Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow's husband, sentenced to death for the murder of his two children and his first wife

US News

By Haley Brown

After a sensational trial that included Chad Daybell's zombie apocalypse murder convictions, the Idaho man was sentenced to death for the murders of his wife and his girlfriend's two youngest children.

A jury unanimously agreed Saturday that the triple murders deserved a death sentence.

Daybell and his new wife, “Doomsday mom” Lori Vallow Daybell — the mother of child victims Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 16 — have been charged with multiple counts of murder, conspiracy and grand larceny for the murders.

Vallow Daybell was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole last year.

Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were having an affair when both their spouses died suddenly in 2019, and Vallow Daybell's two children disappeared, investigators said.

Daybell, a self-published author of apocalyptic fiction with loosely based Mormon themes, created a fantasy land to justify the cold-blooded killings, Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake said.

Daybell developed an apocalyptic belief system that people could be possessed by evil spirits and turned into “zombies”, and that the only way to save a possessed person's soul was to have their body die, said Blake during the trial.

Vallow Daybell's husband was shot and killed by his brother Alex Cox in Arizona in July 2019. The brother told police it was in self-defense. He died of natural causes during the investigation and was never charged.

Vallow Daybell's two youngest children were reported missing by extended family members in September 2019 and a multi-state investigation was launched.

Daybell's wife, Tammy Daybell, later died in October 2019.

Daybell told cops that Tammy died of an illness in her sleep, but an autopsy showed Tammy was asphyxiated.

Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell were married two weeks after Tammy Daybell's death.

Nearly a year after the children were reported missing, police found their bodies buried in Daybell's backyard.

Prosecutors said the two lovebirds were truly motivated by greed: They wanted to collect money from their deaths.

Daybell's defense attorney argued that there was insufficient evidence to convict Daybell of the murders and suggested that Vallow Daybell's brother, Cox, was the murderer.