After a sensational trial that included Chad Daybell’s zombie-apocalypse murder beliefs, the Idaho man has been 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 merited a death sentence.
Daybell and his new wife, “Doomsday mom” Lori Vallow Daybell — the mother of the child victims, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan — were charged with multiple counts of murder, conspiracy and grand theft for the murders.
Chad Daybell was sentenced to death. APVallow Daybell was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole last year.
Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were having an affair when both of their spouses died unexpectedly in 2019, and Vallow Daybell’s two children went missing, investigators said.
Joshua Vallow, left, and Tylee Ryan. APDaybell, a self-published writer of doomsday fiction with loosely based Mormon themes, created a fantasyland 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 for the possessed body to die, Blake said during the trial.
Vallow Daybell’s husband was shot to death by her 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 an investigation began that spanned several states.
Daybell and Vallow Daybell were charged with multiple counts of murder, conspiracy and grand theft. APDaybell’s wife, Tammy Daybell, then died in October 2019.
Daybell told cops that Tammy died of an illness in her sleep, but an autopsy showed that Tammy was asphyxiated.
Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell married two weeks after Tammy Daybell died.
Nearly a year after the children were reported missing, police found their bodies buried in Daybell’s yard.
Prosecutors said the two lovebirds were really motivated by greed — they wanted to collect money from the deaths.
Daybell’s defense attorney argued there was not enough evidence to convict Daybell for the murders, and suggested Vallow Daybell’s brother, Cox, was the murderer.
