Hidden True Crime - Criminal Psychologist breaks down evidence | Did Lori Vallow Daybell have Munchausen by Proxy?

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Did Lori Daybell potentially have Munchausen by Proxy? Criminal Psychologist Dr. John Matthias is here to break down all of the evidence with you. About Hidden True Crime: What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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. Many have asked, and today we explore the evidence behind the possibility of Lori Vall de Bell, having Moonschausen by proxy. This episode was originally recorded in March of 2023. There's clear documentation of pancreatitis and many other elements, back pains that are

unexplicable that have no clear cause. This raises the question of whether this is some version of factitious disorder imposed on another, otherwise previously known as Moochausen's by proxy syndrome. Tiley suffered horrible physical pain her whole life. I sat with Tiley in the hospital year after year after year while she screamed in pain when the morphine wasn't even enough to take away the pain of her pancreatitis. I sat there while she cried and I held back her hair while she threw up and I am the only person on this earth who knows how much Tiley suffered in her life. She had pain every single day. She never felt good. Her body did not work right. And I don't know if that was from complications for me dying

while she was being born or something else, but she had a very difficult life. I think we're going to introduce some information here that's not widely known. So two friends of Lurries are interviewed here with a similar story. Anything else that you could think of that's important, I guess, now knowing that we have all these criminal investigations going, that you overheard then, that like I said, might have written it off, but you go, oh, man, now that all this is happening that's weird or bizarre. In June, when we saw her after she had been gone a couple of months, when I see weed, Christina and I got together with her. She had said that, and Christine would be able to recall, I don't even take ibuprofen, so I have no understanding of medicine or anything of that nature. Okay.

But there was some sort of, I think it was a medicine of some sort, and I don't know if it was something Charles took or if it was something that maybe was another medication that JJ took. Okay. I know JJ took quite a bit of medicine. Yeah. It's different issues. But she had said that she had been putting whatever this was into, I think, a smoothie or some sort of dream. her child's when she was in Texas okay what's going on yeah you know what um oh dude dear who uh sorry about that who told me that i can't remember if it was i think it was Nicole yeah no Nicole said hey yeah

because she said i was there she said Christina and I were there so she'd said and that was she couldn't remember the medication, but she said that she told both of you guys. And that was when they were back in Texas, right? Yes. Okay. When I went back on his like protein milk, like shake or something that he was taking. Okay. And so I said, Laura, you actually do that. She's like, well, I could only get both he and JJ took. I was trying to, I was all off with you on that. I just happened upon your doorstep and it was random and out of the blue. So not a problem, but I appreciate you calling and following up with me. So according to two friends, Nicole and Christina, Lori would drug Charles Vallow's smoothies with Xanax. The reason we're starting with this particular example is because it's proof.

This is definitive proof. I know in the second interview, she said that Lori sort of backtrack on that. but yeah christina said well she was like it's not a big deal just one or two right but so but let's let's dig into this for a second like it is a big deal it is a big deal because lorry is introducing a controlled substance without consent and unknowingly into charles drinks that by any statute is a crime it's not only a crime it's a felony in most states it's punishable by up to five years in prison so why is this important because two people are saying that she's doing this. Lori doesn't see it as a big deal because Lori wants to control his behavior.

Whatever her justification is, it doesn't matter. This is criminal behavior. She's introducing a controlled substance. Let's call it poison because Charles doesn't know he's taking these drinks. She's essentially poisoning Charles. Here we have this idea of empowerment through cruelty. This is where we're getting it, right? Because she feels empowered.

She's controlling his behavior. She potentially has his life in her hands. She could easily create a situation where he overdoses. She can easily create a situation where she essentially murders him, whether knowingly or not. And so I don't see any other way of saying that that's cruel. When you poison people, there's a sadistic component in the sense that you're really, you're negatively affecting someone's behavior and emotional state and mental state

deliberately through a controlled substance. And so I think this is a great instance of this trait of meanness that we're going to start to explore here. This is a never heard before story told by Larry Woodcock. when he was at our house two years ago this month, April, two years ago this month, we have not shared this until this moment.

