Crime Weekly - S3 Ep127: The Daybell Doomsday Cult Murders: Lori...A Ticking Time Bomb (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

JJ Vallow didn’t have the best start in life. Both of his parents struggled with drug addiction, and so when he was born premature in May of 2012, JJ was also addicted to drugs and it took months for doctors to safely wean him off the substances that had been coursing through his little body. But shortly before his first birthday, JJ was adopted by his uncle, Charles Vallow, and Charles’ pretty young wife, Lori Vallow, who had two children of her own, a son named Colby and a daughter named Tylee. Tylee and JJ hit it off immediately, and Tylee became a best friend and mini mother to her younger half brother. It seemed like JJ and Tylee were a part of one big happy family, so when they both vanished in September of 2019, and their normally attentive and loving mother Lori didn’t seem overly concerned about the fact that two of her children were missing, people started asking questions. But no one could have prepared for the answers we would get.  Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. Babbel Right now, get up to 55% off your subscription when you go to BABBEL.com/CRIMEWEEKLY. 2. Daily Harvest Go to DAILYHARVEST.com/crimeweekly to get up to sixty-five dollars off your first box. 3. Skims SKIMS Fits Everybody and more best-selling essentials are available now at SKIMS.com After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you! Select "podcast" in the survey and be sure to select our show in the dropdown menu that follows. 4. PDS Debt PDS DEBT is offering free debt analysis to our listeners just for completing the quick and easy debt assessment at www.PDSDebt.com/crime.

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Start your new language learning journey today and get up to 55% off at babbel.com slash crimeweekly. J.J. Vallow didn't have the best start in life. Both of his parents struggled with drug addiction. And so when he was born premature in May of 2012, J.J. was also addicted to drugs. And it took months for doctors to safely wean him off the substances that had been coursing through his little body. But shortly before his first birthday, J.J. was adopted by his uncle, Charles Vallow, and Charles' pretty young wife, Lori Vallow, who had two children of her own, a son named Colby and a daughter named Tylee. Colby, Tylee, and J.J. hit it off immediately, but especially Tylee became best friends and a mini-mother to her younger half-brother.

It seemed like JJ and Tylee were a part of one big happy family. So when they both vanished in September of 2019, and their normally attentive and loving mother Lori didn't seem overly concerned about their whereabouts, people started asking questions, but no one could have prepared for the answers we would get. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are beginning a new case. We're beginning a deep dive into the murders of seven-year-old J.J. Vallow and his 16-year-old sister, Tylee Ryan. And with this case in

particular, there's nowhere else to start besides at the beginning. But for those of you who are not familiar with all the details, and I think that includes you, Derek, right? You know about this case, but you're not familiar with the details. Not the specifics, but obviously I think everybody knows the Lori Vowell case and because of the circumstances surrounding it, but no, I'm interested to learn the specifics behind it. Yeah. And I mean, I think you're going to be stunned at a lot of points because it's just every time you turn around, every time you turn a corner, there's another thing that you have to sort of tackle. So let me start by giving a brief outline of the people involved and the series of events. So the case starts or sort of centers around two people, Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, and their religious beliefs and alleged cult-like activities.

And it also revolves around the complex and disturbing series of events involving the disappearances and deaths of several individuals who were connected to Chad and Lori. Lori Vallow was a beauty queen mother from California, and Chad Daybell was a religious author from Idaho who focused on the end times in his writings. They were a very unlikely pair, but they were both involved in a religious group that held some unconventional ideas about the end of the world and spiritual warfare and things like that. Now, the timeline of events sort of

began in 2018 when Lori and Chad were formally introduced to each other at a preppers conference. A preppers conference is not like a prepping for the apocalypse. Well, yeah, I guess it is prepping for the apocalypse, but not in the way that you'd sort of think it was. It's prepping for the literal end of the world, like the return of Christ. And, you know, everyone's going to get taken out except for the chosen few who, you know, the people at this conference thought that they were a part of that chosen few who were going to still be around when the world ended. Was it like the rapture kind of?

Yeah. Like the rapture. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Cause there's a, cause I, not that I'm defending, but I'm a little bit of a prepper to some degree. Not like some people out there where they have a whole like shelters built in underground, but I'm a prepper. Not like some people out there where they have a whole like shelters built underground. But I'm a prepper. Are you a prepper for the rapture? Or are you a prepper for like nuclear war? Yeah, I'm a prepper for like disaster.

Like an EMP or some type of nuclear fallout. Things like that. Like I have some stuff like that. But I think the rapture was a little different. I don't even know if they were necessarily prepping. They were just preparing to die. Weren't they? No, they thought that they were still going to be around that they would be the one selected to they Would be the one selected to live the ones who lived, you know the right way

And so now they are allowed to stay when everyone else gets taken out So this thing with Chad just so I'm on familiar with it was more Religious than it was like a pragmatic like hey approach to we need to prep for disaster they were there was a religious undertone to this a million percent so more like a cult type thing definitely okay in my opinion yes okay yes okay in many others opinions yeah okay i think that's why they call laurie cult mom and you'll see that at first it kind of seems like it's just chad and laurie but then you find out like Lori's brother, Alex, is involved. And then Alex's new wife, Zulima, is involved. And Lori's niece, Melanie, and Melanie's new husband, Ian. And there's all these people. It runs deep. Yeah. And then not really anybody on Chad's end, but definitely a lot of people associated with

Lori became involved in these beliefs and this belief system and kind of like not not doing what Lori and Chad were doing as far as, you know, killing people. But, you know, kind of facilitating Alex Cox, Lori's brother, was definitely killing people. But that's neither here nor there. We're going to get there. OK. So in July of 2019, Lori's husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed by Lori's brother, who we just talked about, Alex Cox, in what was initially claimed to be self-defense. And in September of 2019, Lori moved herself and her children to Rexburg, Idaho, to be closer to Chad, who was married at that time. And neither JJ nor Tylee were ever seen again after September 22nd. The following month, in October, Chad's 49-year-old wife, Tammy Daybell, died in her sleep due to natural causes.

At least, that's what they believed at first, because Chad said his wife had gone to sleep with a headache and she just never woke up. Just a few weeks later, Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were getting married on a beach in Hawaii. And I guess they didn't think that looked suspicious at all. But when they returned to Idaho, they were questioned about where Lori's kids were, and then neither one of them cooperated with authorities. They simply said that JJ and Tylee were fine, and everything would be made clear in time. It would be several months before the remains of these two missing children were found, buried on the property of Chad Daybell, and then both Chad and Lori were charged with murder. Now, Lori's brother, Alex Cox, would most likely have

also been charged with murder, but he died at the age of 51, the same, well, actually the month after Chad and Lori became a man and wife. So Chad and Lori were also charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Chad's wife, Tammy, because once the authorities realized that Chad and Lori were leaving a line of dead bodies in their wake, every death that was connected to them was reinvestigated. And that included Tammy's death, as well as the death of Joe Ryan, one of Lori's ex-husbands and Tylee's father. They ended up exhuming Tammy's body, and it was discovered that she had not died of natural causes. She had been asphyxiated. And after several years of watching all of this unfold, many people ask the question of who was in charge? Who was driving the ship? Who was the mastermind? Out of Chad and

Lori, who was the stronger and more dominant personality? And of course, depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer. I know what my answer is, but that's why we're here to start at the beginning and try to figure out what happened and why it happened. And of course, we do have to start with Lori because she does seem to be at the center of this all. Yeah, I'm interested to hear this. This is the stuff that you, unless you really dive into it, you don't know about the specifics and what led up to this, right? You obviously know about the two children and what recently happened with Lori Vallow, but there's a lot more behind it and how we got here. So this is going to, I know this episode, like most cases where we start, this is going to be a lot of background information for people like myself

who don't dive in as deep to these cases as someone like you does. Yeah. And you know, I love looking into the backgrounds and picking up patterns. Yeah. Picking up patterns. And I mean, with Lori, we have a ton of patterns here that I'm going to point out to you guys as I go along. But yeah, there is something to be said about what happens to you in your childhood, what you're exposed to, what you see. And with Lori, it's not even just her childhood her child is a small part of this because she goes on to to get married like five times and she's mormon right so it's kind of crazy because she doesn't drink she's supposed to be like devoutly mormon but i do know that the lds church sort of looks down on divorce they kind of feel like you're sealed to your husband and your children and your

family in the afterlife forever and ever and And they definitely don't encourage divorces. So to get married and divorced, to get married five times and divorced four times is kind of something that's odd. And you wonder like, what's going on with Lori? She's a dichotomy. She's a contradiction. And you'll see this as we go through it, but it's crazy.

So never before in any other case, and I know we've gone deep on Casey Anthony and Scott Peterson and Chris Watts, and we kind of looked into the backgrounds of these people. Never before in any other case has the background and the context been more important than in this one. Lori Noreen Cox was born on June 26th, 1973 in Rialto, California, which is in San Bernardino County, roughly 50 miles away from L.A. Lori was the fifth of six siblings. She had an older sister, Stacy, two older brothers, Alex and Adam, an older sister, Laura, who had died when she was just six weeks old, and a younger sister named Summer.

Their parents were Barry and Janice Cox, and the family were active Mormons. Barry Cox was a successful life insurance underwriter who'd been a lifelong member of the LDS Church and who had served as a Mormon missionary in England during the 1960s. When he returned from overseas at the age of 24, he married 18-year-old Janice Connor, the daughter of a career military man who'd been born in Fort Worth, Texas, but had lived in many different areas of the world from Seattle to Hawaii before the age of 15. And what you need to know about Barry and Janice is they weren't, or they didn't seem to be at least, your typical cookie-cutter Mormon couple. They were different. According to people who knew them, or some people who knew

them, they were more flamboyant and in your face than the average Mormon. They were very upfront about their beliefs, especially their belief that taxation was theft. They did not believe in paying taxes, and they would loudly and proudly discuss this with anyone and everyone who would listen. And in 2019, Barry Cox would actually publish a book titled How the American Public Can Dismantle the IRS. Janice Cox stood out among all mothers, right? Not just Mormon mothers. She was very concerned with her appearance. Her hair was bleached blonde and always styled. Her nails were always freshly done. She wore tight animal print clothing and high heels, a lot of makeup and bright lipstick. And it was clear that Janice Cox was a woman who wanted to look good and wanted to be appreciated for looking good. And it's very likely that she passed this on to her daughter, Lori, who, as we know, if you followed this case from the beginning like I have,

Lori always cared about her appearance to the point where even after she was arrested for not producing her children who are missing, she would not make a court appearance without some brightly colored substance smeared all over her lips. You know, even when she went to prison, she got together with the women in prison so that they could make her makeup because she would not go out in public without makeup, even though she was like being accused of murdering her own children. What she looked like was more important than anything. According to friends, Barry and Janice would go to church at the Redlands California Temple, but they weren't particularly devout and they often seemed more preoccupied with their own lives than they were with the lives of their children or what their children were up to.

The couple would often fly off to Hawaii, which was a special place for the Cox family, and they would leave the kids alone for days or sometimes even a week. And technically, the oldest Cox child still living at home would be put in charge, but that would have been Alex Cox, and he wasn't known to be the most responsible person. According to one of Lori's childhood friends, Alex would take the money his parents had left for groceries and spend it on himself or invite his friends over to party while Lori was left to care for the youngest Cox child, her sister Summer. Sometimes Barry and Janice would take Lori or the other kids to Hawaii with them, and this sort of kick-started Lori's lifelong affair with the Aloha State. Actually, Hawaii held an almost reverent importance to several members of Lori's family, including her mother Janice and her older sister Stacy.

