December 27, 2024 • 49 mins
In November 2019, police conducted a welfare check on seven-year-old JJ Vallow. He hadn't been seen since September, and police will come to realise that neither had his teenage sister Tylee.
They've stumbled onto a web of lies that are about to unravel. Affairs, mysterious deaths, a doomsday cult, and at the centre of it all two missing children. And a mother who isn’t trying to find them.
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Guest: Leah Sottile, author of When The Moon Turns To Blood
And host of the Two Minutes Past Nine and Bundyville podcasts.
Host: Gemma Bath
Executive Producer: Gia Moylan
Audio Producer: Rhiannon Mooney
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waders. This podcast was
recorded on Hey, I'm Jemma Bath, host of True Crime
Conversations and did you know that the team at Mamma
Mia is bringing you over one hundred hours of the
best content from your award winning podcasts for the Hot
Pod Summer of your Dreams. Well, we are here at
(00:35):
two Crime Conversations. We've handpicked some of the most chilling
and thought provoking episodes from our feed, including gripping cult stories,
powerful interviews with crime victims, and in depth accounts from
women who have been incarcerated sharing the journeys that led
them to that place. And that's just the beginning. We
first brought you the story of Valo day Bell Doomsday
(00:55):
murders in twenty twenty two. As you'll hear, in November
twenty nineteen, police conducted a welfare check on seven year
old JJ Valow. He hadn't been seen since September, and
police will come to realize that neither had his teenage sister.
Their parents led a Mormon religious group, which police would
discover to be a very sinister cult. Here's our original conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Take a listen.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
This episode deals with pedophilia and child abuse. Listener discretion
is advised. It's a Tuesday in November twenty nineteen, and
the autumn days in Rexburg, Idaho are getting cooler as
winter fast approaches. Police are on the doorstep of five
(01:40):
hundred and sixty five Pioneer Road, conducting a welfare check
on seven year old JJ Vallo. JJ's grandparents haven't spoken
to him for months, and they're getting really worried. His mum,
Laurie Vallo, answers the door bye, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So yeah, this is a big mess. I just liked
to the guy already asked you. He was just saying
that you wanted to do a well chair day. So
Jaj we Arizona. Who's he worked in Arizona. He's with
one of my friends in Arizona.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
But JJ isn't in Arizona. He's not with one of
Laurie's friends. And his big sister, Tylie is missing too.
Neither child has been seen since around September, when the
family first moved from Arizona to Idaho, a few months
after the shooting death of Lourie's fourth husband, police have
(02:39):
stumbled on a web of lies that are about to unravel. Affairs,
mysterious deaths, a doomsday cult, and at the center of
it all two missing children and a mother who isn't
trying to find them.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Where are your kids? Your comment? They've been missing for
four months. You have nothing to say. Just tell us
where they are.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I'm Jimmy Bath and this is True Crime Conversations Amma
mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. In
today's episode, I'm speaking with journalist and author Leah Sattilly.
Her book When the Moon Turns to Blood examines the
(03:28):
trail of mysterious deaths surrounding Lori Valo and her husband,
doomsday novelist Chad Daybell. A reminder before we get into
the episode. While the couple are facing charges, they are
yet to stand trial for their alleged crimes. Leah, can
you give us a bit of an overview as to
who Lourie Valo was before all of this went down?
(03:52):
What was her family makeup, did she have a career,
what was her story?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it was actually
a little bit hard to find when I was doing
the reporting for this book. She was somebody that wasn't
super online. She didn't have a high profile career or anything.
But what is known about her is that most of
her time she spent just being a stay at home mom.
For a time, she did work as a hairdresser in Texas,
(04:16):
which is probably why her hair always looks so amazing
even in jail. But for most of the time, she
was just concentrating on being a mother. You know, it's
a big part of the LDS faith that the Mormon church,
you know, to be in a mother means to be
a nurturer and a childcare provider. And that's a lot
of what she did and her life really was when
(04:37):
she wasn't working as a hairdresser anymore. It was raising
her children. It was going to church, teaching Sunday school,
and participating in church activities.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And she'd had quite a few husbands as well. She
was onto her fulls by the time this story kind
of really picks up.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yes, So my understanding is that she married her high
school sweetheart. It was something that was her first marriage.
She sort of took off. Her family didn't even know
that she was getting married. That was a very brief marriage.
Her second marriage equally brief, but she did get pregnant
and that was the father of her first son, Colby,
(05:12):
who is alive. And that marriage I don't even think
last of the year. Then she got a little bit
more into more serious relationships. So she was married to
Joseph Ryan for quite some time, who is the father
of Tyleie Ryan. And when that marriage fell apart, she
married Charles Vaalo, her fourth husband and the father of
(05:33):
JJ Vaalo. They adopted JJ together.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Can you set the scene a little bit about who
JJ and Tylie were? Who were they as children?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, so that's a really good question. I spent so
much of the book trying to understand who these children
were beyond their photographs, because that's really what everybody knows
about them. There are these two kids, they're in these photos,
and that's kind of it. Tylie Ryan seemed by all
accounts to be this very precocious, very intelligent child. She
(06:04):
went to an art based school. At one point she
was into dancing, you know, real sarcastic, quick humor. Like
kids at school couldn't even really bully her because she
would just like come right back at them, just kind
of like a really tough kid with a great sense
of humor and a good head on her shoulders. Also
really into church, you know, doing things that you know
(06:25):
any girl would do. She was really into Hamilton. She
you know, crushed on different celebrities with her girlfriends and
went to Disneyland and did all of those things. And
she completed her ged so she didn't finish high school,
but she did a certificate to kind of do the
equivalent of that, and was trying to figure out what
(06:45):
she was going to do next in her life. And
then her little brother was JJ Vallo. So it's a
real complicated family web here. I'll see if I can
explain it easily. So Laurie was married to Charles Valo.
Charles Valo's sister is a woman named Kay Woodcock who
is a real big figure in this story. Kay Woodcock
(07:06):
has her own son, and her son had a little
boy who's JJ. He had a different name when he
was born for a variety of reasons I don't think
we can really get into. He couldn't care for the child,
and Kay Woodcock said to her brother, Charles, you know,
are you and Laurie maybe in a position that you
(07:27):
could adopt this little boy if they wanted to kind
of keep him in the family, and they said yes.
So Laurie and Charles adopted JJ when he was two
years old. They gave him a new name. He was
born Canaan and they named him Joshua. And he was
on autism spectrum, so he had really kind of high
needs that required a lot of their energy, a lot
(07:49):
of their time, and a lot of their understanding. They
sent JJ to a special school that was you know,
catered to kids on the spectrum, and he had a
lot of success there. He had his own guide dog
named Bailey, and seemed by all accounts to be a
really happy kid. And he remaintained a really close relationship
with his grandparents, Kay Woodcock and Larry Woodcock.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So Charles who is the adopted father of JJ. So
Laurie and Charles were together, you know, for more than
a decade of marriage before things started to turn sah there.
What did start happening because Laurie started to get involved
in some teachings around that time.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
When they met, you know, there was a big age
difference between them, Like I think that they would joke
that he was kind of like a sugar daddy a
little bit, and she was kind of this hot, you
know wife, and they thought that was real funny and
they're a beautiful couple, and you know, yeah, like you said,
about a decade into their relationship, Laurie started to entertain
(08:49):
ideas really at the fringes of the Mormon faith, things
that are not acceptable to talk about in church. And
you know, Charles converted to Mormonism for Laurie, so he
was also a real active member in the church. She
continued to go to her local ward every Sunday and
teach Sunday School, but on the side, she was becoming
a part of these groups that would sort of you know,
(09:11):
read into scripture and really kind of fringy extremist ways,
sort of looking for radical teachings within the Book of Mormon,
entertaining things like energy work and near death experiences. And
also she started attending conferences on the sort of survivalist
prepper circuit within the inter Mountain West, so like Utah, Arizona,
(09:34):
and really kind of sinking deeply into this culture that
the mainstream LDS church has long been like no, no, no,
this is not what we teach, this is not who
we are. This is not Mormonism. But even so, there's
like what I found in my reporting, there's a lot
of people who want to like level up their faith.
That's kind of what they'll say. They're like seeking something more.
(09:56):
They're not satisfied with, you know, just being a normal Mormon.
They want something that's going to make them feel a
little closer to their faith. And so what I found
was that I thought she was maybe a part of
like a fringe minority, and you know, that's the is
the case, but it's a lot bigger than I thought.
These conferences and these groups of people that kind of
entertain this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Now we're going to go into Chad in Daytail later,
but he's already kind of on the picture now because
he is a big influence in all of this stuff
that she's kind of sinking into.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Exactly she met Chad on that prepper circuit. He was
in Your Death Experience author had kind of like a
small cachet I think, like of celebrity within that circuit,
and that's where they met. That's how they came together.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Am I right in saying that one of the issues
between Charles and Laurie's relationship is that he is accusing
her of having an affair, she's accusing him of having
an affair. There's all this kind of it gets a
bit messy.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It did. It got very messy. I think that one
thing that I had to understand in doing my reporting
was that, you know, Charles was no angel, and that
in no way means that he should not be alive.
But there's no excuse for him being killed. But he
definitely started to have a sense that something was going
(11:15):
on with Laurie. You know, she had said to him, look,
I can kill you with my powers. I'm a goddess.
Like she started to really be out and proud about
the things that she was believing, and Charles was like,
what is going on with you? And he tried really
to ring the alarm kind of at church with her friends,
with her family, and kind of got shut down at
(11:36):
every point. Now, she also accused him of cheating on her.
She had said something to Kay Woodcock about that he
was paying prostitutes, and she'd found some kind of credit
card receipts and stuff. You know, it was clear that
their marriage was really falling apart. At one point, Laurie
disappeared for two months and went to Hawaii and left JJ.
(11:58):
You know, with Charles, he had no idea where she was,
and he filed for divorce. When she came back, he
revoked that filing for divorce because he said, I think
we can make it work, but of course it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, so I want to take us to July eleven,
twenty nineteen, emergency service is a cold to Laurie's house.
