Hidden True Crime - Beyond the Veil: Revisiting Chad and a Tribute to Tammy Daybell

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Tonight, we revisit Chad’s role in the murders through a close examination of his family upbringing, books and career choices based upon new information since our first episodes. We lay the foundation for the combustible moment when Chad and Lori meet and nothing can deter them from their murderous mission. Lauren concludes dinner with a personal tribute to Tammy Daybell.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Oh, pogen, fast-bocked with cherlech. Hidden, a true crime podcast. A forensic psychologist and a journalist explore the hidden motives behind unthinkable crimes while examining our deepest fears along the way. The opportunity came for me to take over as the cemetery sexton there, and as I worked there, suddenly the ideas came more. You had a little more dead time while you were there.

Exactly. It's amazing what you can think about when you're wheat eating and digging graves. This is Lord Matthias. And I'm Dr. John Matthias. And that was Chad Daybell talking about working in the cemetery, which is going to be a big piece of the puzzle we're trying to solve. We'll get to that later. Today we're going to do something that we haven't done previously. We're going to bring together both Chad and Lori and analyze how and why the combination of Chad and Lori was much more powerful than each alone.

This is what I've been wanting to do since episode one when John said to me, I know that you want to talk about Lori right now, but we need to focus first on Chad. And then we got into Lori. It only took us 10 episodes. to get to the moment we've all been waiting for. And there is a lot to cover when it comes to bringing Lori and chat together and understanding the toxic combo they are. So I am going to sit back more during this dinner.

I've already told that to John. I'm going to let him explain the research that we've all been waiting to hear. So for those of you who tell us you've been binge listening, thank you. Hopefully there'll be a little bit of a payoff in these next few episodes. We expect dinner to be lengthy tonight. I've got my cheese plate in front of me. So we'll probably be dividing this episode into two parts. That's our guess.

We already had the discussion. John's map of things he wants to discuss is bigger than I've ever seen. And so I said to him, this has got to be two parts, right? And he said, yeah, two parts. But we're going to record it all tonight. So we have a two-hour dinner in front of us tonight. Maybe three. We'll see.

Are we going to start with Chad and then jump to Lori? Or what's the layout for tonight? Yeah, I want to return to Chad because, as we discussed early on, I think Chad is really the impetus and the origins behind these crimes. We're going to figure out what's the most hidden with Chad. And then we're going to go to Lori and we're going to try to figure out what's the most hidden with Lori. This is the hidden podcast after all. That's our job. Then we'll talk about how the combination of Chad and Lori together was,

inevitably a really toxic mix that led to these horrendous crimes. All right. Let us begin. We spent the first four episodes discussing Chad and breaking down some of the variables that I thought played a major role in his decision to participate in these murders. Today, we know much more about the Daybell family. We've heard from many sources close to the Daybell family that's improved our knowledge of Chad and his upbringing, and we hope to bring you some of those insights as we progress towards

a better understanding of Chad. When we're talking about the Daybell family, we're referring to Chad's family of origin, his parents who raised him and his siblings, his three brothers and sister, his parents, Jack and Sheila, we're talking about the family who helped mold him as a child. So let's start with the Daybell family. Originally when we talked about Chad, all of our information was based upon Chad's autobiography and his books. Chad has said many times that his books are a reflection of his visions that he's getting from the other side of the veil, so he perceives those to be real. We didn't really use a lot from the books because in many ways it reads like fiction. So we primarily leveraged his autobiography for information about the family. And one of the interesting things about

his autobiography is that Chad really didn't talk too much about his family. I mentioned that that his mother was barely mentioned. She was mentioned maybe three times in the autobiography. He seems to be much closer to his father. We knew that. There were a number of other elements of the autobiography that we talked about, but we've since learned from multiple sources

that there are many other issues going on with the Daybell family. Again, we're talking about the family who raised him, his parents and siblings. We've dug deeply into the Cox family in recent past, episodes, that's Lori Valo's family of origin. A lot of people say this, and I agree, there seems to be a lot more shocking stuff going on in the Cox household, Lori's family of origin, than in the Daybell family.

But with the Daybells, we have also heard from people who say they're a great family, they're a nice family. So let's break down what could possibly be going on in a family that from an outward appearance looks like a solid, healthy family. They come across as a very typical family in the autobiography as well. And I think that's a fair place to begin. I want to talk about some research by Robert Beavers and John Lewis that originated in the 1970s. They formed a research group called the Timberlawn Group outside of Dallas and Texas. They did, in my opinion, some of the best research on families that's ever been done. In many ways, I feel like this research has never really received its due. Beaver's and Lewis sought out a number of families. They followed these. They followed the

families longitudinally for many years and they devised a model of family functioning that's now called the Beaver Systems model. There's a continuum on this model going from severely dysfunctional families to optimal families. One of the things I really like about the Timberlong group research is they focused a good deal on optimal families, which I think is unusual in the family research literature. Well, there aren't a lot of optimal families. They say that. It's happening. actually, you know, around like 2% of their sample were optimal. Right, so don't feel bad everyone when you... Yeah, being optimal is very difficult to achieve.

And as we work closely in molding our little three-year-old, we have learned just how actually difficult it is to raise his son in an optimal fashion. So please don't feel bad if you don't consider your family to be optimal. The Daybell family, interestingly enough, on the Beaver's model, would fall into the mid-range. Mid-range families are what we would consider to be kind of your average family. Beaver says that these types of families are characterized by reasonably clear communication. They're loving families. There's some attempt at control in these families that there's a reasonable amount of control.