They believed it was a place of peace and safety, and Lori would return to Hawaii again and again throughout her adult life. Now, the Cox family had always been well off, and Lori and her siblings grew up in a sprawling home on the exclusive El Rancho Verde Country Club, right across from the golf course. The kids all grew up pretty much spoiled, being given whatever they needed and learning that they were entitled to whatever they wanted. And there's something else we need to understand about Lori's father, Barry. According to Lori's cousin, Megan Iden, Barry Cox believed in something he called the lower 95, which meant that he believed 95% of the population were stupid, unattractive, and less than. But he and his family were a part of the 5%

who were smart, attractive, and successful. Because of this superiority complex, which he no doubt passed on to Lori, in my opinion, allegedly, Barry would often feel as if he was above the law, and he didn't have to play by the same rules that the rest of the sheep did. Knowing what we know about Lori, if you've been following this case, it seems as if she may have held some of those same beliefs. And we don't just see this when she's, you know, lying to the police about where her kids are and telling everybody that her kids are fine when we know damn well those kids were not fine. She did this throughout her life. She would often go to the court system to solve her problems, but then she just would not follow the rules that the legal

system placed for her. And it's just, once again, another pattern of Lori that I believe she got from watching her parents. It's so interesting that we talk about that too, because last week on Crime Weekly News, we talked about the 15-year-old who did what they did. And we had this big conversation about one of the factors being your parents and emulating your parents and what they do and how that can influence who you are as a person. Here's another example of that. Yeah. And I mean, we've seen this before, right? Casey Anthony, Scott Peterson. These are people that we can look back into their childhood, look back at the way they were raised, look at the role models they had as parents and say, okay, we sort of understand why this happened doesn't

excuse it yeah we understand we don't agree with it we don't we don't give you a pass for it but yeah you at least can go ah okay yeah now i get it yeah i see i see where this came from and there's a lot of that with lori now if they weren't running off to hawaii barry and janice would often bring lori with them to the santa Santa Anita racetrack where they would place bets, believing that Lori was a good luck charm of sorts. And Lori probably did seem to bring light with her wherever she went, because reportedly, she'd always had this charismatic and sparkling personality, even from a very young age, and she was described as being very easy to like and disarming.

Lori was also very smart, winning her fifth grade spelling bee championship and always getting good grades throughout middle and high school. When she was younger, Lori was referred to as a good girl, sweet and quiet. But as she grew older and didn't lose all of her baby fat immediately, Lori's mother, Janice, decided to put her young daughter on a strict diet and workout regimen when Lori was in the sixth grade. Janice told Lori that if she wanted to be a cheerleader, she would have to slim down and get into shape. And Janice even signed Lori up for their church softball team so she could get some extra cardio in. Janice coached the team,

so of course she was there to keep an eye on Lori and publicly shame her in front of anyone who was present if she caught Lori sneaking food or eating something that she should not have been. In the seventh grade, Lori confided in her close childhood friend, who has stayed anonymous in interviews, but who we will call Ruby. And Ruby said that Lori had come over to her house when she was in the seventh grade and confessed that her older brother Alex was flirting with her and trying to have sex with her. And Lori said she didn't know what to do before crying in her friend's arms. Ruby said that she knew Lori's brother Alex was kind of weird and a little creepy. Understatement of the year with Alex Cox, by the way. Alex had never had a girlfriend, and whenever Lori and her friends were outside

swimming in the pool, he would stare at them, you know, obviously and blatantly. And Ruby thought that maybe Alex was a bit too fixated on his sister, and he might have even been obsessed with Lori. After Lori told Ruby about Alex that one time, she never brought it up again, and Ruby never asked. But we will get into the weirdly close relationship, the weirdly codependent relationship between Lori and her brother Alex. In the fall of 1988, Lori became a student at Eisenhower High School, and by that time, she'd been molded into a replica of her mother, Janice. She'd started bleaching her hair and wearing tight, revealing clothing to show off the figure she had worked so hard for, and of course, she had her signature bright lipstick and even brighter

smile. Lori had always been charismatic and extroverted, but now she was confident, and all of those things rolled together into a tiny, bubbly, blonde bombshell seemed to be irresistible to those around her. It seemed like Lori felt that when she walked, butterflies followed in her wake and a carpet of flowers sprung up wherever her feet touched the ground. And she was a bit self-absorbed, and so she wanted to be around people who saw her that same way. Lori liked hearing about how pretty and thin she was, about what a good cheerleader and dancer she was. And throughout her years in high school, she became quite popular. She had a lot of friends, some of them from the cheerleading team where she acted as a flyer. One of those

friends was Bernadette Flores Lopez, who felt that she and Lori had clicked immediately upon first meeting. Bernadette said that Lori was hilarious and always upbeat and positive. And Bernadette said, quote, I thought she was just a Barbie doll. She was a doll. She was just really, really friendly. Not overly friendly, but she was just really sweet. I was just so excited to get to know her. End quote. If she wasn't overly friendly, why would you use two reallys to describe her? She was really, really friendly. Not overly friendly. To me, really, really friendly could be overly friendly. Yeah, like maybe a little too much.

Sometimes I feel like when people emphasize things with, you know, the same word twice, it's... Just because they don't have another word. That can also be a little bit of sign of like overcompensating, like really trying to sell something that maybe you don't necessarily believe in. Yeah, and it did seem like Bernadette, even after Lori's kids went missing in the early interviews before we knew what happened, she was like still defending Lori. And she was like, there's no way Lori would ever hurt a fly. Like, I know this girl. She was sweet.

She was kind. Boy, you in for a treat. Right? You in for a surprise. Yeah. But she wishes she could take that back. Yeah. Yikes.

Yeah. That one's a soundbite that that's gonna come back to get you and she's like and all these all our other friends are kind of like turning on her and bernadette kind of stayed true and and i think bernadette probably appreciated lori because bernadette said they were from different sides of the track right like i think that means that bernadette came from probably a poor area and lori came from this like upscale like golf course living but uh bernadette said l probably a poor area and Lori came from this like upscale, like golf course living. But Bernadette said Lori never treated her differently. She treated her fairly and like an equal, which I mean, to me, that's like the bare minimum.

Like you shouldn't be grateful to somebody for that. I understand why you would be, but that doesn't make it doesn't make somebody a good person or it doesn't make somebody a person who's not going to later in life snap and do something crazy and illegal. True. And according to Bernadette, Lori's family was very friendly as well and incredibly welcoming. Bernadette and many other friends of Lori's would spend summer days and weekends hanging out at the swimming pool and practicing their cheer routines on the pool deck while probably creepy Alex watched. Friends of Lori's from that time saw the Cox family as more devout than they'd been viewed in the past. And this is something that I think is very common in these situations. Like it depends who you ask. If you're asking a non-Mormon, are the Cox family like devout Mormons? They would probably be like, hell yeah, man. Like they have a

huge ass book of Mormon in their living room. And that's what Bernadette said. She was like, there's a big book of Mormon in the living room. And that's what Bernadette said. She was like, there's a big Book of Mormon in the living room. Like, they were super devout. But Bernadette wasn't a Mormon. So I think if you probably ask somebody from the LDS community, they're going to look a little deeper and take other things into consideration. Like, having a big-ass Book of Mormon in your living room is not a sign that you're, like, a good Mormon. You know, it's what you do, your acts of service, things like that. So some people said that the Cox family were devout Mormons, but most people agreed that Lori definitely was. Like, she was very into her religious studies, and she would attend religious seminary classes before school each and every morning, which Bernadette Flores Lopez felt was admirable and took a lot of dedication. And I agree with that. If you're a teenager and you're going to religious classes every morning before you go to your regular academic classes, that means you're devoted to it. And it was clear to a lot of people that Lori was

guided by her faith and she knew the path that was laid out for her by God. Lori often talked about attending Brigham Young University after high school. For those of you who don't know, BYU is located in Utah. It is the Mormon college. It's named after, you know, Brigham Young, who's pretty big in the LDS community. Kind of an important figure. And after college, Lori planned to serve as a missionary for a couple of years, just like her father. And for a while, it seemed that Lori would follow that path without any roadblocks. And I don't really know what happened.

But then she met her first boyfriend, Nelson. And for the first three years of high school, it seemed like Lori had stayed away from boys, and she preferred to hang out with her girlfriends. There were hardly any ever boys around. But in her senior year, Lori started dating fellow student Nelson Yanez. And Nelson had also come from a well-off family, and he'd grown up right down the street from Lori, but he was not a Mormon. By the time Lori started dating Nelson, there was already a great deal of distance between herself and her childhood best friend, Ruby.

Ruby said that she and Lori had grown apart because she didn't like who Lori was becoming, this flashy, self-obsessed girl who wanted to hang out with other people who were also flashy and self-obsessed, which did not include Ruby. And Ruby said that she'd never liked Nelson because he was known to have a temper, and he would argue with Lori and shout at her in the halls of school for everyone to see. Yet Lori would never stand up for herself. She would just take it and stay with him. Oh, that's interesting considering what we're here talking about tonight. Yeah. And I mean, you'll see like once again, a pattern. Lori seems to pick these kinds of guys,

violent guys who have a temper at first, but then she switches the type of guy that she seems to be going for almost to a more passive kind of person that I think she could control.

So it seems like she goes from one extreme to the other. I mean, she was married five times. So we've got a whole plethora of personality types to choose from amongst her husbands. But let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right, we're back and we're continuing on with the life and times of Lori Cox, Vallow, Daybell, Ryan. She's been married so many times, I'm going to keep saying that. So Lori graduated from high school on June 12th, 1991. And at the age of 19, she left home and moved in with her boyfriend, Nelson.

And even though her parents had asked her to wait before jumping into marriage, Lori and Nelson eloped in Las Vegas the following year. No one from Lori's life was present at this shotgun wedding, and this will become a pattern. I know we got lots of patterns throughout Lori's life and throughout her next four marriages. Lori and Nelson got divorced about a year later, and we don't know officially what happened between them. To my knowledge, Nelson Yanez has never done interviews or spoken publicly about his short-lived relationship with Lori, but Lori's childhood friend Ruby claims that she saw Lori about a year after her marriage, and they sat down, they kind of talked, and Lori told her Nelson was abusive, and that's why she was divorcing him.

We have no way of knowing if that's true, by the way, because once again, he has not told his side of the story. He hasn't spoken about anything. But after her first divorce was finalized, Lori moved to Austin, Texas, where her older brother Adam was working as a DJ at a local radio station. Before we move on with this story, do you remember years ago? And I remember it was like a big story. Years ago, there was a radio station and they did this contest called like We for a We. And they said whoever could drink the most water without peeing would win the We. Right. And then somebody, a woman died of water toxicity.