Laurie and Charles's house, what was happening.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So what happened was Charles had started getting more aggressive
with Laurie, saying, I'm going to expose you. I'm going
to expose you and your boyfriend, Chad Dabel. I'm going
to tell all these faithful people that you're around that
you're not really living by the way the church says,
that you're doing all this crazy stuff. You know. They
were kind of threatening each other, and she got word
(12:45):
that Charles had started speaking to her brother, to her sisters,
to her parents, and he was going to try and
stage an intervention with her brother where they would record
her talking about what she believed and then they would
show it to somebody in the church in hopes of
maybe getting her excommunicated or or doing something that would
(13:05):
really kind of wake her up out of this kind
of trance that she was in with these beliefs. So
knowing that, Rie called her brother Alex, who at this
point is known as somebody that you know has always
kind of been like a guardian, and she thought of
Alex as her guardian angel, and she said, come over,
I need you to be here. So that morning, Charles
came over to pick up JJ. He said he was
(13:27):
going to bring him to school. A confrontation ensued, and
Alex went to his room that he was staying in
and got the gun that he brought with him and
shot Charles. He said it was in self defense. Now
we know that investigators found two bullets, one of which
was in a wall, but the other one was directly
(13:49):
into the floor, which suggested to them that he shot
Charles like you know a mobster would in a movie,
Like he shot him as he was laying on the ground.
So that shot, based on and many other pieces of evidence,
started to suggest to them that this was a murder.
It was not an act of self defense.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
What struck me was the behavior of Alex off to
that incident. Police camera footage of him on the footpath
outside and he's he's just shot someone and he appears fine.
And then there's this other element where Laurie just takes
JJ to school, like everything just feels so normal.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I'm so glad that you've seen that footage because it
is so striking. I mean, first, you're right, Alex, you know,
he comes outside, he says, I shot my brother in law.
You know, he came out with he hit me in
the head with a baseball that I shot him in
self defense. Charles Vella at once was a college baseball player,
and he was a very you know, very muscular strong man,
(14:50):
and I imagine that if he'd hit somebody in the
head with a baseball bat that he would be very hurt.
And Alex had this just teeny tiny trickle of blood
on the back of his head, like maybe he'd fallen
down or something. So that was clearly a line that
he was feeding the police, but they bought it. And
the thing that struck me was that, you know, one
of the police officers was sort of realizing what was happening,
(15:11):
that you know, there was a dead body inside, and
he tells Alex, hang on, you know, and need just
sit here on the curb and he goes to kind
of get his colleagues and rope it off. So it's
a murder scene, and Alex has the nerve to be like, hey,
can I get some water? Like it just it just
was like, you know, we talked so much about the
differences in the way law enforcement treats people of color
(15:32):
and white people in America, and this was just one
of those glaring examples where you're like, this person just
shot someone and they're just like acting like they're some
kind of victim.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
And he was asking about the weather and stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
It's bizarre. It's really bizarre. And then yeah, Laurie, so
after Charles was shot, you know, she got in the
car with JJ, went to Burger King to get him
some chicken fries and a sprite for breakfast, took him
to school, went to a pharmacy and bought some flip
flops for her and Kyle to wear, which you know,
(16:05):
I don't think has ever been answered, but it makes
me wonder why, you know, did they leave I think
they may have left the house without shoes on. But
then part of me is like, did they walk through
blood that they didn't want? You know, that's a speculation
on my part, but yeah, she kind of went about
her mourning and then came back and pulled up to
the house and the police, you know, told her, your
(16:26):
husband has been shot by your brother, and she's like
laughing and being like, wow, what an impression to make
on my new neighbors. Ha ha ha. It was very
it was very odd. It was very odd. And what's
amazing is that the police really bought what Alex and
Laurie told them. It took over a year for them
to release some of the evidence where they're like, hang on,
(16:46):
this was definitely not an act of self defense.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Had Alex done anything this before? You mentioned that he
was kind of like the family protecta. Was there any
other incidents.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
They had a really strange relationship. There is one incident
of note that is, you know, for people who followed
this story, I think it's critical to know that when
Laurie was married to her third husband, Joseph Ryan, they
had a very very messy divorce and it was so
messy because she accused Joseph Ryan of molesting Tylee and
(17:15):
her older brother Colby, and that was in and out
of court. I mean, it went to trial, which is
very rare that something like that would happen. And to
this day, the mental health professionals that worked on that case,
that interviewed the kids that testified in the trial, they
told Dateline that they still think that there's nothing that happened,
(17:36):
that it was all a complete fabrication of Flori. But regardless,
this was sort of the circumstances. She was telling everyone
that her husband had molested her children and it was
a big deal. So at one point Joseph Ryan had
the ability to see his daughter again, but it had
to be at a facility where someone could like monitor.
It was like, you know, as they were kind of
(17:57):
working towards a normalcy again, he started seeing her there
and it was kind of like, so everybody was like
a neutral party sort of place. Well, he sees Tylee
and then he leaves and he's going out to his
car and there's a guy standing by his car and
it's Alex and he says, you know, I need to
talk to you, and Joseph Frian's like, we don't need
to talk. And Alex gets out of taser and tases him,
(18:21):
and you know, Joseph Ryan gets tased, he falls down,
he gets up, he runs away. Alex continues to tase him,
Joseph Ryan falls down again, fractures his wrist. You know,
the police get called, and in the end, Alex Cox
ends up going to jail for several months for this
assault that he thought Josephryan was a child molester and
he deserved that. So later Tyler Ryan would tell her father,
(18:45):
Joseph Ryan, that she saw it happen. So there's a
lot of speculation of whether or not Laurie and him
were in on this together, and that, you know, Tylee
was there.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
What happens next, because not long after the shooting, Laurie
and the kids' lifetown they do.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, they're there in Arizona for a couple more actually, no,
probably only about a month and a half before they
decide to move very randomly to Rexburg, Idaho. It's a
few states away. You know. Laurie lives in the Phoenix
area in Arizona's a very urban, suburban place, and she
decides to go to this very small town in rural
(19:25):
southern Idaho and she pulls JJ out of school, She
gets rid of his service dog, returns it to the
place that you know train service dogs, and says, we
aren't going to need the dog anymore. So they moved
to Rexburg, Idaho, and she tells no one, No one
knows that she moved. So they get to Rexburg in
early September of twenty nineteen, and pretty quickly, you know,
(19:47):
if you go to the area, everybody goes to Yellowstone
National Park. That's like the thing that you do in
the family. Like a family, they go to Yellowstone National Park. Lurie, Tylee, JJ,
and Alex Cox, Laurie's brother, and that is the last
time that Tyler Ryan has ever seen is in photos
from that trip to Yellowstone. Now, the whole reason that
(20:10):
we can surmise that Laurie moved to Rexburg was that
Chad Dabel lived there. This was somebody that she was
arranging to see. You know, while she was still married
to Charles, they were meeting, they were going to conferences
and seeing each other. She had a separate cell phone
that she would talk to for Chad Dabel. She very
clearly she was having an affair. But with Charles out
of the picture, she moves north to Rexburg, goes to Yellowstone.
(20:33):
Tyleye's never seen, but she has JJ for a few
more weeks and then JJ is last seen in late
September twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Does anyone notice that they'd gone? I guess they're in
this new town where no one knows them.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think the person who noticed the most that they
had moved from Arizona was Charles Valla's sister, Kay Woodcock.
Now she lived in a totally different state, but she
had really regular contact with JJ, with her grandson, and
all of a sudden that just stopped. After Charles died.
You know, they had a funeral for him, and Laurie
refused to go. I mean, she didn't go to the funeral.
(21:10):
She said she didn't want JJ to go to his funeral.
She stopped answering Kate's calls, and then they just moved.
And this could come out in the trial that maybe
some of Laurie's friends that she was involved with knew,
but for the most part, really nobody knew. Nobody really
and her family knew. Her own son, Colby, her oldest son,
(21:31):
did not initially know that his mom and his siblings
moved to Idaho. He had no idea, So it was
a very very random thing.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Jemma buff
I'm speaking with investigative journalists. Leah satilly about Lourie Vallo
and her husband Chad day Bell. I want to set
up Chad Dabell a little bit more because he already
had a family in rex Book, didn't he.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, he was married to a woman named Tammy. They
had been married for twenty nine years, you know, since
they were quite young. They had five children, several that
were grown, several that still lived at home. But yeah,
by whole accounts, a very happy life together. They ran
his book publishing company called Spring Creek Books that published
(22:22):
lots of different authors, but also published all of his books.
And then Tammy also worked as a librarian at a
local elementary school, very popular among kids, you know, very
known for her love of books and that kind of thing.
But yeah, he had a whole life. He had moved
his family from Utah a few years earlier, and that
(22:44):
was also seen in the Dabel family as very odd,
Like what you're moving to Rexburg, Idaho? Why you know,
it's less far than Lori's move. But Davell started to
write in his books about his belief that, you know,
the Promised Land, the sort of like place where the
chosen people would be saved in the End Times was Rexburg, Idaho,
(23:06):
And you have to wonder if that's the reason why
he moved there and why he encouraged Laurie and other
people to move there.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Not long after Laurie comes to Rexburg, something happens to Tammy.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Right, So in October twenty nineteen, she is coming home
from a meeting of the Relief Society. This is the
LDS Women's organization. And my understanding is that she was
going and prepping like freezer meals, so a bunch of
meals for the week where you could just pop it
in the freezer and get it out when you get
home from work and dinner's on the table. So she
(23:40):
had just gotten home, she'd just pulled in the driveway
of the day Bell House, gets out of her car
and there's a guy in all black with a mask
standing there and he starts shooting at her with a gun.
And her initial thought was to scream, but then later
she thought, well, maybe it was a paintball gun. I
don't think that it was. I think that it was
a real gun. And I think the conclusion that almost
(24:01):
everyone has made is that that was Alex Cox. And
she screamed she called for Chad and then what we'll
call Alex ran away, and she posted on Facebook and
just said, hey, neighbors, just so you know this, like
random guy came and shot at me with a paintball
gun and I don't know what to do with that,
but just letting you know. And it was a couple
(24:22):
of weeks later, you know, things normalized, She went back
to work. You know, everything is going the way it
would go. And then one night, all of a sudden.
