Hidden True Crime - BEYOND THE VEIL: The Secrets of Lori Vallow Daybell, PART 1

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

Lori Vallow Daybell has been convicted of murdering her two children, but right before her trial began in April, Hidden hosts John and Lauren Matthias sat down to ask the question many have been wondering: Did Lori change before she commited her crimes, or is this who Lori Vallow has always been? This is PART 1 of a TWO PART Episode exploring Lori Vallow Daybell's mind. A forensic psychologist and journalist (who are husband and wife) explore the inner workings of Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow Daybell's minds, as well as the hidden motivations driving a series of inexplicable murders in 2019. While Lauren attended Lori's trial and plans to attend her sentencing in July of 2023, the hosts continue interviewing and investigating what's Hidden, just as they have been for three years. You can get caught up by listening to our full 'Beyond the Veil" season. LAUREN MATTHIAS worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in Boise, Idaho Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes and criminals to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah and in 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award and has been reporting with News Nation throughout the trial. She is the producer and editor of the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. DR. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims. He received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling, as well his doctorate degree, from the University of Southern California.  Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day.  Dr. Matthias is an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. Contact them at [e-mail] WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ TO SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime https://cash.app/$hiddenTruecrime. DISCLAIMER: The views of our guests/interviewees, do not reflect the views of Hidden True Crime. 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

Lately, I've been trying to be more intentional about what I wear, intentional about everything, just choosing pieces that feel effortless, still put together, timeless, but also not overthinking it every morning. It's why I keep going back to quince. Their pieces just make getting dressed easier and I feel so classy. I feel elevated. The fits are flattering. The fabric is really high quality. Everything is wearable day to day. I actually got this really, really, beautiful yellow V-neck midi dress from them, and I paired it with some Italian leather sandals. It's one of those outfits that just works. It feels polished but still comfortable. It's exactly what I've been looking for. What surprises me, though, is the quality for the price. Quince uses

premium materials like European linen, organic cotton, but they cut out the middleman. So everything is priced way lower than you'd expect. Refresh. your every day with luxury you can actually use. Head to quince.com slash hidden true crime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, quince, q-u-in-c-com slash hidden true crime for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash hidden true crime. 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. This is a continuation of our original podcast season Beyond the Vail, which is about Lori Vallow, DeBell, and Chad DeBow here. Dr. John, where would you like to

start? Let me just start by saying that these are opinions and this is speculation and we're not giving you definitive answers, obviously. So I want you to know that like everybody else in this case, we're just speculating. We're offering professional opinions, but it's still speculation. And I should say as a disclaimer that obviously, as we did with Murdoch, I, you know, I had a, when I was an undergraduate, I had a philosophy professor who I loved who he used to always start a class and often interrupt a class by saying, what are the arguments in the room? Let's let's step back here and think about the arguments in the room. And, you know, I think whenever I do an evaluation or when I do one of these shows or whenever I'm thinking about things critically, I'm always thinking about the

arguments in the room. And I love that. And so I think what we want to start doing tonight is figuring out the arguments in the room. So I want to begin this analysis with a book that was written in 1993. It's called Anchored Narratives, the Psychology of Criminal Evidence. It's by Willem Wagoner. He happens to be a Dutch psychologist. He taught and lived and worked in the Netherlands for many years. And the reason I mentioned this book is because I read this book when I was in graduate school. It's essentially about how juries evaluate evidence.

And I've never forgotten this book because it seems so obvious. But it's also an important book. In some ways, it's obvious. But I'm really surprised that more law school students and more, more lawyers aren't familiar with this book. It's a book about psychology. But the basic argument that Wagoner makes is that juries listen to story, that they evaluate stories that are being told by the prosecution and the defense. So they're listening for narratives. They're listening for stories that are anchored to the evidence. The stories that are more plausible and more coherent and

make better sense of the evidence are the ones that usually lead to either acquittals or convictions. Wagner, by the way, has done some research showing that this is accurate. And so his argument is essentially the juries aren't these rational creatures who sit in the jury box and assess every piece of evidence and put it all together in this perfect puzzle. They don't do that. What they do is they look at the stories, they look at the competing stories, and they look at how the evidence gets anchored in those stories. That's why it's called anchored narratives.

Anchoring, by the way, is what we call a heuristic, which is a mental shortcuts that we use to make sense of complex information. So in anchoring, what we do essentially, we use points of reference to take priority over other points of reference, especially early on. If there's certain points of reference that are really salient, like in the Murdoch case, it would be the video, Paul's video, which changed everything, that becomes an anchor. And then juries take that information. They take that anchor and they apply it to the larger story.

It becomes a part of the larger story. And the story that makes the most sense is usually the one that wins. So the story that makes the most sense oftentimes will lead to either acquittal or a conviction. And so what's interesting about this research as well is the idea that to achieve or reach reasonable doubt, you usually need a competing narrative that's fairly close. It may not be as compelling. So in other words, let's say the prosecution, the prosecution may have a more compelling narrative and they may have better evidence.