There's some distance typically between members. There's usually some underlying anxiety and anger or depression that occurs in these families. And I think probably the most interesting part about this type of family, the mid-wage family, is that this is a family that really keeps things on the surface. There's not a lot of ability to dig deep and to examine underlying emotions. There's struggles to connect in these families. There's a little bit of distance, as I said. there's some underlying anger, there's maybe a bit of a tendency for over control, there's,

as I mentioned, there's some anxiety, there's some depression. Things don't really get resolved in these families. And I think in looking at the Daybell family, I think it's fair to say that this is a loving family from what we can tell, that the kids in this family did feel love, they felt closeness to their parents. But most of them at least that we know. Most of them, yeah, most of them. I think that, you know, they're, you know, they're, you know, they're,

your typical family. The problem with a mid-range family, however, is exactly what I just mentioned, that there's a real struggle to connect. Sometimes I like to use the metaphor of the family dinner table. I picture most mid-range families as sitting down for dinner, talking about things to some degree, clearly, but not really digging too deep, keeping things on the surface, keeping some distance between each other. This is a family who probably doesn't talk a lot at the dinner table. When they do talk, it's how was your day? How was school? Blah, blah, blah, what happened at school? Just things that really don't have any emotional content. And if one of those members actually says, I had a bad day at school and I'm upset. The response would be get over it. Okay. Not only would

it be surface questions, but the members of the family would sort of be expected to give surface answers. Right. There's a negation of emotion. If somebody said, I had a bad day, it wouldn't be tell me what was going on. They wouldn't necessarily dig deeper into the emotion behind whatever brought on that bad day. It would be let's move on and talk about how good the dinner tastes.

Right. There's an attempt to keep things on the surface. And we know from some of our sources close to the daybells that this is the perception of the daybell parents, that there really is this fear for lack of a better term or maybe this desire to keep things on the surface because I think there's some fear,

that if they dig too deep or go too deep into things, that one of the terms we heard was that it might destroy them. That's a pretty powerful way to perceive things, that if you believe, if you dig deep into a problem or really rummage deeply into the emotional life of the family, that somehow it's going to destroy you or tear the family apart. Although I do have a question. You mentioned in the mid-range family that there was a need for control,

we have heard from sources as well, multiple sources, that they actually were not a strict family. And I'll be honest, I initially thought understanding Chad's deep religious extremism, how rigid he is, that he must have come from a family that was very rigid. And while the daybels were Mormon, we have heard that they were actually pretty laxed with knowing where their kids were and what their kids were doing. So what do you mean by control in the mid-range family? In order to understand that, I think you have to understand the Beaver's model, which is that the most dysfunctional families are total chaos. Okay. So they're characterized by absolutely chaotic environments that are free for all. There's no limits.

There's no attempt at parental control. And when there is attempts at parental control, it's usually tyrannical or it's usually in extreme. So things get completely out of control and chaotic, and then a parent or family member will jump in and try to exert too much control. So I think Beavers is contextualizing this. Beaver's is saying that there's some control compared to really dysfunctional families that are totally chaotic. Okay. That there's structure in the family, that there's an ability to get the family moving in the morning and to have some rules and some limits that work. Whereas in the most dysfunctional families, all the rules fail.

None of the rules are obeyed, that there's this absolute chaotic environment. on the Beaver system model, what he's suggesting is there's not an overabundance of control, but there's enough control to help this family function. And there's enough control to keep these deeper issues, these deeper emotional issues at bay. That makes sense. There's a couple of elements to the Debel family that we've learned since our first podcast on Chad. We've actually learned a lot from a lot of people since our first podcast on Chad. I want to say thank you to everyone that has been willing to.

To talk to us, we keep our sources close. We won't always reveal who they are. But many people have come forward. We want to say thank you to all those people who have helped us to understand what's going on. So yes, we've learned a lot more since episode one. We really appreciate the fact that many people have reached out to help us really, really do a deep dive into understanding this case. And the best way to do that, obviously, is to talk to sources very close to the situation. So yes, we're very grateful that you've been able to provide us with some really valuable information

that will allow us to really understand Chad and Lori much better than we would have otherwise. One thing that we see in the Daybell family is that several of the children have struggled with addictions, specifically drug and alcohol addiction. We know that has been very difficult on the Daybell family. Chad, by the way, is not one of those children. but the reason I bring that up is it shows how the Daybell family is coping with emotions. It shows how they're coping with stress in the family, how they're solving problems to some degree.

The way I perceive addiction is that it's a type of self-medication for difficult or painful emotions, that most people who get into drug and alcohol, substance abuse problems, are trying to self-medicate really painful emotions. When I see a family that has maybe one child with addiction problems, it's fairly easy to discount and see it as a function of perhaps that child's temperament or maybe that child struggled more than the others to really deal with emotions. It's easier to discount. But when I see a family with multiple members, the majority of members,

the majority of children struggling with addiction, then I assume that there are some underwerexia, emotional issues that haven't been resolved. Or I assume typically, and this does fall within the mid-range type of family, I assume that the family is not dealing with emotion very well, that they're repressing emotion or running away from emotion, and they're not able to process things in the most healthy manner. So I presume that that's going on in the Daybill family. That will turn out to be really important as we look at Chad, because when you look at Chad, not only in court, but in his writings and elsewhere, there's almost no attempt to really deal with his emotions. There's no writing

or expression of anger or sadness or fear. He throws out a few emotions here and there in his autobiography, but it's really non-existent. And so I think that's consistent with this type of family system that's really struggling to go deeper and to connect at a deeper level and to process those deeper emotions. That is true with Chad. Every time he said he decided to change directions or felt good or bad about something, it was an outward voice telling him what to do. Or in the way he spoke to Tammy, that story that we've already told about him wanting her to stop playing video games, he couldn't directly say to her, I don't like that you play video games because it makes me feel bad. he had to use an angel that visited him to indirectly talk to Tammy.

