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not a self-destructive suicide. So

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but you're, you're, you're.

1:40

What's up everybody and welcome back

1:42

to Koltish. A little different again

1:44

this time. Right now I'm solo,

1:47

but I have my buddy here. His

1:49

name is Ryan McMartin

1:51

and we're doing an episode today on Lori Vallow

1:54

and the Mormon

1:55

doomsday cult. I know that we've

1:58

had many people ask us to do this and doing

2:00

it. We're going to get into it. And I know Ryan's a

2:02

new face, but what's interesting about Ryan

2:04

and I is actually on the side, hopefully

2:07

for Apology Studios All Access members,

2:09

we're going to be having a full Mormon

2:12

history podcast. We're about 19 episodes

2:15

in already. Yeah. We're at MCU

2:17

levels at the moment of how

2:20

much material we've produced. And

2:22

we were what, like eight

2:25

years into Mormon history out of like 180?

2:28

That's the funny thing about Mormonism is the

2:30

history is absolutely insane. We're 19 episodes

2:33

in, which is roughly around probably 35

2:36

hours. It's not available yet,

2:38

but we're also doing another series for Under

2:41

the Banner of Heaven. And that's kind of where our Mormon

2:43

history series began. It just

2:45

all of a sudden we were planning on doing like 10 episodes and it turned

2:47

into way more. So we just have

2:49

a minimum of self control. We have a minimum

2:52

of self control, but I mean, he texted me

2:54

last night and said,

2:55

we're

2:56

doing two episodes and

2:59

that's it. Yeah. You know, just

3:02

two hours and I'm cutting you

3:04

off. Yeah. Oh,

3:06

I love it. All right. All right. Fine. I'm happy

3:08

to introduce you guys to Ryan and hopefully you'll be

3:10

seeing more of his face in the future. So keep

3:13

your eye out for Apology Studios All

3:15

Access, become a member and in the distant

3:17

or short future, you will see all of our

3:19

episodes on Mormon history and Under the Banner of Heaven

3:22

there. So let's, let's get into it, Ryan. Let's

3:24

talk about Lori Valo and the Mormon

3:27

doomsday cult. Where do we begin? Did we begin

3:29

in 1960? That's always

3:32

the tricky part whenever you're talking about any, any

3:36

story whatsoever. It's just where do we

3:38

even begin with this? And

3:41

that was, that was kind of the problem

3:43

that we had with Under the Banner of Heaven. Cause we were like,

3:45

well, where do we start? I guess at the

3:47

beginning. Well, where's the beginning? Uh,

3:50

you know, Joseph Smith's grandparents. Okay.

3:52

Yeah. Well, I guess that's it. And, and

3:55

look what happened with that. Yeah. We obviously went all the way back to

3:57

Adam anyways. So yeah. Yeah. Right.

4:01

So with this,

4:03

there are a couple of preliminaries. We

4:06

want to make something clear from the outset.

4:09

The cult that Laurie Ballo and Chad

4:11

Daybell participated in is

4:15

not to be conflated

4:17

with mainstream Mormonism. They're

4:19

not representative of it and as we go on

4:22

we're going to talk about a couple of specific

4:25

really important points where they deviate

4:27

from, I guess we can call it Mormon Orthodoxy.

4:31

And so we want to make that clear and we're going to

4:33

keep on kind of revisiting that idea

4:35

just to make sure everyone is on the

4:39

same page. Yeah, hold on. Before we go further then, we have

4:41

the wild wild world of Mormon Orthodoxy.

4:44

The ever-changing, effervescent,

4:46

bubbly world. What even is that? Yeah, of

4:48

continuing revelation. But

4:51

one of our slogans is bad theology hurt

4:53

people. So can you briefly describe

4:56

why Mormonism in terms of bad

4:58

theology can give birth to a movement like

5:00

this? Yeah, I think we

5:02

can kind of introduce that now. But the

5:05

way that I think of it is that if

5:10

Chad and Laurie had not, if

5:12

they had been just regular

5:15

mainstream Mormons, then

5:17

at the very least this situation would have played out

5:19

very differently. However,

5:22

the context

5:25

both doctrinally and culturally of Mormonism

5:29

did kind of shape things in

5:31

a way. So obviously,

5:34

like your average Mormon neighbor

5:36

or the guys that come

5:39

and knock on your door, they're going to decry

5:41

everything that Chad and Laurie ever

5:43

did. And they're going to be right to do that

5:45

because that's not a part of their religion. But

5:49

there are going to be those things that

5:51

Chad and Laurie

5:54

will do that will not make sense

5:56

unless you understand some specific aspect

5:59

of Mormon. Right. Yeah, one

6:01

thought for me is kind of like the burning in the bosom

6:03

and we have many conversations with people on

6:05

Thursday nights doing evangelism, Ryan, and it's

6:07

like God speaks to them. So

6:09

it seems like Mormonism with continuing

6:12

revelation and a priesthood authority

6:15

creates the perfect storm environment

6:18

for people when they go off the loose

6:20

end or easily go off the loose end and just do their

6:22

own thing. Yeah, and one of the weird things

6:24

that we're gonna see about this particular cult

6:27

is that it isn't a

6:30

fundamentalist cult and

6:33

The way that this works is that basically with

6:35

any organized religion you're

6:38

going to have three potential

6:40

sources of authority. You're

6:42

gonna have divine external

6:46

revelation like a Bible or you

6:49

know the Quran or something like that, right?

6:52

And then you're gonna have teachers,

6:55

you know, maybe they're gonna

6:57

be Bible teachers, pastors,

7:00

sheikhs, rabbis, whatever. And then

7:02

finally you have the boots on the ground, the

7:05

average show, you know, your average

7:08

Orthodox Jewish person or something like that. Fundamentalism

7:12

in any religion is going to be the idea

7:15

that that first type, that

7:17

revelation, the prophets, scripture,

7:21

that that is meant to be the foundation

7:23

for everything else that you believe in everything that you do. Nobody's

7:27

really consistent with that, you know. You find

7:29

a lot of fundamentalists that are like you're

7:32

ignoring this part right here, you know, but

7:35

that's what fundamentalism basically is. And

7:37

so in Mormonism, fundamentalism usually

7:40

takes the form of you

7:42

know, ignoring, like they'll say the the church

7:45

has apostasized, they'll say

7:48

basically everybody after a certain point, every

7:51

prophet has gone

7:54

off the deep end and we reject everything. And so they're

7:56

usually going to be embracing

7:58

the policies of say Brigham Young.

7:59

and

8:00

so you're gonna have things like polygamy,

8:03

you're gonna have blood atonement, you're gonna

8:05

have even just the way that they dress,

8:07

right? This group though

8:10

isn't fundamentalist. They

8:13

still follow in that line of

8:17

you being the arbiter of truth,

8:20

right? And that's

8:23

what theological liberalism is, where

8:25

you are the one who determines by

8:28

some kind of experience or wisdom or

8:30

whatever what ultimate reality

8:32

is. And this happens

8:35

a lot. This happens unfortunately

8:37

in a lot of liberal Christianity, you know?