But if they don't give you a really plausible version of that story or plausible enough, then the defense can tell a competing story that can create reasonable doubt if it's reasonably close and not completely absurd. And so that's where reasonable doubt comes into play is that the juries are looking at evidence in the context of stories. So it's really the best story. In the end, it's pretty simple. And stories, by the way, are emotional. We love stories and we watch movies and we read books because they're emotional. They appeal to a different level of human beings than just pure intellect. And so I want to say that a part of our analysis will be trying to assess who's telling the better story and whether the evidence that they're presenting is compelling as part of

the nerve that they're trying to convey. Speaking of stories, some people asked us for the base story. Let me just say this. People that have been following this case know how long and complex it is. That does not mean you won't be able to get caught up. But a couple of tips. When we started our podcast almost three years ago, ended up being on Dateline. We were on a 2000, a 21 episode at the end of 2021 called Doomsday Files. That's a great place to start. Or John was also featured on the Netflix documentary directed by Sky Borgman, Sins of Our Mother. That's another good place to start. For the most basic of basic summary, this is a story of two spouses. Those two got married. A husband died and a wife

died, the remaining husband and wife married, and then the woman, Lori Valo Daybell, who were going to be talking about, her children disappeared. And they were later found buried in Chad Daybell, her new husband's yard, her two children. We have learned since then the strange doomsday beliefs they had. For anyone else, I would recommend those to the Netflix stock as well as the dayline. That's a really basic introduction, but you can do more. You can do more. I just want to Yeah, there's so many twists and turns. I don't even know, you know, it's so hard to know where to start with this case. Let me give my version. And this version, by the way, that I began this version of this story like two and a half years ago. And I got a lot of pushback because I was actually arguing and still argued today. I was arguing at the time that Chad is really the impetus. He's the main person behind this whole drama. And a lot of people disagreed with me and said, no, Lori did it. Lori's to blame. blah, blah, blah, kind of the black widow theory of the crime.

And I maintain that and I still maintain today that this whole thing begins and ends with Chad Daybell. In fact, I would say that the larger narrative, and so I guess if we're going to talk about arguments, let's talk about this one. The first argument, the first main argument in the room would be about belief. And I'll explain why that's important in a second. We're mainly going to focus on Lori tonight, but since we're recapping the larger case, let's start with Chad. The main argument with Chad is belief, and that is a lot of people

have questions about whether Chad believed what he said and acted on those beliefs. And the reason that's important is because if Chad believed it, if he was a true believer, in other words, if Chad believed that there were zombies and portals and all these other paranormal type elements, then more than likely those beliefs drove his actions. If Chad did not believe, if he wasn't a true believer, then that opens the door for him to blame other people. That opens the door for him to say, well, I didn't really believe this stuff, but Lori did. And Lori went the extra, Lori took this set of beliefs that I really didn't think was true. And she ran with it and she acted on it. And that's, presumably, that's one of the arguments that would be for the defense that would open the door

for Chad to say, hey, look, I didn't do this. I was framed because I never really believed this stuff. So this is a really, really critical element of this story, and that is who's driving this narrative? Is it Chad or Lori? If Chad's driving this narrative or this drama, then obviously the argument has to be that he's culpable and responsible for whatever the outcomes of this case are. In this case, obviously, many murders. The Chad narrative would be essentially that Chad Daybell writes his first book. It's called an errand for Emma in 1999. He initially says that his books are fiction for many years. He promotes them. He keeps writing books.

Roughly 2014, 2015, Chad meets Julie Roe. Julie Roe starts talking about near-death experiences and how important they are for her and they give her visions. Chad is really, Chad seems fascinated by this idea of near-death experiences. So even though prior to 2015, Chad has never talked about near-death experiences, he's now immersed in this world of near-death experiences. He's hiring people to write books about near-death experiences, and this has a lot of appeal to him. He's also noticing that Julie Roe was selling a lot of books through his press. So he's making money on this idea of near-death experiences. So all of a sudden, Chad reveals that he's had two near-death experiences. And after revealing that he's had these two

near-death experiences, he says that his veil is torn and that he can see beyond the veil, which means he can see into the future, and this makes him a prophet in line with other prophets in the Mormon Church. So now Chad tells us, after 2015, Chad essentially tells us that all his books are actually not fiction. They're real. And he sees his books as a type of scripture. When he starts talking about the fact that his visions are real, he starts getting a bit of a following. He starts becoming somewhat, I don't want to say a cult leader. I don't know how to describe it, but it's kind of a loose-knit cult. People are interested in him. People begin following him. And he continues to write, but now he's professing that his writing is actually

real and that what he's saying is going to happen. And he starts talking more about apocalyptic messages. He starts talking more about the end of the world. He starts talking about invasions by the Chinese and the Russians on American soil. And he starts setting the stage for everything that's going to happen in this case. So in October of 2018, he meets Lori. At the time, Lori Valo, he's smitten with her. They develop a relationship. He starts calling her his goddess. He explains to her how the world's going to end. They become partners in crime. I don't know how else to describe it. They become mutually committed to Chad's narrative. And this is an important point. It is Chad's narrative. It is Chad's narrative in the sense that

he's been writing about this for years. Lori's had an interest. Lori's always had an interest in the apocalypse and apocalyptic, you know, events. And she too was reading Julie Road as well as Chad. And near-death experiences, right. Julie Rose. Right. Ner-death experiences, right. Lori also had a fascination. This is a little aside, but Colby told me that she had this really intense fascinating. with Twilight in the Twilight series and the Twilight books and movies and she couldn't get enough of those. But we'll get into that a little later. So much to talk about, yes.

Yeah, yeah. And by the way, that's just one little thing. There's a lot we haven't shared yet that we know. And some of those things are going to be coming down tonight. You're going to hear a couple stories tonight. You have never heard. Go ahead, John. So Chad meets Lori.

They fall madly in love. the only problem is that they're both married to other people and Lori has two children. So apparently Chad has to solve that dilemma. She has two children. She has two children that are still at home under her care. Colby's married. Although, correct, that's right.

