394 - Shut the House Down

On today's episode, Karen tells Georgia the story of "Mommy Doomsday," Lori Vallow Daybell.

For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hell, Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
That's Georgia Hartstark.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's Karen gil Gareth.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
That was really high.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
No, I thought I'd put a lot of enthusiasm behind it.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Are you excited? Is this your day?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
So excited? This is my day. Actually I got a
new mattress so today, so this might be like the
rest of my fucking life has changed day.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's day one of new life. Yeah, yeah, mattress life.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
That's what happens when you get old, is like mattresses
crucial change your life and sneezing too hard hurts your back.
So here I am.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Is it one of those hospital mattresses that sit you
up like you're in a full body cat Is it
one of those? Guys?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
I don't. I can't pull the trigger on those because
it seems so ridiculous. That's like the right, but like.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
But you would if you could, like if I.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Could try it for a couple of nights, I would.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
And then you could fix like a small television up
to kind of the ceiling up near the top, so
you're always just you know, your neck is always in
a really good position upward.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Can I tell you a secret of a thing about me.
That's like one of my things, like I can't go
barefoot in the house, but also I can't do t
d's in the bedroom. It depresses the shit out of it. Oh,
it's like a deep thing I can't do.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I get it. That's very holistic of you. I'm sure
it's much better for you not to have it in there.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
And it's not like I don't think people should have it.
It's totally fine. It's like I can't have it. It'll
like just make me sad.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yep. You know. It's the same thing with me when
lamps are left on and they're so they're on in
the daytime.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Like when you wake up and you come downstairs and
the lamp's been left on, and it's like, no, dawn.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
No, nobody shut the house down. That's bad, vibe.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Shut the house down.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Nobody locked up and shut it down, and you know,
made sure the dog had water. Nobody. Okay, well nobody.
I like that.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
That's a good one. I can absolutely feel that one
in my bones for sure.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Like I get it usually an exception, not a rule
in our household. But I think the first time it
happened was like when I had roommates in my twenties,
and of course it was in there completely unprocessed. I'm
not as like right done, not off, like this is
the weirdest reaction. And then I let that on just
like no, I'm gonna go walk around the block for
a second.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Just pure rage that someone didn't shut things, what else
didn't get taken care of when you went to bed.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's like, this isn't right. And there's a lot of
households where they're like, oh, yeah, we used to do
that sometimes because blah blah blah, you know, grandma needed
a glass of water or whatever, where it'd be like right,
completely fine for other people.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
But it's like, no, I do it when Vince's out
of town because if there's an intruder or I don't know,
I want to give them light. I don't know, I.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Feel you want to give them pause in the doorway
to be like, oh, oh, is someone reading a book
late into the night.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
It's three thirty in the morning and that light's still on.
That must be an awake household with a you know,
aggressive scary dog. I'm not going to break into that house,
so I'm going to skip that one. Yeah, good plan, Yeah,
thank you. What's going on with you?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
What is going on with me? You know, the US.
I think it's all the huse. But we were just
complaining a Lejandra Aristotle and I we were all just
talking about how hot it was this weekend in Los Angeles,
and it was a humidity hot, which no one here
understands or can deal with unless they're a transplant, myself

(03:45):
being a native California, and I was just kind of like,
what I did not agree to walk into the shower?
What's happening?

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Heavy air? Like well, who created heavy air?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Hey? Heavy, like weird post shower bathroom air, which people
on the East Coast are like, sure, that's summertime to us,
and we're just like, what, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
It's like a steam shower but outside of your shower.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
And it was like that all weekend long. It was wild.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
You have a Twitter thing to talk about.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Oh, it's not really a thing, but it was really
nice of Aaron, who's handle on I guess what we
call X. But really we shouldn't be talking about it.
All is at eMac D thirty three. It's hard to
offboard these things that we've been addicted to for years
at a time. But it was very nice of Aaron
to write to me and say perfect pronunciation of Chelmsford.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
I mean, the odds are so against that, and the
fact that Aaron knew to celebrate that tiny victory for
me is really meant a lot.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
It's a win. It's a win.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
We got to take them anywhere we can because the
odds of the fact that that was supposed to be
a silent L and a silent fucking D or whatever.
The tricks of the trade are.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
The tricks people who named our great nation play on us.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I think that one was a British one.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
The tricks that the Brits play on us are wide
and far reaching.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Very true. So true. How about you anything to report?

Speaker 1 (05:15):
I mean not really Like I'm halfway between two books
and I'm you know, listening to therapy podcasts like nothing.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Oh you have a book, No, I have a podcast. Oh,
but I think most people this is one of those things.
And this is why I love TikTok so much, one
of the many reasons. But the people on there are
so ahead that they were talking about this podcast as
if it's old news and I'd never heard it before.
And it is a podcast called Scamanda.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Oh yeah, it is huge, right, Oh, you'd already heard
of it. Well, it's like on the top lists everywhere.
Oh is it?

Speaker 2 (05:53):
What is relations to the Scamanda people. Let me give
you a little bit of information about it.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I mean, it's not the word scam and so it's
a Karen centric thing immediately it is.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
So it's hosted by I'm assuming a British woman named
Charlie Webster, and it's from Lionsgate Sound and it is
the story of a woman who for years and years
scammed people out of money claiming that she had cancer.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Ooh, one of those.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
It seems simple on the face. What I find fascinating
is just when people do stuff like that, where it's
like the real bold moves. Right, we know it is
probably odds are it's approaching some mental illness? Right, Yeah,
there's some sort of feed you're getting off of people
feeling bad for you, You talking about your illness all

(06:46):
the time, and blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Well it's Munchausen. It's like a original Munchausen, not by proxy.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Right, yeah, right, exactly. They're not making someone else sick,
but they're also not actually sick, right, they're not making
themselves sick.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
And they know that.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, and they're fundraising for themselves. So the whole thing
is a true scam in the most cynical sense of
the word. But it is wild. I binged it so
quickly in hilarity.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Holy shit. Okay, I'll get into it for sure.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Listening to spooky, like spooky books, like haunted house books
right now. There's this author named Riley Sager who writes
these like straight up haunted house books. The ones I'm
listening to is called Home Before Dark, and it's like,
you know, this single woman who's like parents wronged her
and so she's going back to the house she grew
up and that's like basically the Amityville like story that

(07:40):
her dad wrote about the house, and she doesn't believe.
It's just like she's like fuck arounding and finding out
ing right now in the book, You're like, she's gonna
find out.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
We know she's gonna Yeah, I would hope in a
book like that.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, it's not like the ending is going to be
like and it wasn't haunted.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
It's like and now I love my dad.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
All right, Well, should we get into it?