8:40

We see that bleeding in even into the Mormon

8:43

organization right now because the elder,

8:46

I think it's Elder Alan D. Haynes, he

8:48

just said in one of his speeches, he said you cannot

8:50

treat prophecy like antique cars.

8:52

It doesn't get more value in age

8:55

and you can't use past prophecy to

8:58

contradict future prophecy, meaning

9:00

that Mormon fundamentalism

9:03

is ultimately unfundamentalistic because

9:05

there's no solid or concrete ground

9:08

for someone to appeal to you other than

9:10

the authority of the prophet who's speaking now. Yeah

9:12

and there's I think for

9:16

the thinking Mormon you

9:18

have to embrace some sort of theological

9:21

liberalism here because like

9:24

how do you intellectually defend the book

9:26

of Abraham? You really can't. We've

9:30

got an extensive series

9:32

that's going to come out at some point in the future where we talked

9:35

about that. And so

9:37

like what do you do with it? Well

9:40

what you have to do is

9:43

in some way embrace

9:46

some sort of contradiction or just say well

9:49

I don't

9:52

believe this or you know

9:55

I believe this in spite of the evidence or something

9:57

like that. You have to go to some sort

9:59

of I feel right

10:02

about it when we

10:06

shouldn't have to do that. You know, we shouldn't have

10:08

to embrace that kind of an

10:11

ideology in order

10:13

to continue believing things. We should

10:15

be able to embrace

10:19

the truth and also be able to defend

10:21

it intellectually and personally. I

10:23

mean, and that's the truth of what's going on

10:25

in this situation with bad theology hurting

10:27

people. Doing what you think

10:30

or feel is right in the situation

10:33

for Lori Valo or whatever

10:35

last name you want to give her, Chad Daybell, it ends a

10:37

lot of those. It ended up with murder. Yeah.

10:39

Conspiracy and murder.

10:42

The fruit of their labor was

10:45

that. It was all in vain and

10:47

there will be justice that will occur within

10:50

this life but also ultimate justice

10:53

given by God for the murder that she

10:55

committed on her son and her

10:58

daughter ultimately. So let's

11:00

look at a variety of other people. Yeah, even her,

11:03

yeah, one of her ex-husbands and even

11:05

maybe her husband before that and Chad's

11:08

wife. Yeah, let's look at the

11:10

whole big thing. I think we started a good little foundation

11:12

though just to get our audience thinking about

11:16

how Mormonism can give birth to a movement

11:18

such as this. Yeah, in the beginning

11:21

there was a little family, Barry

11:24

and Janice Cox and

11:26

they were members of the Church

11:29

of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and

11:31

these are often

11:34

portrayed as being just typical

11:36

members. I don't think that's 100% true. I mean, there's nothing

11:38

really about them that would make everyone say

11:41

these people are freaks or, you

11:43

know, their children are bound to go

11:45

off and commit murder and start a cult or

11:47

anything but they were a little bit odd. For

11:50

one thing, Barry was known as one of

11:52

those people that really only wanted to talk about one

11:55

thing and in his case that

11:57

was taxes. He only

11:59

ever wanted to about how taxes are unconstitutional.

12:02

And I from what I can tell he's still kind

12:04

of like that. He like

12:06

wrote a book about it and things like that.

12:09

Whereas Janice, she and

12:11

this is back in like the the 70s and

12:13

80s and stuff. This

12:16

was a time when conformity

12:18

was still a really big thing in Mormonism.

12:20

I know it's still kind of depending on

12:22

like what individual

12:25

subculture you're a part of what neighborhood you're in. But

12:27

like back then it was much

12:30

more intense. But Janice Cox was

12:32

the sort of person that would like show up to pick

12:34

up her kids from school wearing like a

12:37

skin type leopard print outfit

12:39

with you know giant glasses and things

12:41

like that. Where were they living? Do you remember? Loma

12:44

Linda, California. Oh okay. So

12:46

not in Salt Lake City, Utah. No. Or

12:49

American Fork, you know. No, no, no, no. And

12:51

there's a lot of geography stuff. We're gonna

12:54

skip a lot of it. You know the stuff

12:56

that like Dateline in 2020 did they can cover that kind

12:59

of stuff. But yeah, they

13:03

eventually had from what I can

13:05

tell five kids. Lori's one

13:07

of their five children.

13:11

She wasn't like an unusual kid you

13:13

know.

13:15

It was a fairly healthy

13:18

environment for the most part. With one little

13:20

exception being that her parents were kind of I don't

13:22

want to say absentee parents but they would regularly

13:25

go on vacations,

13:27

redress themselves and leave the kids behind. They're

13:30

like latchkey kids kind of? A little

13:32

bit. You know nothing that would have made people

13:34

at the time say,

13:37

oh these kids being neglected. You know they wouldn't be calling CPS

13:39

from what I can tell. But it

13:42

wouldn't be uncommon for the parents to take

13:44

off and go to Hawaii for like a week. And

13:46

leave the kids money to

13:49

buy food and stuff. But yeah,

13:52

like they would do that kind of a thing. It

13:55

was kind of a hands-off parenting

13:57

technique from what we can tell.

14:00

Yeah, that's it.

14:01

At some point, Janice

14:04

started getting on her daughters about

14:06

their weight. Lori

14:09

was, like, she wasn't like morbidly

14:11

obese as a kid. But, you know, I mean, she was a little bit

14:13

chunky, you know, normal for

14:16

your average American kid. But

14:19

her mom started getting on both her and her sister,

14:21

Stacy, about this. And

14:23

this will have some repercussions later

14:26

on and sort of tie

14:28

back into things a little bit later. She

14:32

also had a brother named Adam,

14:35

who he's

14:37

one of the people who, from what I can

14:39

tell, is an innocent victim of this.

14:42

He is somebody

14:44

who started to notice that Lori

14:47

eventually will go off the deep end and he

14:49

tries to right the ship.

14:52

He, at one point, tried to

14:55

organize an intervention with her

14:57

to try and sit her straight. There's

15:00

another really interesting story about Adam, but that would

15:03

take us way too far afield. She

15:05

also had another brother named Alex. Now

15:07

Alex, you're going to hear

15:10

a lot about him. There

15:13

are things that I could say that aren't

15:16

really, like we can't document

15:20

to the biblical standard

15:23

that this happened. All I can really

15:25

say is that there are rumors,

15:28

and I think we can verify that

15:30

at least he had an

15:33

unhealthy type

15:35

and degree of devotion to his

15:38

sister. Well, yeah.

15:40

Where Adam was at one end

15:42

of the spectrum, Alex was at

15:44

the other. Yeah, sort of. Yeah,

15:48

I guess in comparison with Alex, anybody

15:51

seems kind of stable. But yeah, Alex is devoted to both

15:54

Lori and also to him.

16:00

his niece in ways

16:02

that just make people scratch their heads and say, how,

16:05

why would anyone be like that? Not

16:07

just why would anyone do that? Why would anyone

16:09

have that kind of a disposition? Right. So

16:11

our zero unsettling. That's just bizarre. Yeah.