Colby's an adult. Tyler and JJ are still minors and still under her guardianship. They have these kids. And I think most normal people in this situation would probably get divorced or their spouses and care for the kids appropriately, however is needed. And right, I mean, that seems like a normal way to handle this, but this is no normal situation. So what happens is, and we don't know exactly why we can speculate, but what happens is that Chad develops this system of darkness and light, and he develops this rating system.

And in his rating system, he gives you a numerical rating. and if the rating is over a certain level, you're considered to be dark, and if it's above a certain level, you're light. And so he also begins to assign in his numerical rating system, at certain levels he begins to assign the label of zombie to certain people. Now that Chad has developed this system, it appears probably around 2019, sometime in early 2019, after he meets Lori, he develops the system.

And now we recognize, according to Chad, Chad recognizes that there's zombies on the planet. And so now Lori and Chad make it their mission to purge the planet of zombies before the apocalypse. Of course, their first steps appear to be purging those closest to them who are zombies of their, how would you call it, of their possessed souls, of their. It's like possession, zombies, evil spirits who inhabit light spirits. By light, we mean good. That's even Daibel language. Part of being a zombie is this demonic element, this possession element.

So the goal here is, for example, with Charles Valo, they refer to him as a zombie and they see him as being someone else named Ned Snyder, who's this dark spirit that's inhabited his body and needs to be removed. So the way this works is that everyone in close proximity to Lori and Chad, or at least people that they have access to who are designated zombies, with the exception of Brandon Boudreau, they also. all end up dead. They all end up murdered. And Brandon's just lucky he wasn't because there was an attempt on his life. There was an attempt. The bullet misses him by a small amount, maybe a foot, half a foot. But thankfully, he wasn't murdered and he's alive and we're grateful for that. So others weren't so lucky. And so this gets us back to the question of belief that the key component of all these murders is that every one of the people that was murdered was labeled a zombie. And every one of the people that was murdered received a high score on the

Chad's dark scale. This is where belief comes in. I think the reason I see this is Chad's drama is because this is Chad's rating system. And Chad is the one ultimately who designates people as zombies. So and also let me read, this is from the probable cause statement for Charles Valo? Charles Valo, Ned Snyder, Lori Valo, Daveo's husband. Lori was charged first-degree murder in his death. This is the probable cause. Right, exactly.

And so this is a really critical sentence. This is the last sentence of the probable cause statement for Charles. It says, and I quote, Melanie Gibb and Zulema Pestanis have both indicated that Lori got her advice and direction from Chad Daybell. When giving instructions, Zlema stated that Lori would always say, quote, I have a been told. So she's been told by Chad. So Lori doesn't do anything without having been told by Chad. Messages identified above have indicated that Chad Daibow was aware of the work with zombies and specifically the work that Zezlema and Lori were doing on Charles prior to 7-11, 2019, which is the date that Charles was murdered. There it is. Melanie Gibb and Zalemipas are telling us that they're taking directions from

Chad Debo. Right. I suppose one of the other arguments, so this is the argument, I guess this is the other argument that Chad Debo might make, which is that he didn't believe this stuff. And so therefore, Lori acted on her own, that this is false somehow, that he wasn't telling people what to do, that this rating system wasn't his or it was misinterpreted by Lori. Right. And so two narratives of the daybel case. This latter narrative, by the way, is based the one where Chad is not responsible and doesn't believe the stuff is based on this idea that he doesn't believe. However, let's go to Chad Daybell's autobiography called Living on the Earth in Heaven. I was looking for it over here. You took it. Yeah, we only have one copy. It's hard to get these days. Living on the edge of heaven, Chad Daybell,

this is page 178. He says, the most common question I receive is, quote, what parts of your books are based upon what you've seen in vision and what parts did you make up? Chad says, the short answer is that I don't fictionalize any of the events portrayed. I'm really not that creative. Let me describe how my writing process occurs. 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 into the lives of fictional families in my novels. So here we go.

In Chad Dable's autobiography, he's telling us, first-tabell. that his novels are not fiction and that he believes this stuff. But again, he could walk that back and say that he really doesn't believe that, of course, he was just saying that because he wanted to sell books. I'm not sure what his argument is going to be. So Chad's trial obviously is not coming up. We're not going to know. But this is the central narrative, I think, that drives this entire process.

It begins with Chad Debel. It ends with Chad Debo. It's based on Chad's rating system. And it comes down to believe. It comes down to whether Chad Debeau really believe this stuff or not. And I want to say this. We have also uncovered. You'll only see this here on Hidden True Crime, the very speech that Chad gave at the event where he met Lori Vallow Debel.

And he states in that speech that he almost, he kind of implies he pretended that his books had been fiction. And then later changed his story because he said that he was able to publish them more easily. They really are true story. stories. And he states that in this speech that we have. Right. So yeah. So there's multiple places where Chad indicates that he believes this stuff. You know, it'll be interesting to see whether at his trial he wants to walk that back and say that he didn't really mean it, that this was all fiction. Maybe he did it to impress Lori. I don't know. It's, it's hard to know what he's going to say exactly. But I think that's the larger narrative. The larger narrative is that this is some version of a cult.

and the cult takes shape after Chad starts gaining some power and notoriety for his books, mainly after 2015, after he meets Julie Roe and starts promoting his near-death experiences and how the near-death experiences then essentially make him a profit. So if Chad's not a profit, he doesn't have the same power. I think that, by the way, that's one of the things that really attracts Lori to Chad is the fact that Chad is portraying himself as this prophet with these visions. And so he is just about, in Lori's eyes, he's just about as godly and saintly as you. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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slash remove. Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. Yeah. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app

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Head to Acorns.com slash Hidden True Crime or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns, Tier 1 compensation provided. Investing involves risk, Acorns Advisors, LLC, and SEC registered investment advisor. A few important disclosures at acorns.com slash hidden true crime. And some people, many people have asked us, you know, Chad doesn't seem to be the type of person. Chad doesn't seem to be Lori's type, at least not physically. My answer to that is always, well, I don't think, I don't think that's what swayed her.