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Okay, let's do it in an exactly right corner, shall we. Hey,
we have a podcast network called exactly Right, and here
are some highlights.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
So our new and first true crime limited series, Infamous International.
The Pink Panther Story is now available wherever you listen
to your podcasts, so be sure to follow that show
right now. Episodes one and two are up. You might
have heard about the heist at the Waffe Mall, the
Pink Panthers, over the top, theatrics, and a bit of
history behind their formative years in Serbia. It is very

(08:34):
exciting series. We don't want you to miss a single
episode of it, so go over now to the feed
and listen to Infamous International.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Also this week on That's Messed Up in SPU podcast,
Kara and Lisa cover Postgraduate Psychopath, a gruesome episode from
svu's twenty second season.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
And I Saw What You Did. Millie and Danielle have
created an extremely curly haired nineteen eighties double feature. It's Moonstruck,
from a nineteen eighty seven starring Cher and Nicholas Cage
and crossing Delancey, one of my very favorite movies of
all time from nineteen eighty eight with Amy Irving lot
curly hair.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I didn't know that about you. I think Moonstruck's one
of my favorite movies of all time, so that's a
fucking special one.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Moonstruck is one of the greatest movies. That's definitely in
like a top five. I mean, they made some good
fucking movies at the end of the eighties, good ones,
they did.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
And that brings us to the MFM store, where you'll
find an assortment of classic Toxic Masculinity Ruins the Party
Again marchandise because apparently they still haven't gotten the frickin' memo.
And that's at my favorite murder dot com.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
All right, I go first this week, and I have
been waiting to be able to cover this story and
tell you about it, and it just recently kind of resolved.
And this story is well, First of all, everyone knows
about it. One that listens to true crime or pays
attention to true crime on a relatively regular basis has

(10:04):
probably already listened to the Dateline podcast about this or
watched the Dateline series on TV about it. But it's
one of those true crime stories that when it was
breaking in the news, I kept going, what how is
this possible? What are you talking about? What do you mean? Like,
every single little detail that would come out was more

(10:25):
kind of frightening and chilling and outrageous than the next.
So one of the main reasons I wanted to cover
it was just the simplicity of saying it all at
one time. Yeah, because sometimes that's very satisfying, where you're like,
how did that happen? And it is kind of laid
out in front of you. But again, like most of
these stories, even when it's all laid out in front

(10:45):
of you, you can't ever get to the truth of
anything of like but why totally? But why?

Speaker 1 (10:51):
So that's it going to be. I'm like, I'm on
the edge of my seat right now. I need to
hear what it is.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Okay, I've teed you up. So it's autumn of twenty nineteen,
and like Charles, Louisiana and Kay and Larry Woodcock are very,
very worried. They haven't been able to contact their seven
year old grandson JJ or his adopted sister Tylie for
quite something, right, you know what it is?

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
On top of that, their mother has been acting very
erratic lately, so Larry and Kay decide to contact the
police in Rexburg, Idaho, where the family lives, to request
a welfare check at their house. And when the police
show up, JJ and Tyli aren't there, but their mother
is and she is ready to go with explanations. She
tells the officers that Tylie's away at school and that

(11:36):
JJ's staying with a family friend named Melanie who lives
in Arizona, so for a wellness check, that's kind of
good news. All is well in this household, except when
police reach out to confirm this story with Melanie, Melanie
tells the police JJ is not with her, So the
police are concerned and officers return to that house the

(11:58):
next day with a search warrant, but they're surprised to
find now that no one is home, and when they
start to investigate, they find that the children's mother has
just boarded a flight to Hawaii with her new husband,
and JJ and Tylei are not with them. So as
they try to piece this timeline of the children's whereabouts together,

(12:19):
officers come up with an even more unsettling realization, and
that is that no one has seen JJ or Tyee
for two months. So now Rexburg police formally announced that
both Jj Valo and Tylie Ryan are missing, and that
their mother, Laurie Valo day Bell, and her husband Chad
day Bell are the prime suspects in their disappearances. Fuck,

(12:43):
this is the story of what Dateline termed Mommy Doomsday,
Laurie Valo day Bell.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Damn, it's so bad.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
It's the kind of thing because of course we talk
about this sometimes where it's like when a mother does
any kind of harm their child and how disturbing that
is to people, and so those stories always get a
ton of heat. It's that kind of thing where it's
like eighty nine percent, that's a guess whatever, but it's
some crazy high percentage of people who commit homicide are men,

(13:15):
but with the percentage leftover of women who do it.
They fill the cable channels. Yeah, women who snap and
women who murder, and mothers who do this and that,
and it's because.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
To their children. It's just so disturbing.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
To their children. So it's like it's one thing to
be a sociopath and be greedy and be like, oh,
I'm going to rob you and kill you or whatever.
And this also there's other factors folded in that are
kind of relevant for today. And the things that we're
seeing people go through today. So the sources used in
today's research are a twenty twenty three episode of the

(13:52):
Dateline television show titled The Trial of Lori Valoda Bell,
which is an unbelievable thing. You have to watch it.
And also journalist Nate Eaton, who wrote for the East
Idaho News basically was the journalist that was reporting on this.
So there's lots of articles that he wrote and the
rest are in our show notes. So let's start at

(14:12):
the beginning nineteen seventy three in Lo Molnda, California. The
Cox family are tight knit Mormon family with five kids,
and their daughter, Laurie, is a bubbly, charming, and happy
go lucky kid. When she's enterteened, she's a high school cheerleader,
and as she moves into adulthood, she becomes a competitor
in regional beauty pageants. Eventually she becomes a hairstylist. She

(14:36):
moves to Texas. She remains devout to both her religion
and she also really loves having fun. She actually at
one point becomes a contestant on Wheel of Fortune and
she wins seventeen thousand dollars. So her religious devotion doesn't
mean that she's not up for a good time. But
Laurie's love life hasn't been as positive as she has

(14:58):
tried to be. By the time she's two years old,
she's been married and divorced three times.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
WHOA.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yes, she has a son named Colby from her second marriage,
and she has a daughter named Tylie from her third marriage.
By all accounts, Laurie's an excellent parent and loves being
a mother. Laurie's third marriage is ending in a hostile divorce,
and that's when she meets her fourth husband, Charles Valow.
Charles is a successful financial consultant, a divorced father of