16:16

And there's a, there's another sister. She

16:19

doesn't really factor into the story except for

16:21

towards the end. She's

16:24

one of the people that will testify against Lori,

16:26

but there's not a lot to say about that.

16:29

Gotcha.

16:29

Okay. So she's grown up and she's kind

16:32

of a little bit overweight according to her mother's standards.

16:34

Yeah. And this kind of, she does, she does, um, probably

16:38

because of her, her mom's influence,

16:40

uh, really buck against

16:43

that. And you know, she eventually becomes

16:45

like a beauty contestant and things like that.

16:48

Uh, but unfortunately that influence will

16:50

have a more profound

16:52

and negative impact on her sister,

16:54

Stacy, which we'll get into in a minute. Okay.

16:57

Man. Okay. So continuing on, we have

17:00

right now, just the picture of Lori's

17:03

family and a little bit of her upbringing, kind

17:05

of a latchkey kid, not even really that more like

17:08

a nothing crazy, but like, you

17:10

know, the parents could have been a little bit more active. This

17:12

was the sixties and seventies. So things were

17:14

a little bit different back then. There's also shag carpeting

17:17

and all kinds of different stuff.

17:19

Yeah. She was growing up. She, she was born in, uh,

17:22

let me see here. 1967 I believe. 1973. Oh, 1973.

17:25

Right. Right. Oh yeah,

17:27

that's right. Yup. Sixties, 67 was her sister. Yeah.

17:30

So she was born in 73 and so she's grown

17:32

up in seventies and eighties

17:35

and early nineties, that kind of stuff. So,

17:38

uh, in 1990 a young man

17:40

by the name of Chad Dayville married

17:43

his wife Tammy.

17:45

Now Chad was

17:47

in kind of a similar situation

17:49

in that he didn't seem like a sort

17:55

of person that would end up doing this kind of stuff. I

17:57

mean, when you look at say the, the childhood of,

18:00

Somebody like Jim Jones. They were warning signs.

18:02

Yeah, huge blinking neon

18:05

warning signs that this dude was headed for trouble It

18:08

wasn't like that with Chad He

18:11

he grew up again in Provo

18:13

this time Had just lived

18:15

in average Kind

18:18

of Mormon life there. He

18:20

eventually went to BYU graduated

18:23

with a degree in journalism and After

18:27

he got married he got a job

18:29

with Cedar fort which is a publishing company.

18:31

It's fairly well known in a more in communities And

18:35

he was kind of high up in that and

18:37

so that that led him to Choosing

18:40

a career in writing books

18:43

and publishing some of his own stuff and eventually

18:46

in 2004 Chad and Tammy would

18:48

actually found their own Spring

18:51

Creek book company and that was

18:54

That was how he ended up publishing a lot of his own

18:56

works Yeah, and that's kind of how Laurie

18:58

when we get into that in the future fine Chad

19:01

and kind of gets enamored with some of his Theology

19:04

and ideas. Yeah. All right, so if we can

19:06

put them on a timeline right next to each other

19:08

We have Chad getting married in 1990 1992 we

19:13

have Laurie marrying her first

19:15

husband in her high school sweetheart Nelson

19:18

Yanes, yeah, we're gonna go with the Ains Yanes

19:21

Yeah, and then okay So then

19:24

in 1995 she divorces mr. Yanes and this

19:26

is kind of like a theme that you see throughout

19:28

Laurie This will be the first this is

19:31

the first this is this is first one

19:33

and then in She

19:37

soon after divorcing mr. Yanes

19:40

will marry a guy named William

19:43

We're gonna just say William L I'm

19:46

not sure how to pronounce that go. Yeah, but Lagoia.

19:48

Okay. Oh, I hope I haven't insulted

19:50

any Lagoia is out there. Yeah There

19:53

isn't really anything terribly Knowworthy about

19:55

this marriage with one

19:58

exception. This is when Laurie her

20:00

first son Colby. Yeah. Colby

20:05

throughout this whole story is just

20:08

this the

20:11

most tragic victim I think of

20:13

what's happened here. He

20:16

is one of those one that is... I can't

20:19

imagine what he's experiencing right

20:22

now. I don't think there's anyone in the world that understands

20:24

it because he has had to see

20:26

from the outside like the degradation

20:29

of his mother. This

20:31

is one of the things that makes this story so strange

20:34

and why it stood out to a lot of people

20:36

is that Laurie Vello didn't start

20:38

out being a maniac who would like

20:41

a sociopath want to kill

20:43

her children. During

20:46

this period after after

20:48

Laurie gets a divorce from her second husband

20:51

what Colby described is like

20:54

you and me versus the world. Yeah. You know

20:56

like his mom was his protector

20:59

and it was like they were best friends

21:01

and partners and they

21:03

could do anything together. Yeah. That was his stability.

21:06

His rock because his father... Yeah

21:08

his father was no longer in the picture. I don't know

21:10

what kind of custody arrangements they had but it

21:12

doesn't sound like

21:15

he was really all that active. I

21:18

could be wrong about that but he doesn't really seem to come into

21:20

play in later events. But

21:24

yeah this provides kind of a contrast for

21:26

what happens later and why it's

21:29

so bizarre.

21:31

Yeah so that's kind of the way things

21:33

were back then. They were

21:35

you know Laurie and Colby were just trying

21:38

to get by as a you know single mother and

21:40

her son all while

21:42

in another part of the world you know Chad and

21:45

Tammy are having... they

21:47

would eventually have five children and

21:50

they're starting their careers and everything and all of this

21:52

is perfectly normal.

21:55

Yes. But then

21:57

something happens that I think is sort of...

22:00

The indication

22:03

that things are going off the rails slightly.

22:07

I mentioned before that Stacey,

22:09

Lori's older sister, had

22:11

a problem as a result of,

22:15

largely as a result of their mom's influence. She

22:18

got to the point where she even

22:20

developed what

22:23

you might call a phobia of sugar.

22:26

She did not as an adult have

22:29

a healthy relationship with food. That's

22:32

something I think she got from her mom. She

22:35

eventually became a diabetic. In 1998,

22:39

she slipped into a diabetic coma

22:41

and did not ever wake up. That's

22:44

Lori's sister Stacey. Lori's older sister. Imagine

22:47

the connection she probably has with her sister knowing that at

22:50

times of her life when her parents are gone for weeks

22:52

on end, that her sister is probably

22:54

helping take care of her. She was a mom.

22:58

I think so. There was something like

23:00

a six year age gap. I

23:02

think of how

23:04

your family dynamic where

23:06

your oldest will take care of the babies

23:09

to some extent. They're

23:11

going to end up hopefully eventually

23:14

looking after her. I

23:16

couldn't imagine what it would be like to

23:18

be Lori and have

23:22

your sister die indirectly

23:25

as a result of something

23:27

that had influenced you as well. She

23:32

became diabetic yet she had a phobia

23:34

of sugar. I forget which type

23:37

of diabetes. Could be a type 2

23:39

diabetes. Probably something

23:41

like that. What's interesting is typically people get diabetes

23:43

from over eating or eating horrible

23:46

foods. Well, she I think went back and forth.