So let's take a listen to what Larry Woodcock has to say. I'm going to give y'all a little bit insight that is absolutely not known to anybody. Two people know it. One of the last times we went to Hawaii, and the day we left Laurie had fixed the fruit salad I love fruit salads

I loved her fruit salad and she knew it because I told her I said you just absolutely make one of the best fruit salads I've ever had and when Kay just said what she said I was immediately drawn to this statement I'm fixing to make when we left Hawaii that morning or that evening

we boarded the plane plane took off and about halfway through the trip I woke up and I told okay I'm dying now I've been I've had enough people die in front of me to dying my arms, you know, around me that's died. I know in general the symptoms of that. And I truly believed in my heart that I was dying. I was going to die there on that plane. Well, Kay kept telling, you know, the stewardress and everybody, we got to do something. I said,

no, just leave me alone. Just leave me alone. We made the trip into Vegas. As we were walking down the corridor to get our luggage and the people mover on the escalator, I just got so sick. And I honestly, in my heart, I thought I was going to die right there. And then I started throwing up. Kay had bought a... I had a brand new Saints cap. cap a ball cap that i had worn one time and it was in my bag and here we are on a people mover

and so larry said i'm gonna throw up and i said well he said give me something to throw up in and i just opened my bag and and he grabbed that hat out of it and he threw up in my new saint's hat and i filled it up and then when we got all the people moving then we just threw it away but I'm wondering, and I've wondered this since it happened to us, because you and I talked about it. And I even asked Kay one time, I said, do you think she was trying to kill me? And Kay naturally said, no, I don't mean, for what reason? But why would she want to kill me? And I've always, in my heart since that time, since the day we were on that escalation,

later and as I said Kay and I talked about this I just wondered if maybe in hindsight and my point in saying what I just said my point is I tried to figure what would she gain out of it by having by doing something with me if that was her attempt what would she gain out of it but she and Kay were so close. One of the things that I've always tried to do is figure what angle would she use, where would she go with that? Why me? I mean, as far as I knew, she thought that I was, you know, her bestie and from everything Kay has told me that Laurie has told her that, you know, she thought i was uh rosen sitting rose on larry every day yeah she just thought that much of it i think uh i mean first of all thanks for sharing that story it is remarkable um and i'm i'm

i'm probably never going to forget the the saints hat as long as i live did did you get the hat replaced or did did you did you throw it out You got it. Did you ride? No, okay. I was going to say, yeah, I think that that hat wasn't salvageable. It was not salvage, but I loaded that hat down. And it was fruits and, but I can tell you I've never been poisoned.

And so I can't, I don't have any personal experience. But in looking at, in retrospect of every, that has happened. Maybe she, in her mind, maybe she did have come up with a reason too, but I can't imagine what it would be. So I think if I were to offer a professional perspective on that, I think you don't need reasons if that's true, if she was trying to kill you. In other words, she's not sitting down and saying, you know, she doesn't have a pro and con list when she's poisoning your food. She's just thinking, Larry looked at me funny this morning. I am so angry at him or I'm tired of him. Or maybe she took something you said as a criticism or a slight.

Like it doesn't have to be as, it can be as simple as that. Like there's no, I know it's, for, for normal, rational human beings, we want reasons. We want, we want to say, she's killing me for money. But with somebody like Lori, there's no reasons. It could have been something that you just had no clue about. Well, look and thinking back through all of this, I think one of the things that I never put up with Laurie's bullshit. That would be a reason. And now I respected her because she had JJ.

Okay. But all this trying to convince our granddaughter that she needed to be part of this cult and wanted her to start reading books that Chad wrote. Oh, she did. So maybe for some reason, because I didn't go along with her beliefs, and I was I never hid that from her because I don't think I think she totally understood that her BS was not going to work with me and and I would call her out onto it but I think maybe that's part of it I don't know I I've tried it like you said those type of people don't need a reason up until just a minute a few minutes ago there's only two people that knew about this came myself. And I will, without a doubt, still in my heart believe that there was something trying to be committed because I've been sick.

