Hidden True Crime - Criminal Psychologist Reacts to Lori Vallow Daybell's Post Verdict Interview | With Briana Whitney
Episode Date: April 26, 2025If you thought Lori Daybell was done... think again! She has once again sat down with Arizona Family's Briana Whitney to give a post-conviction interview and it was a wild ride! Dr. John and Lauren we...re lucky enough to have Briana herself come on today as a guest to help break down Lori's interview, what the things she said really mean, and what Briana thought of her interview with Lori as a whole. Briana Whitney: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianawhitney/ AZ Family FULL Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecA97Uv3uj8&t=1174s True Crime Arizona Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-arizona/id1539546360 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1R36EkLIb4v155hEBQ3I7B?si=4f63758d57e14fe9 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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and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash hidden true crime. I am here with Dr. John Matthias,
criminal psychologist, someone who has followed the Lori Vall de Bell case,
for nearly six years.
And there was a big interview dropped yesterday
by Arizona family, Brianna, reporter Brianna,
and it is with Lori Valot DeBal
after her guilty verdict.
We have watched it.
You have now watched it.
By the way, I called John this morning,
who also was my husband.
I called husband John this morning
and I said,
I said, so what did you think?
And love your mug, by the way, I saw that.
And he said, what, I said, what did you think?
And he said, I'll tell you later.
I have no idea what you think.
And so here we are real time.
Can you guys, can you read my mug?
It could probably be worse, says your mug.
It could probably be worse, right?
Well, so I think that's interview have probably been worse, though.
I think, I think, so that's how, that's how I'm,
feeling this morning, but I think this is a good place to start because my mug, I didn't grab
this mug intentionally, by the way. I just grabbed one of our big mugs. We don't have a lot of big
mugs like this, and I need a lot of morning pickup this morning. So number one, I'm not sure it could
be worseful for Lorry. So I'll start with that thought. But the second thing that's fascinating
about this interview, and it's a quick interview. It's like 20 minutes or so.
but it is action-packed.
So there's a lot in this interview to talk about.
And one of them is this issue of, it could probably be worse, right?
Because there's a moment in this interview where she talks about her near-death experience.
And she says that the near-death experience caused her to do a life review where she examined what's most important in life.
And this is what she found to be most important in life.
You ready for this?
Yeah.
She says, what matters most is, number one, how you,
react, number two, how you treat other people, and number three, the love that you give.
So let's start with the first one. This whole, it could probably be worse. So Brianna says,
tell me more about this, how you can react. And she says, you need to find, quote, joy in every
situation. When you have that experience and you go to the other side of the veil, you understand,
you have a life review. You see your whole life, everything that happened to you. And you see
what's important and what's unimportant. And you see,
what matters in life.
So what matters in life is how you react to things,
how you treat other people,
and the love that you give while you're here on earth.
And that's it.
So you felt not reacting was the best call in that moment?
No, I felt like I should have joy in every situation,
which is what I was taught to do in heaven.
So I think Lori turns out to be a big proponent of it could probably be worse
because she's trying to find joy in every situation.
clearly this is someone who's never going to walk out of prison.
Would we also call this toxic positivity?
Well, to the extreme.
You know, when you say it can probably be worse,
I guess there's some acknowledgement of what worse or worse can mean, right?
But like for Lori, the reason I want to start with this is because this idea of finding joy in every situation,
while it might be applicable to someone who attends self-help workshops like every,
day or something. There's this immense denial of reality with Lori. Like one thing that comes
across in this interview more than anything else is this is a woman who's divorced from reality.
Right. I mean, I get that if you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison, you're going to
want to find some joy or some ways to cope or deal with that. And obviously, that would have been
the case whether she was convicted here or not. But I think I start with this because, you know,
for me, I have to have a coffee mug that reminds me it could probably be worse. Otherwise, I'm going to
swim and I'm going to wallow on how bad it is, right? But for her, she's just completely in denial of
reality. And she wants to find all this joy. And that brings me to a second point that she talks about.
She talks about the moment on the stand with Adam, her brother and how she was going to start
with this joke about how he's Ernest T. Watson, which apparently was Adam's name in school that
they used to joke about it. And she says, quote, we were a joking family. We were a joking family.
It was different when it was up there with him because, you know, you've known him your whole
life. You know, I was going to come in and say, you know, I'm funny. I'm always doing movie
lines. Our whole family is like that. We're big on movie lines. Like Summer and I will text back
and forth in total movie lines without any words ever that are our own, you know, just quoting back
and forth. And so I wanted to come in and ask Adam, Adam, who is Ernest T. Watson?
and see what his reaction would be.
Because there's no way he couldn't laugh.
He seemed annoyed on the stand.
Yeah, well, he would laugh because that was the name
that he called himself when we used to play school
when we were little growing up.
That was like his nerdy name for school
when we played school.
So I thought that would be funny.
But I was trying to be, I mean,
it's obviously a serious situation,
but it's hard with my own family to be serious
because we're really a joking family and so.
So she dismisses like the whole,
green chili chicken enchilada thing is just kind of being funny.
Whereas we know it wasn't.
You know, we know that she challenged him on it.
And she said, you don't, so you don't remember that.
You don't remember my amazing, like she did it in a way that was quite stern.
Right.
Quite serious, right?
But this choking family idea is important.
It's a little snippet from this interview.
It's a very small moment.
But what she essentially says is we were a family that didn't deal with reality.
We were a family that we joked all the time because we couldn't cope with the real world and we couldn't deal with reality.
And I think that's part of what you're seeing here.
This is someone who can't deal with evidence.
She can't do with facts.
She can't do with the real world.
And so this need to find joy in every situation is a complete denial of reality.
And that's going to be a theme that echoes throughout this entire interview.
In fact, there's just all kinds of job-dropping moments in here.
But one of them is she argues many times throughout.
this interview. And it's a short interview, but she comes back to this team over and over again,
which is that the courts and the judge, she uses the word preclude. They preclude her from putting
a hundred case because they won't let her talk about the truth, basically. She doesn't use the term
truth. But she says, when asked about the Nephi comments and how important that was, and
Brianna points out that many jurors apparently found this Nephi argument to be compelling,
that she thought she was Nephi and Nephi wanted to murder Laban, and therefore that analogy
applied to Charles, right? That Lori and Alex Cox were a version of Nephi, and it was okay if they
murdered Charles because of this. He was possessed by Ned Schneider, this evil spirit. But here's what
she says. She says, the prosecution, quote, about the Nephi issue, the prosecution, quote, just makes up
a story. But what she said, the irony, the, I can't even wrap my mind around like the hypocrisy and the
irony of that is what she says throughout this whole thing is all these women on death row
that she supposedly is helping or ministering to or whatever she's doing, they're all
precluded from telling their story. And therefore they're all, most of them get convicted. And she's
precluded from telling her story. The prosecution gets to make up a story, but she doesn't.
So you have this massive misunderstanding, this massive, she's totally misinformed about what the court system does.
The reason she can't just make up a story and BS her way through a defense is because the court will only allow in something called evidence.
Right.
By the way, evidence is also some version of what we call reality.
And evidence is also some version of what we call truth.
