“Dark” and “zombies”
Lori and Chad, Gibb said, believed people could be taken over by evil spirits. Someone who had been possessed was “dark.” Chad taught that some people had become “zombies,” their real spirits gone.
Lori labeled her fourth husband dark, Gibb testified. She labeled her own two youngest children dark too.
Lori told her that JJ had become possessed, Gibb said. “She said he would say things like, ‘I love Satan,’ and climb up on the cabinets and refrigerator.”
At Chad’s trial, Gibb testified that Chad told them Tylee had become a zombie around the age of 12 or 13, but that they had only found out when she was 16.
And under what Chad and Lori taught, Gibb said, if the evil spirit was cast out of a zombie’s body, that body would simply die.
“Who would label somebody dark or zombie?” the prosecutor asked.
“Chad,” she said.
The phones
Detectives had another piece of evidence: phone data.
Tylee was last seen alive at Yellowstone National Park on September 8, 2019, with her mother, JJ and Alex Cox. The next morning, September 9, records showed Alex Cox’s phone in Chad Daybell’s backyard in Salem. That morning, Chad texted Tammy that he had shot a raccoon and buried it in the pet cemetery on their land, and that he had burned some limbs.
JJ was last seen on the night of September 22. Phone records showed dozens of calls between the Daybells and Cox on September 9 and again on September 23.
The backyard
On June 9, 2020, investigators arrived at Chad Daybell’s property with a search warrant, shovels and an excavator.
Detectives found two sets of human remains: one near the pet cemetery, the other near a pond on the property. They were JJ and Tylee.
Chad Daybell was arrested that day.
The verdicts
Lori Vallow Daybell went on trial in Boise in April 2023. On May 12, 2023, the jury found her guilty of murdering JJ and Tylee and of conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell. On July 31, 2023, she was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
Chad Daybell’s trial came a year later. On May 30, 2024, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the deaths of JJ, Tylee and Tammy. On June 1, 2024, the same jury sentenced him to death.
Alex Cox never faced trial. He died of natural causes on December 12, 2019, days before police announced that the children were missing.
In 2025, Lori was tried twice more in Arizona. In April, a jury convicted her of conspiring to murder Charles Vallow. In June, another jury convicted her of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, her niece’s estranged husband, who had been shot at in his car in October 2019 and survived. She received two more life sentences.
Both Lori and Chad are appealing their Idaho convictions. The Idaho Supreme Court scheduled arguments in Lori’s appeal for November 2026.
JJ was 7. Tylee was 16.