There's a bunch of different conflicting stories here, but the
way her son tells it, the oldest Dave Bell child,
is that all of a sudden, he heard the thump
in the bedroom and Chad said, you got to come
in here, and his mother was half on the bed
(24:46):
and half off the bed, and it looked like she
was dead. Now, Chad has given several different accounts of this.
He has said that she's given that account. He's also
given an account that he woke up in the morning
and Tammy had died sometime in her sleep. You have
to remember this is a woman in her forties. By
all accounts, she was really fit, she was running. She
(25:08):
had just visited her face family back in Utah, and
they were talking about how she had taken like a
clogging class, like Hi Cardio kind of things, like she
was real active and you know, had a real busy
life and everything, and then all of a sudden, she
just died. And I think, you know, among the shocking
things of what happened around Tammy Dabel's death was she died.
(25:30):
And Idaho has this really unique thing where the coroner
came and asked, do you want me to do an
autopsy and the family said no. You know, a private
investigator I interviewed for the book said, well, that's a
really good way to cover up a murder. It's unique
and that's not how it is in most states. Idaho
has some pretty unique laws. So they didn't do an autopsy.
(25:52):
They shift her over to Utah, where she warn't to
be buried. She was buried in a graveyard that Chad
Dabel once worked at as a grave digger. And that
was that. It seemed like that was the end of
Tammy's story.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And he's my math correct. He bought. Two weeks later,
Laurie and Chad get married.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yes, they do. Two weeks later. In my book, I
talk about how Chad's brother, Brad told me that at
Tammy's funeral, Chad pulled him aside and said, Hey, I'm
going to be getting married. And Brad was like, what
are you talking about. You're getting married, like your wife
just died. And he's like, well, you gotta, you know,
wait for a while. And he's like, I can't wait.
I need to get married now, and he said, don't
(26:33):
tell anyone. Don't tell anybody. So his brother was like,
what the heck is going on? And truly, two weeks later,
he and Laurie Valla were married on a beach in Hawaii,
so his second marriage, her fifth marriage, and there was
no one there. It was just the two of them.
They wore matching white clothing and purple flower lays around
(26:54):
their neck and these green malachite stone rings that they
had ordered off Amazon. And that was that. They went
home home to Rexburg. Laurie did not move into the
day Bell house. She stayed in her townhouse and Chad
Daybell his children, I got remarried, and they were all
very shocked by that news that who is this woman?
(27:17):
Our mother just sided You're telling us you just got married.
What is going on?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
And something to remind listeners about at this point, is
that JJ and Tylie are missing this whole time.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, and no one knows. I mean, if the timeline
that everyone has determined is correct, the last time Tylie
was seen in early September. The last time JJ was
seen was late September, and you're right by November when
they are remarried, it has been over a month, almost
two months since anyone has seen Tylie and over a
(27:50):
month since anyone has seen JJ. And that's when Kay
Woodcock kind of comes into the equation because she calls
the police in Rexburg, Idaho, after getting into Charles Vella's
Amazon account and seeing that Laurie was using his Amazon
account to shift packages to, of all places, Rexburg, Idaho.
And she's like, oh my god, Laurie moved. She moved
(28:14):
to Idaho to this town. So she called the police
in Rexburg, Idaho and said, I haven't seen my grandson
since August when we were on a video call, and
can you go to this address and check. So they
went to the door, knocked on it and asked where
the kids were. And that's kind of where everything goes insane.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Well, that's, you know, what you would call a welfare chick,
and I've listened to that and when you know the background,
Laurie's lying. She lies to authorities.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
She's so good at lying. Did you notice that, like
she she's so seamless. Oh no, don't worry about it.
This is all a big misunderstanding. JJ's just with my
friends back in Arizona. He's with my friend Melanie. She
has an autistic child too. You know, it seemed like
a believable story, And the detective said, okay, you know,
we'll give you the benefit of doubt. Just have your
(29:07):
friend give us a call and this will all be
taking that. We just need to get eyes on the kid. Well,
twenty four hours later, they hadn't. They hadn't heard from Laurie,
they hadn't heard from her friend. The police in Arizona
hadn't seen JJ, and so they went back to Laurie's
house with a warrant to search the property and whoof
(29:28):
she was gone. They didn't know where she went. She
had disappeared.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
What else happened in that phone call? Because there was
the lie about JJ bang with a friend, which the
friend pops up and says not true. That She also
says something about where Tyler might be, and then she
says that Chad is her brother's friend or something along
those lines.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, right, right. So when the police went to her door,
you're right. They initially talked to Alex and Chad Davielle
and they said, you know, have you seen this little
boy JJ. And Alex said, oh, no, he's with his grandparents.
He's with his grandma Kay Woodcock. And they said, well,
that's not true. She's the one that called us, so
immediately got caught in a lie. They asked both Chad
(30:10):
Alex for Laurie's phone number, and they both said that
they didn't have it. So the police left and they
came back, and then Laurie was home and she, you know, said, uh, yeah,
JJ's with my friend Melanie gibb down in Arizona. And
they asked, you know, who were those guys. Well, that
was my brother and my brother's friend. And they said, well,
(30:31):
what's your brother's friend's name, Chad? He's a writer, they said,
you know, asked what his last name was, and you
hear the click. You hear it start to click for
one of the detectives. She says, his name is Chad
Babel and he says Daveill, didn't his wife just die?
And she's like, I don't know. I think so, you know,
kind of pleas dumb, you know, when you know what's
(30:52):
going on. Her and Chatter are already married at that point,
and Chad's you know, they're both faking it. They know
that they are very close to getting caught in something,
and they're trying to sort of weave this elaborate lie
about how they all know each other and what their
relation is.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So you mentioned that after this check they go poof.
I say, they go to Hawaii. What are they doing there?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
It seems like they're on a honeymoon. I mean, it's
interesting because in December twenty nineteen, that's when the authorities
in Roxburg said, you know, we've got two missing children
on our hands, and they did an amber alert. They
you know, did a press conference and said, you know,
keep an eye out for these two people, Chad Dabo
and Marivello. We have no idea where they are. And
that's when people started to speculate that it had something
(31:39):
to do with her religious beliefs, that their disappearance might
have had something with their fringe Mormon beliefs. So that's
kind of when I started paying attention because I'm thinking,
are they survivalists? Like, are they in some kind of
bunker somewhere with a bunch of guns and a bunch
of canned food waiting out the apocalypse. What is just
so crazy about that is that they were the exact opposite.
(32:00):
They were in this fancy condo that they had rented
in Hawaii that overlooked a golf course. And finally it
took months to track them down there. But when the
FBI and authorities in Hawaii and Idaho went and arrested them,
it was February and there was no evidence that JJ
(32:20):
and Tyley had ever been there.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
There are a few things that happened before that that
I want to touch on. One Alex passes away right watch.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
How good question? I mean, it's the number of bodies.
I mean, I've been a reporter for almost twenty years
and I have never written this story where there are
just so many dead people. So in December of twenty nineteen,
a lot of things happen. Please say the kids are missing,
(32:51):
keep an eye out for them. Tammy Dabell is exhumed
by authorities in Utah because at that point, people are like,
hang on, this woman just died. People are getting really suspicious,
and in Idaho you don't have to say what a
cause of death is. But she was buried in Utah
and there are totally different laws. They exhumed her body,
(33:12):
did a bunch of tests, and put her back in
the ground, really before anybody knew it. The very next day,
Lori Vella's brother Alex, drops dead and it's a very
very odd thing. So he is in Arizona at that point.
He is in the bathroom of his new wife, who
he had been married to for two weeks, and was
(33:32):
also somebody that I would say was a follower of
Chad and Laurie, a woman that was kind of on
board with all their weird interpretations of Warmon scripture, you know,
talking about all these kind of wild ideologies that they had,
and all of a sudden, I mean, you've probably heard
the nine to one one call. This woman's son called
the ambulance and said, you know, this man is on
(33:55):
my mother's bathroom floor and he's vomiting and there's all
kinds of phone coming out of his mouth. He's barely breathing,
and he just died. So it's interesting because nobody really knows.
I mean, the medical examiner there said he died of
natural but it was literally moments after he had been
exchanging text messages with Chad Dabell. It was the day
(34:19):
after Tammy was found. So it's yeah, it seems very odd, right,
The timing is very strange.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
There's so many twists and turns in this story, yeah,
which I think is why everyone is so fascinated by it.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Right, saying that's what's Upian was like, what the heck
is going on? Here? Here's another dead body, here's another
dead body. What is the deal with these people?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
So back to a few months later when police do
actually catch up with Laurie and Chad, but JJ's parents
get a judge to order for Laurie to produce the kids.
And that's how this kind of arrest situation comes about,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah. You know when they found her in Hawaii, you know,
really all she had to say was like, here's where
JJ is. It's all good, But she wouldn't say anything.
So they extradited her back, you know, from Hawaii to Idaho,
put her on a plane and handcuffed in jail, and
you know, she had many, many months to say something
(35:15):
but said nothing. No one had any idea where these children.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Were, so she just happily sat in prison just yeah,
zipped didn't say it would yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
You know, and it's I haven't been inside the jail
where she was, like, I've been outside of it, and
it is this teeny tiny little jail like there is
so few people they can fit there. You know. It
was this tiny jail cell where she could go outside
into this little tiny yard like for a couple hours
or an hour every day, and that was it. I mean,
(35:46):
it was like, you know, she wasn't even seen trial yet,
but she was already sort of being subjected to like
a torturous lifestyle that you would think somebody that is
like would say, okay, you know, let me just tell
you what happened, But she didn't. She just sat in
her jail cell and read Mormon scripture and cleaned and
(36:06):
that was it. Like, I mean, she didn't break I
guess from what she.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Believed was Chad arrested at this point when they got
expired back No, so he was just living his life
in Rexburg.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
He was living his life in Rexburg. He was back
home at his house, you know, living with his kids, posting,
you know, on another Voice of Warning, which is like
a big website that he was a part of, just
kind of doing his thing. But his new wife was
in jail. You have to imagine that they were talking
on the phone, you know, that he could call her
and that kind of thing. But she was extradited in February,
(36:39):
so that's four months that he was back in Rixburg
just sort of living his life.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So it's at that four months post arrest point. It's
June twenty twenty that police converge on Chad's property in Rexburg.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
What do they find? So they showed up in the
morning and said, we have a warrant to search the property. Chad,
you need to stay on the property. And he went
and sat out in the driveway. So if you go
to the Dabo house, you know, you could sit in
the driveway and be able to see the backyard. And so,
you know, local police and the FBI descended on the backyard.