Right.
And so what she's saying essentially is I don't understand how I'm getting railroaded because my fiction and my version of the truth isn't the judge isn't allowing me to tell my fiction, which clearly if I could tell my fiction, the jury would buy it wholesale and believe it.
And I would be acquitted?
Because as she says later, she says, you know, Brianna asked, would you take a plea deal?
And she says no, because, quote, I didn't do anything.
So again, it gets back to the.
theme of absolute, this absolute inability to deal with reality, this incredible level of denial
of reality.
And I guess that ties into this whole idea of delusions and being delusional.
We know she's been diagnosed with delusional disorder, with hyper-religiosity.
You see that somewhat in this interview.
You know, there's not enough time to really dig deep into that issue.
But I think those are some of the main points to kind of frame this interview.
That just she lives in this alternative universe.
You know, apparently you get just to have a defense where you can just spout any type of fiction or falsehoods that you want.
And the judge is supposed to allow it and the jury's supposed to believe it, right?
That's the world she apparently lives in.
In the real world, you present evidence and evidence is vetted by the judge.
And the judge determines whether that evidence gets allowed.
There's a parallel here with Delphi where the whole Odinist defense wasn't allowed in because there was no basis in reality for that defense.
No nexus, yeah.
The judge who heard arguments for three days about the odinist issue basically learned or we learned during that hearing that not a single odinist could be placed in Delphi or near the scene of the crime on the day of the murders, which makes it difficult to argue that there were.
odinists at the scene of the crime because they weren't there.
You can't physically place them at the crime scene.
So that's called evidence.
Just like her, she wants to have this narrative about how Tiley apparently murdered JJ
and then took her own life.
So horrible.
Right.
And so they heard arguments.
There were hearings to address that.
And the judge said basically, no, you can't bring that in.
It's nonsenseical.
There's no evidence.
And so I think that's sort of the crux of this.
I mean, there's so many other moments in here.
One of the most interesting moments, perhaps the key moment in here, which if people
aren't paying attention, they can lose this.
But she's talking about when Adam was on the stand.
And she says twice that she had to get into, quote, attorney mode.
Attorney mode.
I love that because she's essentially telling us.
So you and I debated the other day about, is she competent?
Right.
Is she, this looks like someone who's actually quite effective.
Quite competent.
quite competent.
And so she told us in this interview, she told us why,
because she goes into, quote, attorney mode.
And I think my, I would argue, although this is just speculation,
but I would argue that this is a version of some type of dissociation.
That attorney mode for Lori is a mode where she can deal with reality more effectively.
She can be present in the courtroom,
even though she's delusional in terms of her.
beliefs about what happened. She's grounded in the, you know, the process, right? She's participating
in it. She's not completely bonkers off the wall in the courtroom. Right. And she tells us why.
She says, I go into attorney mode. So attorney mode apparently is a mode for her where she's very focused.
She's dialed in. You know, she's able to address what's going on in the courtroom. But, but I mean,
she does stray from it. You see those moments where.
where, and she complained about it in this interview,
she strays from it at times when she says,
you know, she brings in evidence she's not supposed to.
And the judge says, right, the judge kind of reprimands her
and says, please don't bring in evidence, you know,
and then all the many objections that are sustained,
those are all attempts for her to kind of push beyond the limits a little bit.
But I think you see a little bit of this dissociative component here
because this idea of going into attorney mode, I think,
is really interesting and important for understanding Lori
because this appears to be some potentially speculating
some dissociative state that she can get into,
where she can function in the courtroom at a higher level,
and for the most part, keep out these crazy beliefs about, you know, Nephi.
And, I mean, she tells us in the interview how these beliefs,
she says that what's happening now will have zero effect upon her in eternity, right?
She sees herself as a martyr for all the women on death row.
She talks about Chad a little bit and how Chad and her have special knowledge.
And one of the ways that she connected to Chad was because, quote,
she had no one to talk to about it.
In other words, Chad was the only person she could talk to about these spiritual insights.
and these communications with Jesus Christ, right, that only Lori has these.
And she says, quote, I'm not speaking of anything on earth.
So she sees herself, again, she sees herself as spiritually superior.
And Chad is someone who's obviously similar.
And so they have this camaraderie that's based on that.
And Chad is the only one she can talk to about these,
because he too had a near-death experience
or he claims too.
Chad is someone she can connect to.
That's her best friend.
Right, her best friend.
And also talk about a blatant lie.
Yeah.
We learned that she didn't apparently know
about that Charles was dating other people
until she started getting discovery for the trial.
And then she says she was only friends with Chad.
I know the love story was written.
The love story was written.
Right.
The love story is...
We know exactly what was happening before Charles was killed.
Right.
The love story is a complete total refutation of that lie.
Yeah.
The James and Elena story, the Loewing Fire story,
the blazing his dark rug and the Bobby story,
what we're referring to, the texts.
Right.
So I thought that was interesting, you know,
clearly, like, again, this issue of dealing with reality.
she can't even integrate the fact
she apparently has to see herself
as so self-righteous
and so spiritual
that she can't acknowledge
he was having an affair with Chad
before Charles was killed
even though the evidence is overwhelming
on that point
so she sees herself
as this kind of morally pure human being
that had this friendship with Chad
until after the murder
and then apparently
I guess it was okay right
because, you know, she murdered Charles.
So.
And now we can say that because she's a convicted murderer for that incident.
Right. We can say, yeah, exactly.
Conspiracy to commit first degree murder.
She murdered Charles.
Convicted. Convicted.
Keep going. I have questions. Keep going.
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So I think it's everything we've always talked about with Lori.
It's just, it's, it's, it's just interesting to see this in the context of a post-conviction, right?
That, you know, but I think this, also like this, this, the, this, the, this issue about what matters most.
I just, that I mentioned earlier, how you react.
So you always react with joy, no matter what, apparently.
How you treat other people and love that you, the love that you give.
I mean, you're a murderer.
So another thing that runs throughout this that we've talked.
talked about a lot is this whole idea of being a victim. You know, she's constantly harping on the
fact that she, the way she put it is, quote, the way the system works, unquote, is stacked
against her, right? Like, everyone is, you know, there's this underlying paranoia of sorts where
everyone's out to get her. She's the victim. She can't tell the truth. She can't tell her story, right?
She's been, she's been maligned. There's, there's even a moment in.
here where she talks about, I don't know if you caught this, but Adam and Charles and Brandon were
quote plotting against me.
She implies.
Go ahead.
She implies, I think she implies that they actually may have been out to harm her.
Absolutely.
Talk about projection.
It's the very thing she says in the welfare check, the very first welfare check in November
2019.
She says that her brother is trying to kill her for her $2 million life insurance.
policy. Okay. That is exactly what she is alluding to. And she is not, yeah, she is saying,
even though she's joking with Adam about chicken enchiladas, he's also trying to murder her to get
$2 million. And so she brings that up just quickly. She brings it up tangentially here,
but what a moment, right? Like, I forgot about that. I forgot that, yeah, now that you reminded me that she did say that,
She did say a few times that she thought Adam was trying to kill her.