(15:25):
two boys, and he becomes one of Laurie's clients at
the salon. The second they meet, sparks fly. They quickly
fall in love and marry in February of two thousand
and six, and then Lauri and Charles take their new
blended family with their four kids and they move to Arizona.
Charles was raised Catholic, but at his new wife's urging,

(15:48):
he joins the Mormon Church and he becomes an enthusiastic member.
So eight years go by and the Valows seem like
a picture perfect family. And then in July of twenty
fourteen and Charles reach out to Charles's sister, Kay Wouldcock,
who is from the top of the story the first person.
So that summer, Kay and her husband Larry found themselves

(16:10):
at a very difficult crossroads. They had been raising their
autistic two year old grandson JJ by themselves, and they
had been doing that since he was an infant. They
adore him, but they realize because they're older, they might
not be the best fit to raise him. And Kay
would say, quote, that's when Charles called me and said, hey,

(16:32):
Laurie and I would love to adopt him. It was
the easiest, hardest decision I've ever made. End quote. And
then her husband Larry agrees, saying he was our little boy,
but we knew in the future it would be the
best for JJ. End quote. And it does seem like
the best choice for him. JJ thrives in the Valo household,
and he's absolutely adored by every one of the family members,

(16:54):
especially his sister Tyi. Larry says, quote the family dynamic
with those four chill and with Charles and Laurie, it
just simply came to a circle. With JJ in the
center of it. It worked really well. Tyleie. She loved
JJ and there was no doubt about it. Every time
I ever saw them together, he was drawn to her,
and she was very protective of him. She would hold

(17:14):
him and kiss him. Tyley was an outstanding sister to JJD.
So within a few years of JJ's coming to the family,
things start to change. Laurie is now in her mid forties.
She's always been extremely religious, and she's held some beliefs
that some might consider fringe. But sometime around twenty seventeen,

(17:38):
Laurie becomes seriously interested in religious doomsday prepping. So if
you've never heard of that, basically, a doomsday prepper is
a person who is actively preparing for the end of
the world, usually because of religious interpretation of the Bible
that says like the end is nigh, therefore we all

(17:59):
have to say, are getting ready? Right? So in October
of twenty eighteen, Laurie attends a religious doomsday focused conference
in Utah with some of her friends girls trip.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Can you imagine that's your girl's trip?

Speaker 2 (18:13):
I mean, the biggest drag of a girl's trip where
it's like, yeah, you're just all sitting around a table
at Applebee's, Like, who wants to get apps and talk
about how we're not long for this world and hopefully
the Lord picks us. Everyone in here is going to burn.
Like that's the mentality that never made sense to be

(18:34):
being raised as Catholic. Is essentially when you're in church,
everyone that's not in church with you is going to burn.
And I would just think about it.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, and you're like celebrating that somehow, like we want
we're winning. Yeah, fuck everyone else, which doesn't sound like
a you know, Christian value of what I've heard.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Well, the idea is it's not fuck everyone else, it's
get out there and get some converts. Oh, it's basically
convinced them this is real and true and then they
will join us and then they'll be okay.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Now, Karen, convince me.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Hey, Georgia, if you want to come to Catholic church
with me. It's big, and it's kind of echoey, and
this it smells like incense, and.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
What do I get? You? A fit for a long
long time? Yep.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
But then you stand up, but then you sit, and
then you kneel and then you sit and then you stand.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Wait is it all in a language. I don't understand completely.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
No, no, no, don't be crazy. That was in the seventies.
There's no Latin masses anymore. Although my dad can tell
you all about Latin masks because that's how he was raised.
Oh god, I mean, look, everybody gets to believe everything
they want.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
But should they is the question?

Speaker 2 (19:39):
But should they also think about who's telling you, why
you need to believe it, and what their motivation could
possibly be speaking.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
I've like questioned your sources. My mom sent me a
text the other day that said, from Fox News COVID
booster warning from Florida surgeon general who advises people not
to get the new vaccine, blah blah blah bl I'm like,
check your source. When the CDC says that, I'll listen.
But when the fucking Florida of all places, surgeon General

(20:09):
Hard Pass.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Well, you know, at the very end of that article,
my sister was just telling me about this. She goes
at the end of the article, another doctor comes in
and goes, not only is this not true, it'd be
dangerous if you went ahead with this story. And then
of course Fox News did.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah. Well she said it to me and I said, no, thanks, no, friend,
she got upset.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, well, but at this point does she want to
be upset because that's what it feels like.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, she said, I didn't realize that was news because
she knows she can't share news with me. She thought
it was like health information. This is going off the rails.
But my point is, check your fucking sources. I'm not
getting my sources about COVID from Fox News and Florida,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
At this point, you can't get your sources from quote
unquote enemy territory of people that have like completely thumbed
their nose at a global pandemic that killed millions of people.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Right, Sorry that was a left turn.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
No, that's right. All of this needs to be taken
into consideration because no one. We all have beliefs, and
we all believe our beliefs are correct. We all do
that is.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
The human condition vehemently, and we'll fight them even though
it's like clear when they're not right. We won't let
them go.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
In my experience, as life goes on, if you can
check yourself in some sort of way to go, do
I believe this or do I just want to fight
right now? It's a good question to ask, So, I
want to be right totally. You know, they didn't do
this in dayline, so I wish we'd be a little
more professional. No, there was no sidebar conversation about my mom.