There was no discussion of emotions or what she might have been feeling or he might have been feeling or even understanding why she was playing this video game. And interestingly enough, the Beaver's family systems model has a tie to the work of John Gottman. I've mentioned Gottman previously. He's at the University of Washington. Most of his research recently has been on marital relationships. But prior to that, most people don't know that Gottman actually studied family interactions for many years.

He did a study, a longitudinal study of families that I think is probably still some of the best work on healthy families, again, that I think is not given its due. He wrote a book called Meta Emotion in 1998 that summarizes a lot of this research. It's a very technical book. But I can tell you the conclusion quickly. His conclusion essentially is, and I've mentioned this before, his conclusion. inclusion is that families that engage in what he calls emotion coaching are healthier in every way. Gottman also mentions that you can have love in a family. You can have plenty of love. And as we state, we believe, was present in the Daybell family, that there was love. The children

probably felt love. But Gottman will tell you that that is not enough. That families that just display love at the most superficial level, the children might feel supported, but they're still going be something missing. There's still going to be a bit of an emptiness. So here I'll let Gottman explain the basis for emotion coaching. In my research, I discovered that love by itself wasn't enough. Very concerned, warm, and involved parents often had attitudes towards their own and their children's emotions that got in the way of them being able to talk to their children when they were sad or afraid or angry. But while love by itself was not enough, channeling that carrying into some basic skills that parents practiced as if they were coaching their children in the area of

emotion was enough. Good parenting begins in your heart and then continues on a moment-to-moment basis by engaging your children when feelings run high when they're sad, angry, or scared. So what would be areas of emotion coaching? Would that be talking about what anger is or what sadness is? Tonight, as we were trying to feel. feed our son. He was letting us know he was very angry and then he was very sad and then he was crying and of course I felt very angry. We did ask him, why are you angry? Is that what emotion coaching is? Emotion coaching is basically acknowledging the three most difficult emotions for kids. Those are anger, fear and sadness. Kids really struggle with those issues as do many parents,

as do many families. What do you mean struggle? They struggle to understand them. I think we need to up a little bit. And the first thing that Gottman says, if you listen to the Gottman quote, he says, emotion coaching begins with the parents' emotions. The basis for it is, are the parents comfortable when the child becomes angry, afraid, or sad? Are the parents comfortable enough with their own emotions to address the child's emotions when they're feeling anger, sadness, or fear? That's the basis of it. So the first part is the parents have to be able to deal with these emotions themselves. And that's, that trips up a lot of families right there. Right, right. Right. A lot of parents are not comfortable with those emotions. I'm guessing that this is probably true

in the Debo family from what we understand that when these emotions come into play, like with our son tonight, when he said he was angry, we were willing to say to him, I understand you're angry. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be angry. Let's talk about your anger, right? The first step in emotion coaching is parental comfort with the emotion, those three difficult emotions, and then the willingness to acknowledge those emotions when they're running high. So for Gottman, when children are in the heat of these various emotions, these difficult emotions, many parents want to run away from that. The key is to get in there when the emotions are running high and to help the child process those emotions and to label those emotions and to express those emotions in a healthy way.

Sometimes I want to run away from those emotions. Sometimes I'm like, not again. Can we please have a peaceful dinner tonight? Yeah, don't we all? But good to know. Good reminder, something to think about. What I want to point out is the connection between the Gottman research and the Beaver's research. The commonality between these two is communication that involves the ability to address emotion at some deeper level.

That's the glue. That's the currency of communication in families. Or in an optimal family. In an optimal family, right. And the healthiest families, communication is the key. And especially communication about what's really going on at a deeper level, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, that that's where optimal families excel. You know, it's interesting because when I think about my clinical work and forensic work

over the past 25 years, that would be a common. thread that most of the people who have come into my office with serious problems struggle with their emotions and they struggle with the ability to connect to those deeper emotions. I can remember one woman that I worked with for several years, she couldn't feel any sadness. She simply could not feel sadness to save her life. And the problem with that is if you can't feel sadness, you can't grieve. All of us experience so many losses in life. It may not be easy, but it's a part of life. It's what we experience. We can't stop it. And so if we can't experience sadness, if we can't feel sadness, then we can't grieve. And if we can't grieve,

we can't move on. We can't function. And we're going to be much more prone to depression and more severe mental illness. If we examine why several of Chad's siblings struggled with addiction, then the reasonable conclusion from that is that this was a typical family, but it was a family that still encountered problems in communicating at a deeper level, especially at the emotional level. I would refer people to one of my favorite books on addiction if you're interested in learning more about the nature of addiction and how it's more likely to be a type of self-medication. I would refer people to the biology of desire by Mark Lewis. Somebody mentioned that John make a list of all of the books he has referenced. We thought, wow, that's a great idea. And then John got a little

overwhelmed, but we are working on that list. We heard a story from a source very close to the Debel family that we felt kind of summarized a lot of these issues we're talking about. Would you care to tell that? Yes. We spoke to a source close to the Debel family, and this person said that they would allow us to tell this story. They shared that the Debel parents have helped to raise some of their grandchildren. So there were grandchildren in the home. And somebody else, when to stay there at the house for a couple of nights and left the home with a rash. And at first this person was very concerned and learned later that they were bedbug bites

and that this person's children also had bed bug bites from spending the night at Chad Daybell's parents' home. This person that spent the night decided to confront Chad Daybell's parents about their bed bug problem because they were concerned that there were children living in the home. They wanted to protect those children and said, you have a bed bug problem. I want you to know that. Now you can do something about it. This person was surprised that they were sort of not interested in doing anything about the bed bug problem.