I don't think that persuaded her to fall in love with Chad. I think it was more about a fantasy that she was having of someone like Chad who professed to be super religious and a prophet. And I think that was more of the appeal here. She was driven much more by this fantasy of, we'll get into this a little bit, but this fantasy of eternal love, of the sort that you would find, by the way, in Twilight. So Twilight is a story about eternal love because vampires never die. And so, right, it's the same dynamic. Same idea. That's what Lori is looking for.

She's looking for some type of immortal love. And that's what Chad is dangling for her. Exactly. By the way, Twilight, someone asked, yes, it is also a Mormon author. It wasn't written necessarily for LDS audience, but she is, an LDS author and that could have swayed Lori a little bit. Who knows? In an internal love, that is what she's looking for.

She's not looking for. She's clearly not looking for the hottest man around the block, but. Well, she does put a little bit of emphasis on the physicality of their relationship. But I think ultimately that has more to do with the fact that she's already immersed in this fantasy about Chad being a prophet, which makes him much more attractive. Right. And again, the thing that the thing that allows him to get there is the near death experience because the near death experience is what breaks the veil and gives him the power and the visions to become a profit. That's what real. So the whole, this whole story really changes with Julie Roe and the near death experiences because that then changes Chad's perceptions of a couple of incidents when he was cliff diving or when he was at Dana Point that he then went back and referred to as near-death experiences. And to be clear, he didn't break the veil for going to be very precise.

His veil ripped. It was torn like a piece of fabric. It's very specific with what happens to his veil, which is what keeps him from seeing into the pre-existence where he lived as a spirit before he was born. The veil is supposed to keep you from seeing that and supposed to keep you. beat you from seeing the heavens. But because of Chad's ripped or torn veil, all of a sudden, as you're about to explain, he could see beyond the veil. Right. You could see the future. I'm still from a biological, you know, physiological standpoint, I'm still trying to figure out

where exactly the veil is in the brain. I think it's somewhere between the prefrontal cortex and the hypothalamus, but I haven't quite been able to locate. Maybe someone can help me figure out exactly where the val is. In his book, by the way, in his autobiography, he actually says it's in the brain. So obviously I see the val as being more metaphorical, but Chad reminds us in his book that there is some part of the brain that is the veil. And I'm a little torn, torn on where to find it. But maybe it's the amygdala.

I don't know. We'll figure it out someday, I hope. But yes. So that's a brief introduction to what I think the main narrative in this entire case is it's, it's, you know, again, just to reiterate, it's Chad's drama. He drives the entire narrative. He drives the story. And I think in the end, he affects the outcomes in the sense that his labeling system really is what leads to the horrific crimes. And now.

And now. Yeah. And so, and now let's move on quickly. to the next player in this story. We're going to get to Lori in a minute. We may not be able to cover everything today. We may have to pick this up next week. Right. We have a lot to cover.

So we have a lot to cover. So we may just scratch the surface. But let's talk about another argument in the room. And of course, that would be the argument around Alex Cox. Alex Cox, quick summary, Lori Vallow, DeBell's brother, who is now passed away, who allegedly what we suspect here at Hidden True Crime, the person who took the lives of the children. And according to police did take Charles Vallow's life.

That's Lori's husband who was killed. And someone who friends and family have said truly believed he was following this belief system of Chad and Lori. Yeah, Alex Cox is interesting because he's deceased. It seems to me like there could be an argument out there that Alex Cox drives this entire drama, not Chad Daybell, that somehow, Alex Cox is just some deranged psychopath who happened not to like certain members of these families, and he murdered them. He was sort of a lone wolf, and he acted on his own. I mean, you know, I don't, again, this gets back to our beginning about anchored narratives. Is it possible to tell this story? Is it possible to tell a story here where Alex Cox is this deranged psychopath who

takes the reins and just makes all these decisions and commits all this main? mayhem and murder and maybe everyone wants to point the finger at him. Is that, is that reasonable? Is that a narrative that a jury would find compelling? Right. Are they going to be able to say this was, this was Alex Cox. You know, Lori's alibi has come out. She claims she was not there when her children lost their lives that they were in Alex Cox's townhouse. Whether that's true or not, we don't know. I'm just saying this is what Lori's alibi, her official alibi is. that she was not there, that she was with Chad and or Melanie Gibb and David Warwick, her friends, while something happened with Alex in his townhouse and the children. Right. And so you have to wonder if what role is Alex Cox going to play in these trials? Is he going to play a major role? Are people going to try to argue that Alice Cox somehow, as this lone wolf deranged psychopath just went crazy and killed all these people. And, you know, it's an interesting thought.

I mean, he's deceased, so we can't take the stand. It's a good way to find a scapegoat. Right. And just conveniently, he dies of apparently natural causes in December of 2019. I think a lot of people have questions about that as I do as well. I don't know. Seems to me really dubious, but. Right. And as Nancy says, blame the dead guy. Right. Exactly.