I know what it is to be sick. I know what it is to be afraid. And I can tell you, I was praying that I didn't want to die on an airplane. This is way before Chad Daybell this story. So here we have another instance of potential poisoning. Do we know for sure that that's what Lori was trying to do here? We don't because it was fruit. And of course, we all know that fruit can go bad and it can create problems.

But Larry seemed pretty convinced that this was way beyond fruit, that this had to do with poisoning. He would have had no reason, by the way, to go to the hospital or he couldn't go to the hospital. He was on a plane. Yeah, he was on an airplane. He had no, really no motivation to get blood work done to see if this was poisoning because it didn't occur to him.

Right, at that point he trusted Lori. But looking back, now that we know what he did to Charles, that she clearly poisoned his drinks, his smoothies, it seems to me like this is a pattern that we're starting to see. that this story, if this was a poisoning attempt, again, we can't prove it, but let's say that it was, this gets into that quality of meanness, this gets into that callous unemotional trait of empowerment through cruelty. I love that term because I think that really captures it. This is about Lori feeling empowered. If we talk about...

That would be a reason. In other words, that would be a reason. A motive, right. If we talk about this idea of psychic death or the empty self or a false self, then this is an attempt to transform that sense of victimization and helplessness through poisoning to feel more empowered. And that's what she's doing. You thought this was your run club era.

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Dpop where taste recognizes taste. Well, so this is about Tiley. This is Nancy Grace. I'll put the link to this video in the description as well if anyone wants to go see this. So is Nancy Grace interviewing Lori's friend from Hawaii, April Raymond, and they're discussing Tiley. We had a lot of health issues and they could never really get to the bottom of them. What kind of health problems that the doctors couldn't figure out?

Kylie was always sick and she would be in her room resting or sleeping or recovering or just getting back from the doctor. When she was younger, they told me that she had had several surgeries to try to figure out what was wrong and to try to fix things and it never accomplished anything. Was Lori Valo primarily involved in Tiley's treatments? Yes. If a fleet of doctors in a metropolitan city can't figure out what's wrong and called mom Lori Vallow was the primary person taking care of her, I'd be very, very curious to find the true nature of Tiley Ryan's ailments and if they were somehow inflicted on her. And would Lori Vallow be there alone with her at the time?

she began manifesting the pain and when the pain would go away and what if any attention would Lori Valor receive when Tiley would be ill. This is the first time hearing of this and I'm very, very distressed. Well, we're hearing this from between April and Nancy Grace. We have heard from several people about Tiley always being sick and in the hospital. We've seen photos of her in the hospital. Most of you that follow this case know this is a very repeated story. Exactly. And there's diagnoses, there are multiple diagnoses of pancreatitis, which it seems in these diagnoses to have no clear cause. So the question here becomes, and this is from, by the way, this is from a Gardium ad litem report to the court, July 15th, 2009. I'm just going to quote this in the same period of time. Tiley was age six. She was diagnosed with pancreatitis, having had two episodes requiring hospitalization. between February of 2006 and 2008. So there's clear documentation of pancreatitis

and many other elements, back pains that are inexplicable, that have no clear cause. This raises the question of whether this is some version of factitious disorder imposed on another, otherwise previously known as Moochhausen's biproxy syndrome. I think that's the issue that April and answer, T. Grace are raising here too, right? They're questioning whether Lori is poisoning or introducing a substance into Tile's drinks or food, and is that responsible for all her

physical ailments. My short answer to that is we don't know for sure, but again, we're looking at here we go. Larry Woodcock almost dies from what he believes is poisoning. We know for sure that she's introducing controlled substances into Charles drinks. We have inexplicable reasons for Tiley's illnesses. You have all of these elements are coming together. And let me add one more, a testimony of JJ's last babysitter in Rexberg, who she said that Lori told her

that she could give J.J. Benadryl to help him sleep. Yeah, and let me, this is from, this is from an affidavit written by filed in the courts by Cheryl Willer. I'm just going to quote, we're just going to do, I'm just going to do a quick quote on this. There's a couple things in this affidavit I want to point out. One is a quote from one of her sons. I'm not going to mention the name of her son because Cheryl has gone to great lengths to try to protect the identity and privacy of her kids. But here's a quote from one of Cheryl's kids.

he was, I believe, around 12 years old at the time. He says, quote, Lori gave us all kinds of those green Advil slash NyQuil and Lunesta pills so we could go to bed early. They practically shoved it down our throat. Also in that affidavit, she talks about

that there is a diagnosis in one of the health reports of one of the Valo children. I'm not going to mention name again. here, but there's an actual diagnosis in a chart pertaining to this particular situation that Cheryl says, the quoting states that the application indicates Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. So a doctor that they dealt with to deal with a lot of medical problems back then that was treating one of the children.

