Dateline Originals - Mommy Doomsday - Ep. 1: Ticking Time Bomb

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Lori Vallow was a wife, mother, and beauty pageant contestant. Then people around her started dying.This episode was originally published on February 16, 2021. 

Two days before Thanksgiving, 2019, police arrived at a townhome in Rexburg, Idaho. Hi. Hi. You're Lori. Lori, I'm Lieutenant Ball for the Police Department. How are you? You got a minute? The woman the detectives encountered was attractive, late 40s.

If she was flustered about having police in her house, she didn't show it. She was matter-of-fact. The cops had a simple question. Where was her little boy? Lori answered right away, of course. She knew where he was, where both of her kids were. Her daughter, Tylee, was in college now. Was it BYU-Idaho, just up the hill from where they were standing?

Your daughter goes to BYU-Idaho? Yeah. Does she live here? Mm-hmm. And J.J.? The seven-year-old boy whose grandparents had called police in the first place. He wasn't home, said Lori. J.J. was in Arizona with her friend Melanie.

Thing was, said Lori, J.J. had autism, and he had not been doing well in his new school. She figured he'd do better back in Arizona. She'd join him there soon, she said. I'm going to go back to Arizona so I can put him back in the special needs school. He couldn't do his school here. It was too hard for him. He would scream and cry, take him to school. The principal would have to come out, try to drag him out of the car. Like, this is too hard.

Lori said she wasn't really surprised JJ's grandparents had called the police. Lori had been having all sorts of trouble with grandparents Kay and Larry. She had been trying to avoid dealing with them, much as she could anyway. They had just called in this welfare check as a stunt, a play for custody. And the cops seemed to buy it. People in general tended to buy whatever Lori was selling. See, and we hadn't heard any of that as far as... I'm just saying she's doing this as part of that, my understanding. And our only concern in this whole thing is the child. I got it. You know, and I understand now that we've heard your side of the story. It's awful.

At this very moment, she said, JJ was probably at the movies down in Arizona with her friend Melanie. So she said, go ahead, call Melanie. If they're at the movie, that's... Probably at Frozen 2 right now. Yeah. Because that's the one thing he wanted to do. I'm Frozen 2. Frozen 2, it's so cold here.

I don't know if I can handle a whole winter here. Sounded like Lori had them eating out of the palm of her hand. The cops even apologized for their visit. Sorry, Bob. Thank you. We don't mean to be a problem. I'm sorry that people are constantly knocking on my door. I'm looking for me and I just don't want to be found.

The police left, made a call to Lori's friend Melanie in Arizona, and she didn't answer right away. Probably at the movies, right? But from their home in Louisiana, those troublesome grandparents kept pushing. Y'all go put eyes on JJ. Y'all better do it. Y'all got to do it. So detectives wanted to talk to this Melanie, confirmed the boy was with her. And when she finally called back, she said, no, JJ wasn't with her. In fact, she hadn't seen him in three months.

Of course, detectives went looking for Tylee, too, and discovered she wasn't registered at BYU, and nobody had seen her around town, either. The next day, police went back to Lori's house with a search warrant this time. But Lori was gone, vanished. JJ's grandparents' fears were confirmed. Something was very, very wrong. But getting that news that they'd gone to the house, there was nobody there, there was no sign of any children.

It was, it was, where's J.J.? Where's J.J.? Where's J.J.? The grandparents' call led to an FBI investigation. And from there, a big Rexburg snowball. This story is about a woman. About people around her dropping like flies. It's about a fringe religious group. It's about the end of the world.