Right. Yep. That radio DJ was Lori's brother. Oh, Jesus. Adam. Right. That's a fucking there's a twist, right? There's tons of twists in here, man. I mean, I think that's just coincidence, but that is crazy. Obviously a coincidence, but it's crazy because I remember how big that story was. Like, I remember where I was working when I heard about it because everyone was talking about it because we we really't know you could die from drinking too much water, but it happened. And then I don't think he got sued, but the radio station, Clearwater Radio Station, Clear Channel, Clear Channel Radio Station got sued, tons of damages. He got fired. A bunch of other people got fired, and then he wrote a book about it. Not about that specifically. It was just in the book, but he wrote a book about being a radio DJ and his life as being a radio DJ. Lots of people in Lori's family be

writing books. Makes sense. They're all fucking narcissistic. I don't think Adam is, to be fair. I think he's probably like the most normal. Like Adam, which is the oldest brother in Summer, who is the youngest daughter, appeared to be the most normal out of the bunch. So while in Austin, Lori enrolled at the Baldwin Beauty School, where she would learn to cut and style hair. And she was also introduced to her brother's future wife, Nicole Meyer. And Nicole liked Lori immediately. Like everyone else, she found Lori to be beautiful and sparkling and easy to be around. But Nicole also noticed that Lori had a lot of love for herself, saying, quote,

She probably looked in the mirror more than anyone I know, and it was a running joke in the family. She loved to look at herself and always had drama in her life, end quote. Very accurate way of describing Lori. Very accurate. While in Austin, Lori would meet a man who would become her second husband, William Lagoa, and we don't really know a lot about William's background, but we do know that this was a tumultuous and on-again, off-again relationship from day one. And Lori and William lived together in Austin on and off for about four years before even getting married in 1995. During that entire time, Lori was constantly trying to convince William to convert to the Mormon religion. And before they were married, Lori called the police on William several times, accusing him

of abuse. In July of 1995, a Travis County deputy sheriff visited the couple at their Bluff Springs Road home and was told by Lori that William had hit her in the mouth and thrown her on the bed. Deputy Sheriff Michael Mancias noted in his report that Lori did have a small cut on the inside of her upper lip and William was charged with assault. However, this case would be dismissed when Lori did not show up to her court date. On October 22, 1995, a 22-year-old Lori married 23-year-old William Lagoa. No one from Lori's family attended this wedding, and when she said, I do, Lori was already pregnant with William's child. On April 8th, 1996, Lori gave birth to a baby boy that she named Colby Jordan. And she was over the

moon in love with her son, but things with her husband could not have been worse. In December of 1996, Lori filed a criminal complaint against her husband and his father-in-law, Vito Lagoia. She claimed that during the course of their relationship, William had been mentally and physically abusive towards her and that she had needed to call the police and have him arrested for assault and battery on two separate occasions. Lori said that she and William had separated in February,

two months before Colby was born because he had assaulted her while she was pregnant and he had threatened to snap her neck and kill her baby if she ever called the police on him again. In the complaint, Lori wrote, quote, Alone and on my own, I continue to work and take full responsibility for all my expenses. During our on-again, off-again relationship prior to our marriage, I worked and earned all of the house, paid all of the bills for rent, my car, food, and essentials.

William LaGoya did not contribute any financial support, end quote. So I think she means probably worked and paid the rent or the mortgage at the house. That's how I took it. I mean, I can't imagine what else she would mean, right? Yeah. I mean, you never know, but that's how I took it. Never know. Lori said that after she gave birth to Colby, William called her and he asked her to come to Brackettville, Texas, where he had allegedly been living with his parents. Lori said throughout her time with William, she'd prayed that he would accept her religion, repent of his carnal, selfish, and sensual behavior and become a good Christian. But apparently, William was now ready to convert, even though he'd been avoiding it for years, because he'd been doing a lot of thinking during their time apart, and he wanted to change his life and accept God into his

heart and go to marriage counseling and be a family. William begged Lori to come to his baptism and give him one more chance, and she agreed and decided to forgive him and give him the opportunity to prove he could change and turn it all around. Lori wanted her son to have a father, and she wanted to have a complete and happy family. So Lori packed three-month-old Colby into her car and they drove hundreds of miles to Brackettville only to find that she had been deceived again. And Lori actually says this. She wrote, quote, I found out that my husband deceived me and lied about his change of heart. He was actually living with another woman in Austin and using her car and sleeping with her and letting her pay all of the bills. He knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud me into quitting my job, where I earned about $45,000 annually, to corner and live with him and his parents in Brackettville, where he could work and take care of us, pay the car payment and all the household bills.

He said he wanted and needed his wife and baby and that he needed my car so he could drive to work. He took advantage of my good faith, my charity, and my vulnerable situation. When I moved in with him again, he immediately returned to his old ways and took the keys to my car against my will. And he hid my spare keys so that I could not get access to it. Every time I would ask to leave and go back to Austin, my husband would fight with me physically, hold the keys away. He kept me one-night stand, Lori and Colby snuck out of the house at 3 a.m. And they drove to Lori's parents, who at that time had left California and they were living in San Antonio, Texas. And you'd think that this would have been the end of it, right? Like somebody's held you imprisoned, took your car. It's awful. You just would probably not want to be with them

again and you definitely wouldn't trust them. But Lori goes on to say that when William realized she'd fled, he called her and he begged her to reconsider. He told her that everyone missed her and Colby and that they were a family and they needed to try and work things out. And Lori said she was taken in by his sincere efforts to turn over a new leaf. And she also wanted to get the clothes and belongings that she left behind in Brackettville anyways. So she agreed to go back. William had told her that if they tried and failed to make their marriage work, Lori would be free to go and she could take her car and whatever else that belonged to her. But a few days later, when Lori did end up

wanting to leave, she was told by William and his stepfather, Vito, that she could go, but Colby would be staying. And Lori obviously wasn't going to have that. She said she pretended to go along with it and be subordinate. But a week later, she convinced William to bring her to her parents' house for Thanksgiving. And once there with Colby, she refused to go back to Brackettville. So this was not a great marriage, obviously, and Lori would file for divorce, saying that William was void of any light or intelligence and he clearly didn't know the difference between right and wrong. Life for Lori and her son Colby was not easy after this, and things would remain chaotic for a few years

as Lori took random hairdressing jobs wherever she could, and they moved from place to place, hoping that a change of scenery would bring better and more profitable opportunities. But according to all reports of people who knew Lori and Colby during this time, Lori was a good mother, an attentive mother, who clearly loved her son more than life. A woman named Tammy, who knew Lori

while she and Colby were living in Westlake, Texas, also remembers how impressed she was that Lori managed to work, take really good care of Colby, be a single mother, and still find the time to run twice a day in order to stay in shape, all while not having a sip of alcohol, which I think would be very difficult, by the way. I have to have at least a few sips of alcohol if I'm doing all of that. You? A few sips of alcohol? Never. Few bottles, maybe.

No. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, honestly. Not my Stephanie Harlow. I know Mormons don't drink alcohol, right? Right. But like also they don't get divorced. So if you're going to like break some of the rules, why wouldn't it be the alcohol? Might as well break all of them.

Or just the alcohol one, you know? So in May of 1998, Lori got a brief respite from her troubles when her parents decided to take herself, Colby, and her younger sister Summer to Hawaii for a week-long vacation. The same day the group landed on the islands, Lori's older brother Alex called with some startling news. Alex had been left behind at home to take care of his other sister, Stacy, who was in very bad health. So we actually have to go back a bit in the timeline and talk about Stacy Cox. So Stacy was the oldest daughter and she'd left home in 1987 when she married a Home Depot executive named Stephen Cope. And on April 24th, 1989, Stacy gave birth to a daughter that she named Melanie. Melanie's going to be Lori's niece who ends up kind of wrapped up

in her cult shit, right? But at that time in 1989, Melanie was just a little innocent baby, you know, the light of her mother's life. But the following year, Stacey was diagnosed with diabetes and she was told by her doctor that she needed to monitor her condition carefully and also make sure she was taking her insulin injections whenever she needed. But for some reason, Stacey decided not to do this. And by August of 1995, she and her husband, Steve, were in a bitter custody battle over her daughter, Melanie. Now, bitter custody battles, also a pattern in the Cox family. We've got Stacey and her husband, Steve, having a bitter custody battle over Melanie. We're going to see Lori and one of her husbands, Joe, Ryan, having a really horrendous bitter

custody battle over Ty Lee. And we're also going to see Melanie, this niece, this little niece here, when she grows up later, having another bitter custody battle with her husband, Brandon, who Alex Cox would attempt to kill, you know, instead of Alex. He's back again. Freaking Alex. He was the enforcer of the cult, you know, the hit man of the cult. He was the muscle, which when you see Alex, you'll be like, he was the muscle. But yeah, he was the muscle. I have to say, when you mentioned Caseyony at the top of the show and family dynamics and the whys you know when you start to learn about someone i was thinking to myself like okay yeah i'm sure it's bad but it can't be as bad as casey anthony wow boy was i wrong

i mean i mean casey anthony's family i mean i don't know the we know some of the players but it doesn't seem like it was a mass, you know, issue amongst all family, all relatives throughout the family tree. This runs deep. I mean, this runs really deep. Yeah, at least Lee Anthony wasn't out there like trying to take people out. Well, that we know of. That we know of. That we know of.

I mean, let's. We're not going to make too many assumptions. We're not going to make too many assumptions. We're not going to give her any benefits of the of the doubt because I don't know what that family. But this is I'm even having trouble like I'm writing. I'm usually I'll have like a little diagram or whatever. I'm just listening at this point. I'm like, OK, you know what?

Maybe I'll have you draw me like a diagram afterwards. I mean, let me know if you need me to refresh your memory. Just ask questions because I'm sure there's people in the comments who are not as familiar with this case who will have the same question. I'm going to have to rewatch this episode myself. There's no doubt about it because it's some deep this is deep shit here. There's a lot of connections. And yeah, I understand why we're doing it because it all it gives you a better understanding of the main character that we're talking about here and how we got to this point. Not that we're going to leave this conversation or this series going, you know, I get it. I get it now. It's just the understanding of who this person is at the core,

I think is important when you really want to know the ins and outs of the case. Yeah, I agree. And just for some reference, sort of foreshadow a little bit, Melanie, Laurie's niece, Stacy's daughter, she would go on to marry Brandon Boudreaux. I think his name was Brandon Boudreaux. And they would have kids and they had like a great marriage. They had a great family life. And then all of a sudden, Melanie gets mixed back up with Aunt Lori and Melanie's not happy with her husband anymore. And, you know, she's going over here and she's getting married to somebody completely new, kind of like Lori did when she leaves her fourth husband and marries Chad Daybell out of the damn blue. And now Brandon and Melanie are having this bitter,

horrible custody battle that is almost a mirror image of the custody battle that Melanie's parents would have with her. So it's just very startling and kind of like you see history repeat itself. I think that's common, right? Even we see with alcoholism and infidelity and abuse, domestic abuse. A lot of the times kids will, you have the polar opposite too, right? You have kids who grow up and won't touch a sip of alcohol because their mom or dad was an alcoholic. But I think more cases than not, this is the likely scenario where a child grows up seeing the people that they genetically predisposed to want to be like to grow up. That's their example, right? That's who they're going to emulate, just like any type of person or any type of animal.

They end up being their parents. And it's one of those things where this is what they see every single day. Yeah. So their brain becomes programmed. It's wired to be the same. That's all they know. That's all they know. It doesn't make it okay because as I mentioned two minutes ago,

you can look at those things and choose to not be that person. Because even though you may see it, it doesn't give you the excuse to be the same person. You still, if you're exposed to the outside world, which is a different conversation because of the dynamics of this relationship, doesn't seem like they had too much exposure to other family dynamics that were kind of kept in house. But usually- No, they definitely did. Like I said, the parents are out. They're going to Hawaii andi and stuff laurie was always hanging out at ruby's house like with her parents for holidays and stuff like they definitely had outside exposure so at some point you know the difference between right and wrong you you can see what's going on in your you know under your roof and

what's going on from the in the majority of other people's homes and understand like okay you know what maybe what is going what i'm seeing is not the norm, but I do feel like some people, Lori's probably one of them, where if you had the opportunity to talk to her, she would justify her actions. Oh, she would. Because it's a guilt trip. Oh, see, it's not my fault. It's their fault. No, she wouldn't even do that. She would say, I was a hundred million percent right. My family was always a hundred million percent right. My family was always 100 million percent right. We've done nothing wrong.