Again, I'm not going to say who the child is, but one of the child is, but And this was a skin rash, by the way, a skin rash. Yeah, skin rash. One of the children in the household was having some problems, and the child gets diagnosed because the causes are so vague and so nebulous, gets diagnosed with Moonsons by proxy syndrome. Now we call it factitious disorder imposed on another. But so there is actual.

evidence in a medical chart, I believe today as we speak of a diagnosis pertaining to Lori of Moonsons by proxy syndrome. So can I say something about this really quickly too? Because I reached out to Cheryl. Yep. Many people have seen this affidavit. It's floated around the web. It refers to Lori.

and Charles concerns Cheryl had. So I reached out to her for clarification. And she stated this, and I just want to say this too. Because I asked her, I was like, is this Lori and Charles help me out here? Like what, you know, she said, I believe this was only Lori. This is from Cheryl Wheeler to us. And she said that I could share this. I believe it was only Lori.

Charles just didn't think like this. during our marriage, I was the primary caretaker. I am not complaining about that. But Charles would have naturally defaulted to Lori's style of mothering and then add that, and then some personal stuff that I won't share. And then she said that, I know that you understand the affidavit was during a custody battle.

This custody battle would not have even been brought up if it were not for Lori's involvement in my. children's life. So the custody battle was only happening because Lori entered her children's life, according to Cheryl Wheeler. So I want to share that too. Go ahead, John. Right. That all of these, again, so the main point is that all of these physical ailments and health problems started when Lori enters the picture. Right. Charles may have been involved in some of that indirectly, but it's not, but the, The cause is Lori, that Lori is the driver and the impetus for all these physical elements.

Prior to Lori, there were no issues with the kids at all with Charles. Right. So I think that's... It's important to note. Right. That's the important point. I'm going to read a quote here. This is from a book on Moonshausen.

This is, by the way, a really fascinating book on Moonchhausen. There's not a lot of great books written about Moonchausen syndrome by proxy, but this is called Hurting for Love. Moon Childs is by proxy syndrome. It's by Shriar and Lebo. It was also, I believe, written in the 90s. Let me give you the exact date here, 1993. Here's what they say about Moon Chances by proxy syndrome.

This is page 95. They, meaning mothers, often mothers. They seize the opportunity afforded by the birth of a child to actively relate to and control physicians by amplifying a minor ailment in their children and reducing an illness in their infants. And so doing, they try to maintain an intense yet distant, perverse, and ambivalent relationship with a powerfully loved and powerfully feared paternal representative. As we will demonstrate, the physician comes to represent a second chance at a long-for

relationship with the father. But the fear of yet another abandonment is equally, if not more, powerful. What these case studies suggest is that the good moon childens by proxy syndrome mother is a masquerade of mothering that springs from childhood roots that were quietly traumatic include a profound absence of recognition of the child who will become a moon childens by proxy syndrome mother. Many of many of these young girls, she is. And so she's referring to before their mothers.

Okay. Many of these young girls feel neglected and desperate for approval and recognition. So their argument, the author's argument, is that Moon Chausen's is a function of, interestingly enough, the desire for paternal love. No doubt, Lori had a lot of conflict with her father. And so it's interesting that there is that element, or at least in the case studies that they evaluate, they believe there's that element. And the main payoff is attention and recognition, but specifically the attention and recognition of the father. So I think you have, and also previous neglect, trauma, childhood trauma.