23:49

I think she would have those times

23:51

where she was binging

23:54

or something along those lines and

23:56

it's that imbalance that

23:59

caused the this problem. And then the phobia of sugar the

24:18

key thing here is Stacy had a

24:20

daughter by the name of Melanie.

24:23

When

24:25

Stacy died, Laurie

24:28

began to talk about Melanie as

24:30

if she was the reincarnation of

24:32

Stacy. Not

24:36

that Stacy just had or that

24:39

Melanie had common

24:42

traits with her mother. It

24:44

was a stronger kind of language than that and

24:46

it was something that stood out in the minds of people

24:49

that knew her. You know they didn't say well

24:52

this is a bad sign that you're gonna

24:54

go off into a cult at some point but it was like

24:57

this is different from what you would normally

25:00

say. Yeah that's interesting. Like growing

25:02

up LDS as well

25:04

there's no like reincarnation

25:08

that is orthodox doctrine.

25:10

No there's no reincarnation in Mormonism. So

25:13

the way she maybe gets it is just spirit

25:15

children in a pre-existence or something

25:17

and this one spirit inhabiting a body

25:19

again. I think when we when

25:22

we dive into the theology

25:24

of it later on

25:26

after we've kind of gone through just

25:29

the basics of what happened there's

25:31

there's some reasons for both why

25:33

reincarnation is not

25:36

an aspect of Mormon theology

25:39

and why like how

25:41

they managed to try and fit this into their

25:43

own burgeoning kind of thing.

25:46

Yeah but

25:48

yeah just it's not a Mormon thing.

25:50

Wow.

25:51

Yeah and she's already divorced how many times

25:53

right now? This would be her second

25:57

from what I can tell. Yeah in 2011 One,

26:01

Lori marries for a third time. This time she marries

26:03

a guy named Joseph Ryan, and together they have

26:05

a daughter named Tyree.

26:09

This is a little bit

26:13

more, like there's more to this

26:15

particular marriage than previous

26:18

ones. I mean, we don't really know anything about the previous

26:21

husbands. In this case,

26:23

things get a little bit weird.

26:26

There are accusations

26:28

of abuse of various types,

26:33

physical abuse, at

26:35

some point sexual abuse. Again,

26:39

without, I don't think we have met the

26:43

biblical standard of- Two to three independent

26:45

lines. Yeah, two to three independent lines of testimony

26:47

to just say definitively who's

26:50

responsible for what. I've

26:52

heard enough that I feel like it's credible.

26:55

There's circumstantial evidence? Yes, there are,

27:00

Joe Ryan's sister came

27:02

and visited for a while and she had

27:04

to leave early because she was so sick of

27:06

her brother yelling

27:08

at his kids and

27:13

like roughing him up and stuff like that. Right, so we have

27:15

Lori and Colby. And

27:17

now Tylee. And now Tylee. So

27:20

Colby at this age would have been, let's

27:23

see. I don't know when he was

27:25

born though. Oh, gotcha, okay. So

27:28

we have Colby, he's a little bit older and now

27:30

his sister is born. He's a big brother.

27:33

And now we have the aspect of abuse coming into the

27:35

household from Joseph Ryan. Colby

27:38

then becoming more protective probably over

27:40

his sister and even his mother being just a

27:42

little bit older of a man. And just

27:45

in the midst of that, they eventually

27:48

do divorce in 2004. There

27:50

are, one of the things that makes this

27:52

kind of tricky is that it's not

27:55

at all uncommon in

27:57

custody battles and divorces. for

28:00

somebody to start accusing the other one of

28:02

being abusive towards the kids. And

28:05

you have to take that on a case by case

28:07

basis. You

28:10

can't just say, well, the

28:12

person who's being accused is always guilty,

28:15

or the person who's being accused is always innocent. It

28:17

has to be on a case by case basis, and so we

28:19

don't have enough to know. But

28:22

it doesn't sound like it was a healthy environment, and

28:25

it doesn't sound like something that any of these

28:27

kids wanted to grow up. Gotcha, so it looks like Colby

28:29

was born in between 19, probably

28:31

around 1996. So at this age,

28:34

when she's in this relationship, Lori,

28:36

with Joseph Ryan, it'd

28:38

be anywhere from him being five

28:40

to about eight to

28:43

nine years old when the relationship ended.

28:45

Somewhere around there. Yeah, gotcha. So

28:47

Colby would have been old enough to have some understanding of

28:49

what was going on. Yeah, yeah.

28:52

But not enough to really have the

28:54

kind of perspective that an adult would,

28:56

if that makes sense. What's up, everybody?

28:59

It's the Super Sloop here, letting you know that you can go to shopcultish.com

29:02

and get all of our exclusive cultish

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merch. There's the Bad Theology Hurts

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wear it all the time. Sometimes we wear it at the same time

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without even trying to have that happen on the

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wearing the shirt. You could wear the shirt, too. Go

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29:22

later, guys. So, of course, they divorced

29:25

in 2004. And

29:28

again, it's a single mother and

29:31

trying to raise her two kids. And then they run into

29:33

a guy named Charles Vallow. Charles

29:36

Vallow, from what we can tell, is everything

29:39

that they had initially wanted

29:42

in a stepdad. Yeah. Charles

29:45

grew up Catholic. Probably,

29:47

I don't know how devoted

29:50

he was to it, but I do know that he converted to Mormonism

29:54

in his courtship with Laurie. That was an important

29:56

thing to her. You

30:00

know that was he was wanting

30:02

to be the family man. He

30:04

wanted to take care of these kids He

30:07

wanted to be a good husband and

30:09

from all accounts he was He

30:14

He actually previously had played professional

30:16

baseball. Hmm like you you

30:19

kind of hear the the audio of When

30:21

he was talking to cops later on and you kind of get this

30:23

mental picture in your head And it's just not that's

30:26

not what it looks like you see these pictures online and

30:28

he's like this big beefy guy You know And

30:31

he's just everybody loves you

30:34

know, he he'd really Forgive

30:37

the metaphor stepped up to the plate And

30:39

become and became the kind of dad

30:42

that like all these kids had been looking

30:44

for. Yeah And for

30:46

a while it looked like this story was gonna

30:48

have a happy ending as long as

30:51

Nothing changed,

30:52

right?