And zombies. It's about lazy beaches in Kauai, the desert of Arizona, a frostbitten pet cemetery, and a six-month search for two missing children. This is Dateline NBC's newest podcast, Mommy Doomsday. Seven-year-old Joshua J.J. Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, missing since September. Well, this is a bizarre mystery that involves a series of deaths, doomsday preppers, and now at the center of everything, two children that have gone missing. The bases seem to be preparing for the end. It was made known to her by the Lord that her family would not make it because of the tribulations that were going to

come. It's one of the tribulations that were going to come. It's one of the most unusual situations I've ever heard of in my career in law enforcement. She would say things like, well, it's Chad and I's mission to get rid of the zombies. Team 12's Nicole Zymek is sorting through this tangled web. Here at Dateline, we hear a lot of strange stories. Of course we do. Many true, yet hard to believe. Others, lies, meant to deceive us. And this story, this one, well,

there were hard truths we uncovered that we very much wish were lies. But early into this story, all we knew was that Tylee and J.J. had disappeared, and the people who should know where to find them were themselves missing. Lori Vallow and her new husband, Chad Daybell, had disappeared. Until we found them two months, in Kauai. You guys had an outfit? No, no comment. Where are your kids?

There they were, Chad in shorts, Lori's bathing suit peeking out from her tank top, off to the beach, apparently, looking like they hadn't a care in the world. And back on the mainland, far, far away, a grown son was confused. There's no other way to put it. She wasn't like this.

It's weird. It's just weird to see them together. The whole thing is just weird. Does it even seem like your mom? No. My mom loves us. Always did. Always took care of us. That lady doesn't seem to know. She would die for us. I swear she would die for us. Oh, yes. The Lori Vallow her son knew was the popular mom on the block. So magnetic. So committed. But this Lori was not

the same. Not the same at all. So, when we began this, we had two questions. Who is Lori, really? And where are those kids? This past year at Dateline, we've been investigating. And, well, we can certainly tell you who Lori used to be. Now we have contestant number 13, Lori Risen. Way back in 2004, in Another Life, Lori competed for the title of Mrs. Texas. She is 30 years old, and she stands at 5 feet 6 inches tall.

She has blonde hair and blue eyes. Her favorite food is also anything chocolate. She had toned arms, a radiant smile. She winked as she walked toward the audience. Thank you, ladies. You can go on off now and go get ready for swimsuit. Nice round of applause. There they are. Back then, Laurie certainly looked the part.

The idealized wife and mom. Though, she told pageant judges, she was so busy she often felt like a ticking time bomb. Said in jest, of course, a little quip. Sort of thing you'd say if life was busily perfect. Like the image on the stage in a beauty pageant. Laurie was raised in the LDS church, was devoted to the Mormon faith.

She had always wanted kids, a family. She got married young, divorced, and married again. And that's when she had her first kid, a son, Colby. What was it like to be with her as a little kid? We were really close.

I mean, I grew up being kind of like her little best friend. And so my mom and I did everything together. As single parents and their kids sometimes do because Lori's second marriage fell apart too. Anyway, Colby is at the heart of our story. He knows his mom best, probably out of anyone in the whole wide world. We had a lot of fun. I think that one of her main priorities was trying to, I guess, lighten up the dark. Because we had, you know, she was struggling, she was trying to provide for me, trying to figure out what she wanted to do.

She always wanted to have a family, and I wanted siblings, brothers and sisters, the whole family. And she just made everything fun. This time has a certain coziness to it. Yes, there were the struggles that come with being a single mom, but there was a lot of love, too. They were all each other had. Colby was like a little adult, his mother's best friend,

her confidant. Did she tell you things? Like what? I don't know. Things about her life that you wouldn't talk to other people about? Yeah, I think I got put into an adult situation. Sure.

I always got told what was going on. Kind of like the mate would be, right? Right, exactly. And so I was always on her side, but I always, at a young age, had to take responsibility for things. And so it made me feel like the man of the house always because I knew what was going on. I knew if we had no money. I knew if we were going to move. And it just, I just had to, like,

everything just started being water off my back. And you moved a lot. Mm-hmm. What was that all about? For me, it was just normal. All I knew is that I just packed my stuff up and we left. So I just remember. Mom would say, it's time to go, away you go.

It's time to go. It just, we got our stuff and we left. I don't remember her switching jobs. I don't remember anything too crazy. I just remember our situation always being hard. And so it was kind of like a flight all the time. It was always like trying to get away. Always running.