(37:17):
You know, they had dogs with them that were sort
of sniffing the ground and they honed in on two
areas of the yard. So you know, this is a
really rural place, so it's just sort of this massive
field and they had a pet cemetery where they had
buried some you know, passed away dogs and cats. And
then there was also like a fire pit area where
(37:37):
they could have like bonfires and that kind of thing.
So the dogs really concentrated on those two spots. And
in the pet cemetery area they unearthed the body of
JJ Vaalow. He was you know, duct taped, his hands
were duct taped together, he had duct tape over his face,
he had you know, it was really it was really horrible.
(37:57):
He was in his pajamas. But then in the fire
pit area they excavated body parts that they then had
to test and it proved to be the remains of
Tyler Ryan. Really really grizzly scene. I mean, in both
cases both are grizzly, but what Tylee's body was just unrecognizable.
So that was when Chad Dabel decided to you know,
(38:21):
he's sitting in his car, he turns his car on
speeds out of the driveway. The cops had this place,
you know, there were so many of them there. He
didn't make it very far. They pulled him over and
they arrested him, and that was his last gasp of freedom.
He's been in jail ever since.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
How did the police know to go to that backyard
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I mean, it's a great question. I think that there's
a lot of different things that'll probably come out in
the trial. But the one thing that we do know
was they started really doing a lot of forensic testing
on the cell phones of Alex Cox and Laurie and
you know, all the people are around them, but specifically
Alex Cox's phone hanged to a cell tower on the
(39:04):
day that Tyler Ryan was last seen after they went
to Yellowstone, and on last day that JJ had ever
been seen, so that I think gave them a lot of,
you know, clues. He also sort of remained in these
two areas for quite some time, so you know, by
the power of modern technology, they were able to like
(39:25):
really be able to be specific about where they were looking.
And so that is at least one piece of evidence.
I think that allowed them to know where to look.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
So the kids' bodies were found in June of twenty
twenty and Chad and Laurie went charged until May the
following year. What happened in that time frame was that
just polace building evidence.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
So I think so, I think so, I think I
think at that point everyone realized there are so many
moving parts here. So you've got the bodies of JJ
and Tylie. You've got the body of Tammy Daybill in
a totally different state, totally different jurisdiction. You've got the
body now of Charles Valow down in Arizona, not really
(40:07):
looking like a self defense case anymore. And then you've
got the body of Alex Cox. How did he die?
You know, you get these multiple jurisdictions. What I've found
over the years, it is like very difficult for those
to talk to each other and kind of combine evidence.
So my understanding is that police in Rexburg started then
(40:28):
going down to Arizona. They started doing interviews, They started
trying to get people around Chad and Laurie to talk
to them about what they knew. And I don't know
when that started. And that's another thing to your previous question.
I'm not sure if some of those friends started to
share information that also led to finding JJ and Tylee.
But yeah, I mean, it took about a year for
(40:48):
really any charges of weight because for a while, the
only charge that Laurie was facing was just failing to
produce her kids. It was like a misdemeanor, So it
was something that you know, it's serious, but it wasn't
like we're not talking prison time at that point. So yeah,
it took about a year and then the hammer dropped
and it was like conspiracy to murder, first degree murder.
(41:12):
And then all of a sudden, we're talking about our
prosecutors in Idaho going to make this a death penalty case,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Can you take us through the charges one by one?
Who is being accused of what?
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Okay, I'm gonna try and get this right. So Chad
and Lourie are both facing charges of first degree murder
and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Tylie
Ryan and JJ Vallo and Tammy Dabell. Laurie is potentially
also facing charges in Arizona for the death of Charles Valo,
but Arizona has sort of said we're gonna let Idaho
(41:47):
do their thing and get through with that before we
bring her here. There are also several charges involving I
don't know exactly what the term is, but Laurie was
using or is accused of using, like Tylee's debit card
and things like that. So there are some kind of
like financial you know things around ty Lee as well,
(42:08):
so you know there's they're very serious charge. I mean,
you cannot just call for the death penalty for anything
but conspiracy to commit murder and first murder certainly.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Or that Chad plays not guilty immediately. But Laurie's case
was put on hold for a while. Why was that it.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Was put on hold because pretty quickly after the ward's
death penalties started getting tossed around, all of a sudden,
Laurie was deemed to be incompetent. So what that meant
was was that she didn't understand the charges that were
against her, and she wasn't mentally competent to assist in
her defense. So obviously, like a lawyer needs their client
(42:47):
to be able to tell them, you know what happened,
you know, to be able to defend them appropriately. So
this is something that happens sometimes with death penalty cases.
This is why, like death penalty cases can take a
really long time to go to trial because oftentimes you
will see somebody all of a sudden they're mentally incompetent,
they get taken out of the jail, they get put
in a mental health facility, or they can be restored
(43:09):
to competence, see, so they can understand how to assist
in their defense. So she was in a mental health facility,
you know, in a completely different place in Idaho for
a number of months trying to be restored to competency.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And that ends up happening.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
It does. She's daemed fit eventually, I mean it took
a while, but she was deemed fit and then they
finally were able to officially charge her of what she
also pleaded not guilty.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
When are we expecting these trials to play out?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
So right now they're scheduled for January twenty twenty three,
So that's a long time. I mean that's almost three
years from when they were found in Hawaii. You know,
it could still get moved, but I think that right
now there is a very very aggressive effort to see
justice for what happened and to really solve what happened
with Tammy and what happened, you know, what is known
(44:03):
by the police and by the prosecutors in Rexperts. So
it will happen in January twenty twenty three. Part of
the delay has been that they need to move the
trial from the rural community where Laurie and Chad are
both housed in jail and where they see charges to Boise, Idaho,
which is I want to say, five hours away, and
it's a much more you know, a larger city, and
(44:25):
they think that they can get a much more unbiased
jury pool there. So they're trying, you know, you get
the right to a fair trial, and the judge has
just basically said, you know, I don't think that they
can get a fair trial here because everybody knows the case.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Have Chad and Laurie said anything since being charged?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
No, nothing, A notable amount of nothing. I mean I've
covered other federal trials, not death penalty trials, but other
federal trials where the people in jail will use the
media and say I want to do an interview. I
want to talk about what I know this is. You know,
I'm not guilty, and that it has just been utter
silence the only time anything has happened that felt and
(45:06):
I put like a heavy emphasis on it felt like
it was coming from Chad. Was a while back, as
Chad has sat in jail, his children did a big
TV interview with a news program here where they said
they all sat down with the reporter and they said,
our father is not guilty. This is a conspiracy. Somebody
did something to him, and you know, they really couldn't
(45:27):
answer for how dead bodies ended up in their backyard.
I mean, it doesn't look good, but it did really
feel like maybe one last gasp of Chad trying to
control the narrative in jail and get his children to
speak for him. That's my theory. I don't know if
that's actually true.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
What about Tylee and JJ? For the people left behind
that did love them. The grandparents of JJ and Laurie
had another son. Were they given a proper goodbye?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
No? I mean I think that Laurie has communicated with
her eldest son, Colby, who has been utterly destroyed by this.
I mean he was very close to his siblings and
didn't know that his family had moved. I mean, he
was grown up and out of the house and sort
of psued doing his own relationship and marriage, and you
know that all of a sudden, his mom vanishes, then
she's on TV. Then his brother and sister are gone,
(46:18):
and his head was spinning. I think just as much
as anybody, he has been really vocal about how much
it is just really destroyed him and He's really a
very religious person and has tried to sort of seek
healing through his spirituality for how he feels about his mother.
Kay and Larry Woodcock, I mean, JJ was their grandson.
I don't know that they considered Tylye to be their
(46:40):
grandchild too. And I think Tyley is unique in that
account because initially, you know, people didn't even really talk
about When the police went to Laurie's door, they were
asking about JJ. They weren't asking about Tylee. I don't
think anybody knew that she was missing. It was almost
like she was a little bit of an island on
her own. But Kay and Larry have been consistently, you know,
(47:01):
they live across the country, and they have been consistently
at all the court hearings that are major. You know,
they show up there, they sit there, they watch Laurie,
watch Chad, and they give press conferences and it's heartbreaking
to watch. You know. In the last press conference I
saw that they gave, Larry said, you know, we know
that justice is going to be served, Like we have
(47:22):
no doubt in our minds. The evidence is just it's
very stacked against them.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
How are you feeling ahead of the trial because you
have dug into every corner of this story, do you
still have a lot of unanswered questions that you're hyping
come out?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Yes? I think I really want to know what the
prosecutors in Idaho and the detectives know about Tyler Ryan's
last days, about JJ's last days. That tripped Yellowstone is
very strange. I mean, they were taking family photos, you know,
they were taking photos of her, and then that night
is the night that they think that she was killed.
(47:59):
It's very strange to me. I want to know what happened.
I want to know more about Laurie and Chad's supposed
control of Alex Cox. I don't know. I think that
they're going to say that everything. They're going to blame
everything on Alex, who's dead and can't speak for himself.
I want to know more about that. And I really
I think the thing that anybody who's watched this case
(48:21):
wants more than anything is how the heck did Tammy
Davell die? Because the medical examiner in Utah has not
said what they found when they exumed her and they
did an autopsy, whatever happened there is under lock and key.
They have not said what it is. So I think
that's going to be the big reveal as if they
found something.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Lea Settilli knew everything there is to know about this case.
What an absolute joy it was for her to Lindu's
her knowledge in this complicated and horrifying story. When we
wrapped up our interview about Lauri and Chad's alleged crimes,
there were a few more questions I wanted to ask
about the couple's cult like beliefs that were the backdrop
of this case.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
They believed that they were so pure that the law
didn't even apply to them, that they could really do
what they wanted because they were God's chosen warriors. They
were the ones that were recruiting the people to survive
the end of the world, so that gave them free
rein to do what they wanted.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
That episode is available now exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers.