And so, again, this idea that this inability to deal with the reality
and this idea that she's this perpetual victim,
in fact, I would go even further and say that there's a sense here in which she sees herself as a martyr.
She absolutely does.
This goes beyond victimization.
This gets into martyrdom with helping the women in jail.
and right, having a voice for people that don't have a voice for the voiceless.
It's out there.
It is.
And we have actually somebody backstage that I would like to bring on to discuss this interview.
I think we have someone here that can help us understand this interview better than we ever possibly could.
And that is the person that interviewed Lori Valladabelle, Brianna Whitney.
Hello, Brianna.
Hi. I think you're having me on.
Absolutely.
We're going to put you in the middle here just to make you extra uncomfortable.
That's what we do.
Perfect.
All eyes on you.
You look lovely and we know that you are off to work because you work where Arizona family, tell us what you do there.
Yeah.
So Arizona's family is 3 TV and CBS 5 or a Duopoly station and I'm the true crime correspondent there.
So I cover everything true crime, not just.
the Valo-Day Bell story, but kind of anything that happens around Arizona or crimes around the
country that have Arizona ties. And so it keeps me busy, but obviously this has been a huge,
a huge case for Arizona and Idaho, but for everybody here locally, this trial was a bit of one.
Yeah, we'll put a link to where people can find you and follow you. You're an excellent journalist
in the description of this episode. So thank you for being with us. And I just want to say that you
have now interviewed Lori Daybell twice, which is a great.
one more time than Keith Morrison or anybody else's interviewed her. So, and what an interview. That was
yesterday, right? That was yesterday. Yeah, yesterday morning. How are you doing? You know, I'm tired. I mean,
I know we all have covered the trial for weeks now and it's been a lot of long days and everything like that.
But I think, too, just kind of the mental fatigue of preparing for an interview like that and then getting it
And it's not like we just take a deep breath after we have to do everything for our newscasts and, you know, the digital and the social play.
And I think just even having time to process what I learned and being there in front of her and having to kind of keep that train on the tracks, so to speak, with the interview is pretty mentally and even emotionally exhausting.
Like I almost forget that I'm listening to her discuss these horrific crimes and even just listening to her.
or talk about it, but like her facial expressions with it is a lot. It's a lot to kind of unpack.
And I feel like I'm still doing that. Yeah, you probably have to, as a journalist, you put things
aside. You're going in. It's game day. You just go in for your interview. And then you have to
like go back and like what just happens sometimes. At least that's what I do. So I'm projecting there.
No, that's exactly right. It's exactly right. I think it'll take a couple days. And we're still
working on a big show today kind of with like everything that happened in the trial and her interview and
all of that. So I think after tonight, I'll finally take a moment to breathe and kind of reflect on it all.
Okay. When you conclude that show, send it to us and we'll put a link to that in the description of
this episode as well. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. You have been there every day of the trial.
I want to say I've gotten to know Brianna. We've sat by each other as we wait in line.
You're an excellent journalist. I've told John about you. And we're just so grateful again that
you're here to kind of help us understand what happened, which I do want to know, take us through.
you got this interview. She's willing, clearly trust your station, trust you. What does it like
to prepare for that and go in? Well, there's a lot of logistics behind the scenes that people don't
realize. I mean, it's not just that she's like, I want to do an interview. There's so much coordination
with the jail and the sheriff's office and then her team. And then I, you know, they're like,
you have 15 minutes with her. And I mean, in watching back, I tried to prepare as much as I could
ask her like a slew of questions. Obviously, we wanted her reaction.
to the trial and testimony and things like that.
But I wanted to circle back to some of those things, the family tragedy and how the kids
died and tried to weave that in.
But when you reflect back, like there's a couple times where I wish I would have asked
a little bit more, asked like a couple follow-up questions, but it's very hard in that
moment to walk that fine line of wanting to push hard, wanting to get information, but also
having to respect the fact that she was there giving us her time and at any moment she could
have shut that interview down.
And so it's really tough to strike that right tone with her to keep her engaged in speaking
while also trying to push back on a lot of the clear lies that she told us and also just
even these kind of like crazy details that we know that the public knows to not be true.
What was some of to you, I know you're still unpacking it, what were some of the most shocking
things she said to you this time around?
So right off the bat, probably the main thing I noticed was she was more open than the first
interview.
And I think because we got past the verdict, I feel like we saw a little bit more of the real
Lori, which was tapping into those kind of what I would call more narcissistic beliefs,
but that but kind of turning them into how she viewed the situation and so i i knew it was
going to be a little bit different but i still felt like i could get to her the best way possible
um off the bat i think that i really was taken aback by everything she said about tyly um
that was a huge part of this that i didn't necessarily see coming for one thing it seemed to me
that she wanted the jurors to know that tyly was dead and
And of course, we spent so much time tiptoeing around that.
In her mind, from what I gathered in talking to her, she wanted to establish this picture
that Tiley killed herself because she had a bad relationship with Charles Vallow.
And, you know, of course, that is in that exact moment where I wish I would have said,
well, that how did Tiley bury herself?
And I was, I didn't ask that.
And I probably should have.
But she's going off of this narrative now that Tiley killed herself and killed J.J.
and that's obviously wildly different than everything that we know to be true.
But I'm thinking, why would you want the jurors to know that Tiley is dead?
Because that just opened such a can of worms.
And I think she assumed and thought that the jury would believe her if she got to say that Charles and Tiley were in such a tumultuous relationship of like stepfather, daughter that she wanted to take her own life.
So I think that struck me and just kind of like, I know Tiley's in heaven. I know where she is.
Like, okay. That was really interesting. I also, well, part that stuck out to me was the way that she
explained her cross-examination of Charles dating women. I thought that was an interesting moment because
we all heard her in the courtroom there. She was clearly affected and it happened twice. It wasn't just
Nancy Johancock. She also got into it a little bit with Detective Duncan about
you know, his phone and who he was going on dates with. And obviously there was a bunch of objections
at that time. But she told me she wasn't bothered. She was just surprised. And I thought that was
interesting. And then she's like, but I didn't know he was going on dates. And I'm like,
but you were having an affair. And she's like, well, no, we were just best friends. We weren't
romantic until after Charles died, which I was like, but then you got married just a couple months
later. And she's like, yeah, correct. I'm like, okay. So I think that stuck out to me too,
that, you know, she is going to portray that. Obviously, all the evidence we saw was that Chad
was in the mix well before that. And I was hoping she was going to answer if Chad Debel was
the catalyst of this domino effect that she has used as a phrase with me before. And she just,
she wouldn't really go there. She really wanted to make it more the Charles and the
tiley as the domino effect. But obviously, Chad DeBelle coming into the picture spurred so much
of everything that happened after. Right. And we also have the evidence.
the text messages of how they met. I mean, you don't need any more evidence of their affair that was
going on. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. So I think those were a couple moments that really stuck out to me.
I did think it was interesting that she does say Alex Cox should have called 911 sooner. I actually
wasn't expecting her to say that and she did. So I thought that was kind of an interesting tidbit.
Yeah. Well, he should have that they wanted, if they wanted to get away from murder, he probably.