(21:43):
So I basically told you about the girl's weekend at
the doomsday focused conference outfits, So it's there that Lori
meets fifty year old author Chad day Bell. So. Chad
is a church sexton and an occasional grain digger who
lives in Idaho with his wife Tammy. This his hobby, No, No, like,

(22:04):
he volunteers.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
At the church to dig graves.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, you have to. You know, it's probably part of
the church situation where it's like you're inside doing the
services and then every once in a while you have
to go out there and help out. Now I feel
defensive for him, and he's absolutely the bad guy. Spoiler alert.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
So he lives in Idaho with his wife, Tammy, and
she is the mother of their five adult children. He's
also a religious writer and a staple at these Doomsday
prepper conferences. He is a lifelong member of the LDS Church,
but he pushes the envelope when it comes to mainstream
Mormon beliefs. For example, in his many self published books,

(22:47):
Chad talks about the coming apocalypse and writes extensively about
how multiple near death experiences have given him divine powers.
That's another thing I think we see a lotring, which
is when regular people start to tell the people in
their small circle of their already kind of fringe beliefs

(23:09):
that they have started talking to God. Yeah, red flag, Yeah,
if we're going to go through. So Lauri and Chad
are immediately drawn to one another. It's been described as
an instant love at first site type of connection. They
wind up exchanging numbers, and once they get home to
their families, they still talk to each other almost every
single day. So as this relationship flourishes from Afar with

(23:34):
Lurie still in Arizona, Chad and Idaho, the people around
Laurie notice that she's becoming obsessive about the idea of
a doomsday of demons and about the spirit world. So
Laurie's family starts worrying that she's getting maybe sucked into
a cult because it's just odd and obsessive. Thanks to

(23:55):
the later testimony of Lourie's niece's ex husband, a man
named Brandon, we know quite a bit about what exactly
they were obsessed with. So apparently Chad and Laurie believed
that there were quote light and dark spirits among us
who can infiltrate human bodies, and if a person becomes
too dark, they turn into what they call zombies, which

(24:16):
is their shorthand for demonic possession. So to get rid
of a zombie and free the possessed host, you have
to kill the body of the afflicted person.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Oh my god, imagine if someone just started casually dropping
that shit that like someone you've known for a long
time or in your family is just like, by the way, yeah,
that's scary.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
No one's prepared for that conversation, right, you don't have
anything in your back pocket to be like, hey, can
I stop you on that zombie theory and then present
something else to maybe consider, Like it's so wild that
you're just what could you say?

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, they're already gone.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Especially if it's someone that if they've really worked on
this theory or this is something that's been happening kind
of behind closed door, then you're just like, sorry, what
are you talking about? A TV show? Like it's bewildering
in and of itself. So so Laurie starts taking advantage
of her husband, Charles frequent business trips out of town.
While he's away, Laurie hosts get togethers in her home

(25:16):
where she and Chad share their beliefs with guests. So
there is a little bit of a culty vibe starting,
which is our beliefs. It's not gonna be that many people.
We're all going to get together and we're going to
talk about this and we're going to really give it
some credence and some weight. The threat of demonic zombies,
the end of the world, and the fact that Laurie

(25:36):
and Chad are on a higher plane of divinity than
everyone else. Chad claiming to be a Mormon prophet, Laurie
claiming to be a goddess.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Okay, burning man over here.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I mean, just imagine being invited to that and being like, no, no,
I wasn't in that. I what yeah said was tupperware,
I want to go. I just want to game night.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
I came for the Cube Costco cheese platter. What's going
on here?

Speaker 2 (26:03):
What is happening? So obviously Laurie and Charles one solid marriage,
is no longer doing well. The couple's friends notice them
arguing a lot. Nothing Charles does seem to make Laurie happy,
and Charles says that as their relationship gets worse, Laurie
is becoming more and more hostile and threatening, and finally,

(26:24):
she accuses Charles of being dark spirited and claims that
he's been overtaken by a demon who, for whatever reason,
is named Nick or ned Schneider.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
How do you defend yourself from an accusation like that?
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, it's basically a person looking at you and going,
something's wrong with me, and now I'm going to yell
it into your face, And so you have to be
accused of something while simultaneously being worried about a person.
Charles actually texted some of his friends and wrote to them, quote,
it's the freakiest thing I've ever experienced, So yeah, very scary.

(27:01):
So we don't know if Lurie genuinely believes that her
husband is being taken over by dark spirits or if
she's just using that as an excuse to justify the
extramarital affair that she's having, but it's clear that she
is getting very close to Chad Dabell. She even tells
one of her friends that she and Chad have quote
sealed themselves. Now, in the Mormon Church, sealing yourself is

(27:25):
a sacred binding of two people in the temple. You
don't do it to yourselves. That's not like part of it.
And they're definitely not allowed to be sealed if they
are already married to other people. But Laurie tells her
friend that she and Chad have already been married in
a past life, so this is all above board. Again,

(27:45):
we'll bring back the Mormon faith does not believe in
past lives, So there's stuff really happening here. So now,
Charles comes home from another business trip to discover that
Laurie has locked him out of the house. He can
tell no one's home. He has no idea where she
is or where his kids are. He tries to call her,
she doesn't answer. He calls the police. They basically show

(28:09):
up and let him inside of his own house, and
that's when Charles decides he's had enough with this increasingly
disturbing behavior. He tells an officer, quote, Laurie has lost
her mind. She's threatened me. She said she was going
to murder me. She thinks she's a resurrected being and
a god. I'm as bewildered as you are, and I
don't know what to do end quotes carry It's easy

(28:31):
to assume that he got some officer's advice or something,
because Charles files a petition for an emergency mental evaluation
for Laurie. And so the next day, Lurie goes to
the police department herself, and then she gives her side
of the story. She says charles claims are all baseless.
She says she left the house and took the kids
because she wants nothing to do with him. She claims

(28:55):
Charles is retaliating against her out of spite because their
marriage is falling apart. She voluntarily completes the mental evaluation
and she's ultimately deemed to have a quote normal state
of mind. So Charles files for divorce. He's just like that,
I'm done either way. He leases an apartment, he sets
up regular visitation times with JJ, who's now seven years old,

(29:18):
and he tries to move on with his life. But
he is still freaked out by Laurie's fanatical behavior, and
eventually Charles' lawyers encourage him to get an order of
protection against her. During their divorce process. He also removes
Laurie from his life insurance plan, which has a one
million dollar payout, and he changes that to his sister,

(29:39):
Kay Woodcock, who is now the beneficiary. Laurie is never
informed about that change. So now it's July of twenty nineteen.
It's basically about eight or nine months since Laurie and
Chad met at the conference, and out of the blue,
one afternoon, Charles two adult sons, get a disturbing text
from Laurie. What it says quote, Hi, boys, I have

(30:02):
very sad news. Your dad passed away yesterday morning. I'm
working on making arrangements and I'll keep you informed with
what's going on. I'm still not sure how to handle things.
Just want you to know that I love you, and
so did your dad. What the fuck? She fucking texted them.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
The day after.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
So they're of course stunned. Yeah, they're just like, you've
got to be kidding me. That's how they find out
their dad is dead. They try to call and text Laurie,
she never responds. Shit. They eventually learned the details of
their father's death by googling it. Oh my god, and
it turns out he was shot to death by Laurie