You'll find a link to that in our show notes.
True Crime Conversations is a mmamea podcast hosted by me
Jemma Bath and my executive producer is Geamoylan. If you
have a case you think we should cover next, get
in touch with us. Send an email to true Crime
(49:42):
at mammamea dot com dot au or join our online community.
Just search for True Crime Conversations on Facebook and make
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You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
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(00:35):
two Crime Conversations. We've handpicked some of the most chilling
and thought provoking episodes from our feed, including gripping cult stories,
powerful interviews with crime victims, and in depth accounts from
women who have been incarcerated sharing the journeys that led
them to that place. And that's just the beginning. We
first brought you the story of Valo day Bell Doomsday
(00:55):
murders in twenty twenty two. As you'll hear, in November
twenty nineteen, police conducted a welfare check on seven year
old JJ Valow. He hadn't been seen since September, and
police will come to realize that neither had his teenage sister.
Their parents led a Mormon religious group, which police would
discover to be a very sinister cult. Here's our original conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Take a listen.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
This episode deals with pedophilia and child abuse. Listener discretion
is advised. It's a Tuesday in November twenty nineteen, and
the autumn days in Rexburg, Idaho are getting cooler as
winter fast approaches. Police are on the doorstep of five
(01:40):
hundred and sixty five Pioneer Road, conducting a welfare check
on seven year old JJ Vallo. JJ's grandparents haven't spoken
to him for months, and they're getting really worried. His mum,
Laurie Vallo, answers the door bye, thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So yeah, this is a big mess. I just liked
to the guy already asked you. He was just saying
that you wanted to do a well chair day. So
Jaj we Arizona. Who's he worked in Arizona. He's with
one of my friends in Arizona.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
But JJ isn't in Arizona. He's not with one of
Laurie's friends. And his big sister, Tylie is missing too.
Neither child has been seen since around September, when the
family first moved from Arizona to Idaho, a few months
after the shooting death of Lourie's fourth husband, police have
(02:39):
stumbled on a web of lies that are about to unravel. Affairs,
mysterious deaths, a doomsday cult, and at the center of
it all two missing children and a mother who isn't
trying to find them.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Where are your kids? Your comment? They've been missing for
four months. You have nothing to say. Just tell us
where they are.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I'm Jimmy Bath and this is True Crime Conversations Amma
mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. In
today's episode, I'm speaking with journalist and author Leah Sattilly.
Her book When the Moon Turns to Blood examines the
(03:28):
trail of mysterious deaths surrounding Lori Valo and her husband,
doomsday novelist Chad Daybell. A reminder before we get into
the episode. While the couple are facing charges, they are
yet to stand trial for their alleged crimes. Leah, can
you give us a bit of an overview as to
who Lourie Valo was before all of this went down?
(03:52):
What was her family makeup, did she have a career,
what was her story?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it was actually
a little bit hard to find when I was doing
the reporting for this book. She was somebody that wasn't
super online. She didn't have a high profile career or anything.
But what is known about her is that most of
her time she spent just being a stay at home mom.
For a time, she did work as a hairdresser in Texas,
(04:16):
which is probably why her hair always looks so amazing
even in jail. But for most of the time, she
was just concentrating on being a mother. You know, it's
a big part of the LDS faith that the Mormon church,
you know, to be in a mother means to be
a nurturer and a childcare provider. And that's a lot
of what she did and her life really was when
(04:37):
she wasn't working as a hairdresser anymore. It was raising
her children. It was going to church, teaching Sunday school,
and participating in church activities.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And she'd had quite a few husbands as well. She
was onto her fulls by the time this story kind
of really picks up.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yes, So my understanding is that she married her high
school sweetheart. It was something that was her first marriage.
She sort of took off. Her family didn't even know
that she was getting married. That was a very brief marriage.
Her second marriage equally brief, but she did get pregnant
and that was the father of her first son, Colby,
(05:12):
who is alive. And that marriage I don't even think
last of the year. Then she got a little bit
more into more serious relationships. So she was married to
Joseph Ryan for quite some time, who is the father
of Tyleie Ryan. And when that marriage fell apart, she
married Charles Vaalo, her fourth husband and the father of
(05:33):
JJ Vaalo. They adopted JJ together.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Can you set the scene a little bit about who
JJ and Tylie were? Who were they as children?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, so that's a really good question. I spent so
much of the book trying to understand who these children
were beyond their photographs, because that's really what everybody knows
about them. There are these two kids, they're in these photos,
and that's kind of it. Tylie Ryan seemed by all
accounts to be this very precocious, very intelligent child. She
(06:04):
went to an art based school. At one point she
was into dancing, you know, real sarcastic, quick humor. Like
kids at school couldn't even really bully her because she
would just like come right back at them, just kind
of like a really tough kid with a great sense
of humor and a good head on her shoulders. Also
really into church, you know, doing things that you know
(06:25):
any girl would do. She was really into Hamilton. She
you know, crushed on different celebrities with her girlfriends and
went to Disneyland and did all of those things. And
she completed her ged so she didn't finish high school,
but she did a certificate to kind of do the
equivalent of that, and was trying to figure out what
(06:45):
she was going to do next in her life. And
then her little brother was JJ Vallo. So it's a
real complicated family web here. I'll see if I can
explain it easily. So Laurie was married to Charles Valo.
Charles Valo's sister is a woman named Kay Woodcock who
is a real big figure in this story. Kay Woodcock
(07:06):
has her own son, and her son had a little
boy who's JJ. He had a different name when he
was born for a variety of reasons I don't think
we can really get into. He couldn't care for the child,
and Kay Woodcock said to her brother, Charles, you know,
are you and Laurie maybe in a position that you
(07:27):
could adopt this little boy if they wanted to kind
of keep him in the family, and they said yes.
So Laurie and Charles adopted JJ when he was two
years old. They gave him a new name. He was
born Canaan and they named him Joshua. And he was
on autism spectrum, so he had really kind of high
needs that required a lot of their energy, a lot
(07:49):
of their time, and a lot of their understanding. They
sent JJ to a special school that was you know,
catered to kids on the spectrum, and he had a
lot of success there. He had his own guide dog
named Bailey, and seemed by all accounts to be a
really happy kid. And he remaintained a really close relationship
with his grandparents, Kay Woodcock and Larry Woodcock.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So Charles who is the adopted father of JJ. So
Laurie and Charles were together, you know, for more than
a decade of marriage before things started to turn sah there.
What did start happening because Laurie started to get involved
in some teachings around that time.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
When they met, you know, there was a big age
difference between them, Like I think that they would joke
that he was kind of like a sugar daddy a
little bit, and she was kind of this hot, you
know wife, and they thought that was real funny and
they're a beautiful couple, and you know, yeah, like you said,
about a decade into their relationship, Laurie started to entertain
(08:49):
ideas really at the fringes of the Mormon faith, things
that are not acceptable to talk about in church. And
you know, Charles converted to Mormonism for Laurie, so he
was also a real active member in the church. She
continued to go to her local ward every Sunday and
teach Sunday School, but on the side, she was becoming
a part of these groups that would sort of you know,
(09:11):
read into scripture and really kind of fringy extremist ways,
sort of looking for radical teachings within the Book of Mormon,
entertaining things like energy work and near death experiences. And
also she started attending conferences on the sort of survivalist
prepper circuit within the inter Mountain West, so like Utah, Arizona,
(09:34):
and really kind of sinking deeply into this culture that
the mainstream LDS church has long been like no, no, no,
this is not what we teach, this is not who
we are. This is not Mormonism. But even so, there's
like what I found in my reporting, there's a lot
of people who want to like level up their faith.
That's kind of what they'll say. They're like seeking something more.
(09:56):
They're not satisfied with, you know, just being a normal Mormon.
They want something that's going to make them feel a
little closer to their faith. And so what I found
was that I thought she was maybe a part of
like a fringe minority, and you know, that's the is
the case, but it's a lot bigger than I thought.
These conferences and these groups of people that kind of
entertain this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Now we're going to go into Chad in Daytail later,
but he's already kind of on the picture now because
he is a big influence in all of this stuff
that she's kind of sinking into.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Exactly she met Chad on that prepper circuit. He was
in Your Death Experience author had kind of like a
small cachet I think, like of celebrity within that circuit,
and that's where they met. That's how they came together.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Am I right in saying that one of the issues
between Charles and Laurie's relationship is that he is accusing
her of having an affair, she's accusing him of having
an affair. There's all this kind of it gets a
bit messy.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It did. It got very messy. I think that one
thing that I had to understand in doing my reporting
was that, you know, Charles was no angel, and that
in no way means that he should not be alive.
But there's no excuse for him being killed. But he
definitely started to have a sense that something was going
(11:15):
on with Laurie. You know, she had said to him, look,
I can kill you with my powers. I'm a goddess.
Like she started to really be out and proud about
the things that she was believing, and Charles was like,
what is going on with you? And he tried really
to ring the alarm kind of at church with her friends,
with her family, and kind of got shut down at
(11:36):
every point. Now, she also accused him of cheating on her.
She had said something to Kay Woodcock about that he
was paying prostitutes, and she'd found some kind of credit
card receipts and stuff. You know, it was clear that
their marriage was really falling apart. At one point, Laurie
disappeared for two months and went to Hawaii and left JJ.
(11:58):
You know, with Charles, he had no idea where she was,
and he filed for divorce. When she came back, he
revoked that filing for divorce because he said, I think
we can make it work, but of course it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, so I want to take us to July eleven,
twenty nineteen, emergency service is a cold to Laurie's house.