Blame the dead guy. Why not? Right. It's the question is, so this gets us back to the to what do juries find compelling? What do juries? What resonates with juries? It's a story. It's the story that either a prosecution or the defense are telling the jury. And it's a story anchored with evidence that makes the most sense. Evidence that's the most coherent and the most plausible and that fits the story the best. So would a jury believe the story of the lone wolf deranged psychopath going crazy and killing all these people? I don't know. Again, that wouldn't be up for me to determine, but it seems to me it might be a difficult argument to make for a couple of reasons. Number one is Alex Cox already has or had,

I guess obviously past tense now, but Alex Cox spent time in prison for assault. And he assaulted Joe Ryan. He approached him with the taser. There was speculation that he probably wanted to murder him, but didn't. We also know from certain reports, police reports, that when Joe Ryan was receiving visitation of Tiley, that at least on one occasion, there were several pickup trucks that followed him and made threatening calls to him when he arrived home. And we don't know exactly who.

Unfortunately, those things weren't documented, but it appears that Alex Cox was probably involved. So a lot of people might say, or there could be an argument, that Alex Cox was involved with Lori or maybe took directions from Lori only during the murders that occurred. but that's not that wouldn't be accurate right because it looks like obviously Alex Cox has a prior history of violence and it does seem like this wouldn't be his first rodeo it seems like Lori may have had a lot of influence in these previous events as well so in other words Alex Cox is doing what Alex Cox did in the past if Alex Cox is the

person that murdered the children and the spouses or at least played some role in those murders this is precisely a version of what he's done previously so I think to make the argument that Alex Cox is a lone wolf making these decisions on his own, I think that's going to be hard to make. In addition to the fact that Zulema, Zulama has mentioned or mentioned in her interview that Alex was very concerned that he was going to be the fall guy. Yes, Alex was aware and concerned he was going to be the fall guy. Do that mute, babe?

Yep. So then I press for another answer and he tells me no, right? So then I am going, so then I stand up and I start walking away because I'm like, I don't know what to think at this point. And that's when he said, I think I am being their fall guy. And I'm like, the fall guy for what? What is it? Tell me, what is it that they're trying to pin on you?

What did they do? And he just wouldn't say anything else. And then, so then I get frustrated again because he's not answering. my question. So I turn around and I'm going to walk away again, you know, because I'm just so frustrating that he's not saying anything. And that's when he tells me, either I am a man of God or I am not. Now, at the time, because I turned around and I said, what does that mean? What does that mean? Tell me what does that mean? You can't, you can't just tell me this thing and not say anything to me. And I was so frustrating with him. I'm so mad, really,

because he wasn't saying anything else to me. Ken and damn death, you know, I guilted. I thought for sure that I had brought him to hear him out of Texas. I was, you know, kind of pouncing on him, you know. Now putting it all back and now I understand that, you know, probably telling him to blessings to do certain things. and he in his mind was either following what God is telling me, oh, I am not.

So after he had said that, I think I'm going to be the fall guy. I think I'm going to be there. There, fall guy. Did it any, did you think that Chad and Lori had done something to Tamm? Was that your impression based on that? Statement. I didn't know what to think at the time. I liked that at the end.

That's why I kept it a little bit longer. She specified their fall guy. Their fall guy. So Alex is telling Zulema that he thinks he's the fall guy, which implies that he wasn't a lone wolf. He wasn't acting on his own directives. He wasn't creating all this mayhem and murder on his own. And so this would go back to the statement I just read from the probable cause.

of Charles Vallow, his murder, that Melanie Gibb and Zilemma both said that the directives were coming from Chad. I don't think, I'm sure there's plenty of evidence, by the way, also showing that Lori probably played a role, that Lori had directed Alex before to go after Joe Ryan. Alex, he follows Joe Ryan from visitations. He approaches him and assaults him with the stun gun, right? he does time for that. He's almost certainly being guided and directed in those cases by Lori. And so no doubt that Lori would seem to play a role here. And so that would be the other argument

with Alex Cox, which would be that Alex Cox is simply carrying out his mission. Zilema implies that when he says either I'm a man of God or not. He sees this as being a spiritual mission. Yes. And he sees Chad as giving him spiritual directives to act and to murder and kill these people. We don't know exactly why. We can, we'll speculate that on some future episodes. But, but it seems pretty clear. So the other argument would be that Alex Cox is merely a conduit.

He's a hitman who's acting behalf of other people and taking orders from other people. In this case, it appears that those other people would be Chad and Lori. But I would suspect that you're going to see some arguments in here that Alex Cox, was more culpable and made more decisions than he probably did. So I wouldn't expect that the dead, you know, the, the dead guy did it theory is going to come into play in some way. And I don't know exactly how, but presumably I think we'll see some argument about or around Alex Cox and his involvement in these crimes because it's simple.

It's low-hanging fruit. Is it accurate? Probably not. But again, it's up to the prosecution or to defense to anchor these narratives and to provide the most compelling story based on evidence. And that's what the jury is going to respond to. So now we've briefly touched on some of the arguments in the room. We've talked about Chad. We've talked about Alex.

I would expect some version of those arguments to show up during all the trials that are forthcoming. But that brings us to Lori. Lori is an interesting situation because I think in some ways Lori's dilemma is the most complex. The Netflix documentary spent a lot of time. It was centered around Colby, but it spent a lot of time talking to the Cox family. I don't think it was the intention of the documentary to do this, but the Cox family certainly presented a narrative that I would say was the breaking bad narrative. And that narrative was that Lori was this reasonably healthy person. Maybe she had a few mental health issues here and there, but no history of violence.