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
right
shoulda coulda woulda you know
maybe you shouldn't have shot them twice
just it's just or you know
I know that some people
some family think that she took that second shot
um
wow
what
have you ever been in front of someone
like that someone just so
well let me ask specifically one part
when you said would you have liked
the jury to know that Tyler was dead
she absolutely evaded it multiple times
and you kept pushing back as much
much as you could. And she actually never answered because it was like she did say, oh, if they knew that,
but she would never say yes, right, unless we miss something. You showed us the whole interview.
No, she never said yes. But the way that she was answering that question, being there with her,
I took it as she wanted to be able to reveal this information to give context about Charles and
Tiley and felt she was precluded from doing so. But you're right. She never came right out and said,
I wish that they knew that she was dead.
But that's what's so frustrating about her.
She won't ever answer anything and she deflects.
And I think the thing for me most shocking,
and I want to talk to John about this too,
but the thing from me that was,
I had heard her say this ghastly thing about Tiley on Colby's channel,
her son, Colby's channel.
I had heard that.
But she really was also trying to blame Tiley for Charles's murder.
Like in many ways,
Well, Tiley and Charles got into it.
Tiley and Charles were just, it was so bad.
Tiley was riling him up.
I mean, did you notice that too?
It was like anything that is a problem was Tiley's fault.
Yeah, and convenient to be able to blame that on somebody who's dead.
But also, that's the hard part to wrap your head around as well as like, okay, we're going to now blame your teenage daughter who you are convicted of killing for everything.
And that's just, yeah, that was a tough part of the interview.
Yeah.
John, do you have any questions for Brianna?
No questions per se.
I think it was a really great interview.
And you got so much information out of her in such a short time.
I really appreciated that.
Lauren and I were analyzing it before you came on.
And there's so many nuggets in there that it's, you know, it gives us a lot of food for thoughts.
So yeah, no, thank you.
Provides a lot of insight into who Lori is because, you know,
one of the most interesting things to me was a little nugget in the interview that I think a lot of people would miss unless they were really paid attention.
She said she would go on to quote attorney mode.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Right?
Like.
Multiple times said that.
Yeah. She said it twice.
And that sort of answered the question.
You know, Lauren and I were debating about like, in some ways, how a fact that,
effective she was in the courtroom and how like oriented to the process and how like you know she people
expected her to be completely insane right they expected her to be kind of crazy and out there but she
wasn't and I think she kind of told you why and she could I think there's almost like this dissociative state
she could go into in the courtroom that somehow was focused on you know an attorney and not focused on all the
other spiritual stuff or the spiritual beliefs that would make her look a little bit crazy.
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I actually think she did a little bit better than people
were expecting. Now, it wasn't good, but I mean, you heard, you heard that juror come out and
say, up until closing arguments, I was not guilty. I mean, that, and that was alone with her
cross-examination. Now, maybe also they just didn't feel the state proved their case at that point
until closing arguments, but still, I mean, it wasn't the complete train wreck that I think people
thought they might get in like all the kind of oh this and the beliefs and all that i absolutely believe
in in talking to her she's not stupid she's pretty smart and i believe she chooses when to turn it on
and when to turn it off and with me i've gotten a little bit of both like i could see when she would
you know talk fairly clearly to me about the process and everything like that but i could see that
when she was going into kind of that religious mode like i thought at the end of our interview when i
asked her if she would change her plea in Brandon Boudreau's trial. And she was like, no, I didn't do
anything. And then it was all of a sudden it was like, none of this matters. I'm good in eternity.
Anything that happens here. I'm good there. And that's where you kind of start to see that
that side of her again. And I think she just kind of interchanges them when she feels she wants to.
That was my take up from her at least. One thing I noticed, a little nugget that I noticed
was when she was referring to helping the women
that she's behind bars with
and she says that she tries to encourage them
that if they don't feel like they did it,
they should just go to court and say they didn't do it
and just tell them they didn't do it.
Very simple.
Did you notice that?
I was like, wait, yes.
Well, the court, no, Lauren, you're missing an important point.
The court, as Brianna pointed out earlier
and throughout this interview, the court precludes you.
from telling the truth, right?
Because in Lori's mind,
she doesn't understand that the court doesn't allow
in falsehoods and fictional narratives.
The court is based on evidence.
And so she doesn't understand, apparently.
I mean, and this gets into,
in both of your interviews, she kept saying,
well, they weren't there.
You don't know, right?
Like, she's so literal.
Right.
About making sense of the world.
that she can't, like, most people make sense of the world through inference, right?
Like, we just can't be there for everything that happens.
So, but she doesn't get that.
Like, she thinks, she literally thinks, if you're not there to see something, then it didn't happen.
Right, right.
Or it didn't happen how you think it would.
Right.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's exactly right.
And it's too bad that there's not body camera footage or surveillance footage that caught more of the Tiley and JJ's, you know,
their maybe last couple days.
And then like what happened after that?
Because she can, she does settle on this.
Well, detectives weren't there and you weren't there.
And so only I know what happened and Chad.
And yeah, I thought that that was a really kind of fascinating point as well.
It's hard.
I'm not sure exactly how to ever perfectly interview her because there's not like one
recipe that I feel like it's 100% successful to get exactly
what you hope to get from her.
And I just don't think she's ever going to really tell the full story or tell the truth.
Probably ever, unless, unless everybody goes away and she's like by herself for 20 years behind bars and has no attention at all and hates that and decides she needs to come back into the spotlight.
I honestly could see her doing that like down the road, but I'm not sure we'll ever really get the full truth from her.
And we may never fully, fully know.
But what she said yesterday, we know to not be true.
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Can I suggest one thing about her never being there? Because according to Lori and her statements and her
alibi, she also was not there when her children died. Her alibi is going and seeing them on a bed together.
that she was not there when it happened.
And I want to suggest that she is so literal that if she wasn't there, then it didn't happen.
Like if she didn't see it happen, if she didn't see her kids murdered, even though she conspired to kill them and she's convicted of, you know, killing them.
But if she didn't see it happen, then it didn't happen.
And in her mind, I think that's how she functions too.
But John, maybe she's a great psychologist.
Yeah, from my perspective, and I'm not.
I'm obviously not the psychologist, but that makes some sense to me on the back end then.
I wish you would offer up more of like what happened in the aftermath.
How do you, if you didn't kill them and you weren't there, how did they end up dead on your husband's property?
And why didn't you then call 911 if they were dead?
You know, like something like that.
Yeah.
And she wasn't there when they were buried.
You know what I mean?
Like she wasn't there when Tiley was burned and dismembered.
It's just so upsetting for her to sit, you know, you guys weren't there.
I'm like, well, need.
either were you and maybe you should like process that. Like maybe something happened.
But if she wasn't there, it's just like doesn't, didn't happen to her. It's so weird.
And from, you know, from the perspective over here, like once she, once she was in Idaho,
obviously this stuff really took off and the religion. I mean, it just kept going. But prior to
that happening, like her in Arizona, she was pretty well liked and had like a really nice life.
Like they had a good life.
They were enjoying it here.
There was a lot of opportunity for the kids.
Like obviously nobody's life is perfect.