You're the weird ones. You guys are weird. We are the remember the top 5 percent, just like her father felt, you know, everyone else is a stupid, unattractive, ugly sheep. But we are beautiful, like descendants of the gods and above everyone else. Kind of reminds you of the whole Waco thing, right? You know, with all that. And obviously there's more to that story, but just as far as the mindset, right? They will die for it and they believe it unconditionally. Well, I don't know if Lori would ever die for anything, but she would kill for anything. Her own children, by the way. Terrible. So in this custody battle between Stacey and Steve Cope, Steve claimed that Stacey had

not been taking care of her health. And because of this, she had developed a condition from her diabetes called gastroparesis, which is caused by high blood sugar, and it affects how the body absorbs nutrients. And it can often lead to malnutrition if left untreated. Steve said that Stacey refused to take her insulin and she'd always been weird about food. But by the middle of 1994, she viewed all food as poison. At the end of 1994, Stacey had been hospitalized

and fed by IV three times. She was only 76 pounds. And Steve Cope reported that it was not just his wife's physical health he was concerned about, but also her mental health, writing in the complained quote, Stacy has always admitted to me and others that her family was a psychological hornet's nest. Her mother, Janice Cox, is obsessed with issues of weight, physical appearance and feminine bodies, end quote. I definitely think there is a heavy streak of mental illness in this family. You think? Yeah. That went like, listen, I don't like to assume,

but when you have diabetes and you're 76 pounds and you're not taking care of yourself and you would just rather waste away, you need some intervention here. Okay. Some mental health intervention. And, and clearly, you know, like I said, we're going to see it with Stacy. We're going to see it with Alex. We're going to see it with Lori. Yeah. Most, most of the players you've mentioned so far are not of sound mind. Right.

I mean, I, I don't, I don't think I'm going out on a limb here saying that when we're talking about some of the things that we know for a fact they did, we don't even know everything, but for the things that we've, that have been proven over the years, I think that's a fair assessment. I agree. So that's another sort of pattern amongst the Cox family. And Stacey had become a germaphobe. She was washing her hands ritually at least four times an hour. And these irrational fears ended up affecting her daughter, Melanie, as they do, who was not allowed to go to school because of the germs there. So six-year-old Melanie was not enrolled in kindergarten and Stacey had created a list of foods that her daughter was not allowed to have. And on that

list was milk, which whatever you feel about milk, kids need calcium, right? So Steve Cope said that Melanie's last two teeth had come in with no enamel due to a lack of calcium in her system when the teeth had been developing. And because of her mother, Melanie was scared of the dentist and refused to go. Steve said that he would stock the refrigerator and cupboards with good and healthy food before he left on a work trip. When he returned, he found that Stacey had gotten rid of all of it. And Stacey had become a shut-in. She barely left the house. She hadn't even gone to church in eight months.

And instead of going to a hospital or a clinic for help, Stacey told her husband that she needed to go to Hawaii to get better because that was the only place she felt she could be happy. In a court document, Steve Cope said, quote, Melanie has become the caretaker of her mother, believing she is responsible and sacrifices her own childhood to caring for her mother, end quote, which is incredibly sad because Steve was a Home Depot executive. He was out of town a lot. He obviously initially trusted his wife to take care of the duties at home and to be a good mother. And when he found out she wasn't, that's a terrible position to be in because you are the breadwinner. You're

the only one working. You have to keep working. You can't just not go on these work trips because then you lose your job. And where are you? But you also can't depend on your partner at home to help you with the home stuff. So now you feel like I have all of this to take care of and I just cannot address it all. And honestly, Stacey should have been committed, I think. Yeah. And we see this in a lot less severe situations too, where I've had friends where there's stuff going on at home. And like you just said, they're the breadwinner, they're the sole provider or the major provider. And it's like, pick your poison, right? Like, yeah, I can stay home and address these issues,

but then there's going to be a whole new plethora of issues that I have to deal with. And those aren't easily resolved. Those involve years and years of me doing what I had to do to get to this point where I can provide for my family financially. And if I just turn around and turn my back on that, there's going to be some other issues that, that, that could cause some, some problems as well. So it's an unfortunate situation to be in when you're, when you're wearing multiple hats, because you're having to choose between, you know, your family, but at the same time, you're working for that family as well. So it's, it's a really interesting dynamic, which I think a lot of people who are watching or listening to this may be able to relate to, even though

their family's not as screwed up as this, but I think it's a burden and a stress that many people, maybe not even to this extreme, it could be as, as minimal as you're working really hard for your family. And so you miss out on opportunities to go see certain things that they're in, you know, recitals or games, because that very thing you're working for. You're responsible for everything. You have to still go out there and provide for that thing. Yeah. You're put in a position like Steve Cope's put in a position where he has to prioritize things that are all priorities. Right.

His family's priority, but his job's priority, because without the job, family doesn't have food or shelter or, you know, things like that. So, yeah, it's it's it's almost impossible. And I don't blame him at some point for, you know, being like enough is enough. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. In March of 1995, Steve Cope returned from a business trip where he was in Atlanta, and he returned home to Washington State where he lived with his wife and his child. And he found that his wife, Stacey, had left their home, taking their daughter, Melanie, to stay with Barry and Janice Cox in California. Stacey refused to come home when Steve asked, and for the next few months,

Stacey and Melanie remained with the Coxes. in California. Stacy refused to come home when Steve asked, and for the next few months, Stacy and Melanie remained with the Coxes. But on July 1st, Steve flew to California to attend the wedding of Adam Cox and Nicole Meyer, and when he left to return home, he had his wife and daughter with him. But something had changed in six-year-old Melanie. She had had her hair cut short, she started wearing baseball hats, and she had some strange things to say. In the complaint, Steve Cope writes, quote, something weird has happened to Melanie. She insists that she is a boy and upon meeting new people will insist, call me AJ, Alex or Bobby. And I am three years old. When she does this, she begins talking in a different pitch as if she were three years old.

End quote. I never understood why this happened. I didn't understand who had, you know, coached her to do this. Some people suggest it was Alex because he liked to wear like baseball hats. And obviously one of the names she wanted to go by was Alex. And he would have been there living with his parents at that time. So it's possible. But what is the end goal of telling a six-year-old girl that she's a three-year-old boy named Alex, AJ, or Bobby? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it was just a kid thing. And she was kind of just like, I don't know, role-playing or messing around or going through something. Because obviously this whole situation was probably stressful for her. And then you got to go live with these like banana nut Sunday people. Janice and Barry Cox over here, like probably didn't help the stress level on Melanie when she was

already dealing with her mother's condition and basically feeling responsible for her mother's care and then having her father and her mother fighting all the time. So maybe she just sort of like disassociated in a way. I'm not sure, but it would be concerning as a parent, I think. I would agree with that. On July 28th, Steve finally had enough and took Melanie away from the house, saying he would not return until Stacey vacated the premises. The following month, Stacey's father, Barry, filed his own sworn declaration, attacking Steve, defending Stacey, and demanding that they should get full custody of little Melanie. Barry said that Steve worked too much, and he always left his wife alone,

even though Barry had tried to show him the path to being a good husband. Barry said Steve was a rough construction worker type who had no appreciation or respect for delicate or sensitive things, and he wrote, quote, I loved Steve Steve and I wanted to help him. Accordingly, I warned Steve at one point that his absence and estranged attitude for his wife and child would lead to problems. I told him that a wife was like a delicate flower and needed to have tender love and care. He was indifferent to my suggestions. End quote. I know you treat me like a flower, a delicate flower. I mean, if you remember a few episodes ago, I asked you about my voice and you basically told me I was trash. So that's why you don't get treated like a flower. Wait,

what did I do? We're recording multiple episodes in one week. So I'm a little confused, but I think it was Jacob Landin part one. You were talking about how soothing Eric's voice was. And I said, well, how's, do you talk about me that way? And you basically said, no, you're more of like a drill sergeant. And people got a kick out of that. Do you remember it now? I still don't see why you can't treat me like a delicate flower that I am as a woman. You're, you're a rose with many thorns. How about that?

But my, okay. Yeah. Fine. Fine. Fine. Okay. Okay. This is what you get. With many thorns. How about that? Okay. Yeah. Fine. Fine. Fine. Okay. This is what you get.

This is what you get. I get the thorns. I tried to teach you the right path of how to, you know, really like make a woman bloom, but you just don't want to listen. So you're on your own. Fair enough. So despite this compelling custody argument from Barry, full custody of Melanie was awarded to Steve Cope, thank God. And Stacey, whose health was getting worse by the day, moved back in with her parents who would help care for her.

But in May of 1998, when most of the family was out of the house on a trip to Hawaii and Stacey was alone with her brother Alex, she became very ill. Alex claimed he had walked into her bedroom to find her unconscious. And when she was rushed to the hospital, she fell into a coma that she never came out of. Stacey Cope died on May 21st, 1998, at the age of 31, of undetermined causes. And obviously, it's easy to assume that her death was related to her declining physical health and her untreated diabetes. However, with these people, nothing should be assumed. Okay. I mean, we assumed that Tammy Daybell died of natural causes and found out that we were very misguided on that. I always knew that she didn't die of natural causes. No man buries his wife, who he loved and who he had nothing to do with her death, and then gets married to another woman two weeks later. All right. So that was suspicious right off the bat. But regardless, we don't assume anything, especially when Alex Cox is involved,

because it was reported that after his sister's death, Alex used Stacey's credit card. And, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It could just mean he's like a dick. But knowing what he was capable of later in life, which I believe is, you know, the fact that he definitely was involved hands-on in killing both JJ and Tylee, just my opinion, but, you know, we'll see about, you know, a proof and evidence of that later. Knowing what he was capable of later in life, it does make you wonder if Stacey Cope did

die of natural causes or maybe if she had a little help. Yeah, if we're going to go off some of the other cases we've already discussed, just think about Chad's wife, Tammy. That's one on the surface initially looked like it could be natural causes. And obviously upon deeper investigation, that wasn't the case. So I think your assessment or your belief, I don't think there's going to be a lot of people disagreeing with you. I'm not saying it happened. I'm saying it's possible that Alex had something to do with Stacy's death. And because of how sick she was, they just didn't do a full autopsy like they didn't do with Tammy initially. Not only with families like this, it happens a lot where

it can be hidden behind these things, these underlying conditions that someone may have, which is what makes them targets or easier to pull something like this off. Then you couple that with what you've already told us about Alex, and I'm just saying, I don't think you're far off. Yeah, and I mean, I think it's clear, and it'll become more clear as we go along, that at least Alex and at least Lori did not value human life.

And it didn't matter if that person was related to them or not, right? Because... That's why we're here. Yeah, and I mean, Alex is, you're gonna see, like Alex tries to kill Joe Ryan, one of Lori's husbands. He does kill Charles Vallow, another of Lori's husbands. He's capable of anything. Clearly. Well, that means that there were certain years where they just didn't pay them. And in May of 1999, Barry Cox was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for failing to pay his federal income taxes for the years 1988, 1989, and 1990.

Barry was also ordered to pay almost $250,000 in restitution to the IRS. But after he was released from prison, Barry decided he wasn't going to pay his back taxes either. He was morally opposed to it, and he said it was not legal for them to ask him to pay it. So instead of playing along and, you know, paying his taxes, Barry sued the United States, the IRS, and the DOJ for personal injury damages, and this would kickstart Barry and Janice's decades-long battle with the U.S. government. And as Barry refused to pay the back taxes, the interest kept adding up. But every time one of his suits was dismissed, it kind of looks like Barry would file an appeal or another lawsuit to just kind of keep it in the courts and just kind of keep it in litigation. So, you know, he didn't have to act on anything.