They knew they had bedbugs. They acknowledged it. And then life went on. And this person realized that they could never spend a night. there again or take children there again because there was a bed bug infestation that nobody was seeming to really be worried about or they were almost dismissing it or not facing the reality of what it was. And so nothing was ever done to solve this problem.

The bed bugs continued on. The bed bugs marched on without stopping. They continued to multiply apparently. the person in question did not send children to visit with the day bells anymore after that. You might ask why do bedbugs matter? The answer is because it's a metaphor for how this family solve problems. It's a metaphor for how this family communicates and how they resolve those deeper issues. If they're not willing to take care of a simple problem like bedbugs,

they're almost certainly not going to be willing to address deeper emotional problems. When a child comes to you, for example, like our child tonight, when a child comes to you and says, I'm sad and they're in tears, and there's a reason they're sad. Do you treat that emotion? Do you treat that sadness like the bedbugs and just ignore it? Do you say to that child, go away? I don't want to deal with that. In fact, Gottman identifies several types of parents and their ability to address problems.

One of those parents is what he calls the dismissing parent. This is the parent that simply says, that's not a problem. Leave me alone. We're not going to talk about that. Another parent that Gottman identifies is the disapproving parent. The disapproving parents even worse. The disapproving parent says to the child, you're not feeling sad. If you're feeling sad, that means you're weak.

The disapproving parent is critical of the emotion. The disapproving parent creates shame around the emotion. I don't think that the Debo parents were disapproving necessarily. I think we're going to see that with the Cox parents. But here, I think you probably just have dismissive parents. It's like the bedbugs. Somebody comes to them with a problem. An outside party comes to them with a problem.

You have bedbugs. They've bitten the children that stayed there overnight. They had to go to the hospital to seek treatment for this problem. And the solution is to ignore it, to dismiss it. This is how the family deals with everything. This is how the family deals with emotion. This is how the family deals with psychological issues. This is how the family's going to deal with depression.

This is how the family's going to deal with almost every problem. So the bed bug story, I think, is a wonderful, although sad, I suppose, analogy about the Debo family and how they process things. Right. It's symbolic of ignoring a problem. Or it could just be a family that's overwhelmed. It's just overwhelmed and just wants to keep things on the surface. Yeah, exactly.

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carelick. However, and this leads us more into Chad, when you take a family culture like this, and you have a kid like Chad Daybell, who we now know from our sources and from his autobiography, was very much attention-seeking, that he wanted a certain level of fame, for lack of a better word,

he was looking for a certain amount of attention and even fame as he grew older. And I think that was clear from the beginning. One of the things we heard that Chad would talk to some of his friends at school about the top 40 list and how every week he was really intent upon knowing the top 40 list because in some ways that made him feel important. It made him feel like he was connected to famous people. His autobiography is a contradiction because he'll often say in his autobiography that he made these choices to not get his master's degree or to take the road less traveled

or to not be known or to make the choice to not be as famous as his friends. But then at the same time, he'll talk about his friends that he considers were very successful and he'll name drop a lot. It's an interesting contradiction in his book. He helped publish two books by NFL players that brought him closer to fame or feeling like he was with famous people. We know that in 2019,

there was a movie that was going to be produced of one of his books. And we were told that Chad was obsessed with this movie, that he thought this movie would make him famous and that he would be, quote, bigger than life. These are what I would call the seeds of significance that were planted in Chad's childhood. There was this intense need, and this is probably temperamental, but Chad wanted to be acknowledged. He wanted a lot of attention and a lot of love and a family that gave him enough of that, but not as much as he wanted.

There wasn't neglect, there wasn't abuse, but there wasn't sufficient attention for him. There wasn't sufficient acknowledgement of his special gifts for him. So when his brothers all went on to receive graduate degrees, Chad felt a little bit inferior. In fact, here's a passage from his book where Chad talks about his initial desire to get a graduate degree and then his rejection of that. In Chad's own words. I went to the Utah State University Extension Office and picked up an application. But as I sat down at a table and started filling it out. out. It felt like the pen I was holding was on fire. I dropped it, and I distinctly heard the words,

Stop. This is the wrong direction for you. You won't need additional schooling to accomplish your life's admission. I stood up, and threw the application in the recycling bin. This answer really was a shock to me, because my long-term goal growing up had been to eventually earn a doctorate degree. The interesting thing is that although I was the most studious of my brothers, they all now have advanced degrees, and I don't. But the voice was correct. If I had returned to college, none of what has happened in my career would have taken place. I never would have become an author. There's a couple of things going on in this quote.