But when you look at what they had in Arizona for a while, it is stunning to see where that all ended up.
And it just never had to be that way.
And that part always shocks me.
Like I look at them before and I look at her before and where she lived out here.
And I mean, a very nice suburb and great people.
I mean, there was just there.
there was just everything for her family and to just go the direction she did and then still
perpetuate that narrative now, it blows my mind, honestly.
Yeah, I agree. And it's interesting. And now she's back. These crimes really do begin and end
in Arizona, you know, it really does. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And I'm sure, you know, I, there's a lot of
people out there. And I don't necessarily disagree with this either. There are people out there that are like,
Why are you giving her a platform?
She's a convicted killer.
Why would you do that?
Blah, blah, blah.
And I understand that side of things completely.
And I think that's something that we've walked carefully.
I guess in our role, no matter whether somebody is convicted or not, the job of us as
journalist is to tell all sides of the story to the best of our ability.
And when somebody like Lori Valo DeBelle represents herself in a murder conspiracy case for the first death in a web and a line of many,
we want to know what she's thinking pre and post verdict.
And so I think there's so many people that want to hear from her.
There's a lot that also don't.
And I completely respect that side of things as well.
Like there are definitely that.
Obviously we want to amplify the voices of Charles family and the jurors
and people who were affected by this as well.
We get that all the time, by the way, Briana.
So, I mean, my short answer to that is because we can learn from it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We can learn from it.
Like, why avoid it?
It's, it's part of the story.
It's the world we live in, right?
Like, let's face it rather than run away from it.
Oh, absolutely.
John always states that a better understanding of crime is a better understanding of ourselves.
And crime has existed since human beings have existed.
It's shocking.
It's heartbreaking.
It's the awful part of humanity.
It's the darkness of humanity.
And if we want to understand it and try to process how it happens,
or see red flags or whatever it is we learn we have to yeah learn yeah i hate the woman i hate her
but i also do want to try to figure out what the hell she was thinking and and what makes her tick
with with all of this it's so yeah it's just so hard and it's hard to really put yourself in her mind
but i i wanted to learn as much as i could given the opportunity to do so and i feel like we
learned some. There's obviously so much missing, but I do feel like I got a better understanding of
how she feels the trial went, what she thought was good and bad, and where she stands now.
Where she stands now is obviously still very out of touch with reality.
Yeah. Well, we know you have to go and run to work. Like I said, we're going to be looking forward
to your project today. So send us the link. But your overall take, what are your thoughts going in there?
Yeah, you know, I think on her.
Yeah, I think I was so incredibly nervous for the first interview.
And then it's like I watched her in court.
We all watched her in court for two and a half-ish weeks and going in there after with her.
I felt like I had a better understanding of how to best get her to open up as much as she would.
And I think that I've learned from sitting face-to-face, you know, this close, at the jail, literally this close from her.
that she knows when to play Lori Valadebel, the extreme religious person, and when to play
Lori Valadebel, somebody who actually is a smart person and it is a normal human being. And I think
she just has a personality and a mentality where she is going to do what's best for her and the
moment that fits for her. And I think that's probably the biggest takeaway. I also would just say that
I don't believe that there is any remorse.
And I don't believe she's ever shown that.
I don't think she showed any of that during our interviews either.
But I do respect the fact that she sat down and did answer my questions.
Like, I didn't get, I didn't get stopped.
She did answer them.
And whether they were good answers or answers exactly to the question, that's a different story.
But I at least do appreciate the time to try to understand what is going on in.
her mind.
Thank you.
And I appreciate meeting you, Lauren.
I mean, I think this is a really cool community.
What you guys are doing is awesome.
Like, this is incredible analysis from both of you.
And just to be able to bond and kind of meet other people in the true crime community and in different spaces and platforms, too.
Like, I've enjoyed every hour that we've spent waiting in the courthouse together.
And I think that that's been just so awesome to get to see what you guys are doing, too.
I really support everything that you guys do.
Thank you.
Thank you, Brianna, so much.
Anything else, John?
I just, she touched on the juror issue earlier.
I can't have her leave without following up on.
So tell me about some of the jurors that were on the fence.
Like what, did you talk to them?
Oh, haven't pulled them.
Yeah.
What are their thoughts?
Like, who are these people?
Right, right.
So here's actually a great question.
So we only know who the jurors are.
that came out and talked outside the courthouse.
The juror like questionnaire list is sealed.
So we don't know other people's names who were on the jury that didn't speak and give us their names right outside.
But I think of the, I think three jurors that spoke outside the courthouse, I think the overwhelming consensus was that there were about 10 jurors that were guilty right away.
Two jurors were on the fence when they went into deliberations, which,
I think a lot of people were like, oh, my God, how could they be on the face?
Yeah, right.
I know.
I'm like, what?
I mean that.
Okay.
And so they kind of went over everything.
And it's funny because I thought that Trina K's closing arguments were actually a little lengthy, like almost where we could have wrapped it up just a little bit sooner.
But she was thorough.
And then after talking to one of the jurors, Carl, he didn't give his last name.
Carl that came out.
Carl, yeah, Carl.
Yep, we all know Carl.
Carl.
I think he felt that re like you've heard so much information in the trial.
And maybe this goes to show how important closing arguments are.
He had heard so much in the trial that he was still like, I don't know, this might be not guilty.
I have reasonable doubt.
And then when Trina went through and really pinpointed everything and let me show you these texts again and everything that shows that there was a motive and a plan, that's what really swung him kind of over the edge.
And I think that the text messages in general were seemed to affect the jurors the most.
And I thought that that was also going to be the case.
I think once you explain the whole Nephi thing, you understand then, okay, yeah, this makes sense with that storyline.
Of course, Lori told me that was just to be strong and courageous.
So there is that.
But I think that's what really swung the jurors to feel that there was truly a guilty verdict that needed to be made.
And they are smart people and they knew things were missing.
I mean, we all knew they had to be wondering where Tiley was and what happened to Alice,
all of that.
And so, you know, that was interesting too.
But I think one thing that I keep hearing, and I'm curious what both of you think on this,
like a lot of people think the jury lied about not knowing about who she was and her prior
convictions, that like, how could they not?
And I think it's interesting because there are actually, like, when you start talking to people
around town, if you're not super into news or like super familiar or super, super,
for social media, you may not know.
People have been a long time.
I was also telling people that, too.
Like a lot of this happened before the pandemic.
Pandemic feels like a lifetime ago.
And then that ended up taking over everybody's lives.
So it may not have been as hard to find jury members.
But Lori herself also believes that at least one of them had to know who she is
and had to have known that Tiley was dead and the prior convictions.
Which is actually kind of narcissistic.
They know who I.
We actually went out, my producer and I went out with Jerry Valo.
after he interviewed with me, Charles Vallow's brother.
And we were asking actually a bartender there, like, hey, do you know?
No idea.
We went to another restaurant.
They have no idea.
There are a lot of people that just don't follow this.
It's exactly right.
Or true crime.
Yeah.
There's a lot of people that just don't, they don't want to let that intrude in their lives.
Right.
And I think that's exactly accurate.