(30:41):
Valo's brother, Alex Cox. You have to listen. If you
haven't listened to Mommy Doomsday the Dateline podcast, you absolutely
have to listen to it. It's Keith Morrison is the
host and narrator Angel. So that's great in and of itself,
but it says thoroughly reported on all of these kind
of detail parts. There's so much to it, like the

(31:04):
details of this kind of falling apart, including Alex Cox
and his involvement in his sister's life, which seems very
codependent and very unhealthy. But basically what we know is
that Laurie and Alex, they both tell police similar stories.
They claim that on July eleventh, twenty nineteen, Charles swung

(31:24):
by Laurie's house to pick up JJ as scheduled to
take him to school, and at some point during this, Alex,
who was staying at Lourie's house, which is something he
didn't normally do, he says he confronted Charles for allegedly
abusing Lourie. And just to be clear right up front,
there is no proof or indication Charles was ever abusive

(31:46):
towards Lourie. Regardless Alex says that a fight breaks out
between the two of them. He claims Charles picks up
a baseball bat and begins swinging it. So in response,
Alex pulls out his gun and shoots Charles multiple times
in self defense.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Oh my god, the.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Family is at home. JJ and Tylie are at home,
Laurie is at home. Once this happens, Laurie takes those
kids and leaves the house. So this is clearly a
horrifying and traumatic experience for everybody that was in that
house when that happened, and should be said always that

(32:25):
people respond to trauma in all different ways. So when
Alex calls nine one one, he seems weirdly calm and unfazed.
It's just very regular. Laurie, on the other hand, is upbeat.
She leaves the scene to drop JJ off at school. Yeah,
she returns to the house with Tylee. And this is

(32:45):
a scene that's caught on bodycam that you can see
in the Dateline TV special, which is in and of
itself an amazing and incredibly thorough thing. So they have
bodycam footage of her and she immediately says she's only
lived in the house for three weeks, and she makes
a joke about how this event, the shooting death of

(33:06):
her estranged husband by her own brother, will make her
seem like a bad neighbor. Then she says quote, I'm like, hey, neighbors. Sorry,
Oh my god. So later we'll learn that just minutes
after Charles was shot dead, Lurie took the kids through
a Burger King drive through to get breakfast, and later
that same day, after Charles's body has been taken away,

(33:28):
Lurie throws a pool party at the house, a big
one with quote loud music and lots of people swimming.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Yeah. Also, she never writes an obituary for Charles. She
never plans a funeral for Charles. She ships his ashes
to his family and they hold a memorial service of
their own for him.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Those poor people, Oh my god, horrifying. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
And then Lurie refuses to let JJ attend his father's funeral.
So Alex Cox is never criminally charged for Charles's death.
The investigators seem to accept the self defense claim and
that's it. But of course, over time cracks will emerge
in Laurie and Alex's story. For starters, forensic experts will

(34:16):
eventually question whether Charles ever held the bat that day,
as there is no physical evidence found to support that
he touched it.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
Do you think that they had the pool party to
like get rid of any physical evidence that could have been.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
There, or just yeah, you mean, like to cover everything else?

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, or is it just crazy?

Speaker 2 (34:32):
It could be that, And it could be you know,
I'm having absolutely no idea what's going on with her mentally,
So it could be, you know, she's a sociopath and
there's no feelings whatsoever. It could be that she has
been pulled into this kind of cult thinking of like
everything's about to end, nothing matters. Some people are these zombies.

(34:56):
You know, you have to protect yourself from them. Fear, fear, fear,
and then like the denial. You know, she's freaking out
maybe inside, so she's like party, we have to have
a party and like kick it up.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Fine, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
And like kind of fill the empty space with like
people and talking and noise totally. And then also along
with the with the other physical evidence, the position of
charles gunshot wounds suggest that the second shot was fired
while he was already on the floor, which is in
direct conflict with Alex's claim that he fired in self defense.
While Charles was charging at him with a bat. So

(35:33):
phone records eventually show Charles arrived at the house at
seven thirty five am, and Laurie took the kids and
left by seven forty nine, So fourteen minutes Laurie and
the kids were in the house when Charles was killed
sometime between seven thirty five and seven forty nine. But
Alex didn't call nine one one until eight thirty six am,

(35:55):
over forty five minutes later. Fuck, and even still he
tells the operator that Charles was shot just minutes ago.
We also will eventually learn just hours after Charles' death,
Chad day Bell, who still lives in Idaho, calls a
local Arizona funeral home and asks for a price quote

(36:15):
on cremating a body. And he used his own name
when he made that phone call. What the fuck doesn't
look great for like that there's some pre planning going on,
or at least some discussion. So days later, when Laurie
learns that she's no longer the beneficiary of Charles' million
dollar life insurance plan, she texts Chad and tells him, quote,

(36:38):
I talked to the insurance company. He changed it in March,
so it was probably ned before we got rid of him.
End quote. Yeah, so Laurie actually uses the words got
rid of him when talking about her now dead husband
and the demon that they're accusing him of having. So
now it's just weeks after Charles' death, occasion between Laurie

(37:01):
and charles grieving family just stops. Kay and Larry Woodcock
are extremely suspicious of the claim that Alex Cox killed
Charles in self defense and they can't help but notice
that Laurie seems to be cutting their phone calls with
JJ short, so they're trying to talk to him, make
sure he's okay, and she's like rushing him off the phone.

(37:21):
Then a few weeks after that, Kay and Larry cannot
reach their grandson at all. In early September twenty nineteen,
less than two months after Charles's death, Laurie suddenly moves
Tylee and JJ out of Arizona and into a townhouse
in Rexburg, Idaho, close to Chad day Bell. He lives
in nearby Salem with his wife, Tammy. Laurie's brother, Alex Cock,

(37:44):
also moves to Rexburg in the same housing complex as Laurie,
and then on September eighth, Shortly after the family makes
the big move, Alex, Lourie, and the kids take a
trip to Yellowstone National Park, Tylee just days shy of
her seventeenth birthdays for a picture holding JJ and that
will be the last known photo of Tyley that's ever taken.