30:54

So I wonder what appealed to

30:57

him right like she's been divorced

30:59

three times now, I think

31:01

I Forget if he had been divorced

31:04

or if he was a widower But I think he

31:06

had been married previously and that

31:08

was a part of their initial bonding

31:10

that they both That

31:14

they they both had this kind of shared experience

31:16

and and you know, it can be hard for somebody who

31:19

has been married previously to

31:22

Find love again. Yeah, I believe he had two children from

31:24

a previous marriage. I think so. Yeah, that

31:27

sounds about right but

31:29

yeah, he He

31:31

wanted to kind of become this family man

31:33

and move on with his life and it

31:36

really looks like he did at least for for

31:39

a good while in 2014 the

31:42

family moved to Kauai, Hawaii

31:44

and Again

31:48

things look like they're going really well. This is

31:50

actually about the time when another major player Comes

31:53

into the story Joshua JJ

31:56

Valle Now the way

31:58

that this works

31:59

It gets a little bit complicated. There's a big family

32:02

tree involved here. Charles

32:04

Vellon had a sister named Kay Woodcock

32:07

and she's married to a guy I believe

32:09

named Larry. They

32:12

had a son who at

32:14

least for a period of time was,

32:17

let's just say, making some unwise decisions. You

32:20

know, it doesn't seem like he was on the right track. And

32:23

as a result, he got his girlfriend pregnant

32:26

and they decided, you know

32:28

what, we are not ready to take care of a kid. So

32:32

they talked with Kay and Larry

32:35

and Kay and Larry agreed that they would at

32:37

least try to

32:40

raise this kid as their own. Again,

32:43

a very noble

32:45

thing, you know, that's hard for grandparents to

32:47

do. And they took JJ

32:50

in and the way that Larry described

32:52

it, it was like he wasn't really sure up until

32:55

a certain point where he like held JJ

32:58

and he was just like,

33:00

I love this kid. That

33:03

first time they hold your kid. Yep.

33:06

And

33:07

after a while though, there

33:10

became a problem or a

33:12

problem became apparent to them. The

33:16

theory, and there's

33:18

no way to really verify this now,

33:21

the theory is that JJ's biological

33:24

mother may have been drinking

33:27

or doing drugs during the pregnancy. Oh,

33:29

okay. Possibly. We

33:32

don't really know for sure. But

33:34

we do know that at some point, JJ

33:37

started to exhibit some of the signs of autism.

33:39

Gotcha. It doesn't sound,

33:42

it's hard with autism

33:44

to determine like where on the spectrum they are. Yeah.

33:47

It doesn't sound like he was so far

33:49

gone that like, you know, he can't communicate or anything

33:51

like that. But he did

33:53

need special care. Yeah. And Kay

33:56

and Larry are like, we're grandparents. We

33:58

do not. really have the

34:01

capacity and they start kind of thinking

34:03

like what do we do then? At about

34:05

that same time Charles

34:08

comes for a visit and he mentions

34:10

to Kay and Larry He

34:12

says, you know, Laurie and I are looking

34:15

to raise a kid

34:17

by ourselves Gotcha, and

34:20

by this point Colby is probably a teenager. I would

34:22

think I'm not sure Of

34:25

the exact timeline of his life But

34:27

they're like we want to we want to raise a kid together

34:29

from the start right and It

34:33

was just like a match made in heaven It was like this

34:35

is perfect like we've got this

34:37

kid that you're absolutely going to love and

34:40

everybody is like in love with this

34:42

kid, right and they

34:44

took him in and Officially

34:46

legally adopted him and so JJ

34:49

Valin becomes Laurie

34:51

and Charles

34:52

Like I saw there. I know the job. Yeah.

34:54

Wow And that's about the same time that they moved

34:56

to Hawaii. Okay. Gotcha. That's in 2014.

34:59

So now they're living in paradise

35:01

Essentially, we've got this uh, re-unified family

35:05

we've got Colby highly is Charles's

35:09

two children living with them too At

35:11

this time. I don't believe so. Okay, so we got

35:14

Colby, Tylee and then Charles goes

35:16

and takes a visit to his sister Yeah,

35:18

and they had a grandson and he adopts

35:21

this child into their family. So this was his great nephew

35:23

Yes, gotcha. Yeah, and so for

35:26

for the future we're just gonna say

35:28

JJ was their son because you know I

35:31

mean in reality when you adopt somebody that's what happens.

35:33

Yep Um, and so

35:35

again at this point it's like things

35:38

are going really well, you know Colby

35:40

and Tylee finally have a stable family

35:43

and kids like that's the number

35:45

one thing You know and

35:47

JJ looks like he's got uh, some

35:50

good parents that are going to raise him up everything

35:53

Looks like it's going to be fine. Okay The

35:58

family moves back to the U.S. mainland

36:00

and lives together in Arizona. At

36:04

this point, friends and

36:06

family hear that

36:08

Laurie is reading the books of a guy

36:11

named Chad Dayville.

36:12

Okay.

36:13

This is where Chad comes back into the big house. This is where

36:16

everything starts to collide. And

36:21

the way it works is that she starts like reading

36:23

his books and he had a podcast.

36:25

I forget what the name of it was. There are a couple

36:27

of different podcasts that come together. He

36:30

does interviews and that kind of stuff. And

36:33

she's just enraptured by this guy.

36:36

I don't know what level of interest she

36:38

had in like end times and theology stuff before

36:41

this. Yeah. And I think about

36:44

to go back, I think what enamored her as well is that

36:47

Charles, he was kind of like a superficial

36:49

LDS man. He wasn't really deep into

36:52

theology or anything like that. It was more like he was LDS

36:54

for their marriage. And so Chad was

36:57

actually so entrenched like within

37:00

LDS theology that he became his own essential

37:03

theologian. That appealed to

37:05

her because Charles wasn't the man that was deep

37:08

into fulfilling the covenant path in

37:10

terms of an intellectual knowledge. Yeah. In terms

37:13

of intellectual knowledge, yeah. I think from what from

37:15

what people have said, Charles was he

37:17

did actually convert. Yeah.