But from what? Maybe life wasn't so picture perfect after all. Colby wanted stability. He wanted to be a kid. And they wanted to feel like a family, a real family. Mom, dad, siblings, pancakes for breakfast, church on Sunday, the whole works. A regular Norman Rockwell painting, but Mormon. That's when Lori met her third husband, Joe Ryan. And then she met this guy, Joe. What was he like? I don't want to say anything negative about him,

but our relationship was not great. This wasn't the stepdad you were hoping for? Not for me. I mean, I was already protective of my mom from a young age. So when he came around, I was excited, but I was also just, you know, worried. You want to be wary. Yeah, exactly. And I just wanted to protect her from anything. And then came the sibling Colby always wanted. A baby sister, Tylee. He wasn't alone anymore. But families, no matter how imagined, how fantasized, are composed of humans, after all, imperfect ones. This was no Mormon Rockwell. Yes, Colby had a

sister with blonde hair and chubby cheeks, but he had a stepfather too. And he does not remember Joe Ryan fondly. He was just very explosive. He got mad and it was very mad. I remember like destroyed, we had a, so my mom had like an in-the-house salon that she would do her old client's hair. They would come all the way to see her. And he went in there with a bat and just destroyed it.

What? Just when he was angry. So, I mean, I get being angry, but his was just that high level, like, really scared. Like, you don't know what he's going to do. Did he ever abuse you or Tylee? There's definitely abuse for me. What kind of abuse?

He abused me. He was pretty physically abusive in a way he wasn't he he went out of his way to make a point when he would like spank me and then he just did weird things like little hits in the head like thought it was funny so there's a lot of stuff with that and then um you know we went to court for so many years over it but but he was sexually abusive as well. With you? Mm-hmm. And Tylee?

Tylee came out and talked about something. I'm not exactly sure because I was so young, and I remember just telling my mom. And after that, I don't know, Tylee had mentioned something which kind of started the big fight with everything. Joe and Lori fought bitterly about Tylee. As far as everyone could see, Lori loved her kids. She would fight for them, die for them if she needed to.

So Lori picked up her two kids, and again, she ran. What else could she have done? And that's when Alex Cox got involved. Alex, Laurie's brother. Well, when Laurie told Alex that Joe was abusing the kids, watch out. Alex went hunting. It was the summer of 2007.

Uncle Alex tracked Joe into a parking lot in Austin, Texas, lunged at him with a stun gun, said he was going to kill his brother-in-law. Joe escaped that day with a broken wrist, but he lived for now. Alex pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, did 90 days behind bars. But by the time all that happened, Laurie had already moved on, met a knight in shining armor, and everything changed.

Laurie's third marriage came to an ugly end. She accused that husband of abusing her two children. Her brother Alex assaulted the guy, spent time behind bars, wanted to kill him, Alex said. Not the image of a happy young LDS family. But even before all that drama played out, Lori was already hard at work building another family with another man. His name was Charles Vallow. They had a mutual friend who introduced them and they hit it off immediately. That's Kay again,

Charles' sister and JJ's grandma. Complicated, we know. We'll explain that, just not quite yet. For now, Lori. When Kay first met her, she was impressed. Well, a little mixed, but mostly. He was just enamored with her right away. We, one day, were talking, and I asked her, I said, well, how many, have you been married before? She said, yeah. She said, I said, well, how many times have you been married? And she said, three. And I said, and you're 32, girl, you know, you better hope this one sticks. And the kids, they seem to take to Charles just fine. He was so nice to me. He was so nice to Tylee. He made a lot of effort with us.

And he just, he like seemed like he genuinely cared about us. Was this the husband, the father figure that Lori's little family had been hoping for? He certainly seemed to be. Smart, successful, nice. He had children of his own from a prior marriage. He didn't seem to mind having a blended family. And, though he had been Catholic all his life, for Lori, he converted.

He joined the LDS church enthusiastically. And they were very active in the church, in the community. You know, Charles worked, Lori's a stay-at-home mom. Charles was over the moon, and they were loving, a stable family at last. It was refreshing, especially after so much pain and turbulence. Charles really did everything he could for my mom. I was just the type of person he was. He loved her. He clearly loved her, right?

Of course, yeah. And he just felt like whatever she wanted, he wanted to try to make her happy. But Charles offered more than love. He offered the kind of life money can buy, too. A product of a successful career in insurance. And with money came protection, security. The family moved together to suburban Phoenix to put some distance between them and the ex, Joe Ryan.