(38:06):
And after this, essentially Tiley disappears. So thanks to GPS
and phone records, we now know a few crucial things
about what happened next. Records show that the family is
back in Rexburg on September ninth, and that night, Alex
Cock was inside Laurie's townhouse between two forty two am

(38:30):
and eight forty nine AM, and not long after that,
around nine am, Alex's phone kings at Chad day Bell's house.
It's believed that Alex stays there until around noon. Coincidentally,
at eleven fifty three that morning, Chad texts his wife Tammy, saying, well,

(38:51):
I've had an interesting morning. Spotted a big raccoon along
the fence. Hurried and got my gun. He was still
walking along, got close enough that one show did the trick.
He is now in our pet cemetery. Fun times end quote,
Oh that's bleak. So if Chad's wife Tammy did happen
to notice a fresh grave on their property, then that

(39:14):
text from her husband would explain it and basically keep
it off of her mind. Tammy is wholly unaware of
her husband's affair. She doesn't even know who Laurie or
her children are. She would have no reason to doubt
what her husband is telling her. Meanwhile, Tillie's seventeenth birthday
comes and goes and she is nowhere to be found.

(39:35):
Her friends and family are incredibly concerned, but when anyone
asks Laurie where her daughter is, she just has all
different explanations. She tells one friend, Tylie has enrolled in
classes at BYU Idaho and she's away on campus, which
doesn't really make sense because Tyleie isn't quite college aged
yet that but it does seem to work, I'm sure,

(39:58):
because it sounds like and planning and kind of like, oh,
she's off doing school stuff.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Around the same time as that, Laurie starts telling people
in her inner circle that JJ is a zombie.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Oh dear.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
One friend would later say, quote, Laurie was obsessed with
talking about it to the point where she was saying,
look how he's behaving, Look how hyper he is here.
She was planting ideas to show me that she believed
he was a zombie. But to my mind, he looked
like typical, JJ, What the.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Fuck do you do with that information? If you're the friend, it's.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
So sinister, And I'm sure the average person if she's talking,
that's a person in her inner circle. So she's just
giving her the story that she wants to give her. Yeah,
that's a person who's already accepted that thinking, right, that
concept is okay with me. Now you're talking about it's
your own child. If this is your belief system, it's

(40:49):
your belief system. But where are the limits within that?
Are there any?

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Yeah? So then on September twenty second, at some point
between nine pm and midnight, Alix Cox is seen walking
into Laurie's house with JJ, who's asleep in his arms,
and this is the last time anyone sees JJ. So
later police will look at Alex Cox's phone records from
around this time, and the data they find places Alex

(41:16):
on Chad day Bell's property and nine fifty nine the
following morning, mere hours after JJ is last seen at
Lourie's house. So now it's late September twenty nineteen. It
hasn't even been a year since Laurie and Chad Daybell
met at that conference. Yeah, yet in the past three
months alone, Laurie's husband, Charles has been shot dead by

(41:38):
her brother, and her two children, Tyle and JJ, are
suddenly missing. And meanwhile, Chad is still married to his
wife of nearly thirty years, Tammy. Everything seems fine with
them on the surface, until Chad starts sharing a disturbing
prophecy with his friends. He claims to have a vision
that Tammy's going to die before her fiftieth birthday, and

(42:00):
that's less than a year away. So on October ninth,
twenty nineteen, Tammy day Bell has a frightening encounter with
a strange man in a ski mask. As she's unloading
groceries from her car. He approaches her while holding what
Tammy thinks is a paintball gun. She'll later post about
the encounter on Facebook, saying he shot at me several times,

(42:20):
although I didn't think it was loaded. I was about
to smack him with my freezer meals when I decided
to yell for Chad instead. End quote. So the day
Bell's call nine one one, but at that point, the
gunman is long gone. It's now believed that this man
was Alex Cox, and he was trying to shoot a
real gun at Tammy, but it jammed. At the time,

(42:43):
police write off this encounter as a prank. Ten days later,
another nine to one one call is placed from the
day Bell residence. This time it's Chad. He tells the
dispatcher Tammy has died in her sleep. My god, so
this is an absolute shock. Tammy day Bell is a
school librarian. She is an avid runner, She's a sharp woman.

(43:04):
She's only forty nine years old. Chad immediately declines an
autopsy and hastily schedules Tammy's funeral just three days later.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
You can just decline an autopsy if a healthy person dies.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
I guess so, if there's no suspicion, if there's no
reason to be suspicious. But wouldn't you want to know
what happened? Wouldn't you want the full story?

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Definitely?

Speaker 2 (43:27):
So her funeral is so rushed that some of her
own family members can't make it for the service, and
she's immediately buried. Less than two weeks after that, Chad
and Laurie run off to Hawaii to get married less
than two weeks after his wife dies in her sleeping
weeks they take pictures of themselves smiling and white outfits,

(43:48):
wearing matching lays and dancing on the beach. Whew, horrifying.
Back on the mainland, the Woodcocks have called the police
and requested the welfare check on JJ and Tylee's So
this is where we're coming back around to where we started.
So the police have just publicly declared JJ and Tylee missing,
and they find out that Louri and Chad have gone

(44:10):
back to Hawaii after having been married there just weeks before.
So they get married. I believe it was the end
of September, and this is they were basically just there.
It's like six or eight weeks later. So Rexburg detectives
start turning up the heat on these newly weeds. They
want Laurie to prove that her children are safe, and

(44:32):
they tell her all she needs to do is bring
Tylee and JJ by the police station and show them
that they're okay. Laurie doesn't do it, she doesn't show up,
she ignores that request, and then around this time, yet
another shocking death takes place. On December twelfth, twenty nineteen,
just weeks after Lauri and Chad get married, Alex Cox

(44:54):
is found dead. Oh shit, there's tons of initial suspicion
around his death. Vally determined that he died of natural causes,
although it's reported that he did have narcan in his
system when he died, which isn't the drug you take
when you overdose on I think O the leads. Okay, Yeah,

(45:16):
So now the FBI has joined the Rexburg Police in
the search for Tylee and JJ, and at the same time,
Kay and Larry Woodcock have announced a twenty thousand dollars
reward for the children's safe return. So pretty soon this
case breaks in the news. It's covered all over the world.

(45:36):
Strangers from everywhere are anxiously waiting to hear what happened
to Tylee and JJ and where their mother is. Like
what the explanation possibly can be?

Speaker 1 (45:46):
Like what is actually going I remember it being like this,
Like there's no way they can come up with a
simple explanation, Like there's nothing here that's just like simple
at this point, So what kind of fuckery is it
going to be? Because it was clearly going to be
some kind of fuckery going on.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
It wasn't going to be anybody's going to come back
and say, Oh, it's this misunderstanding and don't worry. You
don't have to worry about us. There's impossible. Also, those
two children and their faces being on the news every
single night, it's like, I feel like I'll always know
what they.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Look like, little angel faces.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
But also just thought like, how can this be a
question mark?