This voice that he supposedly hears is his voice. He's saying, I don't have the confidence to do this. The stop is about self-esteem. It's about confidence. This is about Chad saying to himself, I don't think I can do this. And then he has to justify it later by saying that the voice told him

clearly that he made the right choice because he became an author. Yes, he became an author, but that doesn't mean it was the right choice. This is what we call hindsight bias. He's looking back in hindsight and saying, I made the right choice. But the reality is that voice

that's telling him to stop and not proceed is really the voice of inadequacy. And we're going to see this voice repeatedly with Chad. There's another passage in the book where Chad talks about being bullied a little bit. He was the victim of bullying. He says there quite clearly that he had self-esteem issues. Here's Chad in his own words. In my wood shop class, I became the target of a bully.

He sat right across from me, and whenever the teacher left the room, this kid would just pound his fist into my shoulder and back. My self-esteem was pretty low. And that's not the only place where he says that. So imagine Chad wanting this attention, wanting to feel really important. Imagine Chad taking this bullying home to his family and wanting to discuss it. This becomes a version of the bed bug problem. I'm sure he wasn't able to take this home and process it emotionally, right?

And that is not going to help his self-esteem. I mentioned in one of our early episodes that there was a moment. moment when Chad was attending BYU and he felt very alone. He was walking across campus and this is what he said. I vividly remember walking across

the BYU campus during a January snowstorm and thinking there isn't a soul on earth who cares what I'm doing right now. To me that's the most epiphanal moment in the entire autobiography because it sets

the stage for everything else Chad feels insignificant in that moment. True, he's young. But this is a theme that pervaded his entire childhood. This sense of insignificance, the sense of inadequacy. This is a theme that will later evolve into the Chad Daybell we see today. So are you saying he still feels inadequate? I think the answer is yes, that he still harbors this underlying sense of inadequacy today.

However, one of his defense mechanisms was to respond to that with a certain degree of narcissism. I don't know for sure if Chad would be diagnosed as a narcissistic personality disorder, but there's undoubtedly many narcissistic features. As your co-host, I'll say I think he would be diagnosable. Nancy McWilliams wrote a book called Psychoanalytic Diagnosis in 2011. That was the second edition of the book. That's a book I use frequently when I look at personal. personality disorders. It's probably one of the best books that cites the most relevant research and explains how personality disorders develop. McWilliams says that some of the conditions that lead

to narcissism are shame, ugliness, and inferiority. And those are all qualities that I think Chad Dable experienced. Are they literally referring to ugliness as looks or is this about who he is inside? How he feels inside. Not physical. I mean, I think physical could be part of it, but it's Ugliness, I think, at multiple levels. Physical, emotional, psychological, ugliness in the sense of some sense of disgust. We'll talk about this later with Chad, how important disgust is. We do know that he struggled with dating,

but so many people have commented on his looks. And I don't want to be someone to do that or judge him for that, but we do know that he struggled with dating, that he was rejected many times in his dating life. In fact, here's a quote from Chad's autobiography in his own words about dating. If I dated a girl I really liked more than two or three times, the spirit didn't mess around when I prayed whether the relationship should develop. Almost before the words were out of my mouth, I would hear a resounding no.

No in caps, no. So notice, again, this is Chad's voice. Chad frames this as an outside voice, as a voice coming from, externally to him. But of course, it's him. Chad is saying with the no here that he feels like maybe he's going to get rejected so he terminates the relationship early. If that's true, if the person he's dating doesn't do it. But he's not allowing anything to develop. He's the one with the no apparently who's ending things so that he doesn't have to experience rejection. Right. And with Tammy, he actually said after his many knows, it was finally a yes. While he frames that in a

outward voice telling him that it was good for him to marry her, what that voice really was, was him saying, yes, I'm finally not rejected. Yes, I know she really likes me. Yes, I know she wants to marry me. So Tammy's the first yes. And the reason for that is because he perceived Tammy to be submissive. He believed that Tammy was someone who would not challenge him. She was someone who could appease all of his self-esteem issues. And someone that would always say yes and would always be his yes. So let's talk a little bit about the shame. I think there's a lot of shame with Chad Daybell.

One of the defense mechanisms that narcissists use to cope with the sense of shame and inferiority is to develop a sense of omnipotent control, that narcissists want to be in charge, they want to have control over people's perceptions of them. They want to have control over their environment and the world that they live in. In other words, they're seeking to present this image of strength and perfection that allows others to see them as wonderful human beings. That's definitely Chad Debo. But I mean, we all want people to think we're wonderful, right?

We do. Part of creating the perception of being wonderful is also being authentic. It's also having the ability to show some weakness and some vulnerability to make ourselves human. One thing we know about Chad is he never ever once said that he was wrong. Right. I think that's an amazing little fact about Chad that not once

was he willing to acknowledge that he was wrong. And that is the major characteristic of narcissism. The inability to acknowledge any flaws or any weaknesses, this struggle to be humble, this inability to be vulnerable.

And all of those, by the way, are related to this idea of shame. The inward shame that he doesn't want to acknowledge. Right, the inner shame. Let's take this idea of Chad's desire for significance and fame and develop a little bit of a timeline. Okay. So that we can get to the place where Chad puts himself in a position to murder children. I think the first place we'd have to start is with his near-death experience in 1985. Chad was doing some cliff diving in Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah. He dove from a cliff into the water. He said that he was unconscious, and in that moment, his veil was cracked open, and he was able to access the other side of the veil, or how would you explain that?