Colby wasn't exactly happy about this at first. I was so mad about moving to Arizona at first just because we went from Texas and then we went straight to the desert. And I'm like, this is the ugliest, worst place we could ever go. There's nobody here. But that was like, the reason I'm still in Arizona is because that feels like

the most home. Because when we were there, we stayed in one house. We had all of our family around us. They all came over for parties. Like that was like the highlight because there wasn't court drama. There wasn't custody battles. Like everybody was just calm. And so that was like the highlight. And that was for several years? Mm-hmm. That was all the way through high school. So from like eighth grade all the way till senior year. Wow.

Most stability you ever had in your life. Mm-hmm. They finally had their little slice of Rockwell in the Arizona sunshine. All was good. And it was in this time of peace and stability that a happy accident came into their lives. J.J. He's Kay and Larry's grandson. Kay's son is the boy's father.

J.J. was born ten weeks prematurely, weighing under three pounds, and like thousands of infants every year, he was born with drugs in his system, fighting to survive. Unfortunately, J.J.'s parents weren't in any shape to take care of him. So he became a ward of the state. Kay got a call when it was time for little J.J. to leave the hospital. It was social services on the line.

Would Kay and Larry take J.J. in? And the answer, the only answer, was of course. Raising a baby wasn't exactly how they'd expected to spend their golden years, but they'd make it work. They had to for their grandson. My biggest concern at that time, it had been a long time since I had raised a baby.

And when I tell you a baby, I'm talking about a baby. And the first night when we brought him home, obviously with the start that he had in life with substance in his body, and he was being weaned off of it. He was real restless. So when I got dressed to go to bed, I had my robe on, and my younger life, when my kids would get nervous or they couldn't sleep, I'd lay them on my chest and always put their head by my heart. And I from that moment on, I just absolutely fell in love with that little boy. And he will tell you, he's Pawpaw's boy. It was just, it was special. It was truly special. But Kay and Larry knew their home wasn't the best fit for a boy like JJ. He was on the autism spectrum and he needed stimulation. Kay and Larry had a business to run too, a 24-7 operation.

And so when Charles asked, would they consider letting him and Lori adopt JJ? Kay and Larry knew what their answer would be. We turned them over to them on February 14th or 15th of 2013. That's when they took physical possession of him. It was a sad day for us.

It was more than a sad day. It was a very sad day for us. But it was a joyous day in the sense that here was this perfect little mother and daddy that wanted an adopted child. They wanted their own child together. They wanted their own child together. And J.J. was it? And J.J. was it? And J.J. was it. I mean, he was. And every time we went, every time Kay went, he was so happy. He really was.

He was a happy child. And we seen such. We seen J.J. change so much for the better. Laurie at that time was an unbelievable mother. And we loved her. I mean, she was just amazing. And so was Charles. Charles was an unbelievable dad.

The moment he got home, he was with JJ. And he doted over him like a mother hen. It's hard to forget the direct line between that tiny three-pound JJ fighting for his place in the world and now. This was one of those decisions that changed everything. The kind of moment you could spend your whole life going over and over and over, like a bruise that never seems to heal. The gap where the tooth used to be. What if the grandparents had not let Laurie and Charles adopt the baby?

But you can't go there. You make the best decision you can at the time, and you don't look back. People get the if-onlys, and they sink beneath the waves. Back in Arizona in 2013, simpler times, Colby and Tylee were busy falling in love with their new little brother. What about JJ? When he came along, little baby, right? How old were you? I was 17. I mean, I remember the conversation of them telling us they wanted to adopt him. And I really remember thinking, like, we're all grown. Like, you're going to have a whole another baby?