Laurie and Charles's house, what was happening.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So what happened was Charles had started getting more aggressive
with Laurie, saying, I'm going to expose you. I'm going
to expose you and your boyfriend, Chad Dabel. I'm going
to tell all these faithful people that you're around that
you're not really living by the way the church says,
that you're doing all this crazy stuff. You know. They
were kind of threatening each other, and she got word
(12:45):
that Charles had started speaking to her brother, to her sisters,
to her parents, and he was going to try and
stage an intervention with her brother where they would record
her talking about what she believed and then they would
show it to somebody in the church in hopes of
maybe getting her excommunicated or or doing something that would
(13:05):
really kind of wake her up out of this kind
of trance that she was in with these beliefs. So
knowing that, Rie called her brother Alex, who at this
point is known as somebody that you know has always
kind of been like a guardian, and she thought of
Alex as her guardian angel, and she said, come over,
I need you to be here. So that morning, Charles
came over to pick up JJ. He said he was
(13:27):
going to bring him to school. A confrontation ensued, and
Alex went to his room that he was staying in
and got the gun that he brought with him and
shot Charles. He said it was in self defense. Now
we know that investigators found two bullets, one of which
was in a wall, but the other one was directly
(13:49):
into the floor, which suggested to them that he shot
Charles like you know a mobster would in a movie,
Like he shot him as he was laying on the ground.
So that shot, based on and many other pieces of evidence,
started to suggest to them that this was a murder.
It was not an act of self defense.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
What struck me was the behavior of Alex off to
that incident. Police camera footage of him on the footpath
outside and he's he's just shot someone and he appears fine.
And then there's this other element where Laurie just takes
JJ to school, like everything just feels so normal.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I'm so glad that you've seen that footage because it
is so striking. I mean, first, you're right, Alex, you know,
he comes outside, he says, I shot my brother in law.
You know, he came out with he hit me in
the head with a baseball that I shot him in
self defense. Charles Vella at once was a college baseball player,
and he was a very you know, very muscular strong man,
(14:50):
and I imagine that if he'd hit somebody in the
head with a baseball bat that he would be very hurt.
And Alex had this just teeny tiny trickle of blood
on the back of his head, like maybe he'd fallen
down or something. So that was clearly a line that
he was feeding the police, but they bought it. And
the thing that struck me was that, you know, one
of the police officers was sort of realizing what was happening,
(15:11):
that you know, there was a dead body inside, and
he tells Alex, hang on, you know, and need just
sit here on the curb and he goes to kind
of get his colleagues and rope it off. So it's
a murder scene, and Alex has the nerve to be like, hey,
can I get some water? Like it just it just
was like, you know, we talked so much about the
differences in the way law enforcement treats people of color
(15:32):
and white people in America, and this was just one
of those glaring examples where you're like, this person just
shot someone and they're just like acting like they're some
kind of victim.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
And he was asking about the weather and stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
It's bizarre. It's really bizarre. And then yeah, Laurie, so
after Charles was shot, you know, she got in the
car with JJ, went to Burger King to get him
some chicken fries and a sprite for breakfast, took him
to school, went to a pharmacy and bought some flip
flops for her and Kyle to wear, which you know,
(16:05):
I don't think has ever been answered, but it makes
me wonder why, you know, did they leave I think
they may have left the house without shoes on. But
then part of me is like, did they walk through
blood that they didn't want? You know, that's a speculation
on my part, but yeah, she kind of went about
her mourning and then came back and pulled up to
the house and the police, you know, told her, your
(16:26):
husband has been shot by your brother, and she's like
laughing and being like, wow, what an impression to make
on my new neighbors. Ha ha ha. It was very
it was very odd. It was very odd. And what's
amazing is that the police really bought what Alex and
Laurie told them. It took over a year for them
to release some of the evidence where they're like, hang on,
(16:46):
this was definitely not an act of self defense.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Had Alex done anything this before? You mentioned that he
was kind of like the family protecta. Was there any
other incidents.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
They had a really strange relationship. There is one incident
of note that is, you know, for people who followed
this story, I think it's critical to know that when
Laurie was married to her third husband, Joseph Ryan, they
had a very very messy divorce and it was so
messy because she accused Joseph Ryan of molesting Tylee and
(17:15):
her older brother Colby, and that was in and out
of court. I mean, it went to trial, which is
very rare that something like that would happen. And to
this day, the mental health professionals that worked on that case,
that interviewed the kids that testified in the trial, they
told Dateline that they still think that there's nothing that happened,
(17:36):
that it was all a complete fabrication of Flori. But regardless,
this was sort of the circumstances. She was telling everyone
that her husband had molested her children and it was
a big deal. So at one point Joseph Ryan had
the ability to see his daughter again, but it had
to be at a facility where someone could like monitor.
It was like, you know, as they were kind of
(17:57):
working towards a normalcy again, he started seeing her there
and it was kind of like, so everybody was like
a neutral party sort of place. Well, he sees Tylee
and then he leaves and he's going out to his
car and there's a guy standing by his car and
it's Alex and he says, you know, I need to
talk to you, and Joseph Frian's like, we don't need
to talk. And Alex gets out of taser and tases him,
(18:21):
and you know, Joseph Ryan gets tased, he falls down,
he gets up, he runs away. Alex continues to tase him,
Joseph Ryan falls down again, fractures his wrist. You know,
the police get called, and in the end, Alex Cox
ends up going to jail for several months for this
assault that he thought Josephryan was a child molester and
he deserved that. So later Tyler Ryan would tell her father,
(18:45):
Joseph Ryan, that she saw it happen. So there's a
lot of speculation of whether or not Laurie and him
were in on this together, and that, you know, Tylee
was there.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
What happens next, because not long after the shooting, Laurie
and the kids' lifetown they do.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, they're there in Arizona for a couple more actually, no,
probably only about a month and a half before they
decide to move very randomly to Rexburg, Idaho. It's a
few states away. You know. Laurie lives in the Phoenix
area in Arizona's a very urban, suburban place, and she
decides to go to this very small town in rural
(19:25):
southern Idaho and she pulls JJ out of school, She
gets rid of his service dog, returns it to the
place that you know train service dogs, and says, we
aren't going to need the dog anymore. So they moved
to Rexburg, Idaho, and she tells no one, No one
knows that she moved. So they get to Rexburg in
early September of twenty nineteen, and pretty quickly, you know,
(19:47):
if you go to the area, everybody goes to Yellowstone
National Park. That's like the thing that you do in
the family. Like a family, they go to Yellowstone National Park. Lurie, Tylee, JJ,
and Alex Cox, Laurie's brother, and that is the last
time that Tyler Ryan has ever seen is in photos
from that trip to Yellowstone. Now, the whole reason that
(20:10):
we can surmise that Laurie moved to Rexburg was that
Chad Dabel lived there. This was somebody that she was
arranging to see. You know, while she was still married
to Charles, they were meeting, they were going to conferences
and seeing each other. She had a separate cell phone
that she would talk to for Chad Dabel. She very
clearly she was having an affair. But with Charles out
of the picture, she moves north to Rexburg, goes to Yellowstone.
(20:33):
Tyleye's never seen, but she has JJ for a few
more weeks and then JJ is last seen in late
September twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Does anyone notice that they'd gone? I guess they're in
this new town where no one knows them.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think the person who noticed the most that they
had moved from Arizona was Charles Valla's sister, Kay Woodcock.
Now she lived in a totally different state, but she
had really regular contact with JJ, with her grandson, and
all of a sudden that just stopped. After Charles died.
You know, they had a funeral for him, and Laurie
refused to go. I mean, she didn't go to the funeral.
(21:10):
She said she didn't want JJ to go to his funeral.
She stopped answering Kate's calls, and then they just moved.
And this could come out in the trial that maybe
some of Laurie's friends that she was involved with knew,
but for the most part, really nobody knew. Nobody really
and her family knew. Her own son, Colby, her oldest son,
(21:31):
did not initially know that his mom and his siblings
moved to Idaho. He had no idea, So it was
a very very random thing.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me, Jemma buff
I'm speaking with investigative journalists. Leah satilly about Lourie Vallo
and her husband Chad day Bell. I want to set
up Chad Dabell a little bit more because he already
had a family in rex Book, didn't he.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, he was married to a woman named Tammy. They
had been married for twenty nine years, you know, since
they were quite young. They had five children, several that
were grown, several that still lived at home. But yeah,
by whole accounts, a very happy life together. They ran
his book publishing company called Spring Creek Books that published
(22:22):
lots of different authors, but also published all of his books.
And then Tammy also worked as a librarian at a
local elementary school, very popular among kids, you know, very
known for her love of books and that kind of thing.
But yeah, he had a whole life. He had moved
his family from Utah a few years earlier, and that
(22:44):
was also seen in the Dabel family as very odd,
Like what you're moving to Rexburg, Idaho? Why you know,
it's less far than Lori's move. But Davell started to
write in his books about his belief that, you know,
the Promised Land, the sort of like place where the
chosen people would be saved in the End Times was Rexburg, Idaho,
(23:06):
And you have to wonder if that's the reason why
he moved there and why he encouraged Laurie and other
people to move there.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Not long after Laurie comes to Rexburg, something happens to Tammy.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Right, So in October twenty nineteen, she is coming home
from a meeting of the Relief Society. This is the
LDS Women's organization. And my understanding is that she was
going and prepping like freezer meals, so a bunch of
meals for the week where you could just pop it
in the freezer and get it out when you get
home from work and dinner's on the table. So she
(23:40):
had just gotten home, she'd just pulled in the driveway
of the day Bell House, gets out of her car
and there's a guy in all black with a mask
standing there and he starts shooting at her with a gun.
And her initial thought was to scream, but then later
she thought, well, maybe it was a paintball gun. I
don't think that it was. I think that it was
a real gun. And I think the conclusion that almost
(24:01):
everyone has made is that that was Alex Cox. And
she screamed she called for Chad and then what we'll
call Alex ran away, and she posted on Facebook and
just said, hey, neighbors, just so you know this, like
random guy came and shot at me with a paintball
gun and I don't know what to do with that,
but just letting you know. And it was a couple
(24:22):
of weeks later, you know, things normalized, She went back
to work. You know, everything is going the way it
would go. And then one night, all of a sudden.
There's a bunch of different conflicting stories here, but the
way her son tells it, the oldest Dave Bell child,
is that all of a sudden, he heard the thump
in the bedroom and Chad said, you got to come
in here, and his mother was half on the bed
(24:46):
and half off the bed, and it looked like she
was dead. Now, Chad has given several different accounts of this.