And once again, we can see another pattern emerge. Lori and her family seem to like lawsuits. They seem to like being in court and being in legal battles, but they just did not like following along with what the legal system would decide, right? They like to bring this stuff to the legal system, but then when the courts are like, okay, we've heard your case denied, and now you have to do this, they were like, we only want to follow the legal system when it works for us, not when it's against us. What do you mean? While Barry was dealing with all of that, Lori was meeting her third husband. Apparently, he came into the salon that she was working at to get a haircut, and they fell in love immediately.

Love at first sight, at least for Joe Ryan, the man. Joe was tall, handsome, and successful. But what made him most open to letting Lori into his life was the fact that he was ready to start a family of his own. Joe had had a troubled childhood, and he'd grown up in foster care without a real family unit. Now that he was an adult and making good money, having a family was all that he wanted, and he was itching to find the right woman to settle down with. I mean, obviously, we now know that Lori was not the right woman for Joe Ryan. I don't think she's the right woman for anybody.

She was the opposite of the right woman. And Lori would literally destroy this man in every way she possibly could. They'd only be married for three years. But during that time and in the years that followed, Lori would decimate Joe Ryan, literally torture him until the moment he died. And if we're looking at the question that I had asked at the top of the episode, which was, you know, who's the mastermind, Lori or Chad? I will say that many people believe Lori didn't start veering into her unhinged and out of the norm religious thinking until she became obsessed with Chad and his writings. But we have proof from unbiased third parties during

this time to show that all of this crazy stuff she was into and all of this like extreme stuff she was into actually started during her marriage to Joe Ryan, as did some other bizarre and attention seeking behavior. In 2001, Lori and Colby moved to Driftwood, Texas, outside of Austin, and they began living with Joe. And in 2002, when Joe proposed to Lori with an expensive diamond ring, she said yes, as long as he would convert to Mormonism. They flew to Hawaii to get married on a beach on Maui, and once again, no one from Lori's family was in attendance, even though the wedding happened in their favorite place in the world, Hawaii. After the honeymoon, Lori, Joe, and Colby started their lives in a 4,400-square-foot home on Island Oaks Lane in Driftwood that Joe had designed himself, and this special house design included a built-in hair studio for Lori.

Joe said that Lori didn't have to work if she didn't want to, but if she wanted to keep some of her old clients or, you know, just cut hair for fun, she'd have this designated space to do so. Joe Ryan just really wanted to make Lori happy in the beginning. And you'll notice this pattern once again with Lori and her husbands in the future. Because before, she seemed to be like these abusive guys. But from Joe on, she was with guys who, not to say that Joe wasn't abusive, because we'll find out that he was after some time. But it seemed in the beginning, he really wanted to sort of bend over backwards and do the very most to make Lori happy. And so did her

following husbands, Charles and Chad. And they kind of wanted to just give her everything she wanted, which was a dynamic that she was used to, I think, from her childhood, where she was spoiled and given anything she wanted. So Joe's sister, Annie Cushing, met Lori soon after the wedding, and the two women would actually become very close friends for a long time. Annie said that Lori was tenderhearted, fun-loving, vibrant, and charming. And Annie was so grateful that after such a rough start in life, her brother had found someone so warm and loving to start his life with, to start a family with. Annie said she'd never seen Joe so happy. And Annie said, quote, they were just this incredibly beautiful couple, like celebrities wherever they went.

They were both extroverts. They were larger than life. They were just like this little whirlwind of generosity and love, end quote. Annie and her children visited Lori and Joe as often as they could. They even went on vacations together. And even after Joe and Lori eventually divorced, Annie kept in touch with Lori, seeing her as a sister still. But Lori would soon become pregnant after the marriage. And after the baby was born, Annie Cushing began to see some cracks in the foundation of her brother's marriage and life. And this baby, this new baby, was Tylee. Tylee

Ashlyn Ryan was born on September 24, 2002, and she was welcomed into the family and loved by everyone. Colby was happy to have a little sister he could play with and protect. Lori was happy to have a daughter. and Joe Ryan immediately fell head over heels in love with his little girl. Unfortunately, it didn't seem as if Joe Ryan was as close to Colby. And sources often state that Joe legally adopted Colby, but that does not seem to be accurate, even though Colby was given Joe's last name legally. So Colby would become Colby Ryan. And Colby, in one of these docuseries on oxygen, I think it's called like Sins of Our Mother, Colby says something like, at first, Joe was great.

Everything was fine for a while, actually, everything was fine. But then it seemed like Colby just started getting on Joe's nerves or Joe had something against Colby. Colby didn't really know when the change or the shift happened. but eventually Joe just kind of seemed to start taking things out on Colby. And it appeared that Joe could be a bit rough with Colby. And during a Dateline interview, Colby said, quote, he went out of his way to make a point when he would spank me and weird things like little hits on the head and thought it was funny, end quote. Colby said that Joe Ryan had an explosive temper and he was scared of his stepfather eventually, so he tried to stay out of his way and make himself small because no one ever knew what would set Joe off. For instance, during a fight with Lori, Joe once took a baseball bat to the hair studio that he'd had built for her. And when Joe's sister Annie Cushing visited with her kids in the summer of 2003, she saw her brother's temper firsthand on more than one occasion. Annie had flown in because she wanted to meet baby Tylee, who wasn't even a year old yet.

And just as like a little side story from this, Tylee's young age, not even being a year old, made Annie raise an eyebrow when she saw Lori take Tylee into her hair salon and start bleaching her hair, which is ridiculous to me. Absolutely ridiculous. So Annie said that she'd already seen pictures of baby Tylee and she'd always just assumed that the baby's hair was blonde. But in person, she could see that Tylee had dark roots. And she watched as Lori rectified that with like, you know, adding highlights and stuff to this little baby's hair, which once again, we've got a pattern of being very concerned about appearances

and for some reason, wanting to be like super blonde. Janice Cox, Lori's mother, always made sure to have her hair bleached. Lori would always make sure to have her hair bleached. Once again, even from prison, she'd find a way to do it.

Okay, she'd find a way to do it. And she's bleaching Tylee's hair as a baby. I don't want to offend anybody. So I'm trying to pick my words wisely here. I can, I'm sure you guys can see my wheels turning. If you're, if you're watching on YouTube, agree. I, I personally would not be bleaching or dying my, my infant's hair. I'll just say it. I'll just say it. Just say it. Yeah. I mean, it would be borderline, in my opinion, a form of child abuse. There's chemicals that the baby shouldn't be inhaling

or having going to her scalp. I have a feeling we're going to get wrecked for that one, but it is what it is. I mean, that's a personal opinion. I don't think so. I would argue, I don't know if there'd be a crime there because it is, the intention at that point is not to hurt the baby. It's for appearances. And I think if I want to play devil's advocate, I haven't said that in a while. And I did this, some would argue that getting a baby's ears pierced at such a young age is an appearance thing for the parents and not necessarily for the baby. And that could be a form of child abuse. So, well, by the way, can see both sides. And so I'm kind of going back. What do you see? That was a pretty good, that was a pretty good counterpoint, right? No. Okay. All right. All right. Here's my thing. I'm going to be quiet now. Getting a child's ears pierced, like a baby's ears pierced.

It's like a second of pain, but it's not like dangerous. Okay. Bleach and a hair dye on a baby's head, which isn't even fully sealed up because you still have a soft spot it's sealed it's just soft it's not even sealed up yet no it's sealed it's not sealed there's a soft spot yeah it's soft but it's there's not a hole there the plates of the skull haven't haven't come together yet they haven't fused but there's not a hole in the baby's head where it can like seep in through. It's not like you kind of, what kind of hole did you have in your head? Just kind of soft spot that you have might explain some things. Listen on my kids.

Every time I like felt their soft spot, I just like, uh, cringed because I was like, Oh, under the scalp is their brain. I have to be so, so careful with that. But is that not true? There's not a hole in their head. There's all, there's the plates, the four plates are not fused together yet. They're still moving, but on the surface, the skin, it's not like if you poured water on their head, it would go into their brain. There's not a hole. Yes. But if you put hair dye in, which does soak in, it could be going to the brain. Yeah, I guess we're good. This is going to, this is off the rails. I just I feel like it's dangerous.

It's dangerous. And you think about it from the sense of, you know, if the bleach got into the baby's eyes or something like that. Or inhaled. Even just inhaled. All for an all for appearance. Right. And it's more it's not for the baby. The baby doesn't care.

It's more for you. And that's why I do make the argument against myself that I do do and i did it so i'm not blaming anybody who has i i did it to my daughters we had their ears pierced very young and that is you know that's more for for us than it is for the babies they don't give a shit about their ears being pierced yeah but i always felt like you pierce your baby's ears because like you know it's easier to do when they're babies than later when they're like terrified and you don't want to like give them a complex you know when they're like older i was against it i was against it jenna wanted to do it i was against it because i just it broke my heart to see them in any type of of course all right we we went off the tracks there for a couple minutes but it happens sorry let's take our last break. We'll be right back.

So let's get back to talking about the instances of Joe Ryan's temper that his sister Annie Cushing saw. So on one occasion, Annie said that her six year old daughter, her six year old daughter was getting out of Joe's SUV when she accidentally kind of like laid on the horn. And for some reason, Joe really was triggered by this, and he started yelling at the little girl and aggressively moving towards her, and Annie had to get between them. Another time, Annie saw Joe pull Colby across a room by his hand and sort of like bending his arm back and pulled him across the room, and then he removed his belt and started hitting Colby with it. And Annie was yelling at her brother like, what are you doing? Stop. But he wouldn't listen. And later, when Annie spoke to Lori about it, and she's like, listen, do you know that your husband's doing this to your son? She said Lori seemed unconcerned and unfazed, like very chill about it, as if she knew and accepted that Joe did this. Another day, there was a rainstorm and the living

room ceiling began to leak. And I guess because it was like a newly built house, Joe Ryan flew into such a rage, he started punching the wall, swearing up a storm and throwing things. And Annie said that every single kid in the room just like froze. They were stunned into silence. Even baby Tylee, who was in her walker, just like kind of like turned towards this like very loud sound and froze. As the relationship between Joe and Lori turned cooler and more distant, Lori turned to the LDS church even more. This is the thing Colby to church several times a week. But she also started doing this thing where she would go to the church late at night. And there was a room there that was just, you know, mirrors on the wall. And she would put on her favorite music, religious music and like music from the 80s and stuff. And she would just dance in this room by herself to the music at night. And she said this was her way of communicating with God.

Lori didn't just talk to God, though. Reportedly, she told her friends that she was always communicating with spirits from beyond the veil who would give her instructions and life advice. Lori also started telling people that she believed her daughter, Tylee, was actually her dead sister, Stacy, reincarnated. In 2003, based on advice she got from God, Lori appeared on the television show Wheel of Fortune. Hi, how you doing, Lori? I'm good, how are you? Lori Ryan from Austin, Texas, a hairstylist in Austin, hey? That's right, the best. How's the hair in Austin? It's good. Good. Austin's a happening place. Probably thanks to you. Pretty much. Talk about your family a little bit. I have a wonderful husband, Joseph, at home, who is watching our two beautiful children,

Colby, who is seven, and Tylee, who is one. Yeah, what do you guys like to do for fun? We like to play all kinds of sports on our three acres. Okay, sounds like you have a nice life there. We do. Congratulations. Nice to have you with us. Alright, we need a letter. P.

