Chad Daybell sentenced to death for triple murder of his family

An Idaho jury sentenced Chad Daybell, the man who was convicted this week for the 2019 murders of his first wife and his second wife's two children, to death.

Daybell showed no emotion as the judge read the jury's verdict. It took the jury two days to make its decision.

Lindsey Blake, the district attorney for Fremont County, Idaho, told reporters she hoped the verdict would give the victims' families and friends a chance to heal.

“We are satisfied with the outcome and justice has been served for the victims in this case,” she said at a press conference on Saturday.

The jury found Daybell guilty on all counts Thursday in what prosecutors called a conspiracy to pursue “money, power and sex.”

Daybell, 55, was charged with murder and conspiracy in the deaths of the two children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 16, as well as his ex-wife of nearly 30 years, Tamara “Tammy” Daybell, 49 years old. , with whom he had five children. She died at their home on October 19, 2019, with the cause of death determined to be asphyxiation, according to investigators.

Prosecutors said Daybell, the author of books about the apocalypse, promoted spiritual beliefs to justify the killings and claimed all three were possessed and “marked” them for death so that he and his new baby friend Lori Vallow can be together “without earthly hindrances”. parents, earthly obstacles.

Daybell and Vallow were married in Hawaii two weeks after the murders, according to prosecutors.

Daybell's guilty verdict came more than a year after Vallow was also convicted of murdering her two youngest children. She was sentenced to life in prison after a judge granted the defense's motion to throw out the death penalty in her case.

Vallow faces charges in the death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who was shot and killed by his brother in 2019.

Chad Daybell was also convicted of two counts of insurance fraud related to $430,000 life insurance policies he held on Tamara Daybell and of which he was the beneficiary.

Before the jury began its sentencing deliberations Friday, several family members recalled their grief over the sudden death of Tamara Daybell on Oct. 19, 2019, and the anguish and anger that followed in learning that, following an exhumation to carry out an autopsy, she had been murdered. .

“My sister shouldn’t be dead now,” Samantha Gwilliam told the court. “She should be here alive, smiling, with her family and friends. She should be taking care of her grandchildren and taking care of her animals.”

His siblings expressed shock and horror upon learning that two children had also been killed.

“I retched and sobbed when I found out about JJ and Tylee,” Gwilliam said through tears.

Ryan was a child from Vallow's third marriage while JJ was the nephew of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, whom they adopted.

Kay Woodcock, JJ's grandmother, described her “immense pain” over the boy's death, which she called a “betrayal that cannot be explained”.

“There is a hole in my heart, in the hearts of every member of my family, that can never be filled and will remain that way for the rest of my life,” she said through tears.

She said JJ was incredibly intelligent and compassionate and cried over the fact that she couldn't make more memories with him.

“The constant question remains: who would he have become?” she says. “Could he be a famous scientist with incredible math skills? How could his incredible imagination have flourished? Could he be the next Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Tim Burton, Elon Musk? We will never know .But we know how incredibly special he was to us.

The children's brother, Colby Ryan – Vallow's eldest – expressed his sorrow at not seeing his siblings grow up.

“It’s very difficult for me to express in words what it means to have lost my entire family,” he told the court. “In short, I lost everything I ever knew.”

Chad Daybell did not address the court during the sentencing phase of the trial. He also did not take the stand to testify in his own defense before the verdict.

Since the death penalty was introduced in Idaho in 1864, the state has carried out 29 executions, the last in 2012, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

There are currently eight residents on death row in Idaho, according to the state Department of Corrections.

ABC News' Jeffrey Cook and Samara Said contributed to this report.