So I think you have, potentially you have a lot of those elements in this particular case. The thing that I really started thinking about after reading that book, by the way, is this idea of triangulation. We talked about this with Murdoch, how I've talked about the family therapist, Murray Bowen, who says that the basic unit in a family is a triangle. So when there's problems between two members and a family, often a third member will be brought in to diffuse the conflict to take the heat down. and with with tylee i think tylee plays that role to a very large extent in this family that

tylee's always brought in to diffuse conflicts between other people the tylee becomes this pawn of sorts and i mean it's sad it's sad but but but i think there's this attempt by lory to triangulate tyley who she's very conflicted about, by the way. Lori detest Joe Ryan. And unfortunately, Tiley is the daughter of Joe Ryan. So I think in some ways, Tiley suffers by association with Joe Ryan. I think Lori has this constant approach avoidance relationship with Tiley in the sense that she wants to be close to her, but then she gets angry at her because she associates her with Joe Ryan. So I think that if there is Moon Chausen's in this particular case or fact it's just disorder, it has something

to do with that dynamic, that she feels a great deal of love and dependency towards Tiley, but she also wants to punish her because of her association with Joe Ryan. So I think the poisoning is an attempt to keep Tiley close because she's sick all the time, and Tiley needs her. There's a dependency. but it's also an attempt to inflict harm on Tiley because she represents bad association to Joe Ryan. So it's sort of this, I love you,

but I'm going to punish you type relationship. And it's also, I think, applicable to her hospital stays. That I think there's this interesting dynamic that this book points out that the physician gets triangulated. You know, I'd be really curious to know if there's a consistent physician who's treating Tiley that Lori, is interested in or attracted to, right? That would make this even more fascinating because now Lori is showing up with a physician

who she can't really have a relationship with. She's married. But yet, there's this fantasy of paternal love that she gets to go to this physician and it's sort of risk-free in the sense that she's around this physician all the time. I presume it would be a male in that case. She gets to be seen as this really good mother because she's always bringing her daughter in for attention. And yet, at the same time,

she's inflicting suffering and pain on her daughter by poisoning her. And nobody can figure out what's going on, really. I mean, pancreatitis might be a valid diagnosis, but that's questionable. Or even, I mean, not just attention from a doctor, though, attention from her family. Tyler's sick again. Tyler's in the hospital.

Everyone knows. Lori's there, being a good mother. Charles is on his own, you know, taking care of JJ, you know, before or after Charles. You know, everybody knows where she is. People are coming to visit, Tiley and Lori. She's getting that attention, that recognition. Right. Yeah.

And so the main motivations, I think, for Moonchausen's would be attention and recognition and the poisoning component of that would be empowerment. that Lori has this secret sense of empowerment that she's in control, that she is punishing Tiley. And I'm not saying that's conscious, by the way. I think the way she's punishing Tiley here is, she knows she's potentially, and again, I don't know for sure if this is true,

but she knows potentially that she's harming her and punishing her through medication or poison, whatever she's giving her. But she also knows that she's going to get a, a positive payoff from that, as you said, from attention. But she's in control of the situation. This is her drama. She's in control from start to finish. And that's an important piece of this, too, I think. Right. Letter to the courts from Mary Vogel. This is from February 28, 2008. And so people understand Mary Vogel was the ad litem. She took the place of Tom Ware. So Tom Ware, the

ad litem of Tiley's was released from the case and Mary Vogel came in. Here's what Mary says February 28th, 2008. She's talking about the relationship, the custody battle for Tiley. She says this is a pattern that has continued to spiral Tiley's life into a dramatic and destructive situation that I do think is harmful and have outlined in previous letters and reports to the court. If these events and situations persist, I believe that it becomes more and more possible to overlook something truly dangerous or exaggerate something that is manipulative in nature. It is a dangerous pattern.

So the Mary Fogel, the guardian ad line in to Tiley is essentially telling the courts that she thinks that Lori Valo at the time, that Lori Valo is more than capable of creating harm to another human being. They don't know and you don't know. You don't know what I've been through, and you may even give a crap when they've been through. Nobody does, except for me.

I'm the one that was in the hospital with Tylee for hundreds of days watching herself. Kylie is free now from all the pains of her life. I sat there while she cried and I held back her hair while she threw up. And I am the only person on this earth who knows how much Tiley suffered in her life. She had pain every single day. She never felt good. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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