There are two Ps. You want to risk it? You can. There's either bankrupt or that $10,000 Kenneth Cole gift certificate. You've been risking $6,000. I have to. Now I'm here. You have to? I had no money anyway. Okay, then lift the darn thing up.

Oh, my goodness. What is going on? What do we have? Oh, my gosh. I want to go. Okay. Gopher, Doc, Isaac, and Captain Steubing. Yeah!

Thank you! You're welcome. For letting me do that. It's a free country. Wow. Of course, those are all correspondence on 60 Minutes 2. You got $7,500 and you got this gift certificate. I wasn't trying to talk you out of it. I just thought that that was a lot to risk.

But what do I know? The important thing is she has $17,500 just by not listening to me. What were you thinking? You're an expert. Yeah, yeah. What do I know? She has the lead. Believe it or not, we'll be back.

Freaking bizarre, right? So bizarre. I gotta tell you. I gotta tell you. Never did I think on Crime Weekly, we would be watching a clip of one of our suspect on Wheel of Fortune. Dude, it's crazy. And like, you can see, I'm glad we have this clip, right? Because you can see that she's very charming right she's very like personable she even seems to charm pat sajak like towards the end you know he's like kind of flustered like he doesn't even know what to do and she's like touching him and hugging him and he's like kind of blushing a little bit like that is the effect she seemed to have on people i mean

just to point out the obvious but she's an attractive woman to be honest. Not anymore She was she was but back in the day, you know I really wish that we could play this clip of you saying she was an attractive woman Not anymore and we could put it in her prison cell and keep piping it in there because she would die It would be torture to her because she's relied so heavily on her physical appearance all through her life Yeah stress definitely got the best of her over the years. Yeah. I don't look like that anymore.

When I saw that clip, I was like, whoa, time has not been good to her. It's all that late night talking to God. You, among other things, yeah. Among other things. But you can see, you know, yes, she's very pretty. She gets her teeth bleached, you know. She got a boob job because she's going to be in pageants later. She's running constantly.

Probably with the money from Wheel of Fortune. Dude, right. But look at her. She's in great shape. She just had a baby. She just had a baby. That's how focused she was on her physical appearance. And of course, she's always been smart and sharp.

So she ended up solving the puzzle. She won $17,500, which honestly, probably only reinforced her belief that she'd legitimately gotten this message to go on Wheel of Fortune from God, because God told her, like, if you go on Wheel of Fortune, you're going to win money. And so she goes on Wheel of Fortune, she wins money. And she's like, see, I told you I've been talking to God, man. Like, do you think God gives messages messages like waste his time to come over and be like laurie wheel of fortune needs you right now no no i feel like sometimes these sickos when they when they do something that's heinous they some many of them actually feel like they did get a message from

god or you know a sign from god but some of them just use it as an excuse as like, Hey, yeah. Oh, I did this because God told me to, because they'll find the quote unquote sign, even if it's not really there. It could be a dish falling on the ground. I know. And this is exactly how Lori was, right? I'm glad you said that because this is how Lori was. And I forget who said it, but somebody said like, she had this tendency to like over symbolize things, like think that every single little thing was a sign from God or a sign beyond the veil. So she'd be talking and then a butterfly would fly by. She'd be like, see, that's, you know, that's my my dead sister flying by because I was just talking about her. Yeah, that's what they do. But remember that

movie with Matthew McConaughey, Frailty haven't seen that what no you have to watch it dude Matthew McConaughey is he's not the dad he's the little boy but he's like remembering his childhood and it's Matthew McConaughey as a little boy and then his brother and their dad makes them like help him kill people because he says he's getting messages from God and they're called like the God's hands killers it's crazy good crazy good movie messed up and i know you like matthew mcconaughey all right all right all right love them so and then you heard laurie say in this clip right she had this wonderful husband this beautiful life we like playing sports on our four acres none of it's true you know they they did have four acres but at that point her marriage was falling apart. And she certainly wasn't ready to admit that to anyone else, maybe not even herself.

And this was the reality she wanted to broadcast to the world, that everything was perfect, that she had things under control. And she did this effortlessly with a smile. And this is exactly the way she would do it when her two children went missing almost two decades later. Like, I remember all the times that the reporters would, like, run up to her before they got arrested. And they'd be like, Lori, where's your kids? And she would just like smirk at them. She'd be like, no comment, no comment. And then when she would talk to her mother or her sister, and they'd be like, where's the kids? She'd be like, everything's

fine. Just trust me. Nothing's wrong. Everything's good. And she just sort of like, I don't think it was denial, but it was just like, I have to show everybody that I have things under control. Everything's good. So after winning on Wheel of Fortune, Lori entered the Mrs. Hayes County Beauty Pageant and she won. No one was really sure why she decided to enter the pageant. Her younger sister, Summer, said that she believed Lori did it as an outlet and also that she was hoping that it might help her marriage. I think Lori did it because she likes being the center of attention. But what do I know? However, winning this pageant got her an entry into the Mrs. Texas pageant, which would take place in Grapevine the following year. And if she was able to win there, she'd go on to the Mrs. America

pageant, which was the title that the then 30-year-old Lori really wanted. And so for the next few months, she put all her focus into getting pageant ready. And by the time she walked the stage in a teal bikini, Lori was in great shape. She looked amazing. But maybe appearances are deceiving, and what was going on inside of her was not as peaceful and perfect, because Lori would actually get into the finalist round. But something she said in her interview with the judges may have ruined her chances. Tell us who you are, what did you do?

Being a good mom is very important to me, and a good wife, and a good worker, and being all those things together is not easy. So I'm basically a ticking time bomb. Yikes. Just the laugh afterwards. It's like, well, you're out of the top 10 right i'm basically about to lose my fucking mind i'm basically a ticking time bomb wow i'm sure the judges were like

they had the same reaction you did yikes okay next Okay, next contestant. Yeah, so exactly. I mean, she obviously did not make it into the final five. She didn't win. She didn't go on to Mrs. America, and it probably hit her a little hard. But during the two days of pageant festivities, it looked like Lori and her husband were great. Joe, Ryan, and Lori were seen together. They looked poised and polished, happy, the ideal couple. But it was all just a facade because directly after losing the Mrs. Texas pageant, Lori filed for divorce from Joe Ryan and he moved out of the home. Now, Lori needed some help with the kids at that time, so she flew her 15-year-old niece, Melanie, to Texas to help with baby Ty Lee. Melanie and Lori had always been very close. When Melanie had been born, a 16-year-old Lori had walked around with the baby in her

arms pretending to be Melanie's mother. And since Melanie's real mother, Stacey, had passed away, Lori had become a surrogate mother to her niece, which is probably why Melanie would later be influenced to follow Lori and her bizarre religious beliefs. If Lori and Chad Daybell had a cult, Melanie definitely would have been part of it. She will say that she does not believe that and she does not feel that, but I do. Yeah. I mean, they usually don't agree with that, right? They're not going to use the phrase cult ever. That's what it was. Yeah. It's a group, an organization,

whatever. They'll use whatever phrasing they can. It's a family, whatever, a group of people with a common belief. They have a family, like Charles Manson and his family. Yeah. Now, I'm not going to say that Melanie knew what was going on. I don't think she knew everything. I definitely don't think she knew that JJ and Tylee were murdered by their mother and their uncle. But, you know, I think that she knew enough where some of these things that Lori and Chad were talking about were like literally bananas, bananas. And I think that

a person who hadn't been so heavily influenced by Lori to believe that Lori kind of had all the answers. I think any other person besides that would have been like, I don't know about this stuff. I don't know about this stuff. But Melanie sort of went along with it. And, you know, I can't even really blame her because it seemed like she had a very chaotic childhood and somewhat of a chaotic life. But after Joe Ryan left, Lori could only stay in the expensive Driftwood home for so long because she was just not paying the mortgage and she would eventually get evicted. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But first, let's talk about how after the divorce went through in May of 2005, Lori was supposed to share custody of two-year-old Ty Lee with Ty Lee's father, Joe Ryan.

And Joe was given visitation rights. They'd agreed on a court-ordered schedule, which included, you know, some weekends, holidays, summers, things like that. Joe was also ordered to out a $350,000 life insurance policy, naming Lori as the beneficiary and trustee for Tylee. And I bet Lori wished she could just take Joe out and get that money, because according to a 2005 bankruptcy filing, she desperately needed it. Lori was broke and drowning in debt. As I said, after Lori filed for divorce, Joe Ryan moved out of the mansion. Lori didn't pay the mortgage, and when she was evicted, they still owed $560,000 on the $710,000 home. She also owed $16,000 on her car, which was

more than the car was even valued to be worth at that time. She owed almost $100,000 in taxes. Her and Joe jointly owed that in taxes. She had $28,000 in credit card debt, and she had all these loans and medical bills that she hadn't paid. And Lori claimed that at that time she was making $3,700 a month cutting hair and $1,500 a month from Joe's child support, but that was not enough to meet her monthly expenses, which included $1,900 rent on her apartment in Austin, Texas, which like she didn't need to get an apartment that was $1,900, by the way. She didn't need to, but she had to live her life of luxury. And this is like, what, 2005? Right now, $1,900 for an apartment in Austin, Texas is probably pretty standard.

But then it was expensive. That's expensive. I mean, I feel like that would be considered kind of expensive now. You're not going to get a shitty apartment for $1,900. In 2005, $1,900 for an apartment in Austin, Texas was like, this is a luxury apartment. Yeah, my place isn't much more than that. I mean, it's more, but again, like you said, it's 2023. So that's expensive for 2005. It's expensive. Especially with the market the way it was. And you ain't got no money, girl.

You ain't got no money. Yeah. Because she can't sacrifice anything. She has to live this like Kim Kardashian life. And that brings us to another of Lori's patterns. Troubles with money did seem to plague Lori as she made her way through life because she had a tendency to spend it before she had it. And whenever Lori got married, she would stop working and let her husband spoil and support

her. And when she got divorced, she would go back to work for a little bit until she found another husband to spoil and support her. That was how she met Joe Ryan. And it was how she would meet her next and fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who honestly, Charles was the best of the bunch. Charles was awesome. What a sad thing for him that he came across Lori Vallow. Charles Vallow is another victim in this case and he did not deserve this at all. So Charles, I think he met Lori

through like somebody else that worked at the salon. He came into the salon to get his hair cut and he immediately was just smitten with Lori. He was 49 years old, born and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He had like a cute Southern accent. He was very much a Southern gentleman. He was a successful financial planner who had an expensive haircut, wore tailored suits, and was in great shape from his time as a college and semi-pro athlete.

Charles Vallow had attended McNeese State University, where he'd been given a scholarship to pitch for their baseball team. And in 1975, he set a new record for the university when he struck out 13 batters in the first ever college game he pitched. In 1977, Charles was drafted by the Houston Astros, a semi-professional baseball team. And when Charles met Laurie, he too was fresh off of a tumultuous divorce and custody battle. Lori was the oasis in the desert that he needed. And she needed a man to take care of her and her two children. And even Colby, her son says, later says like, yeah,

I think, you know, my mom definitely liked Charles, but what she liked most about him was that he made good money. And he would provide stability and security and take care of her. Yeah. Which, like I said, Charles Vallow did not deserve that. He was a good man. He was a good man and he deserved a good woman in return. And he got freaking Lori. So things between Lori and Charles moved very fast. Right. Lori had this way of convincing men that she was head over heels in love with them so that they would become head over heels in love with her or at least feel safe to like fall into her. And on February 24th, 2006, the couple were married in Vegas. And once again, no one from Lori's family was present. However, out of all of Lori's husbands thus far, everyone seemed to like Charles the most. Lori's son Colby said that Charles was

really sweet and he cared about Lori right from the start. He wanted to give Lori everything she'd ever wanted. He wanted to make her happy. And that included eagerly converting to the Mormon religion for her. It seemed like Lori in the past with her past husbands, she'd always had to pull teeth to get them to even consider converting, right? But Charles, he didn't even take any convincing. He was happy to do it if that's what she wanted. He was happy to do it if it made them more of a family unit. Even Charles' ex-wife, Cheryl Wheeler, didn't have anything bad to say about Charles. They shared two sons together, 11-year-old Nicholas and 8-year-old Zach, and the boys were not interested in playing baseball, which obviously was Charles' thing. They wanted to play soccer.