37:20

You know, it wasn't just a sign

37:22

on the dotted line kind of situation. He actually was like, you

37:24

know, teaching Sunday

37:26

school classes and things like that. Like he was active

37:29

and involved in the church

37:31

from the time that he converted. But like you said, like

37:34

Chad had this thing where like he

37:37

had

37:37

thought about a lot of this. And

37:39

he had a lot of the same inclinations

37:43

as Laurie did. Now the

37:45

complicated part and the part that gets kind of

37:48

muddy is who comes up

37:50

with what at what point? Because

37:53

we've already seen that Laurie had some concept

37:55

of reincarnation. But

37:57

like to

37:59

change had already believed

38:01

that and they just

38:03

kind of latched on to each other or was Chad

38:07

did Chad hear that and think of this as something

38:09

that he could use or exploit

38:13

I don't think we're ever really gonna know that right

38:16

the only thing that's really still available

38:18

of his published works that shows

38:21

what he personally believed

38:24

is there's one book I think was called

38:26

something like like living

38:29

on the edge of heaven where he talked about

38:31

having two near-death experiences

38:34

gotcha and how that that

38:37

shapes

38:39

how he viewed his life he said that

38:42

in the second one but the first one was like

38:44

he was cliff diving or something and

38:47

and something went wrong and the second one

38:49

was a swimming accident where he

38:51

was underwater for too long and

38:53

in the second one he says

38:56

that he like talked to his grandfather

38:58

about life and stuff

39:01

and he received some sort of revelation

39:03

as to his children's future I don't know what exactly

39:06

but afterwards he said that

39:08

it was like

39:09

the

39:10

the veil had been torn between

39:13

him and the afterlife

39:15

and so he was always sort of connected to

39:17

that other world from that point out interesting

39:19

yeah and that's kind of what opens

39:23

what opens the door to the rest of everything

39:26

right so Laurie Laurie's door was essentially opened

39:28

when her sister died in a

39:30

way finding peace through her niece thinking

39:33

in a sense that her niece could be reincarnated her reincarnated

39:36

sister and

39:38

now for a love I believe it's 11 years yeah 11

39:40

years Laurie's been married

39:42

to Charles they moved to Arizona

39:44

she starts getting interested in some of Chad's

39:47

podcasts and maybe reading his books having

39:50

correspondence or trying to get correspondence

39:53

with him because it's like Laurie's

39:55

almost like the spiritual leader of her home so it's

39:57

like Chad is the spiritual leader of his home

39:59

and he can see through the fruit essentially

40:02

of his writing and things

40:05

of that nature and she's longing for something

40:07

like that and then what you're saying is

40:09

there's a theological interest as

40:11

well she's reading some of these things she's also interested

40:13

in things about the end times

40:17

and he talks about that kind of stuff as well because

40:19

it's all mixed with their theology which we'll

40:21

get into in the later episode but she

40:23

gets correspondence with him and

40:26

I believe that something

40:29

else begins to happen yeah and there

40:32

and we don't have very much

40:34

insight into what

40:36

their dynamic was and at what point because

40:39

a lot of what happened between them was just

40:41

in personal conversations right

40:44

it was you know

40:46

their text messages and things they did at

40:48

some point decide

40:50

to have separate phones so

40:53

like Chad had a phone that was just for

40:55

Lori right and then Lori had a phone that was just for

40:57

Chad by the way married couples

41:00

if your spouse is doing that that's a bad thing that's

41:02

a bad thing yeah this is they

41:05

weren't subtle that's

41:08

the thing that kills me just like they

41:10

at some

41:12

point it's obvious it's so

41:15

obvious they're not even trying to hide

41:17

the affair right do you

41:19

think this happened after they

41:21

had met in person in 2018 so they met at some

41:25

conference in Utah yeah it was it

41:27

was in 2018 yeah

41:30

so the first thing that happens is

41:32

in April 2018 Joe Ryan

41:35

dies that's one of her that's

41:38

her husband or yes

41:40

yeah her third husband the abusive one yeah

41:43

he he dies from a heart attack and

41:45

they initially they

41:48

just kind of wrote that off as being a

41:50

heart attack and then they eventually they reopened

41:53

the case after everything else happened

41:56

it does look like he actually had a heart attack okay

41:59

but it was really fortuitous because it meant

42:01

like he wasn't gonna be fighting

42:04

for custody or anything like that. Yeah, that's Tylee's dad.

42:06

Yeah, that's Tylee's dad. So he would have a claim

42:08

of some sort to her and suddenly

42:11

it's over and Laurie was not exactly upset about that.

42:14

But then just a few months later in October 2018

42:18

phone only Chad and Laurie meet in person. There's

42:21

a conference that took place

42:23

somewhere in Utah and and they

42:26

finally get a chance to actually talk. Now the

42:29

conference that we're talking about, I don't

42:31

have the facts and figures though the numbers right in front of me,

42:34

but it doesn't sound like

42:37

you know a ligonier conference where there's like

42:39

a thousand people there. They're

42:41

probably like

42:42

30 people. Yeah.

42:45

So you're gonna get someone on one time. You're

42:48

gonna get to raise your hand and ask this person a question

42:50

and there's you

42:53

can develop something there and I think that's exactly

42:56

what happened. So

42:58

that's October 2018. Now January 2019,

43:02

just a few months later

43:04

Charles begins

43:06

to show some concern

43:08

about Laurie's beliefs

43:10

and this is the point

43:12

at which he calls the police and

43:15

he talks to them and this is recorded

43:17

on body cam. Now

43:23

I don't know how much of the the full theological

43:26

package has been delivered to Laurie, but

43:29

we're already at the point now where Charles

43:31

is saying my wife

43:33

is telling me that I've died

43:36

and that my body is being possessed by

43:38

a demon named Ned Schneider. Something

43:42

has happened in a relatively

43:44

quick period of time. And

43:47

this is it's insane. It's wild,

43:50

but it's so quick. This is a few

43:52

years ago. Like she wouldn't have said anything like

43:54

that about this time according

43:56

to Adam Cox

43:58

who remember is... Laurie's

44:02

other brother. He

44:04

was saying that he had had a conversation

44:06

with Laurie where she was telling him that she

44:09

was reincarnated and that she

44:11

had progressed

44:14

to godhood and had come back and that she

44:16

couldn't be killed. And Adam's

44:18

like,

44:19

what are you talking about?

44:21

What is this? And

44:24

sometime around here he

44:26

gets into contact with Charles and they start

44:28

talking about having some kind of intervention. But

44:32

unfortunately that would not come to fruition.

44:34

Yeah, let's stop real quick. Let's try to find that body

44:36

cam footage and throw up here and let's just listen

44:39

to a little bit of it. So just for clarification

44:41

here, here is the first body cam footage. I'm only

44:43

gonna play about a minute and 30 seconds of it just to give

44:45

context to what Ryan was talking about.

44:48

He's outside of a hotel here that Laurie

44:50

was staying at and he

44:52

was locked out of the house first by Laurie.

44:54

He went to a hotel to confront his wife. He

44:57

also had a petition to try to hold her for

44:59

a mental evaluation. So Gilbert police

45:01

officers captured their interaction with Charles after

45:03

he failed to locate her at

45:05

the hotel and here it is.

45:07

So is she in there?

45:27

She thinks she's

45:29

married tomorrow night. You think

45:32

she's what? We're married tomorrow night, on top

45:34

of the temple. Angel. Angel. LDF. Angel.

45:37

LDF. Angel. She knows when you

45:39

think they're coming and think

45:41

they're here to respect

45:43

you. He knows that

45:45

she knows she knows about it. She knows who's

45:47

in charge. That's why she's taking a couple everywhere.

45:51

I'll try to support her if she could. But

45:53

it's gotten really, really bad over here. She's got it

45:55

right. She's on the

45:58

next slide. I'll take it over

46:01

Charles' body. Charles

46:03

is killed. I'm going to kill you. You're

46:06

murdered today or tomorrow. I can

46:08

do it. She's

46:10

a priest of blessing. She's always...

46:13

So who's

46:15

Nick Schneider? Oh, okay.

46:18

Okay. Oh, okay.

46:20

So he's not at church.

46:24

She took my truck from here. Alright,

46:26

so we'll stop it there. There

46:29

is a lot right there. Did you hear that? Again,

46:32

we're going to get into the theology more in the next episode.