He has said that she's given that account. He's also
given an account that he woke up in the morning
and Tammy had died sometime in her sleep. You have
to remember this is a woman in her forties. By
all accounts, she was really fit, she was running. She
(25:08):
had just visited her face family back in Utah, and
they were talking about how she had taken like a
clogging class, like Hi Cardio kind of things, like she
was real active and you know, had a real busy
life and everything, and then all of a sudden, she
just died. And I think, you know, among the shocking
things of what happened around Tammy Dabel's death was she died.
(25:30):
And Idaho has this really unique thing where the coroner
came and asked, do you want me to do an
autopsy and the family said no. You know, a private
investigator I interviewed for the book said, well, that's a
really good way to cover up a murder. It's unique
and that's not how it is in most states. Idaho
has some pretty unique laws. So they didn't do an autopsy.
(25:52):
They shift her over to Utah, where she warn't to
be buried. She was buried in a graveyard that Chad
Dabel once worked at as a grave digger. And that
was that. It seemed like that was the end of
Tammy's story.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And he's my math correct. He bought. Two weeks later,
Laurie and Chad get married.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yes, they do. Two weeks later. In my book, I
talk about how Chad's brother, Brad told me that at
Tammy's funeral, Chad pulled him aside and said, Hey, I'm
going to be getting married. And Brad was like, what
are you talking about. You're getting married, like your wife
just died. And he's like, well, you gotta, you know,
wait for a while. And he's like, I can't wait.
I need to get married now, and he said, don't
(26:33):
tell anyone. Don't tell anybody. So his brother was like,
what the heck is going on? And truly, two weeks later,
he and Laurie Valla were married on a beach in Hawaii,
so his second marriage, her fifth marriage, and there was
no one there. It was just the two of them.
They wore matching white clothing and purple flower lays around
(26:54):
their neck and these green malachite stone rings that they
had ordered off Amazon. And that was that. They went
home home to Rexburg. Laurie did not move into the
day Bell house. She stayed in her townhouse and Chad
Daybell his children, I got remarried, and they were all
very shocked by that news that who is this woman?
(27:17):
Our mother just sided You're telling us you just got married.
What is going on?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
And something to remind listeners about at this point, is
that JJ and Tylie are missing this whole time.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, and no one knows. I mean, if the timeline
that everyone has determined is correct, the last time Tylie
was seen in early September. The last time JJ was
seen was late September, and you're right by November when
they are remarried, it has been over a month, almost
two months since anyone has seen Tylie and over a
(27:50):
month since anyone has seen JJ. And that's when Kay
Woodcock kind of comes into the equation because she calls
the police in Rexburg, Idaho, after getting into Charles Vella's
Amazon account and seeing that Laurie was using his Amazon
account to shift packages to, of all places, Rexburg, Idaho.
And she's like, oh my god, Laurie moved. She moved
(28:14):
to Idaho to this town. So she called the police
in Rexburg, Idaho and said, I haven't seen my grandson
since August when we were on a video call, and
can you go to this address and check. So they
went to the door, knocked on it and asked where
the kids were. And that's kind of where everything goes insane.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Well, that's, you know, what you would call a welfare chick,
and I've listened to that and when you know the background,
Laurie's lying. She lies to authorities.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
She's so good at lying. Did you notice that, like
she she's so seamless. Oh no, don't worry about it.
This is all a big misunderstanding. JJ's just with my
friends back in Arizona. He's with my friend Melanie. She
has an autistic child too. You know, it seemed like
a believable story, And the detective said, okay, you know,
we'll give you the benefit of doubt. Just have your
(29:07):
friend give us a call and this will all be
taking that. We just need to get eyes on the kid. Well,
twenty four hours later, they hadn't. They hadn't heard from Laurie,
they hadn't heard from her friend. The police in Arizona
hadn't seen JJ, and so they went back to Laurie's
house with a warrant to search the property and whoof
(29:28):
she was gone. They didn't know where she went. She
had disappeared.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
What else happened in that phone call? Because there was
the lie about JJ bang with a friend, which the
friend pops up and says not true. That She also
says something about where Tyler might be, and then she
says that Chad is her brother's friend or something along
those lines.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, right, right. So when the police went to her door,
you're right. They initially talked to Alex and Chad Davielle
and they said, you know, have you seen this little
boy JJ. And Alex said, oh, no, he's with his grandparents.
He's with his grandma Kay Woodcock. And they said, well,
that's not true. She's the one that called us, so
immediately got caught in a lie. They asked both Chad
(30:10):
Alex for Laurie's phone number, and they both said that
they didn't have it. So the police left and they
came back, and then Laurie was home and she, you know, said, uh, yeah,
JJ's with my friend Melanie gibb down in Arizona. And
they asked, you know, who were those guys. Well, that
was my brother and my brother's friend. And they said, well,
(30:31):
what's your brother's friend's name, Chad? He's a writer, they said,
you know, asked what his last name was, and you
hear the click. You hear it start to click for
one of the detectives. She says, his name is Chad
Babel and he says Daveill, didn't his wife just die?
And she's like, I don't know. I think so, you know,
kind of pleas dumb, you know, when you know what's
(30:52):
going on. Her and Chatter are already married at that point,
and Chad's you know, they're both faking it. They know
that they are very close to getting caught in something,
and they're trying to sort of weave this elaborate lie
about how they all know each other and what their
relation is.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So you mentioned that after this check they go poof.
I say, they go to Hawaii. What are they doing there?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
It seems like they're on a honeymoon. I mean, it's
interesting because in December twenty nineteen, that's when the authorities
in Roxburg said, you know, we've got two missing children
on our hands, and they did an amber alert. They
you know, did a press conference and said, you know,
keep an eye out for these two people, Chad Dabo
and Marivello. We have no idea where they are. And
that's when people started to speculate that it had something
(31:39):
to do with her religious beliefs, that their disappearance might
have had something with their fringe Mormon beliefs. So that's
kind of when I started paying attention because I'm thinking,
are they survivalists? Like, are they in some kind of
bunker somewhere with a bunch of guns and a bunch
of canned food waiting out the apocalypse. What is just
so crazy about that is that they were the exact opposite.
(32:00):
They were in this fancy condo that they had rented
in Hawaii that overlooked a golf course. And finally it
took months to track them down there. But when the
FBI and authorities in Hawaii and Idaho went and arrested them,
it was February and there was no evidence that JJ
(32:20):
and Tyley had ever been there.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
There are a few things that happened before that that
I want to touch on. One Alex passes away right watch.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
How good question? I mean, it's the number of bodies.
I mean, I've been a reporter for almost twenty years
and I have never written this story where there are
just so many dead people. So in December of twenty nineteen,
a lot of things happen. Please say the kids are missing,
(32:51):
keep an eye out for them. Tammy Dabell is exhumed
by authorities in Utah because at that point, people are like,
hang on, this woman just died. People are getting really suspicious,
and in Idaho you don't have to say what a
cause of death is. But she was buried in Utah
and there are totally different laws. They exhumed her body,
(33:12):
did a bunch of tests, and put her back in
the ground, really before anybody knew it. The very next day,
Lori Vella's brother Alex, drops dead and it's a very
very odd thing. So he is in Arizona at that point.
He is in the bathroom of his new wife, who
he had been married to for two weeks, and was
(33:32):
also somebody that I would say was a follower of
Chad and Laurie, a woman that was kind of on
board with all their weird interpretations of Warmon scripture, you know,
talking about all these kind of wild ideologies that they had,
and all of a sudden, I mean, you've probably heard
the nine to one one call. This woman's son called
the ambulance and said, you know, this man is on
(33:55):
my mother's bathroom floor and he's vomiting and there's all
kinds of phone coming out of his mouth. He's barely breathing,
and he just died. So it's interesting because nobody really knows.
I mean, the medical examiner there said he died of
natural but it was literally moments after he had been
exchanging text messages with Chad Dabell. It was the day
(34:19):
after Tammy was found. So it's yeah, it seems very odd, right,
The timing is very strange.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
There's so many twists and turns in this story, yeah,
which I think is why everyone is so fascinated by it.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Right, saying that's what's Upian was like, what the heck
is going on? Here? Here's another dead body, here's another
dead body. What is the deal with these people?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
So back to a few months later when police do
actually catch up with Laurie and Chad, but JJ's parents
get a judge to order for Laurie to produce the kids.
And that's how this kind of arrest situation comes about,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yeah. You know when they found her in Hawaii, you know,
really all she had to say was like, here's where
JJ is. It's all good, But she wouldn't say anything.
So they extradited her back, you know, from Hawaii to Idaho,
put her on a plane and handcuffed in jail, and
you know, she had many, many months to say something
(35:15):
but said nothing. No one had any idea where these children.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Were, so she just happily sat in prison just yeah,
zipped didn't say it would yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
You know, and it's I haven't been inside the jail
where she was, like, I've been outside of it, and
it is this teeny tiny little jail like there is
so few people they can fit there. You know. It
was this tiny jail cell where she could go outside
into this little tiny yard like for a couple hours
or an hour every day, and that was it. I mean,
(35:46):
it was like, you know, she wasn't even seen trial yet,
but she was already sort of being subjected to like
a torturous lifestyle that you would think somebody that is
like would say, okay, you know, let me just tell
you what happened, But she didn't. She just sat in
her jail cell and read Mormon scripture and cleaned and
(36:06):
that was it. Like, I mean, she didn't break I
guess from what she.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Believed was Chad arrested at this point when they got
expired back No, so he was just living his life
in Rexburg.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
He was living his life in Rexburg. He was back
home at his house, you know, living with his kids, posting,
you know, on another Voice of Warning, which is like
a big website that he was a part of, just
kind of doing his thing. But his new wife was
in jail. You have to imagine that they were talking
on the phone, you know, that he could call her
and that kind of thing. But she was extradited in February,
(36:39):
so that's four months that he was back in Rixburg
just sort of living his life.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
So it's at that four months post arrest point. It's
June twenty twenty that police converge on Chad's property in Rexburg.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
What do they find? So they showed up in the
morning and said, we have a warrant to search the property. Chad,
you need to stay on the property. And he went
and sat out in the driveway. So if you go
to the Dabo house, you know, you could sit in
the driveway and be able to see the backyard. And so,
you know, local police and the FBI descended on the backyard.