They wanted to do rowing. But Charles never made them feel obligated to play baseball. He never made them feel bad about it. He supported them in everything they did. And he was described as being a Disney dad. He genuinely loved spending time with his kids. He took them fishing and camping and Boy Scouts. He was very present and engaged. And at first, his ex-wife Cheryl was happy that Charles had found someone else and had moved on because, you know, he'd been so devastated when she'd found someone else and moved on. So Cheryl thought initially that Lori was perfect because once again, like everyone else, she thought Lori was beautiful and warm.

And Cheryl was like, well, you know, this woman has two kids of her own and she seems deeply religious. And, you know, this is going to be good for Charles. But it only took a few times of meeting and interacting with Lori for Cheryl to change her mind. Lori has a good ability to weed out people that don't drink her Kool-Aid. And I was one of those people. I mean, we've maybe said three sentences to each other in all this time. So she was and she was not a good mother. The boys would come home and they'd tell me things and, and, you know, they were used to my household and the rules and how

it was all going. And, you know, Charles was just head over heels and just didn't see what was happening or potentially happening with his sons and being around her. All right. So ex-wife didn't like Lori. I can understand that on top of other reasons, but usually that's the case. But I mean, this doesn't seem like it's a real sixth sense. I don't normally the ex-wife doesn't like the new the new wife. Well, she liked her at first, right?

Because here's how I think the divorce with Charles and Cheryl went. I think that Cheryl found someone else and then they wanted to get divorced. So Charles was like heartbroken about it. And he really wanted like Cheryl to come back to him. So Cheryl was like, thank God he's found someone else. You know, he can go and get married and he can move on because I've already moved on. And this will be less like, you know, tense for us. So she liked Loriori at first but

then after a little you know a couple times she was like oh this bitch crazy yeah well that happens a lot but for the time being you know for for a short time things seemed peaceful with this new blended family they lived in a big house outside of austin they had a pool so that colby tylee nicholas and Zach could play and swim together. Charles also made sure that Lori had an in-house hair salon that he did not bust up with a baseball bat. Andy took it a step further and also made sure she had a room with mirrors on the walls to dance in at night so that she could convene with God and the spirits on the other side of the veil. Colby was doing great. For once, he was kind of like feeling stable. He was enrolled

in elementary school. Tylee was in daycare. Lori was wearing designer clothes, driving expensive cars, and she had a husband who would spoil her senseless. She pretty much had everything she ever wanted, but apparently Lori was not happy enough with having it all to leave the past in the past. And although she divorced Joe Ryan, she hadn't destroyed him yet. She wasn't done with him yet. On August 8th, 2006, Lori called the Hayes County Sheriff's Office and accused her ex-husband of sexually abusing both of her children, Tylee and Colby. And this is where things seem to go downhill for everyone. Because at one point, both Charles and Lori were in the same court in front of the same judge for custody battles with their designated ex-spouses because Cheryl now didn't want her kids to be at Lori with Lori at Lori's house because she was like Lori's crazy there's something wrong with this woman and to the point where they actually

had a judge the judge had like installed cameras in Lori and Charles house so that they could like watch you know how she interacted with the kids and they didn't find anything on the camera she didn't do anything because she knew she was being watched. You know, it's freaking Lori. She knows she's being watched. But apparently, you know, Cheryl's kids and Charles's kids would come home to Cheryl and be like, Lori's doing some like crazy stuff. She's acting weird. We're not comfortable. We don't feel safe. So they had cameras installed. And eventually Cheryl was like, I don't I don't want them to go there anymore. So they were both in custody battles. Lori was in a custody battle with Joe Ryan.

Charles was in a custody battle with Cheryl and they were in front of the same judge. So the judge was like, well, we should just combine these cases because this is ludicrous. Charles's ex-wife Cheryl was trying to get her kids out of the house with Lori because she felt that Lori was not mentally stable. And what she saw in court only solidified that belief, with Sheryl saying, quote, Lori was also in a custody battle with Joseph Ryan, and it was so intertwined that the judge combined our cases all together in the courtroom. It was quite odd, but she loved it. That's when I learned she doesn't do what she's told to do. She doesn't want to. I saw that a lot in court, end quote. That is for sure. Now, the abuse claims against Joe Ryan are complicated because multiple experts would find that they were not substantiated and Tylee herself would deny them.

But to this day, Colby insists that he was sexually abused by Joe Ryan. So once again, this is very a complicated situation. We don't know who to believe or what to believe. But basically, as soon as Lori made these allegations, Hayes County began an investigation, and they brought out everything that they had for this investigation. They clearly took the charges very seriously. Police arranged for Colby and Tylee to be interviewed by a child abuse expert at a place called Roxanne House, which was a nonprofit that worked with abused children. And during this interview, three-year-old Tylee did not make any claims of sexual abuse. She said she knew where her private parts were and that her father did not touch her there or look at her there.

She said that they did sleep together in the same bed, but that was because she was scared of monsters and her daddy wore his pajamas. Tylee said that sometimes she was afraid of her daddy, but she was unable to verbalize why. And when the 30-minute interview ended, Tylee was asked again if she was afraid of her father, and this time she said no. During Colby's interview, he said that Joe had molested him when he was eight years old, and he gave graphic details about this abuse, but he admitted he'd only told his mother Lori a few days before she called the police. Now, here's something I will highlight. This is what is said in the records, that Colby says, I only told my mother about this few days before she called the police. But in that docuseries on oxygen that I was talking about, Colby says

that he had told his mother earlier. And that was when that was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back. And that was when she decided to divorce her husband. Like that was kind of the last thing she couldn't take anymore. And when Lori talks about this later, she talked about it on a podcast. She says, oh, you know, I my husband was raping my children and, you know, I wanted to kill him. I was planning on killing him like I had to get out. that Colby had told his mother this far earlier than he claimed to have at the time. Like during the time that he was being interviewed, he said he had just told her. So once again, I don't know what to believe, but that whole kind of like timeline doesn't add up. Yes. Something's off there. I mean, based on what we know about her, I would venture to say he probably told her sooner. And maybe in this interview, he wanted to protect her a little bit. I don't know. I just told her. I probably told her sooner and maybe in this interview he wanted to protect her a little bit.

I don't know. I just told her. I just told her. But the reality is he had told her much, much earlier. That's my guess, but I have nothing to substantiate that. Yeah, we can just assume. That's alleged. Based on what we know about Lori now and her decision-making skills.

Based on what we know about Lori now, I wouldn't be surprised if she planted these memories in her son's head. But that's not to say that it didn't happen. I get what you're saying. We don't know, but it's possible, right? So Lori then told the social worker that when she was still married to Joe, she'd found hundreds of gay porn sites on his computer. But she said she had no idea that he was sexually interested in men. And when the police asked to talk to Joe about these allegations, he immediately hired a lawyer. And six weeks later, he filed his own motion accusing Lori of violating their custody agreement by refusing to give him access to their daughter. And she'd already violated the agreement when she moved in with Charles because she was supposed to have remained within 100 miles of where Joe lived. Here's Joe Ryan's lawyer, Keith Taniguchi,

discussing the lengths that the police went to investigating these child abuse claims made by Lori. The truth was is that they said that he was doing all kinds of abhorrent sexual contact with her. So among other things, they went over there and took his bed and they cut the top off his bed and they took all the sheets and whatever he owned and they took it over there to,

and had it inspected for DNA because they thought they were gonna find his DNA and her DNA all over the bed or somewhere and because they surprised him, it was, you know, increased the chance that he couldn't go over there and somehow tamper with the evidence. And so they went off and they spent months over there looking at this mattress. And, of course, it came out nothing. In the meantime, he went and took a polygraph test and she was sent to a counseling.

And I don't remember how she arrived at this counselor. This counselor was allegedly, and she's now deceased, was an expert on child abuse. And she had a partner that also claimed the same title. And so they went through this counseling and Tylee kept saying the same thing until one day Tylee kept saying the same thing until one day Tylee recanted. During this investigative stage, I got a phone call from the second person in charge of the Mormon Church. No kidding. Second person.

He calls me up and vouches for her authenticity. And I'm like flabbergasted. How do you get, it'd be like getting the Pope to call me or the bishop under the Pope or whatever to call me about some disciple. And I was like, this is getting out of hand again. So looking back through like the records, there was a time when Tylee told her therapist things about her father. So as far as I understood, and it's complicated, right? Because I had to go through all a bunch of different records. Tylee was seeing a therapist regularly, like during the whole custody battle thing. But she was also being interviewed by these child abuse experts at this Roxanne house. So it was kind of like a

separate thing. And Tylee would sometimes tell her therapist things about her father sexually abusing her. She never did tell the child abuse expert at the Roxanne house that stuff. But then she kind of went back on these claims. So when she was interviewed by a child abuse specialist on March 21st, 2007, the counselor was disturbed by what they witnessed from Lori and Tylee. Tylee said that Joe Ryan was her old daddy and Charles was her new daddy. And then when she was asked if anyone had told her to say bad things about her old daddy, Joe Ryan, Tylee responded that Colby and Charles had. Now, in the notes from the session, it states, quote, when the child made these statements, the mother's jaw dropped, eyes widened, and she appeared quite shocked.

She did not seem fearful she was in trouble. Rather, she seemed in disbelief and shock. End quote. Another report from a different psychologist from the Orion Treatment Center in Austin said, quote, The report also stated that Lori claimed once again Tylee was the reincarnation of her sister Stacey, and she talked to Stacey through Tylee, which is concerning to me because Tylee was like three years old. And how was Lori talking to Tylee as if Tylee was her sister, her adult sister, Stacey? Like that would probably be very confusing for a three-year-old

girl. Like why the hell is my mom calling me Stacey and talking to me about all these things that I don't understand? I have no idea who she's talking about. You know, like it was probably very disruptive. And I have no idea why these counselors just were like, oh, yeah, you know, she says that, you know, Lori says she talks to Ty to her dead sister Stacy through Ty Lee. And they weren't like, I wonder how psychologically traumatic that is for a child. Yeah, a lot of this, I'll be honest, is definitely confusing to me. It seems like there's a lot of back and forth and there's some things that if I was in this profession would

raise some flags for me that I would want to look in more and I wouldn't just say, yeah, that makes sense. But I always try not to Monday morning quarterback these professionals because it's easy to, when I'm sitting here behind a camera, seeing it, you know, hearing it from you, I wasn't there. I don't know the, you know, the whole situation. I don't think behind a camera, seeing it, you know, hearing it from you. I wasn't there. I don't know the, you know, the whole situation. I don't think we ever can, but I will say on the surface, just you talking about it, I'm in agreeance with you. Some of it definitely is a head scratcher to me. Well, I mean, from what I could tell, there was several people who said that like, yeah, Lori would make these alarming statements to these mental health professionals and to social workers

and stuff. She would make these alarming statements. But because she was so charming and because she seemed so, you know, sane and down to earth and like this person said, genuinely religious, they kind of were just like, oh, it's fine. You know, this is just like her religion. She seems perfectly sane otherwise. So she could say these crazy things with such like conviction and, you know, level headedness almost. And then this like charming, sweet personality that she had that she, people just seemed like taken with her. And they kind of just like went along with it. That's what people say. I can completely see that. And I think you showing, I know we were joking about it earlier,

but I think showing that wheel of fortune clip really drives that home. And by the way, top five or whatever she was, top 10 for Miss Texas, not easy to do, not easy to do. And you have to not only be attractive, you have to be someone who's charismatic, someone who is engaging, someone who people are drawn to. I mean, Mrs. Texas, I mean, let's think about that. It's a big deal. And so it just, it reinstills the fact that it wasn't an isolated group of people who she was able to manipulate on a large mass scale in a room full of people who were judging these women constantly for this recognition, this award, right? This title. She was able to fool all of them. For a little bit until she said she was a ticking time bomb she was a ticking time bomb but i don't think it's going out on a limb to say that this was someone

regardless of what we know she did now uh in this moment she was really in her prime and she in conjunction with her looks this was not someone that people looked at and said or listened to and said yeah this is someone we have to watch out for she was able to play that character very well to the point like i just said where she was able to fool a room full of literal judges it's pretty impressive and i mean you can tell like she does all of the things and i'm like i'm glad that if you're watching on youtube you would have seen that clip of her on wheel of fortune. She does all the things you're supposed to do. We'll have it in there with the audio, but it doesn't do it justice with the video.

