by ‘Cult mum’ Lori Vallow allegedly killed her two children in what she believed was an act of ‘mercy’, her former friend has claimed.
Ms Vallow and her husband, doomsday preacher, Chad Daybell, are accused of killing her two youngest children, Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7. Ms. Vallow is currently on trial in Boise, Idaho, while Mr. Daybell’s trial is scheduled for later this year.
The couple are accused of killing the children shortly after they disappeared in September 2019 after being convinced the miners were zombies whose ‘dark spirits’ needed to be released through death. Ms. Vallow and Mr. Daybell refused to cooperate in a desperate interstate search for Tylee and JJ that lasted nine months before their remains were finally found buried on Mr. Daybell’s property in Salem.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with NewsNation, a former friend of Ms Vallow, who asked to be identified only as ‘Jess’, said the murder suspect believed she had to ‘kill her children’s children’. [possessed] body” to give them a chance to go to heaven.
“They don’t see zombies as people. They see them like someone would see a cockroach controlled by a parasite,” she said in the interview that aired Wednesday night. “When people have these beliefs, killing children, for them, is mercy.”
She added: “As disturbing as it is and hard to fathom, that’s why someone who has spent all these years being kind and loving could then do it.”
Jess went on to say that these beliefs were instilled in Ms Vallow by Mr Daybell, who published several books on doomsday scenarios loosely based on the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Ms Vallow reportedly told Jess she could cast demons out of her body “several times a day”.
“She said, ‘Oh, you raise your right arm to the square and three times you order them to leave,'” Jess recounted.
According to court records, the couple had a rating system to classify how far people’s souls had gone from good to bad. The only way to then rid an individual of zombies would be to kill them.
“[Mr Vallow] told him all these things and she trusted him and she believed him. She believed he was a prophet,” Jess said. “If you believe with all your heart that this person and everything they say and do is right, and they tell you that your child is not alive, has a parasite and is going to suffer .”
Lori Vallow is seen in court
(AP)
Jess said she believed Ms Vallow still clung to those beliefs.
“I don’t think Lori can ever get better,” she said. “Because if she does, she has to face the fact… that she allowed or even participated in killing her own children for nothing and I don’t think she can face that.”
“Who can deal with that? Who can admit that they killed their own child? She has to believe in it for the rest of her life to believe in herself,” she added.
Ms. Vallow’s trial is ongoing in Idaho. Opening arguments are scheduled to begin on Monday (April 10).
The case was moved to Boise over fears that his notoriety would taunt the jury panel. Despite efforts to try the case in another county, dozens of jurors were dismissed due to prior knowledge of the crimes.
Thirty-nine jurors have been chosen so far. The court must select 42 jurors before reducing the number to 18 – 12 who will deliberate and six alternates.
Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan, the missing children whose mother Lori Vallow Daybell was found in Hawaii living with her new husband Chad Daybell
(AP)
JJ and Tylee were last seen in September 2019, weeks after the family moved to Rexburg, Idaho, following the shooting death of Ms Vallow’s husband, Charles Vallow, by his brother Alex Cox during an alleged domestic dispute – which Mr Daybell and Ms Vallow also face a conspiracy over. on murder charges in Arizona.
Cox claimed to have acted in self-defense before his death in December 2019.
Mr Daybell’s ex-wife, Tammy Daybell, was also found dead at their Idaho home in October 2019, weeks before he married Ms Vallow in Hawaii.
Tammy Daybell was initially pronounced dead of natural causes after her husband refused an autopsy. The case was later reopened amid the search for JJ and Tylee, paving the way for conspiracy charges that Mr Daybell and Ms Vallow now face in his death.
