How Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell’s Religion-Fueled Romance Led to Multiple Murders: “Instant Fatal Attraction”
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It can all be traced back to a day in 2018 when Lori Vallow, a married mother of three, first crossed paths with author Chad Daybell at a spiritual conference in St. George, Utah.
In just a year’s time, that pivotal meeting would ultimately lead to at least four deaths, talk of zombies and demons, and a national manhunt, all driven by a bizarre set of religious beliefs that positioned Chad as a modern-day prophet and Lori as his real-world goddess.
The two were determined to be together no matter what obstacle was in their way — even if it meant killing their spouses and two of Lori’s children in
Dateline: Unforgettable revisited the shocking case in “The Trial of Lori Vallow Daybell” episode, laying out the couple’s deadly path of destruction.
“This story is as strange and disturbing as any we have ever told,” Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison shared of why the case is so memorable. “The notorious case of Doomsday mom Lori Vallow Daybell, charged in the murders of her own children, Tylee and JJ, a family destroyed. A couple who decided to play God and their children paid the price.”
Lori Vallow once appeared to be the idyllic suburban mom. Although she’d been unlucky in love early in life, Lori had settled down with her fourth husband, Charles Vallow.
“She just made everything fun,” her oldest son Colby Ryan recalled.
Colby had been a product of Lori’s short-lived second marriage. She also had a daughter, Tylee Ryan, from her third marriage to Joseph Ryan. And Lori and Charles had adopted their son JJ, who was autistic, after Charles’ nephew — the boy’s biological father — had been unable to care for him.
“They were simply the best parents there was and they truly did love JJ, There’s no doubt in our mind,” JJ’s grandpa Larry Woodcock remembered.
After years living in Hawaii, the family moved back to the mainland and settled in Arizona. By then, Colby was grown and had moved out of the house, but he still remained close with Tylee and JJ.
The family’s life took an unexpected turn when Lori, once a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, grew closer to a group of doomsday preppers known as Preparing a People. It was at one of the group’s spiritual conferences where she met Chad in October of 2018, a married father of five and former grave digger, who often wrote about the end times.
“This was like an instant fatal attraction,” Nate Eaton, news director of East Idaho News and a Dateline contributor, said of the meeting. “It was an instant, ‘I want you and I will do anything to have you.’”
There was only one problem: Chad and Lori were both married to other people.
Content retrieved from: https://www.oxygen.com/dateline-unforgettable/crime-news/how-lori-vallow-and-chad-daybells-romance-led-to-murder.