It's nothing against JJ. It's just, you know, you're 16, arrogant, you don't know anything. So I was like, you're really going to bring a baby into a grown house, right? We're all about to be, you know, out of the house and stuff like that. So that was my first reaction. Then we got JJ and I fell in love with him like instantly. Just he immediately, like I would get up in the middle of the night, lived in the basement, run up to the room to see if he was breathing. Just stand there and just like, is this is this chest moving yeah so I loved him so much just from the beginning what was it about him he's just special he's just special he just he just has such a great spirit and when he was a baby he was already

a miracle baby like he barely made it out of being born right so I don't know what it was he just came into our lives and we all just fell in love with him so easily. He just was part of our family, like, without hesitation. So that initial skepticism went away pretty fast. What about Tylee? How did she get along with JJ? The same thing. I think Tylee, as JJ got older, because he did need so much special care, we really all learned how to take care of him.

So, like, you almost feel that connection to him. Like, okay, I know exactly how to take care of him. So like you almost feel that connection to him. Like, okay, I know exactly how to make, you know, your bottles. I know exactly how, you know, you like to go to sleep, things like that. So Tylee took on, I think, a motherhood role for him and just really felt. Yeah. I've seen a couple of photographs of the two of them together and she does seem to be tremendously protective. Yeah. And she loves him with all her heart. And then just when it seemed like life couldn't get any sweeter, the family moved to Hawaii. What was the reason for the move?

Charles has always wanted to live in Hawaii. And Laurie. And Laurie wanted to live in Hawaii. And Charles had a book of business that he was developing in Hawaii. And it was paradise. Laurie could be in the water every day, could be on the beach. At the beach. Yeah.

And she loved that. And she had J.J. with her. He loved it. He loves the water. He does. Whether it was a swan poo, a garden hose, or the Pacific. It was, he worked hard, he being Charles, he provided a good living. And he just simply, he wanted to be in Hawaii for a while.

They might have been shooting for the American dream before, but now the family was living in Eden. JJ's school was top-notch. Tiny classroom, teachers who really seemed to care. He flourished, was affectionate. He looked people in the eye. Charles and Lori were happy. Life was good. Very good.

They loved to do all this stuff. They found their things that they liked. happy. Life was good. Very good. They loved to do all this stuff. They found their things that they liked. They got paddle boards and just found the active things that they liked. But Charles was super happy. My mom was happy. That's their paradise. And it is. It's the most beautiful place you've ever seen. It's a lovely place to end there, too.

I mean, that's a sweet spot in the yard. Oh, yeah. Lori got active in the LDS church, and that's where she met a single mom named April. When I met Lori, I had been divorced for several years, but very isolated because of not having that sense of community. Isolated for being a single mom. Within the religion, I don't think there were any divorced women in our congregation. I was kind of the only one, and people were kind of, you know.

How did it feel? Almost like Hester Prynne, kind of like the Scarlet Letter, you know. It was very different. People looked at you funny or something. I felt that way. I definitely felt that way. So how did you meet Lori? So Lori, I met her at church, and we became fast friends.

Did you kind of recognize a kindred spirit? Yeah, very much so. I mean, she was from the mainland, and I had a fitness business. I was a fitness instructor, and she was a fitness instructor. And she was married to Charles at the time, but she'd been divorced. And so we, you know, here's another Mormon woman that's been divorced and been through what I've been through. And so we kind of connected on that level. I felt very understood by her.

April's experience with Lori was a lot like everyone else's at the time. Lori was charismatic, fun. Lori cared. So what was she like? Really fun. Fun to be around. Really positive. Full of energy.

Full of life. Really nice to me. Really nice to my boys. Kind of just enveloped us really quickly into her life. After this period of not feeling very welcome. Exactly. It was how? It was so refreshing and it was like, oh my goodness, this must have been meant to be.

That's how I felt. I felt like it was like divine design. And she was pretty charismatic, right? Oh, absolutely. Everybody loved her. Everyone loved being around her. How often did you see her? We would see each other several times a week.

We'd get together for, you know, go for walks after I got home from work. Or she was a hairstylist, so she would cut my hair. We'd have dinners, family dinners together. We both served in the primary presidency for our ward, and so we were always planning activities for the kids once a week or activities on Sundays. So you really were besties. We were really close, yes. But in Kauai, friendships can be as ephemeral as the clouds. Colby was the first to leave. Wasn't island fever exactly. He just wanted to be on his own, live his own life.