She's generally pretty healthy. And then she meets Chad Daybell. And Chad Daybell is the trigger for everything that could possibly go wrong. Chad Dayball has an outsized impact on her. He's this malicious influence and everything goes south for Lori, including apparently, or maybe this decision to be involved in the murders of her spouse, Charles, and the two children. So this is what I called the Breaking Bad narrative. The Breaking Bad narrative is that Lori is this wonderful human being.

She meets Chad Daybell and now she's not. Of course, when I think of the Breaking Bad narrative, I think of Walter White from the show with the same title. And in fact, Lorne and I went back and reviewed. visited some of our favorite moments in Breaking Bad because we were talking about this. And Walter White, for those who don't know Breaking Bad, by the way, I don't know. So I don't want to, I don't want any spoilers here, but. Well, you can give a summary. I think it's fairly clear just by the title.

Final episode was like 2013, so it's dated by now. But for those unfamiliar with the story of Breaking Bad, it's the story of the lead character. His name is Walter White. He's a chemistry, high school chemistry teacher. He gets diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He's totally has months to live. So he decides to start cooking meth, which is the purest meth anyone has ever made. It becomes a big hit on the streets.

He makes a ton of money. He essentially becomes a drug lord and he runs this drug empire until he's eventually killed. In a nutshell, Walter White is this really meek, kind of lovable loser type guy, chemist, chemistry high school teacher who becomes a drug lord fairly quickly. And so his transformation is from this meek guy to this powerful drug lord. This is from the first episode of Breaking Bad. And we went, Lauren and I went back and revisited this since we haven't seen it in a long time. But I had forgotten how well they portrayed Walter White as, you know, someone who was sort of afraid of his own shadow and just didn't have a lot of self-esteem and a lot of assertiveness. Over and over and over, it is growth, then decay, then transformation.

It is fascinating. Is there something wrong with your table? Okay. Ionic bonds. Ionic bonds. I think those times shine, huh? Right. So I love the fact, by the way, that the student who's mocking him is named Chad. It's too good. Little irony. We haven't seen this in years, but there it is.

There's Chad. I don't know why Chad shows up everywhere. So he reprimands the student, Chad, and asks him to move back to his seat. And Chad drags the chair, being really disrespectful, and then mocks him at the carwash where he's working. There's another great scene where Hank, who is with. be his brother-in-law, FBI agent, and Hank has a gun, and he hands it to Walter White, and Walter White kind of fumbles with it, and Hank mocks him for the way he's handling the gun. And so those are two examples of Walter White being this very insecure high school chemistry

teacher who in many ways seems to have poor self-esteem and he does his best. He seems like someone who works hard. He cares about his students, but he clearly doesn't have a lot of assertiveness or power. Let's move on a little bit. This is after Walt has become a drug lord. Who the hell are you? Exactly who I am. And who killed Gus Fring.

Bullshit. Cartel got for him. Say my money. name damn right so there you go that's the transformation of walter white he's been mocked by students he's been mocked by hank for having a gun and now he's meeting with the drug cartel asking them to say his name it that's that's one of my favorite moments in breaking bad because it's so it's so dramatic and it's such a dramatic transformation now walter white is this powerful drug lord who's forcing a member the cartel to say his name just because he can. The question I have here is, do we see something

similar with Lori Daybell? Similar as in the way that the Cox family portrays it, that she was this perfect mother who broke bad. Right. Exactly. Is it, if we look at Walter White, you know, can we say that we see something similar with Lori? And you might say, well, why is that important? the reason it's important is because the argument would be that Lori got caught up with the wrong person and in this case, Chad, obviously, and that Chad was making all the decisions. Chad was responsible for the deaths of everyone that she just went along for the ride. She really didn't know what was going on. She broke bad in the sense that she ended up with the wrong person and made a decision

to be with him. but the argument I think that somebody would make maybe the defense, I don't know, would be that maybe she shouldn't be held responsible or at least not as responsible if this is the narrative. Because in the end, she's really this good person. She just got caught up in the wrong situation. There is, by the way, this thing in psychology called the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error says that people tend to overestimate the impact of, of personality on behavior rather than the impact of the situation. So in other words, if the situation here is that Lori met someone like Tad DeBal who was

power hungry and took advantage of her, that has more influence on her than her personality. At least that's the argument. The fundamental attribution error comes into play, like, for example, in the famous Milgram experiments where Milgram had a group of people, scientists, authority figures, wearing white, lab coats. They were shocking Confederates and in front of subjects, research subjects. And he wanted, Milgram wanted to see how far the research subjects would go if the authority figures continue to ask them to apply more shocks and more pressure to the Confederates. So people were being shocked. They were screaming. The scientists wearing the lab coats would then, you know,

would then say, you need to increase the shock level. You need to increase the pain that these people are experiencing. And they would see if they would stop. And many of them didn't stop. Many of them, many of the research subjects actually went so far as to increase the shock levels to the point where the Confederates would, they weren't actually passing out because they weren't really being shocked. But the Confederates were silent. So the implication was that they were unconscious. So that's a case. The Milgram experiments are a case of the fundamental attribution error in the sense that the situation has much more impact.

than personality does on how these research subjects are acting when an authority figure is telling them what to do. This is, I think this is going to be potentially an interesting argument in the room with Lori. I agree. I think it is. Is she breaking bad because of Chad Debel? And if so, can we, you know, again, and this gets back to story. Is this a story the jury should believe? And can someone produce the evidence to support this narrative?