(37:17):
You know, they had dogs with them that were sort
of sniffing the ground and they honed in on two
areas of the yard. So you know, this is a
really rural place, so it's just sort of this massive
field and they had a pet cemetery where they had
buried some you know, passed away dogs and cats. And
then there was also like a fire pit area where
(37:37):
they could have like bonfires and that kind of thing.
So the dogs really concentrated on those two spots. And
in the pet cemetery area they unearthed the body of
JJ Vaalow. He was you know, duct taped, his hands
were duct taped together, he had duct tape over his face,
he had you know, it was really it was really horrible.
(37:57):
He was in his pajamas. But then in the fire
pit area they excavated body parts that they then had
to test and it proved to be the remains of
Tyler Ryan. Really really grizzly scene. I mean, in both
cases both are grizzly, but what Tylee's body was just unrecognizable.
So that was when Chad Dabel decided to you know,
(38:21):
he's sitting in his car, he turns his car on
speeds out of the driveway. The cops had this place,
you know, there were so many of them there. He
didn't make it very far. They pulled him over and
they arrested him, and that was his last gasp of freedom.
He's been in jail ever since.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
How did the police know to go to that backyard
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I mean, it's a great question. I think that there's
a lot of different things that'll probably come out in
the trial. But the one thing that we do know
was they started really doing a lot of forensic testing
on the cell phones of Alex Cox and Laurie and
you know, all the people are around them, but specifically
Alex Cox's phone hanged to a cell tower on the
(39:04):
day that Tyler Ryan was last seen after they went
to Yellowstone, and on last day that JJ had ever
been seen, so that I think gave them a lot of,
you know, clues. He also sort of remained in these
two areas for quite some time, so you know, by
the power of modern technology, they were able to like
(39:25):
really be able to be specific about where they were looking.
And so that is at least one piece of evidence.
I think that allowed them to know where to look.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
So the kids' bodies were found in June of twenty
twenty and Chad and Laurie went charged until May the
following year. What happened in that time frame was that
just polace building evidence.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
So I think so, I think so, I think I
think at that point everyone realized there are so many
moving parts here. So you've got the bodies of JJ
and Tylie. You've got the body of Tammy Daybill in
a totally different state, totally different jurisdiction. You've got the
body now of Charles Valow down in Arizona, not really
(40:07):
looking like a self defense case anymore. And then you've
got the body of Alex Cox. How did he die?
You know, you get these multiple jurisdictions. What I've found
over the years, it is like very difficult for those
to talk to each other and kind of combine evidence.
So my understanding is that police in Rexburg started then
(40:28):
going down to Arizona. They started doing interviews, They started
trying to get people around Chad and Laurie to talk
to them about what they knew. And I don't know
when that started. And that's another thing to your previous question.
I'm not sure if some of those friends started to
share information that also led to finding JJ and Tylee.
But yeah, I mean, it took about a year for
(40:48):
really any charges of weight because for a while, the
only charge that Laurie was facing was just failing to
produce her kids. It was like a misdemeanor, So it
was something that you know, it's serious, but it wasn't
like we're not talking prison time at that point. So yeah,
it took about a year and then the hammer dropped
and it was like conspiracy to murder, first degree murder.
(41:12):
And then all of a sudden, we're talking about our
prosecutors in Idaho going to make this a death penalty case,
and they did.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Can you take us through the charges one by one?
Who is being accused of what?
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Okay, I'm gonna try and get this right. So Chad
and Lourie are both facing charges of first degree murder
and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of Tylie
Ryan and JJ Vallo and Tammy Dabell. Laurie is potentially
also facing charges in Arizona for the death of Charles Valo,
but Arizona has sort of said we're gonna let Idaho
(41:47):
do their thing and get through with that before we
bring her here. There are also several charges involving I
don't know exactly what the term is, but Laurie was
using or is accused of using, like Tylee's debit card
and things like that. So there are some kind of
like financial you know things around ty Lee as well,
(42:08):
so you know there's they're very serious charge. I mean,
you cannot just call for the death penalty for anything
but conspiracy to commit murder and first murder certainly.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Or that Chad plays not guilty immediately. But Laurie's case
was put on hold for a while. Why was that it.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Was put on hold because pretty quickly after the ward's
death penalties started getting tossed around, all of a sudden,
Laurie was deemed to be incompetent. So what that meant
was was that she didn't understand the charges that were
against her, and she wasn't mentally competent to assist in
her defense. So obviously, like a lawyer needs their client
(42:47):
to be able to tell them, you know what happened,
you know, to be able to defend them appropriately. So
this is something that happens sometimes with death penalty cases.
This is why, like death penalty cases can take a
really long time to go to trial because oftentimes you
will see somebody all of a sudden they're mentally incompetent,
they get taken out of the jail, they get put
in a mental health facility, or they can be restored
(43:09):
to competence, see, so they can understand how to assist
in their defense. So she was in a mental health facility,
you know, in a completely different place in Idaho for
a number of months trying to be restored to competency.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And that ends up happening.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
It does. She's daemed fit eventually, I mean it took
a while, but she was deemed fit and then they
finally were able to officially charge her of what she
also pleaded not guilty.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
When are we expecting these trials to play out?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
So right now they're scheduled for January twenty twenty three,
So that's a long time. I mean that's almost three
years from when they were found in Hawaii. You know,
it could still get moved, but I think that right
now there is a very very aggressive effort to see
justice for what happened and to really solve what happened
with Tammy and what happened, you know, what is known
(44:03):
by the police and by the prosecutors in Rexperts. So
it will happen in January twenty twenty three. Part of
the delay has been that they need to move the
trial from the rural community where Laurie and Chad are
both housed in jail and where they see charges to Boise, Idaho,
which is I want to say, five hours away, and
it's a much more you know, a larger city, and
(44:25):
they think that they can get a much more unbiased
jury pool there. So they're trying, you know, you get
the right to a fair trial, and the judge has
just basically said, you know, I don't think that they
can get a fair trial here because everybody knows the case.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Have Chad and Laurie said anything since being charged?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
No, nothing, A notable amount of nothing. I mean I've
covered other federal trials, not death penalty trials, but other
federal trials where the people in jail will use the
media and say I want to do an interview. I
want to talk about what I know this is. You know,
I'm not guilty, and that it has just been utter
silence the only time anything has happened that felt and
(45:06):
I put like a heavy emphasis on it felt like
it was coming from Chad. Was a while back, as
Chad has sat in jail, his children did a big
TV interview with a news program here where they said
they all sat down with the reporter and they said,
our father is not guilty. This is a conspiracy. Somebody
did something to him, and you know, they really couldn't
(45:27):
answer for how dead bodies ended up in their backyard.
I mean, it doesn't look good, but it did really
feel like maybe one last gasp of Chad trying to
control the narrative in jail and get his children to
speak for him. That's my theory. I don't know if
that's actually true.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
What about Tylee and JJ? For the people left behind
that did love them. The grandparents of JJ and Laurie
had another son. Were they given a proper goodbye?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
No? I mean I think that Laurie has communicated with
her eldest son, Colby, who has been utterly destroyed by this.
I mean he was very close to his siblings and
didn't know that his family had moved. I mean, he
was grown up and out of the house and sort
of psued doing his own relationship and marriage, and you
know that all of a sudden, his mom vanishes, then
she's on TV. Then his brother and sister are gone,
(46:18):
and his head was spinning. I think just as much
as anybody, he has been really vocal about how much
it is just really destroyed him and He's really a
very religious person and has tried to sort of seek
healing through his spirituality for how he feels about his mother.
Kay and Larry Woodcock, I mean, JJ was their grandson.
I don't know that they considered Tylye to be their
(46:40):
grandchild too. And I think Tyley is unique in that
account because initially, you know, people didn't even really talk
about When the police went to Laurie's door, they were
asking about JJ. They weren't asking about Tylee. I don't
think anybody knew that she was missing. It was almost
like she was a little bit of an island on
her own. But Kay and Larry have been consistently, you know,
(47:01):
they live across the country, and they have been consistently
at all the court hearings that are major. You know,
they show up there, they sit there, they watch Laurie,
watch Chad, and they give press conferences and it's heartbreaking
to watch. You know. In the last press conference I
saw that they gave, Larry said, you know, we know
that justice is going to be served, Like we have
(47:22):
no doubt in our minds. The evidence is just it's
very stacked against them.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
How are you feeling ahead of the trial because you
have dug into every corner of this story, do you
still have a lot of unanswered questions that you're hyping
come out?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Yes? I think I really want to know what the
prosecutors in Idaho and the detectives know about Tyler Ryan's
last days, about JJ's last days. That tripped Yellowstone is
very strange. I mean, they were taking family photos, you know,
they were taking photos of her, and then that night
is the night that they think that she was killed.
(47:59):
It's very strange to me. I want to know what happened.
I want to know more about Laurie and Chad's supposed
control of Alex Cox. I don't know. I think that
they're going to say that everything. They're going to blame
everything on Alex, who's dead and can't speak for himself.
I want to know more about that. And I really
I think the thing that anybody who's watched this case
(48:21):
wants more than anything is how the heck did Tammy
Davell die? Because the medical examiner in Utah has not
said what they found when they exumed her and they
did an autopsy, whatever happened there is under lock and key.
They have not said what it is. So I think
that's going to be the big reveal as if they
found something.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
Lea Settilli knew everything there is to know about this case.
What an absolute joy it was for her to Lindu's
her knowledge in this complicated and horrifying story. When we
wrapped up our interview about Lauri and Chad's alleged crimes,
there were a few more questions I wanted to ask
about the couple's cult like beliefs that were the backdrop
of this case.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
They believed that they were so pure that the law
didn't even apply to them, that they could really do
what they wanted because they were God's chosen warriors. They
were the ones that were recruiting the people to survive
the end of the world, so that gave them free
rein to do what they wanted.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
That episode is available now exclusively for Mamma Mia subscribers.
You'll find a link to that in our show notes.
True Crime Conversations is a mmamea podcast hosted by me
Jemma Bath and my executive producer is Geamoylan. If you
have a case you think we should cover next, get
in touch with us. Send an email to true Crime
(49:42):
at mammamea dot com dot au or join our online community.
Just search for True Crime Conversations on Facebook and make
a request to join. If you're looking for something else
to listen to, like and follow all of our Muma
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