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (46:23):
How can it just be a month's long question mark?
Slowly it breaks that they're in Hawaii and they're just
kind of not answering questions, which that's when you just go,
my very cynical true crime follower side goes, this is
the worst news of all.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Myself is like an Auntie was like, if my sister
wasn't telling me where the fuck my nephews were and
I hadn't seen them in months or heard about something
going on, I'd be fucking losing my mind. And it
just would be like, what a horrible, horrible experience. Yeah,

(47:00):
not that my sister would do that. She's a great
fucking mom, but you know, Lee is a badass and
she's great. But no, it's just that it's such an
unimaginable position. It's just unimaginable. It doesn't make sense. And
the idea that the people who knew Laurie Valo and
that talk to her, that were slowly listening to her

(47:20):
talk about the end of the world and slowly listening
to her talk about all this other stuff, they must
have been.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Scared to death.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
So on January twenty fifth, with both children still missing,
police finally track down Laurie and Chad in Hawaii, sitting
poolside in their swimsuits. They serve them a court order
requiring Lourie to present both Tyley and JJ to authorities
within five days, and on January thirtieth, which was five
days later, that court ordered deadline rolls around, but Laurie

(47:50):
does not show up. She's still in Hawaii. It was
a court order for the mainland. Soon after that, Laurie
is arrested on multiple charges in voting, two counts of
felony desertion of a child. She is held on five
million dollars bail. On February twenty ninth, Chad, who can't
pay that bail, winds up returning to Rexburg without his

(48:11):
new wife. Things aren't looking great for him either, because,
as detectives continue investigating the children's disappearances, they get his
search warrant for Chad's property in Salem, and as everyone
holds their breath and waits to see what the results
of this search warrant are, we all find out that
human remains are found buried in the yard at Chad

(48:34):
day Bell's property, and then it's soon confirmed that these
remains due in fact belong to sixteen year old Tyle
Ryan and seven year old JJ Valow. So Chad day
Bill is promptly arrested and sent to jail. Meanwhile, the
police are now taking a much closer look at Tammy
day Bell's mysterious death, Thank god. They soon find incriminating

(48:59):
texts between Lauri and Chad, including one message that describes
Tammy as being quote possessed by a spirit dude at
chilling parallel to the Need Schneider text messages Laurie sent
about Charles ahead of his untimely death. So they exhume
Tammy day Bell's body. An autopsy is finally performed, the

(49:20):
pathologist concludes that Tammy day Bell was in fact murdered.
Her cause of death was exphyxiation, and as detectives continue investigating,
they learn that phone records once again place Alex Cox
near the day Bell's neighborhood on the night that Tammy died.
So the picture that's coming into focus is a nightmarish

(49:43):
murder spree that's like a brother murder for higher spree. Yeah, chill,
these two people of children of loved.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Ones, innocent fucking loved ones. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
So by late May twenty one, they're already a slew
of charges brought against both Lauri and Chad day Bell,
and now new charges are introduced. Lauri and Chad are
both charged with first degree murder for Tyleee and JJ's deaths.
Chad is charged with first degree murder for Tammy's death,
and Laurie is charged with conspiracy to commit murder for

(50:18):
Tammy's death. Both Lauri and Chad plead not guilty to
all charges. The couple's tried separately, and Laurie's case goes
to court. First. Her child begins this past April of
twenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Am, so just like six I can't count six months
ago something like that. Yeah, it's September, people made changel August, Yes, six.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Months nice one, thank you. So right off the bat,
of course, it's a complete media circus cameras are banned
from the courtroom, but for some reason, audio recordings are permitted,
so people are actually live streaming.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Like anyone can audio record essentially.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
I'm not sure, but basically it's being live streamed, and
then citizen sleuth's are just listening and trying to put
together theories on like trying to piece this thing together
and just analyzing all of these wild details. Journalist Nate
Eaton of the East Idaho News says, quote, there were
people from everywhere, Australia, South Africa, all of the states.

(51:20):
You had to get a ticket, and those tickets were
gone every day within one minute. It was like a
Taylor Swift concert.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
So now the doomsday mom headlines start to dominate this case.
Prosecutors argue that Lourie's trial is not just about religious zealotry,
though it's also about money, power, and sex. The jury
learns that Louri continued to collect her kids' social Security
benefits after they were missing, and in addition to Lourie

(51:49):
trying to cash in on Charles' life insurance, it's revealed
that just two days after Tammy day Bell passed away,
Chad contacted her school district and asked about an insurance
payout Dateline reported that quote in all the history of
the district, they had never had somebody come in so
quick to find out how to claim life insurance.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
See. I was wondering that when you said that, Like
what is a normal amount of time, because there is
like people who don't have money to cover the funeral
or you know, pay rent next month, right, so they
need the life insurance. But I guess it's all circumstantial evidence.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Well, I think it's also imagine getting the real news
of someone like your husband being dead, and then how
quickly you would start doing that kind of business, Like
how you'd even be able to think within a week
or twoes time, Like oftentimes that's other people, other family members,

(52:51):
and it would just kind of be like a different
story and a different setup. I mean, who knows. Maybe
some people sit down and they've completely repressed every feeling
like I have to take care of business. But I
think it's really saying something that they're like in the
history of the school district, no one's.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Ever called that fast. I like to hear is like
the details of like what really happens.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
So prosecutors say that Laurie used her small cult like
group to exercise power over other people, including her brother
Alex Cox. They argue that Alex was all in on
Lauri and Chad's religious ideas and that he was essentially
manipulated into doing anything, even murder for his quote goddess sister.