He said that his veil was torn while he was under the water. Again, and we've talked about this before, but a veil in LDS doctrine is what is placed over human beings when they are born. Mormons believe in the pre-existence that we lived in heaven before we were born. And the reason that we don't remember heaven or the pre-existence is because a veil was placed over us once we were born into this earthly existence. And Chad is saying that his veil physically was torn. In other words, he envisioned a veil as a literal piece of fabric that has been ripped and now he can see the other side. It's quite a bold statement to make that he had this near-death experience and he could see the pre-existence and where he came from and he could see his ancestors and he could know what was going to happen in the future and that he would speak to angels. All sorts of things happened once his veil was torn or ripped.

The reason why this is important, this is extremely important actually in understanding Chad Debo is because it gives him the authority to claim that he's a prophet. If he can reach beyond the veil and understand things that us mere mortals cannot, then he can start making the claim that he's a deity, that he's a prophet, that he can do things that most of us or none of us can do.

So this is the moment in 1985 at Flaming Gorge Reservoir where the seeds are planted for Chad Daybell to be become a prophet to lead the 144,000 to the new Jerusalem that begins in this moment. Chad's shame and his insignificance and his need for meaning all start coalescing in this moment where he begins to take on the role of a deity by reaching across the other side of the veil and seeing things that mere mortals cannot. He's now in a position, according to him,

to claim authority of a God. And to let us know who's dark and who is light and who is good and who is bad. Bad issue, by the way, that seed gets planted two years later in 1987 on Chad's mission. In fact, let's go to his autobiography and listen to what Chad has to say. That is an interesting moment. In some buildings we entered, the feeling was immediately dark. We would feel a bit depressed. i really think evil spirits had gained control of these buildings even influencing the behavior of the people living there these spirits seem to gang up against us in such buildings

so in nineteen eighty seven chad is on his mission he's in newark new jersey he enters an apartment building and he senses evil spirits for the first time and he labels them dark this is the beginning of chad's labeling system of good and evil dark and light. It begins here on his mission in 1987. He makes it even clear that this is where his rating system began in a blog he wrote. He says this was a turning point. Here's how Chad explains developing his rating system. During a dinner with a Peruvian family, I sat down next to the husband, Raphael. He had shared that day a vision where his great grandpa had appeared to him. The grandpa told Raphael to get baptized and moved to America. So here I am, he said. I said to Raphael,

I have visions too, but I don't dare tell anyone. Back in Utah, they'd think I'm crazy. Raphael looked at me in shock. The Mormons in Utah don't talk about these things? I shook my head. Oh, they'll mention them as historical events, but it's as if the members there don't believe they will happen now, I told them.

raphael got kind of fired up the veil was very thin for joseph smith and it is for me and my family our ancestors helped guide us that conversation was a turning point for me i began to consciously develop my gift and could recognize good and bad spirits as we knocked on doors my area consisted of thousands of apartment buildings along the hudson river and i can testify that most of them are haunted Better said, the buildings are inhabited by disembodied spirits who died and don't really know where to go next. So they hang around places they lived in mortality. So Chad lacks the cultural awareness to understand this is a common practice in Peru, talking to your ancestors. On All Saints Day or the Day of the Dead, which is coming up next week on November 2nd, Peruvians traditionally picnic with their dead ancestors. So rather than understand this as a cultural difference, he just assumes from this conversation, it's a universal practice. So am I hearing this right from this conversation with this Peruvian friend of his, he somehow decides that his spiritual gifts are to rate people, good or bad, and recognize dead people in buildings.

Right, exactly. And there's another turning point that occurs after his mission. In 1993, Chad is in San Diego with his family. He's by the beach, on the cliffs. When a wave comes in and washes him out to sea, Chad has another near-death experience, which only increases his divine authority at that point. It's a significant moment because it compounds the authority that he received from his earlier near-death experience.

It adds to it. It gives him more power to argue that he's a deity, that he can reach beyond the veil in a way that no one else can. can. Right. What's up with that? I mean, most people just have one near-death experience. It's good enough, right? He has to have two. In fact, chapter 14 in his book is titled, My Second Near-Death experience. It's almost like he wants to one-up those with only one. And this is where he actually goes to the beach with his family. He's married now to Tammy. He has some children or Garth, maybe just Garth. They're in La Jolla, and a wave hits him. He goes under. He comes back up. He's pretty beaten up. He was whipped around by a pretty big wave. But that is the moment that he said he once again could see the spirit world. And he says to that it's not that the bail is gone. His personal bail had been ripped open, even wider. Quote, and this time it didn't close up nearly as much as it had the first time. Quote. I think he sees the second near-death experience is an opportunity to really solidify his power.

It turns out to be a very similar circumstance as his first one. Both occur in water. Both occur on cliffs. I think he just needs this moment to really argue persuasively that he's a deity who can look into the future

in a way that no one else can. If his veil wasn't ripped enough the first time, it's solidly raced. now and will not heal. So with his veil torn and with his belief that he can reach into the spirit world, that he can see the future, he begins to have a number of promptings that later become some of his books. He writes his first book in 1999 called An Erron for Emma.

The reason why that's important is because, number one, he wouldn't write these books if he didn't believe that he could look into the future, that he really believes. believes these books are a function of his ability to see the future and that they're a reflection of reality. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Chad eventually perceives these books to be revelation and scripture, even though he doesn't say so. That's a question we get a lot from people that follow this case closely. Did Chad truly believe he could see into the future or in the past, or was he just using this as a manipulative tactic? No, he definitely believes he can see into the future.