Maybe I think all of us that are, you know,
consumed by this stuff. Like, oh, my God, it's huge. But at the end of the day, right, there may be a lot of
people that, like, to your point, that just don't follow true crime because it's sad and they
don't want to. And that's okay. But so it might have been easier to find these jury members than we
all anticipated it would. I thought, I think, Lauren, did you do an interview with your
number eight? Was it Natasha? Yes. Yes. And I thought her comment outside the courthouse was
interesting about her grandma knowing did you hear her talk yes and her grandmother's jaw dropped you
don't know and and they were like i just moved from minnesota yeah i don't know and i told my grandmother
don't tell me anything and and then victoria the other juror had you could tell that she had just
found out because she was shaking she's like i'm shaking i can't believe this yeah that was very real like
you can't just come out and be like i'm she she was literally just found out it was it was crazy
and i think that that moment for me was pretty poignant and just the coverage so right after
that happened like i was going live for our station our other reporter and photographer were getting
these interviews live and i was listening to them live with like our viewers and everybody and then
reacting in real time to like what we just heard so listening to the jurors raw thoughts in those
immediate moments and i was just thinking for them they literally get out of the the deliberation
room get out of the courtroom and people are like look her up look her up look up the cases and they're
literally googling on their way out of the court house and then boom media's running after them like
oh my god and i'm like you as that must have been so overwhelming for those jurors to just even
like comprehend what was going on like that's that's such a unique situation to this case i feel like
Yeah, and I've never seen anything like that, by the way.
Like, yeah, I was sitting there waiting for a press conference and I was like, there's, there's hold up, hold up.
I was on my phone going live and I started just running.
Yes.
Yeah.
Like, it was only later.
Yeah, and it was very real time.
So I think we can know that was real.
That was real.
That was real.
Nobody was preparing for an interview.
Nobody was like, this is what I'm going to say.
That was, that was real reaction, real time, real after a verdict too.
You know, if there was a juror that maybe learned it and didn't say it towards the end, I don't know.
I don't know.
But I really genuinely don't think any of these jurors knew going in.
And I really think a lot of them learned right after the guilty verdict.
I do too.
I mean, and I think that the process is even watching it as media in the way that the court functions, like, I think it could be a little intimidating.
Like, I would not want to make a misstep in the legal system.
Like that is just not, of all the missteps to make, I don't think it's to do it in the courthouse.
So I think in that case, like I do think that they were trying to do their best and put their best foot forward.
And remember, we had that one juror like the second day who said, oh my gosh, I might have seen something two years ago, three years ago, but I'm not totally sure.
And I can't remember.
And the judge was like, look, it's fine.
Like, if you think you can keep going unbiased, you know, but that's, I do think they were genuinely worried about that aspect.
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I think so too.
They were very sincere.
that did happen. He realized after watching body camp footage of Lori saying, hi, neighbors,
that someone might have shown it to him two years ago walking past YouTube, but he still didn't
even know what it was, but oh, my goodness, I need to like confess this. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Right. So much so that he was almost like he did, he probably didn't even need to do that,
but was trying to do the right thing. So I agree with you. I don't think the jurors knew. I really don't.
They seemed genuine, at least from the ones we talked to, obviously we didn't get to talk to.
every single one. But my take was that they didn't know. And in that moment, they were quite
literally being on like information overload right after. Like, I think about the fact that all of
us have seen and been privy to this information for six years. And they're learning it right
there. There's no way to even process that and just have anything other than a very stunned
and maybe even saddened reaction. I agree. I agree. And I know that there, someone was critical
of something that Carl had said that maybe he was driving home the day before and, you know,
he was thinking about three consecutive life sentences. Let me just throw this out there too.
I don't even know what day it is anymore. When you are covering a trial, I don't know what I'm
thinking what, what day it is, what week it is, whatever, you know, I just think that I just,
if they found something out towards the end, then maybe that hit. But I just, I don't think they knew.
I really don't. I don't either. I think that, you know, I was thinking about this too, just,
just even from our coverage in the way this way, and you have more experience with it,
especially with the Delphi trial, but just the sheer amount of time that goes into being part
of a trial, whether you're a jury or a media member or you're waiting in these long hours,
it can feel very isolating. I even felt pretty isolated at one point, and I live here.
I'm thinking the jurors, I mean, they are in there. They can't.
talk about it they're sitting there for hours i think that they probably wanted to go home and
have somewhat of their normal lives here and probably made it a point to not talk about it or think
about it because that i mean that can mentally mess with you just those long days in and out
sitting there silent in a courtroom you know i think there was probably some some motive on
their point to just get have their normal lives outside of that courtroom i agree with that yeah well said
Yeah.
Brianna, thank you.
This was so wonderful.
I'm so glad that you were able to come on.
We are honored because we know that you can't do interviews with anyone and it is such
an honor to have you.
We love your journalism.
We love what you're doing.
And so like I said, send us all those links.
We want to see everything you do today.
I will.
I appreciate it so much in what you guys do.
And I'm so happy that we now have this friendship and connection in this community.
And I hope to work alongside you again soon.
Thanks, Brianna.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye, guys.
Bye.
Bye.
And that is my friend, Brianna.
And someone that has now interviewed Lori Valladabelle twice.
More than I think anyone now.
So I think she can say it.
Wow.
Yeah.
Minus law enforcement.
I mean, as far as the media goes.
That's true.
I have a lot more questions for you, though.
You know what?
I just want to respond to something that Brianna
said she talked about how Lori had such a good life.
You know, they had a really nice home.
Charles was very successful.
They lived in a really good suburb, I guess.
You know, in some ways, like, she sees that as Lori throwing away all of this stability
and these kind of, I don't know how else to put it,
like these materially successful elements of her life, right?
Right.
But I think in a way, like, that's kind of, that's important to Lori.
Lori was obviously motivated by money and like the material trappings of her life
and Charles' success and all that.
But I think at some level, you know, Lori was getting older and there's some midlife crises
going on.
I think there was this
yearning for more. I think
Lori always had sort of the
spiritual yearnings that were unrealistic.
And I think
that's what Chad Daybell dangled
to her was this goddess
mantle.
He referred to her as his goddess,
right, and convinced her of that.
And I think, so it wasn't,
I think it's important to understand.
It wasn't really
the material elements of this that mattered to Lori.
It was her yearnings beyond that.
Yeah.
It was her yearnings to be immortal.
It was her obsession with Twilight before any of this happened.
Her obsession with Julie Roe, right?
Her, you know, Colby, I want to remind people that, you know,
I did an interview with Colby several months ago.
And one of the things Colby said was that his mother was obsessed with her mortality.
She was obsessed with death.
She was to talk about how she was going to die all the time.
She talked about the apocalypse all the time.
And the way Colby put it was she never lived in real.
This is a quote from Colby.
My mother never lived in reality.
Right?
And that's kind of a theme I started with.
today and and but there's something deeper here that I haven't talked about in a while and that's
the spiritual yearnings are in many ways are a cover for her death anxiety and for her mortality I think
in many ways that's really what this whole thing is about she's trying to avoid the fact that
she's human that she's mortal
that like all of us, our days on this planet are limited.