So he moved back to Arizona and enrolled in college and fell in love with his now wife, Kelsey. But Lori and Kelsey did not get along. So I think that what happened was it just became a competition, and I didn't really notice it. And my wife was saying, like, you know, do you see how she challenges me? I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, why?

For me, I was like, why can't you guys get along? My mom's so close. I'm so close to my mom. I'm so close to you. Like, I would wish you guys could just have a good relationship. My wife wanted to be close to my mom. I think there's just that disconnect. She took me away from her. And so it just made this huge dynamic that I was just too frustrated to deal with all of it. Your mom was treating you like a boyfriend, not like a son? Oh, 100%. And it took me a long time to get to that point, to understand that.

So, a mom having a hard time letting go of her eldest son? Frustrating, maybe. Not all that unusual. But then, well, there was this. You remember Joe Ryan, Lori's third husband, Tylee's dad? The one Lori's brother Alex assaulted with a stun gun after allegations of abuse? In the spring of 2018, Joe Ryan turned up dead. Did you ever wonder about Joe and why he...

I mean, he died of a heart attack, I guess. Absolutely. You do wonder about that. Oh, absolutely. When Lori told me about it, she was taking me to the airport. We were just talking, you know, chit-chatting along the way, and she said, well, you heard about Joe and Tylee's dad? I was like, yeah.

I said, what happened? And she said, well, you know, he is so evil. He was so evil, and God took him. God took him because he was too evil to be on this earth, and now we don't have to worry about him anymore, and Tylee doesn't have to deal with him. And I said, well, what happened? I mean, how did he die?

She said, well, you know, he was dead for like three weeks, and nobody even missed him. She said, because he is that evil, and people didn't want to be around him. But they smelled the smell. Maintenance went in, or whoever went in and found him. And he was, she said, it was a mess. But he was dead, and he left a little insurance policy. I was the beneficiary for $75,000, and now Tylee is getting Social Security every month from her dad,

so it's all good. He was evil. He needed to die. Maybe it was God's plan? Maybe. But to Kay and Larry, it seemed like a pretty convenient death for Lori. Now free of a troublesome ex was money for Tylee, too. I still don't believe, even though there was no autopsy done, there was nothing, I don't believe that he died of a heart attack.

Well, he got cremated. They had him cremated, and so they'll never know. That'll never be answered. Never be answered? Maybe. And maybe a bit too soon to say never. Besides, as you'll hear, it wasn't the last all-too-convenient death

to happen around Lori. Oh, no. Not by a long shot. This season on Mommy Doomsday. They said that different earthquakes are going to happen, different invasions are going to happen to the country. And in that process that they felt that Rexburg was going to be a place that this 144,000 are going to move here. And I heard Chad say that himself. He felt that Rexburg was going to be a place that this 144,000 are going to move here. And I heard Chad say that himself. He felt that that was the headquarters.

Next thing you know, she's like, I'm moving somewhere cold, and I can't really tell you where I'm going right now. And she had just pages and pages of doctrine and lists of categories that people belonged in. And in fact, my name was on one of the lists, but it was interesting because it was a, someone's name had been crossed out and mine had been handwritten, handwritten in. I saw him as the hand and her as the puppet on that hand. They were both like gasoline and fire. I have to believe, you know, she has a plan and knows what she's doing, and I have to wonder

if she has a reason she doesn't trust authorities or the court system. The court system's kind of failed her in the past, and, you know, I... Do you realize how astonishing this sounds? I know, but... I mean, really astonishing. Sure, I understand that, but the bottom line is I don't know what I don't know, and all I do know is she's done everything to protect her kids always. Will we see JJ and Tylee again? I absolutely believe so. I hope so. Mommy Doomsday is brought to you by Dateline NBC. For Dateline NBC, Shane Bishop and Vince Sterla are producers.

Linda Zhang is the associate producer. Joe Delmonico is the senior producer. Susan Nall oversees our digital programming. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is our executive producer. And David Corvo is our senior executive producer. From Dion Hum Media, senior producer is Odelia Rubin. Producer is Haley Fager.

Executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. With production help from Hansdale Sue. And music by Andrew Epin.