He argues that his books are a reflection of reality. In fact, let's listen to Chad. Talk about this. In Chad's own words. I don't fictionalize any of the events portrayed. I'm really not that creative. Let me describe how my writing process works. My torn veil allows information to be downloaded into my brain from the other side.

The scenes I am shown are real events that will happen, but it is my job to fit them into the lives of the fictional families in my novels. So this is important because when he writes his first book in 1999, I think his first sentence of his first book is another one of those seeds that's going to lead us towards these murders. the seed is that he believes his books are portraying a reality that will come true. That he's now in the process in his first book of creating the New Jerusalem, which is a post-apocalyptic world. He believes that he's actually portraying something real. And if you read his autobiography and answering that question about whether he really believes this, there's no doubt after you read his autobiography that his entire autobiography is really an argument

as to why he's a prophet and why his visions for the future are accurate. So is he really sitting in prison right now still believing himself? Probably, yeah, I would say yes. Huh. Is it like narcissism, though, where in the sense that narcissism is about thinking you're the most perfect person in the world, but deep down, there's a lot of shame. Is his belief he truly believes himself, but deep down, maybe he knows he's a fraud? Is there any of that going on or is he just really believing himself?

Deep down he might believe it, but there's so many defenses you'd have to crack to get to that. Okay. I think he's convinced himself it's true. In social psychology, there's something called the sleeper effect, which essentially amounts to if you tell yourself something enough, even if it's a lie over time, you'll come to believe it. It's actually talked about in the persuasion literature that authority figures who spread lies are able to get some of their followers to believe those lies over time because they say them so much. It's a similar effect here. If Chad tells himself these lies over and over, eventually

they become a part of his reality. That makes sense. One thing that's interesting to point out about Chad's near-death experiences and his books in which he talks about portals and a lot of science fiction type components is that people who believe in the paranormal tend to be more fantasy prone. They tend to be more suggestible. They tend to be less analytical. And so I think see those qualities here, that even though Chad thinks that he's creating this reality, the truth is, of course, that he's engaged in this elaborate fantasy. Another reason he's more gullible and believing these fictions is because he's very suggestible. People that are obsessed with paranormal phenomenon tend to be very gullible and suggestible. And Chad Daybell seems to fit that mold as well.

Okay, yeah. Although I doubt he would admit that. Oh, I doubt he would too. I doubt there's a lot Chad would admit. Let's take the string of events. The first near-death experience in 1985, his mission experience of perceiving evil spirits whom he labels as dark in 1987, that his near-death experience again in 1993. All of these elements lay the foundation for his later profit status and ability to judge other people as good or evil. There's another component to Chad's story that I think is absolutely critical in understanding him, and that is is his work in cemeteries. Chad received his first job as a cemetery. Sexton around 1993. He spent most of the 90s working in a cemetery. And then later, after his publishing

business began to flounder in the mid-2000s, around 2008, he took another job working in a cemetery. He went back. He went back. It's getting late. So just as we thought, we're going to have to pick up the rest of our dinner in our next episode. So in other words, we didn't ever get to Lori and Chad and their toxic combo, but we're setting the stage. So stay with us as we put these final puzzle pieces together. Here's where we'll start up in part two. Around 1993, Chad takes a job working as a cemetery sexton.

He works in the cemetery for most of the 90s. He returns to becoming a cemetery sexton again in the late 2000. In other words, Chad spent most of his adult life working in and around cemeteries. If you ask me to identify one of the most important variables in this entire case, it would be this. It would be Chad's professional life working in and around dead bodies for many, many years. We want to thank Burke Rich from Salt Lake City, Utah for being the voice of Chad Daybell and Dan McCauley. from Boise, Idaho for all the other voiceover work you hear here. We want to thank our Patreon members who have donated.

We are currently working on bonus content for our supporters. We now have a YouTube channel, Hidden True Crime, where we've posted our last few episodes. Our Instagram is username Hidden True Crime. Our Facebook page is Facebook.com slash Hidden True Crime. And again, for those willing to donate and to help us continue producing this podcast, you can head to patreon.com slash hidden true crime.

This last week, an important date passed. October 19th marks one year since Chad's wife Tammy Daybell died. John and I have been thinking a lot about her. And I wrote a tribute for her. I felt she deserved a voice. And I want to share with you before we end what I wrote. This last week marks one year since Tammy Daybell died. Chad claims Tammy passed in the middle of the night last

October in her sleep. We still don't know how Tammy died, but we can all guess why she died. We can only hope that it was peaceful. Tammy is a victim we don't hear a lot about. Her children have avoided any interviews, and her parents have mostly remained quiet, requesting to grieve privately, but also sharing that they hope justice is served swiftly, that they are suffering and will suffer for years to come due to the loss of their daughter and sister. It was uplifting news to hear on the first anniversary of Tammy's death that her family started a foundation in her name, the Tammy Douglas Daybill Foundation. They say it will honor her love of service and literacy and give children the opportunity to love the written word. Tammy seems to have lived a quiet life.

