Lori Vallow Daybell was convicted Tuesday of conspiracy to commit murder in the 2019 killing of her estranged husband in Arizona. The jury returned the verdict after starting deliberations on Monday.
Charles Vallow, who was Vallow Daybell’s fourth husband, was fatally shot by Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, in July 2019. Cox claimed self-defense at the time and was not charged. Cox died of natural causes months later.
Cox’s account was later called into question and Vallow Daybell was charged in Vallow’s death following other murders, including of her children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow. Vallow Daybell is already serving life sentences in Idaho for those murders and conspiring to murder her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell’s wife, Tammy.
She now faces another life sentence in the Arizona case.
Jurors deliberated for a total of three hours over two days. During the trial, which began in Phoenix on March 31, prosecutors argued that Vallow Daybell and Cox had planned to kill Vallow so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
“What we see is a very planned out, premeditated murder,” prosecutor Treena Kay told the jury in her closing argument.
Vallow Daybell represented herself at the trial despite not being a lawyer. She didn’t call any witnesses or put on any evidence in her defense, but said in her opening and closing statements that Vallow’s death wasn’t a crime.
“This was a tragedy,” she said. “Don’t let them turn my family tragedy into a crime.”
Adam Cox, another brother of Vallow Daybell, testified on behalf of the prosecution, telling jurors that he had no doubt his siblings were behind Vallow’s death.
He testified that before Vallow’s death, his sister had told people her husband was no longer living and that a zombie was living inside his body.
Before he died, Vallow told police he had concerns about his wife, whom he said believed she was preparing for the end of days. He also alleged that she threatened to kill him. He filed for divorce in February 2019.
This trial was not Vallow Daybell’s last. She is scheduled to go on trial again in early June on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of her niece, Melani Pawlowski.
Prosecutors say Cox carried out the attempted shooting. Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty to the charge. She will be sentenced in Vallow’s death after her second trial.
Chad Daybell was also convicted in the murders of Tylee, JJ and Tammy, and was sentenced to death.