So let's try to break down this. argument. For Walter White, there's a bit of a crisis. There's a trigger, and that trigger is lung cancer. For Lori Daybell, the Netflix documentary implied that the trigger was Chad Daybell. I actually think the trigger was coming apocalypse. Many people probably have forgotten this, but Lori believed that the world was coming to an end on July 20th, 2020. And she was absolutely convinced of that. The trigger, actually, I believe, is that Lori really wholeheartedly thinks the world is coming to an end, which is a version of cancer in my mind. Walter White thinks he's going to die. Lori Debel thinks she's going to die. So I think she feels some urgency to take

action. It's not so much about Chad Debel, although Chad Debel obviously has this massive influence on Lori and her beliefs. I think it's more the fact that Lori really thinks the end is in sight and that she has to take action. And therefore, there's a real urgency to eliminate all these zombies. I agree. So that's the commonality. And she mentions that, you know, that she's on a mission. Even right before meeting Chad, she shares in Melanie Gibbs House in that testimony meeting, she's been called on a mission. The time is now, she states. Right. Exactly. And so I know I'm going to just take this question here from OK-dokey, or is Chad breaking bad because of Lori? I mean, the argument against that, that's an interesting argument, by the way. I think, I think there's an

to be made that Chad broke bad too, but it wasn't because of Lori. Chad broke bad because of the power he was receiving because of the accolades he was receiving from his books. And because he saw Julie Roe, he saw, I don't want to, I don't know if it's fame, but he saw the results that Julie Roe was getting from writing about her near death experiences. She was getting a lot of attention. Chad saw that. And he started then talking about his near death experiences and his visions and his books

became more popular. He got a lot of attention for that. So I think if Chad breaks bad, it's not because of Lori. It's because of power. It's because he's now getting a certain amount of fame that he never expected. And it's going to his head. It's the old story about hubris. Say my name. Say my name. Right. And that by the way, that by the way is always my list. That is my litmus test for whether someone is broken bad. Does somebody go from not being able to say their name, which is to say that they have really maybe poor self-esteem and poor assertiveness to standing in front of the cartel and telling someone, say my name. I don't know if Chad Debel, by the way, ever got there. I could see him doing a version of that, but I could actually

see Lori doing a version of that as well. Lori might say something to the effect of, I am a goddess. She doesn't want you, it's not like Walter White, where you have to tell him he's Heisenberg, but I think Lori wants to hear that she's a goddess. And that's exactly, by the way, what Chad Daybell tells her. That's what she wants. Which, speaking of that, this is from the document dump from the Chandler Police Department. This is, this I think, by the way, is one of the absolute keys to this case, which is the text between the text from Chad to Lori. In one of the texts he wrote to Lori, he says, quote, they look deeply into each other's eyes for the first time.

And he knew he was in the presence of a goddess. He instinctively knew she was everything he had ever dreamed of. So he, Chad tells Lori. And he's writing this to her. He's texting this to her. Texting it to her just days after Charles was killed. Chad tells Lori multiple times, many, many times that she's a goddess. So isn't that a version of Say My Name?

And he's saying you're a goddess. In this breaking bad narrative, the question is not, with Lori, I think the question is not whether that means she broke bad. The question is whether she's having other people earlier say that to her. Is Lori telling Joe Ryan say my name and Joe Ryan is saying you're a goddess or some version of that? Is she doing that with Charles Vallow? With Lori, the bigger question is not whether, in other words, you can't argue that she's broken bad if she's doing some version of that before. Wanting attention from a man who thinks she's a perfect woman.

Wanting someone to say that she's a goddess or to say that she's special or if you compare these two, I don't know. I feel like we're on the cusp of a really deep dive here. I agree. We are on the cusp of a very big deep dive. And we still have one, two, three, four, five, six even videos just to share. Yeah, we have the heart of what we're going to talk about is coming up. Let me just set the stage a little bit and say that to give people something to think about if they join us next time. I hope you guys do.

Let me just summarize the arguments in the room with Lori or this idea of Breaking Bad. The argument for Breaking Bad is that Lori has no previous criminal record. She's had some problems, but as far as we know, she's had no previous criminal record. She's obviously, she's had some really intense custody battles. She's clearly been in some really bad relationships. She's had a lot of conflicts. But as far as we know, she has no criminal record prior to Chad Daybell. That would be part of the argument for Breaking Bad.

Another part of that argument is that her family is really adamant about the fact that she changed dramatically when she met Chad. In fact, I should say this, that some of the Cox family has reached out to us, and they thoroughly, completely disagree with our analysis of their family and our analysis of this case, and they disagree with our take on Lori. And I just want to say I respect that, that they're certainly entitled to a different view, and it's their family. You know, one comment I would make, though, is there's a reason why I can't be a therapist to my family, and that's because I don't have the objectivity to step outside my family and assess it. I mean, I can assess my family to some degree, but could I be objective enough and could I distance myself emotionally enough from my family

to really understand the dynamics and to help affect change? And I think for most of us, the answer to that would be no. So my only response to the Cox family would be, well, you know, I really respect your opinion and I don't disagree that our analysis could be completely base, but I would say that it's hard for, it's hard for families to really see themselves and to really objectively understand and analyze themselves. And so, so I would just ask the Cox family to maybe withhold a little judgment and to understand where we're coming from too, that we're, we're just doing the best we can with the evidence we have and the information we have. And we're trying to make sense of a very difficult and complex situation. So, but, but I want to

say that I appreciate the fact that they're willing to tell us that they disagree with us. And other people too. But let's conclude where we're going to because I think you kind of left on a cliff and some people think we just sort of concluded something. I think what we're leaving this on is a question that we haven't. So the argument for breaking bad, no history of violence. The Cox family really, really thoroughly believes that Lori changed dramatically. And there's other people in Lori's orbit like April Raymond, who was a close friend of Lori's, argues that she changed dramatically as well. When you say that someone has changed her I think you have to look at the context.