She smiles huge. She leans in. She touches. You know, it's this flirtatious kind of really very disarming, like, oh, I'm just I'm here to be friendly and here for you. And I'm so warm. And she leans into them like this is what they tell you to do when you're like manipulating people or if you're trying to flirt and have somebody let their guard down, like this is what you're supposed to do. This is the kind of body

language that they suggest doing. It opens other people up to you. So she I don't know if it came naturally to her or if she practiced that. I tend to think it came naturally to her. Yeah, I don't think she was like putting a lot of effort into it i think that some people just had that innate ability she was definitely one of them yeah and oh not only did laurie tell the counselor that she was talking to her dead sister through her three-year-old daughter tylee she told the counselor that she had been talking to the ghost of a lawyer at night who had been giving her some great legal advice. Jesus. Oh, okay.

Whatever you say, Lori. So in April, the therapist who had been seeing Tylee regularly for, you know, standard therapy, she witnessed Lori coaching Tylee to say things about Joe Ryan. And the therapist noted, quote, Tylee has almost battled up due to being pushed so much. Tylee almost spilled the beans during one session, but then closed up. Ms. Vallow is very anxious and tied up in multiple

legal situations. The anxiousness appears to be affecting Ty Lee, end quote. And at the end of May 2007, both Joe and Lori, so Joe, her ex-husband Joe Ryan, and Lori were at the Travis County Courthouse for another custody hearing. This is ludicrous. But Joe walks by Lori in the cafeteria. So they had a break. They both went to the cafeteria to grab a drink. Joe walked by Lori. And she began screaming that he had hit her.

And this caused Joe Ryan to be arrested on the spot. And Joe's lawyer, Keith, was also in the cafeteria. And he witnessed the whole thing. And he's like, let's be clear. I definitely think Lori made this up and was lying simply to get Joe in trouble. You know, she loved the drama. She loved the attention and she loved torturing this guy

and making him look bad so that he wouldn't be able to see his kid, which I think is just the most disgusting thing ever. Because by this time, this whole time this is happening, like eight, nine months, he has not seen his daughter it's disgusting yeah that's um that's a tough one to think that he was going through that and i wish this was something that didn't happen to a lot of people out there but it does it happens every day yeah and i mean like listen was joe ryan kind of physically abusive to colby probably because we have witnesses who said that was he sexually abusive to Colby? Probably, because we have witnesses who said that. Was he sexually abusive to Colby? Could be, right? Could be. We don't know. There's no evidence that he sexually abused his daughter, Tylee, because in July, the findings from the sex offender assessment done on Joe Ryan showed that Joe posed no was in Tylee's best interest to be reunited with her father as

soon as possible since she'd already been withheld from him for so long and at that point it had been almost a year that Joe had not been allowed to see Tylee the entire time. Vivian Lewis, the psychologist who prepared the report, also voiced her concern about how Lori was going to take this news, writing quote, Miss Vallow is a devout Mormon who has mentioned to me that death would be an option before giving Tylee back to her father, even for a visit. These are real and serious concerns. I have no way of knowing if Miss Vallow was serious, end quote. Hindsight gives us the benefit of knowing that Miss Vallow was indeed serious. Yeah. Yep. Indeed serious. And she was willing to take certain actions to see her ex-husband and the father of her child taken out of the picture.

And as she always did when she was having, you know, men problems, Lori called her older brother Alex to ride in and save the day. And that's where we're going to pick up next time. I mean, that was a lot. We went almost two hours and we're just covering background. Yeah. And we haven't even started on Chad's crazy ass yet. That's what I'm saying. I mean,

we're just covering background. So this is a deeply rooted story that didn't start a year or two ago where we are now with, you know, this case and the recent, the recent developments in it i don't think i need to like be cryptic she was obviously found guilty but it's one of those things where how we got there especially to end where you ended it as far as her making these these threats i guess we'll call them that right years ago and people being unsure if she was serious or not it's unnerving

now to think about it because and we always say say this, the coulda, shoulda, woulda, I don't think this is something where you would have, but damn, you know, if things are just taken a little bit more seriously, you wouldn't be human if you didn't ask yourself, what if, what if just as it was one person who took her comments literally and got these children away from her, where would we be right now? Would we be here? I mean, like I said earlier, a lot of people will say, and I mean, including Lori, right? And her lawyer, this was not Lori's fault. Chad Daybell manipulated her and he planted these like crazy religious beliefs in her head. And I think we have disproved that at least that

Chad planted these crazy religious beliefs in her head. I think they we have disproved that, at least that Chad planted these crazy religious beliefs in her head. I think they fed off each other. I think they met each other and they both had these crazy religious beliefs and they like fostered them in each other. Because she was already talking about, you know, convening with the spirit of her dead sister through her daughter and talking to like the ghost of a lawyer at night, far before she even knew Chad Daybell existed. So would this have happened still? Maybe. I feel like Lori had a way,

and even later the prosecutor in her case would say like, somehow Lori managed to get out of trouble all the time. She managed to sometimes always come out on top, no matter how bad it was, no matter how dire it looked for her. She'd always find a way to wiggle out of it. So whether that was luck or maybe her spirit guides were helping her or just because she was charming and blonde and had a big

smile and white teeth and knew how to play the game and knew how to manipulate people. I don't know what it was, but I definitely think that she would just have kept getting away with it. Yeah. I definitely don't think she was some innocent person until she met Chad Daybell. And then all of a sudden he groomed her or manipulated her, whatever you want to, whatever you want to. He didn't create this, right? She wasn't brainwashed. She clearly had an undertone of this from a very early time and fooled a lot of people. And I agree with everything you said as far as they were kind of meant for each other. And she had these traits, she had this skill set, these interpersonal skills, if you will, that were- Yeah, good way of putting it, interpersonal skills, very good ones. Very good. And Chad maybe helped her harness those skills because he had, because he had some of his own, but they were just. He really didn't, actually.

Really? I mean, he wasn't someone who was charismatic. Nope. So even though he was able to control people and do these things and he just. I don't think he, like, I really don't like, I think she was the mastermind, man. Like, listen, usually cult leaders are what charismatic right yeah they have something about them that's in that's endearing you know where you're like oh i maybe i see their point a little bit not that you would fall for it but like you could see how others would yeah chad did not okay okay chad did not but he was considered the leader was he not by who yeah i mean my understanding from the the minimal amount of information I have with this, he kind of brought her in.

But you're telling me that you don't think that's the case. No, dude. He didn't bring her in. She started reading his books and listening to his interviews on podcasts. And she was like, I must meet this man. And then she goes to this prepper convention and goes up and introduces herself to him and flirts with him. And then within no time, he's texting her being like, oh, we were married in our other lives. And, you know, the God told me I would meet a sparkling woman today and stuff like that. So like he wasn't like a charismatic speaker,

though. He wasn't like this extrovert. He wasn't the sparkling personality. That was Lori. Chad was kind of like weird and awkward and like kind of a quiet guy like an introvert you know a writer he would speak if he had to do speaking engagements but he's not super like charismatic at all so it's interesting what what you're saying though it's you have this woman who was charismatic good-looking knew how to get what she wanted I mean she literally was in a competition for it and did very well. And there's a potential that Chad Daybell was her new target, you know,

air quotes here, researched him, read his books, listened to his podcast, kind of got in on who he was as a person, what made him tick, what he gravitated towards, goes out to his convention, right? With the intention on crossing paths with him and knowing that when she did if she did She would know what to say how to say it so that he would be drawn to her and there's a real possibility that her whole Reasoning behind going was obviously not only to meet him but to like warm her way into his life in his heart Grab his attention in a way where he would want to continue the conversation afterwards which is exactly what she got and i mean that's some deep shit to think that she this was a premeditated uh if anyone's playing the long game it's lori though right come on definitely someone who got what she wanted not only that even the casting

to people who put her on wheel of fortune all I mean, she definitely knew how to win over whoever she was trying to influence or impress. And this could just be another example of that. It's like you said, a long game. Good way to describe it. Honestly, like I may change my mind because I've never gone this in depth before. I may change my mind as we go along. But where I stand now, Lori's the mastermind. Lori's driving the ship. Lori is like,

this is Chad is a vehicle I can use to move myself to the next level. Because at some point, she convinced Charles Vallow to convert to Mormonism. I mean, she didn't, like I said, it didn't take much convincing. He wanted to do it. Right. But then after a couple of years, she started telling people like, oh, he's not my spiritual equal. Charles doesn't understand these very complicated concepts. And he tries to, but he just can't. And this poor guy is doing his very most to catch up with her and try to be on her level and be on the same page as her. But he can't because she's been doing it her whole life and he's new to it.

And she's very much making him feel bad and inadequate for this. And then she's got Chad Daybell here, who's like the freaking king of the Mormons, has like a family that stretches back to the founders of like the LDS church, very much like kind of Mormon royalty. At least that's the way he would make it seem in his autobiography, right? And she's like, oh, this is a person who's going to bring me to the next level. Because there's going to be like a doomsday and there's going to be a reckoning. And only a certain amount of people are going to be left.

And I can't like make it with freaking Charles over here, who doesn't know his ass from his elbow when it comes to Mormonism. But Chad Daybell will get me there. Okay? I'm just going to say that's what I think happened. She uses people, man. She uses people as stepping stones. And she doesn't care who she hurts or whose freaking eye socket she's putting her stiletto heel

in on her way up to the top. That was very visual, wasn't it? There's Stephanie's speech for the end. Well, weigh down in the comments below. Let us know, what do you think? Is Lori the puppet or is she the puppeteer? There ain't no way Lori freaking is a puppet. There ain't no way. Way down below. Let us know what you think. We always like the engagement. We want to hear what you think.

Puppets or puppeteer? On that note, we're going to end this episode. Like, comment, subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening on audio, please leave a review. Leave a comment as well. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Let me know in the comments if you think that Derek would have fallen for Lori Vallow's charms. I'm talking Wheel of Fortune era Lori Vallow. Like, would he have just fallen, been another fly in her spider's web, in her black widow web? Let me know. Or would Derek have puppet mastered Lori Vallow?

Let me know in the comments. Okay. Thank you guys so much for being here. See you next time. Night. Night.

Night. Night.