46:35

But I want you to have the context of what Charles

46:37

was going through. He says, my wife is telling me

46:39

I'm not Charles. There's someone named Nick

46:41

Schneider who's possessed my body. Nick Schneider has

46:43

killed Charles and now I need to

46:45

die. Essentially. Remember, she's been

46:47

having correspondence now with

46:51

Chad Daybell for

46:54

about a year. This is about a year or

46:56

a year and a half before Charles

46:58

then comes to police. So he says she's having

47:00

a mental break. She's not living

47:02

in reality anymore. And she's

47:05

read Charles' books and stuff, but she only meets him in October.

47:08

Chad's books? Yeah, Chad. Yeah,

47:10

she only meets him in October. So

47:12

as far as like a direct interaction,

47:16

it's only been a few months. Wow. So

47:19

I mean, I wish

47:21

that I had access to it like any of his old interviews and stuff.

47:24

All you can really find online is like

47:27

trial transcripts and his

47:30

awful books. His books

47:32

are so bad. I mean, they're like, I

47:34

could go on forever. They can be as bad as you want when

47:37

you have your own publishing company. Yeah, exactly. Like

47:40

you would wonder like how did somebody get this done? Just

47:42

setting aside bad theology, they're

47:45

just really stupid. All right. And

47:47

I know that's not the worst thing he did, but I like to read

47:50

and I like to read good things. I

47:54

don't want to read any more of Chad's stuff.

47:57

Right. Anyways, so

47:59

yeah. it's about

48:02

this time that Laurie's beliefs seem

48:04

to be kind of fully developed into the Insanity

48:07

that will cause everything else

48:10

to happen and Charles

48:12

Charles is saying Like Laurie

48:15

has already threatened to kill me. Yeah Wow,

48:17

you know, this is by

48:20

this point it's like things have

48:22

gone too far and they as

48:25

a result of this interaction will have a

48:27

Psych evaluation done of Laurie

48:29

which she will pass with with flying colors

48:32

Which I wish I knew a little bit more about

48:35

that because I wonder how

48:38

that managed to happen when Laurie

48:40

is known to be somebody who can be very charming

48:43

and so maybe that's got something to do with

48:46

it, but Something

48:48

it's not just that she's believing things that are weird. Like

48:50

there's something wrong with

48:52

her at this point, right? That's in February

48:56

2019 she was actually deemed competent

48:58

after a mental health Intervention

49:01

in Charles Valo. He filed for

49:03

divorce February 2019 saying

49:05

that he feared for the safety of himself and His

49:08

children. Yes, and I guess she

49:10

talked her way through it and charmed the police

49:12

I think you can actually watch parts of that interview

49:15

on a documentary. I forget exactly. There's one that

49:17

she did where they

49:21

Like after her children go missing the

49:23

cops come to her house and they're like, what's all this about

49:25

and she just Totally

49:28

has these cops in the palm of her hand. Oh, yeah. Yeah

49:31

Now I don't know if that's one you're thinking of but it like yeah,

49:33

it just shows like How

49:36

deceitful she can be? Yeah I believe that in

49:38

the documentary that I watch that it

49:40

could it could have been that interview But I believe

49:42

they actually had footage from the

49:45

first initial interview after he

49:47

talked in my police and thought for the divorce But I remember

49:50

just them talking about essentially that she was a

49:52

charmer. She was a beauty queen Oh,

49:54

yeah at one point so she knew how to talk right

49:57

and get her way out of things And

50:00

I believe she even brought her daughter with

50:02

her to the interview Tylee

50:05

to give some type of sway because she didn't

50:07

not only just manipulate the police She also

50:09

manipulated her children at this

50:11

time. Yeah, she manipulated Colby and she

50:14

also manipulated Tylee especially Tylee

50:16

because Tylee had At

50:18

this point a devotion to her mom

50:20

like she wanted to be just like her mom She wanted

50:22

her mom's approval so so bad

50:25

and that I think explains a good bit

50:27

of what happens next What's up, everybody? If

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51:12

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51:14

funded by you our listener, right?

51:16

And before we go on it, I believe

51:19

in the documentary as well that her

51:21

son he consistently

51:24

tried to get her to see things

51:26

clearly part of their relationship

51:29

got destroyed with Colby He

51:31

claims in the interviews that he was now a Christian.

51:34

He had come to Christ. I think through

51:36

meeting his girlfriend Maybe yeah, I hope

51:38

so. Yeah, and He was always

51:41

having phone conversations with her trying

51:43

to plead with her to Know

51:46

who Jesus is and I know there's controversy

51:49

with Colby now today I'm not gonna

51:51

get into any of that type of stuff But

51:53

just shows you the dynamic of

51:55

the relationship that he would have had added with

51:57

his mother during the time She started having an unemotional

52:00

And I meant to say actually that she was manipulating

52:02

JJ not Colby at the time. He's manipulating

52:04

Tylee and JJ I

52:06

believe Colby at this time is doing his own thing

52:08

trying to get out of the house Yeah, he's trying

52:10

to plead with his mother to regain

52:13

some form of sanity because he is the one that

52:15

she actually stays in consistent contact with almost

52:18

throughout the whole time since her son and During

52:21

these phone conversations. He's constantly trying

52:23

to plead with her. Yeah to regain

52:25

some mental He's trying to bring her back.

52:28

He's trying to bring her back So we

52:30

have a marriage in shambles right now with Charles

52:32

and Laurie I can only imagine what

52:35

custody looks like with JJ

52:37

entirely Meanwhile,

52:41

I believe Charles isn't living at home

52:43

anymore He's allowing Laurie to stay

52:45

there and Laurie brings her brother into

52:48

the picture You said something about Adam her her

52:50

first brother not Alex, but yeah, talk

52:52

about that real quick. Yeah, Adam uh Well,

52:55

just as far as the stuff that pertains

52:57

to what's going on. Yeah here. He

53:00

he'd had By

53:03

this point he had conversations with Laurie that

53:06

were like Like

53:09

this woman has gone completely insane. What

53:12

do we do about this? I think that's kind of indicative of

53:14

how The rest of the family

53:16

was feeling now what he talked about

53:18

in an interview his past is that she had

53:20

kind of destroyed Like

53:23

that part of the family too because in order

53:25

for everything to follow

53:29

the way that it does there has to be a

53:31

lot of lying and so

53:34

she starts telling people oh, well, you know the

53:36

kids are over here the kids are over there and It

53:39

leaves everybody else in the family thinking. Well, do

53:41

I believe her or do I not

53:43

and if I don't believe her? Well,

53:46

then what does that mean?

53:48

you know if

53:49

Laurie doesn't know where the kids are and what

53:52

happened to the kids and It makes

53:54

you sort of feel bad for thinking

53:56

that your own sister could do something

54:00

something bad to her own

54:02

kids, but like you're also realizing

54:04

that things don't make sense and that kind of stuff

54:06

was splitting open the

54:09

rest of the family as

54:11

far as Adam goes he

54:13

tried

54:15

Tried it to like talk to his mom

54:18

and say like hey Laurie's

54:20

saying some weird stuff and his mom is like

54:22

well She didn't say anything like that to me Adam

54:26

tried to set something up with Charles and

54:28

just Get an intervention going.