Lori is probably someone who had fairly extreme beliefs before in the sense that she's reading Julie Rowe and she's reading Denver Snuffer and she's reading a lot of these, how would you describe them more and these fringe Mormon figures? Yeah, visions of glory. Yeah, Denver Snuffer. Yeah, fringe near-death experience type books that go beyond the typical basic Mormon doctrine that one would learn in church. Denver Snuffer discusses seeing your own vision of Jesus Christ.

Visions of glory certainly refers to near-death experiences, as well as spirits inhabiting dead bodies. So those are the arguments for Breaking Bad. You know, the arguments against Breaking Bad would be, these are questions. You know, does Lori have some type of personality disorder that existed before Chad Debo? Does Lori have potentially some history of violence or harming others

before Chad Daybeau. Does Lori have a bit of a cruel streak before Chad Daybo? And we're going to be getting into this. So we're going to be getting into this a lot. That's the point. So we are posing questions. We are posing questions to think about we're not answering it right now. I'm right. We're asking this. We're asking this next week. The questions, the questions that I'm asking are questions that would argue against the breaking that bad narrative. So in other words, if Lori, if you can, is you can say that Lori might have some type of personality disorder or that she might have some history of harming other people prior to Chad Daybell, then those would be, that would be evidence against Lori breaking bad. In other words, that she may have become worse with Chad Daybell,

but she already had some tendencies towards being bad prior to Chad Daybell. That would be, that would be the argument against her breaking bat. That's what we want to explore. Does she have some type of personality disorder. Does she have some history of potentially inflicting suffering on others or harming others? Does she have some previous history of extreme beliefs? What family did she come from? How did her family influence her? Was her family responsible in part for some type of personality disorder? Those are all questions that we want to answer. I don't know, for example, where the defense might go, but it seems to me, if I were to defense attorney, I might consider arguing something like the Breaking Bad defense or narrative that

Lori was not a criminal. She meets Chad Debo and things go really south quickly. So, right? It seems like a solid defense, right. You know, it's interesting though. We'll get into this more next time. It's interesting, though, that I don't see Lori turning on chat at this point. There's really no evidence whatsoever that

that Lori is going to abandon Chad or turn on chat in any way. And that, so in order to make the breaking bad argument, I think you, Lori would need to turn on chat to some degree. And there's really no evidence of that. And so where you go from there, I don't know. Maybe you say that Lori had some mental health problems. She was really vulnerable. Alex Cox somehow played a role. It becomes much more difficult.

When you move away from the breaking bad argument, it becomes much more difficult, I think, to mount a compelling story. or a compelling defense. I guess also the alibi issue. I guess they're moving in the direction of she has an airtight alibi. She wasn't around the children. I don't know if they're going towards the direction of an airtight alibi. They're just stating what Lori wants her alibi to be, whether or not that's airtight is to be determining court. Right.

And of course, I mean, it doesn't, Chad Daibald doesn't have to be in the room or Lori, Lori doesn't have to be in the room. If they're directing Alex Cox to murder people, then obviously they're co-conspirators. I mean, so maybe there's there's a sense in which part of this is, I think, Chad and Lori tend to be really literal in the sense that they think that if they're not in the room and they're not committing the murders, that they don't have anything to do with the murders. Even if they order the murders, they seem to think, I know with Chad, for example, early on, we heard from some of our sources. that Chad was like completely perplexed about why he was in jail. Right? He thought, I didn't have anything to do with this.

But I think what the way Chad sees that is that he didn't pull the trigger, right? He didn't pull the knife. He didn't actually. I mean, I'm not sure that's true with Tammy, by the way. But in general, I think Chad has this perception that if he didn't commit the actual murder and wasn't in the room, then he couldn't be a murderer. And right now we're speculating to you. What we're doing is we're posing.

all of these what-if questions. All of you are gems, but we have, we will be exploring this on our next hidden hour. John and I will discuss tonight when that will be. We have a lot more to show you, a lot more. For those that are new to this case, again, I want to point out a few things.

And for those that listen to our original Beyond the Vail series, go back and listen to it again. I edited them for days, and I still remember things I didn't remember. So we recommend everyone heading to the podcast playlist and listening to our first Beyond the Vale series to get caught up. I also recommend, for those new to the case,

visiting our entire Daybell collection, our full Daybell collection, where there are a lot of interviews as well. And then on our Patreon account, I'll try to put it towards the top because Patreon kind of buries posts, but we have thousands and thousands of pages of FOIA documents, Freedom of Information Act documents.

Don't even give me started on FOIAs right now. We're not even going to talk about FOIAs in the last week, but we've always... Yeah. Filed FOIA requests and have gotten public records for the public to be able to pour over. And we have those in our Patreon account. Those are just a few things that you can do this week while we prepare. Then take these questions that we're posing and the speculation and the things we're thinking about and put it into a theory.

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