(53:33):
But because Alex is dead, we will never know his
true motives or beliefs. It's all conjecture. So in Laurie's trial,
prosecutors focus on the idea that Laurie was infatuated with
Chad Dabel and wanted to get rid of any obstacle
that might keep them apart, including her own family members.
There was so much damning testimony and evidence from wedding

(53:56):
rings purchased while Tammy was still alive, to Chad introducing
Lori to his neighbors as a grieving mother weeks before
her children were declared missing.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Shit.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
I mean, just every detail is worse than the last.
But the most disturbing, heart wrenching revelations from the trial
are all about Tylee and JJ. Police officers give testimony
that's heartbreaking and horrific describing how they found their remains.
Everyone in the courtroom saft photos from the crime scene

(54:28):
and JJ's autopsy. Because it's all evidence, which is really
something to consider. People are being lookie lose or people
are like, oh no, I want to see how this
all plays out. And it's like with something like that,
I really wonder how many of those people were like,
this was a terrible idea, right, this is not anything
I actually wanted to have to come face to face

(54:50):
with the reality of it.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Well, I also wonder about the jurors who are forced
to see that stuff. And we don't offer any PTSD
counseling post like traumatic trials like that. It's just like,
now go home and go on your way after seeing
the fucking worst of the worst.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah you know, yep, that's right, that's right. So of
course there's a big emotional reaction throughout the courtroom. Laurie
begins to cry, She asks to leave, the judge denies
her request, and apparently you can hear Larry Woodcock weeping
in the courtroom as like those things are shown.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Oh Jesus, it's.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Just horrifying for everybody. Finally, the prosecution rests case and
all eyes are now on Laurie Valo's defense team. Most
people expect her lawyers to argue something like there's no
concrete proof that she herself, as opposed to Alex or
Chad carry out these killings. But to everyone's total shock,

(55:49):
Lourie's attorney stands up and simply says, quote, we do
not believe the prosecution has proven this case, and we
rest our case.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Whoa nothing, no defense, that's it.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Yet they don't mount a defense. Laurie does not testify,
they don't call witnesses, they don't present any evidence at all.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (56:08):
And later, during closing arguments, Laurie's lawyer places all the
blame on Chad day Bell, and he says, quote, why
can't people escape religious leaders? Why can't Laurie escape and
get back to her good mom life? Is Laurie a
leader or a follower of Chad? So she so wants
to be a leader, but she's not leading anyone. She's
following Chad. She thinks Chad is following Jesus, but he

(56:30):
is not.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
So why didn't they call anyone to testify about how
enamored she was with him? And you know what I
mean like that? Because there wasn't anyone to fucking do that.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Right, because that probably wouldn't have been the story, but
still what a bold move. No case. Our case is
no case. I was shocked when I read that part.
I was shocked. The jury deliberates for seven hours and
then they come back with a verdict. Laurie Valo da
Bell is found guilty on both counts of first degree murder,

(57:00):
pharisee to commit murder, and a grand theft charge for
taking her children's social security benefits. She is sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of parole. After the trial,
Kay and Larry Woodcock's stand outside of the courtroom speaking
to the media. Larry tells reporters quote, JJ, I love
you Tylie, I love you Tammy. I'm sorry for what

(57:21):
happened to you. My heart hurts. My heart hurts for
these three. This is what this has all been about
from the very get go. It started with two children missing,
and I stood up and I said, where are the children?
Where are the children? Horrible? So Laurie Valo very recently
appealed her convictions, citing procedural issues that range from her

(57:42):
trial jury's selection process to the judge's declaration that Laurie
was mentally fit for trial. It's unclear what will become
of her appeal. Meanwhile, authorities in Arizona have now indicted
Laurie on additional charges related to the murder of her
third husband, Charles Valo.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Oh good.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
It's unclear when these will go to court. Chad Daybell's
trial is set for April of twenty twenty four. And
that is the story the Dateline and I think a
bunch of other media outlets called Mommy Doom's Day, Lori
Valo and the tragic deaths of sixteen year old Tyler Ryan,
seven year old JJ Vallo, forty nine year old Tammy

(58:21):
day Bell, and sixty two year old Charles Valo.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
Oh wow, great job covering that.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
I thank you.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah. I watched those Dateline episodes and it's rough, I mean, horrifying,
just evil fucking people.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
Evil people, and also just under this concept of like, okay,
here's our belief system. Now we're going to go dig
inside of that and go to a like an even
rarer belief system that have many less people that get
to have a say in what we're doing and say.
And it's like, once your beliefs only include like twelve

(58:59):
people in your living room, there's a problem.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
And to happen so fast too, within only I mean
less than a year. That shit should take ten fucking years,
you know, to like indoctrinate people and to slowly. It's
like they were they were primed and like wanting to
have these beliefs because they happened so fast.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
It happened so fast, and then they murdered so many time.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
People but like close to them people.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Yes, I mean it hired, like hired a family member
to murder them, and just by percentages, I don't think
it's unreasonable to think that alex Cox also could have
been murdered since he's the only person that would have known,
like there were true details and all the worst.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Just going to say, why do you think they murdered
alex Cox? Because clearly they did, like right, so what
was the reason behind that? Like was he like the children?
It was too much. It seemed like he was involved
with that part. So I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
But it's like, how are they saying he died of
natural causes? Like there's no way, it's just unprovable. It's
all that stuff where it's like it doesn't mean the
truth has been found out, it's just that they're saying
there are limits to what we can find out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Right, it's all alleged until it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
So crazy, just one of the craziest stories. It's almost
unsatisfying actually to see it all on paper, because I
thought it's like I thought there would be an explanation
of how they could do it or something.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Well, you almost like want her to be brainwashed, because
it's an explanation that at least we can like try
to understand. But it is such a short time and
everything happened so quickly, it seems like she was one
hundred percent on board with what was going on.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
I mean, just who knows.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
God damn, yeah, it's been an hour and twelve my
story is my God, really long? Should we do it
two parter? I think, so, oh, I'm the whole time.
I was like cool, You're like, by yeah, well, I
mean it was great. I was like on the edge
of my pants the whole time, and wow, what a

(01:01:12):
fucked up story? So bad?

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
You think you want to know. I'm one of those
people I thought I wanted to know this is what
it always happens. Then you then you know, and you're
like damn.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
But you don't know anything. Like it's like a cold
case where it's like I still don't understand I still
don't understand humanity and why and why and what's going on?
And how yeah, all the things.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
How much is denial? How much is just a total
lack of I mean, yeah, humanity is the right word.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
All right, Well i'll go next week. I have a
long one. It's a good one. I think you're gonna
like it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Perfection, I love it all right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody,
Thanks for being here with us. We really appreciate when
you join us on this same podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
So you guys are the best. Thank you say sexy
and don't don't get murdered?

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Boy?

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
Bye, Elvis, Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
Our editor is Aristotle Oscevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
This episode was mixed by Leona Scualace.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Our researchers are Maren mcclashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my favor Murder. Byebye,