54:30

I don't know if he tried that before the the

54:33

divorce or if it was afterward

54:35

But I do know that because of what

54:38

happens in July they never get a chance to actually

54:40

do that Yeah, and what exactly happened

54:43

in July and let's let's get

54:45

into that right now. All right, so here's where Where

54:49

national attention starts to be be drawn

54:52

into this on July 11th 2019 Charles

54:56

Rallo was shot dead by Alex

54:58

Cox at Laurie's home in Chandler,

55:00

Arizona The

55:03

claim made by

55:05

Alex and Laurie and Tiley

55:08

is that Charles Came

55:12

to Laurie's house looking to

55:14

pick up the kids as part of their custody agreement

55:17

There was some sort of altercation

55:20

between him and Alex

55:23

At some point Tiley

55:25

gets scared and grabs a baseball

55:28

bat and comes downstairs and Somehow

55:32

Charles gets the baseball bat out

55:34

of her hands Attacks

55:38

Alex and hits him in the back of the head and

55:40

Alex just happens to have I think

55:43

it was a revolver on him And he shoots Charles

55:45

Supposedly as the revolver was near the suitcase

55:47

in the bedroom and he ran into the bedroom and

55:50

grabbed Yeah, he didn't have it on like

55:52

on his body yet nearby because

55:54

that would have been suspicious I guess

55:57

After this happens Laurie,

56:01

I don't know if Laurie was supposed to be at

56:03

the scene at the time, but she takes JJ

56:06

to school, which

56:09

is one of the first signs that

56:12

I think should have been kind of an alarm to

56:14

everybody that something weird was happening

56:16

here. Because the police who arrive on scene don't know

56:18

any of the stuff that we've just brought in.

56:21

They don't know that she's got these weird

56:24

spiritual beliefs or anything like that. They just

56:26

know an ex-husband

56:29

has been killed in the

56:31

home of his wife and well, you know,

56:34

these kinds of situations can be very volatile. It's

56:37

kind of understandable. And remember the testimony

56:39

that we have about what happened comes

56:41

from Tylee. It comes

56:43

from Alex and

56:47

parts of it coming from Laurie.

56:49

So if you want, you can actually go and you can look

56:52

on YouTube and find body cam footage of

56:54

the conversations that Laurie and

56:56

Tylee were giving to the police officers

56:59

about what happened and

57:02

why Alex shot Charles

57:05

Vallow. You can weigh that for yourself.

57:07

I believe that the courts already weighed in on

57:10

parts of their opinion of the situation. But

57:12

continuing on, we have now Charles Vallow,

57:15

right, married to this woman for

57:17

about 11, 12 years. It

57:21

seems like he was the one that she was always waiting

57:23

for to rescue their family, to

57:25

take them from the pit. But

57:28

something happens where she falls in love with

57:30

a man through his writings and through his

57:32

theology, ends up believing

57:34

some insane things about the afterlife,

57:38

about even herself, having a direct

57:40

connection with

57:41

God.

57:42

And her brother

57:45

as well gets roped into this and

57:48

her brother ends up killing Charles. And

57:51

that's the reality. So we have one dead husband

57:53

before, Joseph Ryan, which

57:55

they've said that he died of natural causes. Just

57:59

trying to paint the picture here. And then we have

58:01

now Charles Vallow

58:04

shot

58:05

multiple times by her brother,

58:08

Alex. And

58:10

then what happened?

58:12

Well,

58:13

already this is sort of attracting

58:16

some attention because there are aspects of what

58:18

happened that don't really make

58:20

a whole lot of sense. And

58:23

it's been done to death, but I'll just point out that

58:26

you can see in the videos that

58:28

Alex has a bandage on the back of his head.

58:31

And he says that the

58:33

Charles hit him with a baseball bat. Charles

58:36

Vallow was a big guy. He's

58:39

bigger than me. And I'm a big guy. And

58:42

he used to play baseball. And I'm thinking,

58:45

if this dude swings a bat and

58:47

hits you in the head, you're

58:49

not going to get a little scratch on the back. You're

58:52

not going to be okay. Yeah, you're going to be out

58:54

for the count. Yeah, like that's a big thing.

58:57

Also, it's discovered later that

58:59

like Alex never

59:02

stayed the night at Laurie's house except for

59:04

this one time. And, you

59:07

know, he waited 43 minutes to call the police. It's

59:09

just a bunch of stuff that just sounded weird to people. And,

59:13

you know, her reaction when

59:15

they interview her is kind

59:17

of strange because the thing is, if you plan a murder ahead

59:19

of time, you mentally get used to the idea that this person is going to

59:21

die. So it's

59:24

hard for you to fake

59:26

shock. You can't

59:28

really fake the surprise because it's

59:30

not a surprise to you. You know this

59:32

is going to happen and you're used to the idea of this person not

59:34

being alive anymore. And I think that's the case with

59:37

everybody that was interviewed, including Tylee. But

59:40

their stories were all the same. Right. And

59:44

I think this will play into the

59:46

fates of various people later on

59:48

in the story. But then in September of 2019, Laurie, who now has custody of

59:50

her two youngest children, moves to Rexburg, Idaho on the under

1:00:00

kind of strange circumstances. And

1:00:03

that's where Chad Daybell was

1:00:05

living at the time. It

1:00:07

was strange because she didn't go out

1:00:10

and say to everybody, hey, I'm going to

1:00:12

Rexburg, Idaho.

1:00:13

I called me, I had to track her down.

1:00:17

Why not be open about this? And

1:00:21

unfortunately, very soon thereafter,

1:00:24

the problem gets much, much bigger because that's when

1:00:26

on the 8th of September 2019,

1:00:31

Tylee and JJ and Alex and Lori go

1:00:33

to Yellowstone National

1:00:36

Park where they finally have

1:00:38

their final family

1:00:41

outing and get together and this

1:00:43

one haunting picture of

1:00:46

the kids together. And after

1:00:48

that, Tylee goes missing. Wow, and

1:00:51

I think right here is the sad

1:00:53

place to stop the episode. But

1:00:56

we're gonna stop the episode here and then we're gonna

1:00:59

get into the end of the lives of

1:01:02

JJ and Tylee. And

1:01:04

then we're gonna go into the theological implications.

1:01:07

What is it that happened here from

1:01:09

a spiritual perspective? Yeah, let's untangle

1:01:11

this timeline through the lens

1:01:14

of understanding their theology

1:01:17

and critiquing these things through the biblical

1:01:19

worldview because bathiology hurts people. And

1:01:22

again, how could all of this have been prevented? And

1:01:24

again, we know that justice will occur, cosmic justice, by

1:01:28

the God who will make all things right

1:01:30

in the end for the terrible

1:01:32

things that occurred to JJ and Tylee and

1:01:36

even Charles in my opinion. And a whole bunch

1:01:38

of other innocent people who have been negatively affected

1:01:41

by this. Absolutely, so stick with

1:01:43

us while we talk about this and the

1:01:45

second part coming up right after this. We

1:01:47

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1:01:50

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