And she's created this whole fiction.
Her and Chad Daybill created this entire fictional universe around those issues to avoid those issues,
those deeper issues.
I think she's, and I know she's consumed by those issues because Colby told us.
That was the main motif from his childhood.
that his mother, like his, not only was his mother immersed in this death anxiety,
but all the kids were too.
Like she, Colby said, he just thought it was normal that she would talk about dying all the time
and the apocalypse, right?
And so I think it's important to understand, like, it's not the lifestyle that Lori had
that really drove her to this.
It's, it's those yearnings for becoming transcendent.
and becoming something other than human,
for transcending the human condition,
for immortality, for being a goddess,
for that's where Chad Daibald appealed to her.
You know, and I don't know, if I'm doing a 30-minute interview with Lori,
I don't even know how I'd approach that.
It's not something I think she would even be aware of.
So I don't think it's something you would get from an interview,
but I think it's interesting that Brianna brings that up because I think for many people,
it's confusing.
Like, why would she give up everything she had?
Why would she give up kind of this ideal lifestyle, this ideal life where she had everything?
She had security, financial security, right?
She was beautiful.
She looks beautiful.
She looks materialistic.
I know she's not beautiful, but people mention her looks.
And she had what, you know, many think, as you're pointing out, is this ideal life.
She had a man who loved her and he was handsome and they had a big home and she was taken care of.
And they lived in a nice neighborhood.
Yeah.
Right.
And the answer to that is because that's not, in the end, that's not what she wanted.
She was consumed by this.
She talks about her father being a very spiritual man and always talking about the importance of spirituality and kind of
transcending the normal constraints of being human.
And so in the end, I think that's really what drives her.
She wants to get beyond anything material,
and she wants to find sort of this immortality and love,
which she gets that partly from Twilight,
but also from, as she points out,
she mentions couples retreat during the interview.
I'm like, man, that's, I don't remember that movie,
but it's a romantic.
I remember vaguely that it has to do with kind of this idealized romantic situation in the end.
And so that's what she wants.
She wants to create this perfectionistic spiritual world that she can reside in.
And that's why Chad enters the picture.
picture because Chad really dangles that carrot for her.
And death, in that world, by the way, death doesn't really matter.
Because death is just, right?
Death is just a way station on the way to something else.
And so for her, you know, like you have to situate these murders in the context of that,
of that larger picture for her.
And she talked repeatedly to Colby about her mission.
She tells Colby something like, well, nothing ever would have changed because my mission would have been the same.
And that's a spiritual mission.
It's a mission that transcends this world.
So I think to really understand Lori, you kind of have to dig deeper into, you have to kind of go to that different level and see those motivations.
Because all these other motivations like the life insurance, her romance with Chad, those are all, those are all.
components. Those are all components of getting to that other place or at least, I mean,
the irony is you never really get to that other place, but she doesn't think that. She
thinks she can get to that New Jerusalem and then everything will be fine and she'll be happy
for eternity and she'll have a lot of power, right? That's really where she's trying to go.
And I do want to point the doubt that money in these prepping groups is true. They tell
everyone to prep, to even have supplies, to barter, to buy white tents, to spend thousands of thousands
of dollars on supply for the greater cause. So money oftentimes is very, very important and valued
in this sort of extreme LDS prepping group. And I do see that there is a mission. Chad DeBell sent
her, there are seven missions that they were going to accomplish. And one was establishing
white tents, buying land, you know, things, things that take money.
But again, those are means to an end.
The end is to get, the end is to get to the post-apocalyptic world, which is the New Jerusalem.
What did you think about her blaming Tiley, not just for J.G. and her own death, but really putting Charles on her.
I think it's just it's a convenient
Tiley's a convenient scapegoat for her fictional narrative
I realize now that Tiley was her scapego her entire life
yeah you know everybody says that Tiley was problematic
yeah now I'm realizing that Lori just told everyone she was problematic
and Tiley was trying to probably stand up for herself and survive right
she denied Tiley a voice and I think
Tiley more than anything wanted to be heard.
And that's, that's, it's as simple as that.
And so Tiley was never, I don't, I don't believe Tiley was a rebel or angry or
Tiley, Tiley was just absolutely negated.
She was ignored, right?
She, she was, she was used.
Used, yeah.
She was the problem child.
She was the black sheep because Lori created that.
Yeah, she created that.
What a convenience for Lori.
And then when she no longer needed her.
Yeah.
She murdered her.
But it's true in a testimony meeting that she gives it, Melanie Gibbs home at the,
I believe it's the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019.
So before the murders and just before she, oh, it would have been 2018 because I believe it was just before she met Chad.
So it would be 2018.
She said, the love of Jesus washed over her and it was greater than anything she'd ever felt in this earthly world.
You know, it was greater than any love you could ever imagine.
And that's what she wanted.
That would speak to her.
And she also said, in that same, I don't remember it was exactly in that moment,
but she said one of her goals was to stretch time.
She says that repeatedly.
My goal is to stretch time.
Time lasts forever.
Again, right, she's just the real, the underlying,
if you want to get to the underlying motives,
I think that's where you go.
That's where I would go.
We talk about that in our first podcast from five years ago now, right?
About terror management theory and death anxiety
and all the stuff we're talking about.
But I think that's really at the deeper level.
that's really what's driving her.
And the reason I bring that up is because we haven't talked about that in a while
and also because you see that in this last interview that Brianna did,
you see elements of that.
And if you look at those elements and start piecing them together,
I think that's where they go.
That's where they fit in the puzzle.
The puzzle is, for both Chad and Lori,
at the end of the day, the puzzle is putting together the pieces,
the 144,000.
the gathering of 144,000 to get to the new Jerusalem.
So she's not motivated by a big house and a nice car and all that.
I mean, she likes that.
But I think as she approached middle age and she realized that time was running out,
she had more of these spiritual yearnings.
And that's where Chad Daybell came in and really captured her imagination.
Yeah.
A couple other questions I have for you.
what did you think when when she she says that she tells the women behind bars with her,
just stand up and tell them it's not true or that you're innocent.
Well, again, it speaks to this idea that the court system precludes the truth.
Like in her mind's eye, the truth doesn't have to be based on evidence or fact.
The truth is whatever you feel is the truth, whatever you believe is the truth.
And so obviously that's what she believes about herself.
She thinks that the entire system is rigged so that she can't tell the truth.
And that somehow if she could tell the truth, everyone would believe her.
She believes that about the other women on death row.
Like all they need to do is basically tell their fiction, tell their lies, and they'll be set free.
never mind that the reason what she doesn't say she says that almost no murderers on trial get acquitted.
And she's right, the numbers are low, but there's a reason for that.
The reason is because DAs don't bring murder charges unless they have plenty of evidence.
Because going to trial for murder is a very time-consuming, expensive, and lengthy process.
And so you only bring murder trials when you're convinced you can make a compelling case with evidence.
That's why most murderers get convicted because the DA has a fair amount of certainty that they can put on a strong case.
But in Lori's world, it doesn't matter.
Like evidence doesn't matter.
The evidence is the narrative that's the most emotionally compelling and that she believes.
And she believes that about the women she's with too.
