad Daybell has written 25 books. They're not that good. And he would go out, it seems, and try to recruit people in a way. See, oh, you want to talk about the end times? So there was a group of about eight or nine, but probably more than that. Were they mostly women?

Mostly women, yes. That he had been married to? All women except Alex. Hi, my question is, with the claim now of incompetency versus insanity, is that still considered a psychological condition? Is she being held in jail still based upon that, or is she in a mental institution?

She's been in jail in isolation since day one. There is no insanity defense in Idaho, so she can't plead insane. And the judge will decide at the competency hearing if she should be treated in jail with medication or whether they should move her to the state hospital. And the prosecution is opposing the competency evaluation results, by the way. No surprise.

But they're saying, we don't agree. She's competent, which is one reason there's a hearing. And they could ask for another independent evaluation, another evaluation to come in and decide. The state. The state could, yeah. I don't think, the only reason they haven't is because I think she's going to get rehabbed within 90 days and get ready for trial.

I think that's what's going to happen. I think you're right, Nancy. In fact, all the prosecutors I've talked to said this will be a blip and that, you know, a few months from now, things will be back on track. Question? Yes, I just recently listened to a podcast, and I'm not even sure the names, but it reminded me a lot of this about a mother that had taken two children. She was suffering from mental illness, was not supposed to be left alone with the children. Is it Elizabeth, what's her last name, Jackie? Elizabeth, is it Johnson or Jackson?

She had the two children last seen at Chick-fil-A. She said that she had taken them to daycare, and they kept tracking down the daycares and could not find them. That's Catherine Hoggle. Catherine Hoggle, yes. So it's been a few years now, and every time her husband speaks to her, she is still saying that her attorneys advised her to remain incompetent, so she's not

questioned or tried I don't think that's gonna happen in this case that was my question it's that's it it's hoggle that's her name The only reason I know that is because Nancy just had me read it. Yeah. I was wondering what had happened with that case. It's too high profile a case. You're not going to get away with it. Hey, Nancy, really quickly, thank you again for, you know, putting together and cultivating a catchphrase. Years ago, you came up with tot mom.

Now you've done cult mom. Congratulations. Thank you. Oh oh my goodness last two questions quick go so my question is with this case other you know the cases about the little boy that was found last week in jasper with samuel from yes um you know what keeps you from being so discouraged about just everybody dropping the ball i mean the little boy had been missing for a month. How long have JJ and Tylee been missing before anything was done about it? I mean, it's just you just want to, like, scream,

and it's frustrating that we're here now and we're talking about it, and guess what? They're dead. I agree. What can you do about it? The only thing you can do is keep trying because these cases are to a point we can't do anything about them. But we can do something about future cases when you think children are being neglected or mistreated. That's the only answer.

Whoa, whoa, wait. Oh, wait, that's Kevin Balfe. Okay. We are live at Crime con 2021 in austin everyone thank you for being with us goodbye friend you're listening to an iheart podcast