Don't get me wrong. From all accounts, she was vibrant and ready to help anyone who was in need. She had her opinions and seemed quite independent. In addition to raising five children, who friends say she loved more than anything in the world. She showed her compassion for animals, including a quirky love for ducks. She loved her job as a school librarian and worked hard to run her family's publishing company. When I say she lived quietly,

from what I can tell, she was content to live in her husband's shadow, working hard to support his dreams and her family's dreams. She was secondary. Others' needs came before her own. While friends say how positive she always was, I sense it's because she quite,

kept her personal hardships and concerns to herself. When I say Tammy lived a quiet life, I mean she left a lot unsaid. The public is left guessing, left guessing, with plenty of evidence to assess. Knowing how much was on her plate, five kids, two jobs, serving in her church and community, running the household, I don't know how Tammy would have ever found time to enjoy the online game, Frontierville. I can assume she found some solace and a way. to escape by playing. Chad let the world know about this habit of his wife, and he saw no benefit.

Chad wanted Tammy wasting no time, pretending to be a pioneer, but rather researching real pioneers, her ancestors with any free time she might have. According to Chad, after he told Tammy to stop playing the game, she hesitated. But as Chad explained, she finally obeyed his demands after he told Tammy that her deceased grandmother Lucille appeared in a vision, angry at her granddaughter. Chad told Tammy what Lucille's spirit told him, and I quote, I told you to have Tammy quit her damn computer game cold turkey so she would be receptive to a message from me, but she didn't. Tell her she has more important work to do than play games. Grandma Lucille yelled angrily beyond the veil. Tammy finally stopped after Chad shared his vision.

I wonder if Tammy ever told anyone this story. I wonder if it would have been another thing left unsaid in her life if Chad had not decided to share the story of shaming her so publicly. I wonder just how much was left unsaid. There is an engagement photo of Chad and Tammy. Tammy was either 19 or 20. It's an eerie photo now, filled with an awful irony as their chosen location for the engagement shoot

was in a cemetery among headstones. They both look so cheerful. I sense in Tammy her naivety. I can imagine her idealistic view of marriage and the hope she felt for a future life with Chad Daybell. I likely sense these things because it's all too familiar. I too was naive and idealistic and full of so much hope on my first wedding day.

Like Tammy, I was married in the LDS Temple to a man of my faith. The man I married was a righteous man, a church attending man, a rule follower, and a spiritual hero to many. He was also a man who yelled at me when I was late to church, told me angrily that he felt he had to carry all of the spiritual weight in our relationship and shamed me for not being a better help meet. It was a help meet he wanted, not a partner. And me, this independent, feisty Venus flytrap, I was a studious pupil, learning all I could about being a delicate flower.

I quit my career as a TV reporter. Not that money wasn't needed. It definitely was, but a less threatening career as a nanny seemed a safer choice. I learned to cook and I cleaned, yet my submissiveness was never enough. He was always moving the goalpost,

and no matter what I did, I could never meet his expectations. Just like Tammy, I enjoyed an online game to pass the time. It was sort of numbing, and I didn't know what else to do. It was a version of, A virtual escape when a real escape felt impossible.

I felt I had no other options. Like Tammy, I was taught that if I love the Lord and my husband loved the Lord, we can make it work. I was taught that if something was broken, you fix it. I was taught that it was near sinful, or at the very least shameful, to throw away a marriage ordained of God. I had been taught as a young girl by Sunday school teachers that a good marriage is trusting my husband, letting him take the lead and letting him make the decisions. I was taught that my grandmother was a saint because she put up with my grandpa who was difficult. She was praised for staying with him.

I was taught about how women were God's gifted nurturers. I felt it was my responsibility to create a peaceful, happy home and that it was my fault if it wasn't this way. My favorite scriptures were about loving others. I strive to always love my neighbor, but more importantly, I needed to love my husband, and I needed to forgive. and forgive and to forgive again. It took two years for me to realize it wasn't my husband I had to continue forgiving. I had to forgive myself for making the wrong choice. It was only two years of my life, but it was still two years. I could have left on the honeymoon when he told me he had made a mistake marrying me. I could have left a few months later after he drove me to the airport

threatening to fly me back home to my parents because I was being difficult. When he told me that he wanted children, just not my children, I did leave. But he convinced me to come back. You can't just fight off all those Sunday school lessons. It's not that easy. Not to mention my grandmother was a saint. I could try to be a saint too. I was 33 when I got married the first time. So with life experience, a career in independence in my tool belt, two years in, I found the confidence to divorce. My story has a happy ending. I found true love. I found love with someone who doesn't want to want a help meet, but a partner. I found love with someone who doesn't share my same faith, but who respects me. I found love with someone who prefers Venus flytraps over violets. I married

someone who rather than silence me, encourages me. John helped me find my voice and to say the things that shouldn't be left unsaid. Escaping emotional abuse is the title of my memoir, a book I published. I wanted to finally say it all, and John encouraged me the entire way. There is no doubt in my mind that Tammy was an emotionally abused woman for years, decades. Marrying so young at the age of 20, she didn't have the tools I did. I think about that a lot. I think about it because I really believe that if I had married at 20 instead of 33, I might not have found a way out. Tammy's story ends in absolute tragedy.

Her loyalty and compassion, dedication and forgiveness, her selflessness, cost us. her her life. Her life is that of a literal martyr, sacrificing it all and saying nothing. The day before Tammy died on October 18, 2019, her good friend and coworker noticed Tammy was acting differently at work. Mandy Fowler said that her usually positive friend was acting frustrated. It was far from typical Tammy. Mandy will always wonder what was on her friend's mind. So will I. I wish she had found her voice that day. So much was left unsaid. Tammy, I never had a chance to meet you, but I feel like I did. I wish we could have talked. Everything you left unsaid, you could have said it to me, and I would have listened. Rest in peace, Tammy Douglas, Daybell. Just like your family, your parents and siblings,

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