Well, they're all telling the truth.
You know, maybe some of them aren't.
Maybe there's a lot of evidence against them.
Just because they feel like they're innocent doesn't make them innocent.
I mean, it's, again, it's delusional.
She doesn't live in reality.
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I want to go back to this idea that Lori's family, her family of origin, the Cox family,
is just all jokes and joking and sharing movie lines with each other, yet they're all trying to kill one another.
Right. Well, again, like, it's the whole joking thing. So I think what she's saying is this is a family that lives on the surface. They're materialistic. This is, you know, they have these rigid beliefs. This is a family that's not. So there's research on healthy families, by the way. Yeah. Talk to me about it. And it's true. Like, ironically, like one of the qualities of really supremely healthy families. And I'm talking about like very, there's not a lot of healthy families.
but like the top one or two percent of families,
they do have kind of this,
I wouldn't call it joking quality,
but they have this quality of being light
and not taking things too seriously.
But they also have this quality of being attuned to reality.
They don't live in fantasy land.
They don't live in a fantasy world.
They're more than capable of processing the world the way it is.
They're more than capable of seeing the world realistically.
they tend to be somewhat optimistic,
but that doesn't mean that they don't see the world as it is.
And the Klax family is the antithesis of that,
as far as I can tell.
This joking quality is just a superficial level of them being unable
to process the world,
to process reality in a meaningful, compelling way.
Well, so superficial that it's actually movie lines.
they're joking about.
It's not even their own lives.
It's just movies.
It's movie lines.
It's completely divorced from reality because their jokes aren't even self-deprecating or about what's going.
I mean,
and I'm sure there are,
I don't sit at the dinner table with them.
And I've admired listening to Adam Cox over on his podcast,
but we're talking about the family system as a whole and how they function as a whole system.
And, yeah, you're right.
Like movie line joking.
I mean, nothing wrong with a good movie.
line, but that's also not even like making fun of what's right in front of you. I don't know.
Yeah, and there's going to be in every family there's going to be variations. Adam could be
a little different. I know Adam has said that he's, he's felt at times like he didn't, you know,
necessarily belong in that family or something like that. I forget exactly. But it's been a while.
But, but yeah, just in general, I think that,
you know, there's avoidance going on there more than,
there's avoidance going on more than kind of a real confrontation with the world.
An honest dialogue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
And then to go back to that chicken chili enchilada comment, I agree with you, it was very real.
And when she, when she answered Brianna to say, oh, I was.
just joking that that wasn't true. She absolutely wanted him to remember her chicken cheese
enchiladas. Am I right there? Like she wasn't joking. Yeah, no, she wasn't she wasn't joking.
Yeah, no, that was, I mean, you could go, you can go watch it again. I don't, I don't think she said
she was joking in the interview. I think she implied it. She was, she said she wanted to start with a joke
about this Ernest T. Watson name. But I don't,
I don't think she actually said the green chili chicken enchiladas.
I don't remember.
I'd have to listen to that part again.
But I don't think she actually said that that was a joke.
I think she implied it.
Right.
And then again,
she goes on later in the interview to also imply that Adam's trying to kill her.
Yeah.
For her.
Right.
Yeah.
Or was.
Yeah.
Projection.
Well,
anything else?
I mean, yeah, I just watch it.
I see narcissism, denial, projection, illusion, anger.
But I also, I see competency.
I see a very, very competent manipulator.
Yeah, and that's sort of what Brianna said, too,
that she can, she's a chameleon of sorts.
She can turn it on and off based on the person she's in front of
and what they want to hear.
And, yeah, we've seen that time and time again with her.
She sheds tears and opening arguments, but not on the video after her husband is murdered or killed.
Right.
She's convicted of murdering her own daughter, but yet can throw her under the bus so easily.
I know it's used for as a scapegoat even in death.
Yeah.
And yet, you're right.
she does believe that she is a goddess.
And what is going to happen in her in the eternities is a lot more important than what is happening to her here.
And she said as much, she said she will not be punished for any of this in the eternity.
Well, she said, right.
She says, quote, this will have zero effect upon me in eternity.
And that, and Rihanna correctly pointed that out too.
Like, if you want to understand Lori Valo Debel, that would be the most important line from this entire interview.
Because that speaks to what I just talked about in terms of her game.
Her end game here is immortality.
Her end game here is that she's a goddess getting to the New Jerusalem.
This is all just an inconvenience.
This is all an annoyance that she has to deal with.
So she doesn't really care.
She can be convicted 100 times and serve a thousand lives.
sentences. She doesn't care.
Yeah. She doesn't care as long as she's a goddess in the hereafter.
Right. And as long as she adheres to that belief that her and Chad are, you know,
this goding, this deity and this goddess that they're going to run the New Jerusalem after the
apocalypse. She's fine. She can cope with all of this. In fact, she's more than fine. She's a
martyr. A toxic positive martyr. She just needs to be toxic, positively, toxic, positive.
What does she say? Just got to find joy in the little things. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
No, joy in every situation. I think, I think she should get some, you know what I think. I think she
should get some furloughs from prison to go show, to show up on some like talk shows and self-help
seminars. I think she'd be a great addition
to some of these self-help gurus and their workshops
because like for her there's no limits to anything.
Right. Like she's an example of someone with unlimited power
and she's an example of someone who finds joy in every situation,
even though she's a convicted murderer. Like she would be amazing
in some of these self-help seminars. She'd be fantastic. I really think she'd
She could furloughed.
Oh, she'd be a great motivational speaker, for sure.
Well, maybe she can write a book.
Just don't tell the audience.
Just don't tell the audience that she's a murderer.
She can write a book behind bars.
You are not, not a zombie.
She can write, she can write, no, that or I've got another title for,
boundless joy in jail.
Boundless Joy.
I guess it would be you are not a zombie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You are not.
I'm trying to decide you are not not light.
That's what it would be.
You are not not light.
You are light.
I always get confused with double negatives,
but I think it's you are not,
you are not light.
That's going to be your book.
I just titled her book.
But yes.
she can go you're right actually she is like the perfect personality to be a motivational speaker
if you didn't know you know what she'd done she could just get up there and motivate the crowd
find joy in jail how about how about how about she's doing that in jail sounds like she's
inspiring many i have heard that all pretty in prison well john drinks from his it could probably
be worse.
Here's my
here's my takeaway for today.
It could probably be worse.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
All right.
Well,
thank you.
Anything else you want to say?
Um,
no,
not really.
Are you excited to see me?
Are you excited to see me in person
and not split screen?
Yeah.
For sure.
It's a romantic.
You guys,
you guys drive safely.
and please drive safely.
And yeah, we're super excited to have you back home.
And just remember, it could probably be worse.
It always could, actually.
It always could.
But don't make it worse.
Drive safely.
And thank you for your excellent trial coverage.
You did an amazing job.
Grayson did an amazing job.
You guys are amazing.
Thank you.
Thank you. Well, I'll be seeing you. I'll be seeing you soon. And thanks for holding down the fort. And right. We'll get going. I just have like an entire house to pack. So I'm going to take off. See you soon. All right. Okay. Okay. Bye.
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