A man from Idaho was found guilty on Thursday of killing his wife and his new girlfriend‘s two youngest children. The case involved strange claims of apocalyptic predictions, children turning into zombies, and secret relationships.
The jury took only six hours to decide that Chad Daybell was guilty. This ended a case that started in 2019 and involved at least four different states. Daybell stood there in a long-sleeve dress shirt and looked calm as the verdicts were read.
Now the jury will decide if Daybell, who is 55 years old, should be punished with death for killing Tammy Daybell, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow. The trial’s punishment phase starts again on Friday after almost two months.
JJ’s grandfather, Larry Woodcock, told The Associated Press that he was happy because everything was taken care of and every problem was resolved. “I’m still sad about the deaths – four people died for no reason. But my wife and I are very happy with the decision. ”
Last year, Lori Vallow Daybell, the mother of the children, was given a life sentence in prison with no chance of getting out. She was found guilty of conspiracy and murder. She married Chad Daybell only two weeks after Tammy Daybell died. She is waiting to go to court in Arizona because she is accused of killing her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Charles Vallow was JJ’s dad.
The judge in the case said lawyers on both sides can’t talk to the media until the trial is over.
The case got a lot of attention from the media, so the judge decided to have the trial in Boise instead of the small town in Idaho where the crimes happened. This was done to make sure the jury could be fair and unbiased.
During the penalty phase, the prosecutors will try to prove that the crimes deserve a death sentence because they were very cruel or met other factors specified in the law. Daybell’s lawyers will try to show the jury reasons why a lighter punishment is suitable.
Five years ago, JJ’s grandparents, Kay and Larry Woodcock, started looking into the situation because they were worried that Vallow Daybell was not letting them talk to JJ on the phone. JJ and his grandparents lived in different places, but they were always close. They talked to each other on video calls a lot since JJ was three years old. JJ was really smart but also had autism, Larry Woodcock said. When he didn’t know what to say, he would tell his grandparents, “Mawmaw, Pawpaw, I don’t know. ”
“During the last few years of his life, he was getting funnier and showing more of his personality. ” “I really miss his sense of humor,” Larry Woodcock said. “Every day, my wife and I always ask each other for advice and say `Mawmaw, I don’t know’ or `Pawpaw, I don’t know’. ”
In 2019, Kay Woodcock asked the police to make sure the child was okay. Investigators quickly found out that both children were gone, and a search in multiple states started. The investigation quickly went in different directions that were not expected.
Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were dating when their previous partners died suddenly, according to investigators. Vallow Daybell’s brother Alex Cox shot and killed her husband, Charles, in Arizona in July 2019. Cox said it was self-defense. He did not get in trouble.
Vallow Daybell, her kids JJ and Tylee, and Cox then moved to eastern Idaho to be near Daybell, who is a writer of books about the end of the world that are based on Mormon beliefs.
In October 2019, Tammy Daybell passed away. Chad Daybell first said she died from being sick and sleeping, but a later examination found she actually died from not being able to breathe. Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell got married two weeks after Tammy Daybell died, which surprised their family.
Almost one year later, the bodies of the missing children were discovered buried on Chad Daybell’s land in eastern Idaho. Investigators found out that both kids passed away in September 2019. Prosecutors say Cox worked with Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell in all three deaths, but Cox died of natural causes before he could be charged.
Lawyers brought in many people to testify in order to support their argument that Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell planned to murder the children and Tammy Daybell. They did this because they wanted to remove anything that could get in the way of their relationship and also to get money from life insurance and survivor benefits. The lawyers say the couple believed that evil spirits could possess people and turn them into zombies. They thought the only way to save a possessed person’s soul was to kill their body.
Fremont County prosecutor Lindsay Blake said that Daybell pretended to be a leader of a group called “The Church of the Firstborn” and told Vallow Daybell and others that he could tell if someone had become a “zombie. ” Daybell also said he could tell how close a person was to death by reading their “death percentage,” Blake said in her closing arguments on Wednesday.
Daybell used the same pattern for each person he killed, according to Blake.
“Chad Daybell called them ‘dark’. ” Their chances of dying would decrease. “Then they would have to be killed,” she said.
Blake said that Daybell convinced Vallow Daybell and her brother, Cox, to help with the plan. Daybell also gave Cox spiritual blessings and warned Vallow Daybell that the angels were upset because she was ignoring him at times.
Daybell’s lawyer, John Prior, said that the prosecution’s descriptions of Daybell’s beliefs were not true. He said Daybell was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was very religious and always talked about his spiritual beliefs.
Prior said that the police only focused on finding evidence to use against Daybell, instead of looking at the true facts of the case. He also said that the children’s uncle, Cox, committed the crimes. He remembered that Cox had shot JJ Vallow’s father in Arizona, and the two children saw it happen. He also said Cox tried to make it look like Daybell did a bad thing by burying the children in Daybell’s yard.
During the sentencing phase, the jurors will decide if Daybell should be given the death penalty, which can be either by lethal injection or firing squad, or if he should be sentenced to life in prison. Woodcock said he will be happy with either choice.
“You deserve it for killing kids. ” You deserve it for killing your wife. “Chad decided to do something he knew was bad,” Woodcock said.