The murder trial that commenced this week in Idaho of Chad Daybell, a father of five and doomsday prophet, may seem like an afterthought to the sensational trial of his second wife, Lori Vallow Daybell. Lori, globally known as “cult mom”, was found guilty last May of murdering her two young children as well as Chad’s first wife, and sentenced to three life sentences. She faces yet another trial, in Arizona, for killing her fourth husband.

But the stakes are even higher for Chad, also charged with murdering his first wife and Lori’s children, and burying the children in the pet cemetery in his backyard. Unlike with Lori, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. 

In an Idaho courtroom, Chad’s team has been doing everything in their power to portray Lori as an oversexed seductress who seduced Chad and drew him unwittingly into her and her brother’s web of evil and murder. There is only circumstantial evidence tying Chad to the actual killings, and his lawyers are trying to point the finger at Lori and to her brother, Alex Cox, who is dead.

Chad, 55, is on trial at Ada County Courthouse in Boise for the murders of his first wife, Tammy Daybell, 49, and two of Lori’s three children – Tylee Ryan, 16, and JJ Vallow, 7. He’s also been charged with insurance fraud for cashing in on a life insurance payout for Tammy, who died just a couple weeks before he traveled to Hawaii to marry Lori in a romantic beach ceremony. The couple was also cashing Tylee’s Social Security checks to which she was entitled due to the early death of her father, Joseph Ryan.

Chad and Lori, 50, subscribed to an extreme brand of Mormonism in which they believed they were heavenly beings who’d been married in past lives. They also divided people around them into numerically scaled “light” and “dark” categories and believed some of their family members had become “dark” and were possessed by zombies. Chad, himself, was an author preoccupied with the end of times who was excommunicated from the Latter Day Saints church for “apostasy.” And while some say these religious beliefs led to murders committed on the couple’s behalf, prosecutors say the killings were ultimately about a “desire for sex, money, and power” that motivated them. 

Text messages obtained by law enforcement show that Lori and Chad believed Tammy, shortly before her death, was very “dark” and was possessed by a spirit named “Viola”. Similarly, JJ and Tylee had become dark and were zombies – behavior signified by Tylee being rebellious and JJ, who was autistic, behaving badly. Shortly before he died, Lori’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, told police, while trying to have Lori committed, that she believed he was possessed by an evil spirit named “Ned Schneider”.

Lori is already serving three consecutive life sentences for murdering the children and conspiring to murder Tammy, but she has another upcoming trial in Arizona for two counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Those charges relate to the death of Charles (Chad is her fifth husband), and the attempted murder of Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Lori’s niece, Melani Pawlowski, who was involved in Lori and Chad’s extreme religious circles (Melani, now remarried, has turned on Lori).

Opening statements for Chad’s trial began on Wednesday with prosecutors attempting to paint a similar picture to the one that was presented to a jury for Lori’s trial. 

“Two dead children … buried in the defendant Chad Daybell’s backyard in September of 2019,” prosecutor Rob Wood said. “The next month, his wife is found dead in their marital bed. Seventeen days after the death of his wife, Tammy Daybell, this defendant is photographed laughing and dancing on a beach in Hawaii at his wedding to Lori Vallow – a woman who was his mistress and the mother of the children buried in the graves on his property. Three dead bodies.”

Mr. Wood went on to explain that Chad refused to let anyone stand in the way of his “rightful destinies,” adding that he wanted more than the “ordinary existence” he had with Tammy, his wife of 28 years and mother of his five children.

(When Tammy died, Chad insisted she’d died peacefully in her sleep after being “sick for some time.” He claimed he’d had religious visions, prior to her passing, that she was going to die. Her body was later exhumed amid all the publicity surrounding Lori, and prosecutors now claim she was suffocated. Prosecutors say Alex’s cellphone pinged near Chad’s house on the night Tammy died.)

“His desire for sex, money, and power led him to pursue those ambitions and this pursuit led to the deaths of his wife and Lori’s two innocent children,” Mr. Wood said of Chad.

Next up was defense attorney John Prior. In his opening statements, he talked about how Lori  was a “beautiful, vivacious woman, very sexual person and very manipulative, and she knows how to get what she wants.” Mr. Prior shared that Lori first met and “pursued” Chad at a religious conference in October 2018. Then, he emphasized how “different” the two of them were.

“[Chad] has no remarkable background of any kind,” Mr. Prior said. “I think he had a speeding ticket in 2005. But Lori Vallow was a different story.”

Mr. Prior then went on to explain that Lori had been through many marriages – some of them short-lived. The one constant in her life? Lori’s big brother, Alex Cox, an amateur standup comedian.

“Alex Cox was Lori’s protector,” Mr. Prior said. “Alex Cox would do anything and everything to protect, aid, and assist Lori Vallow with whatever her endeavors without unbridled question. Anything. And if Alex Cox even perceived that there was a problem, Alex Cox reacted.”

Prosecutors believe Alex, who mysteriously died of natural causes before facing any charges, may have carried out the murders of Tylee (Lori’s daughter with her third husband), JJ (Charles’ nephew whom Charles and Lori adopted) and Tammy. He shot and killed Lori’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019, claiming self defense. As we mentioned earlier, Lori has since been charged with conspiring to murder Charles. Alex is also believed to have shot at Brandon Boudreaux in Arizona, missing him. 

Chad’s defense is expected to try to blame everything on Alex and Lori.

According to a leading Idaho reporter who’s covered the case for years, Nate Eaton, Mr. Prior, the defense attorney, should have at least seven witnesses over the course of the trial – a stark contrast to Lori’s first trial, in which her defense called none. Chad’s adult children, who have stood by their father, are expected to testify in his defense.

Legal observers of Lori’s trial said the lack of witnesses and anemic defense suggested Lori was unwilling to cooperate with her lawyers and throw Chad under the bus. Now that she’s been convicted, however, Chad’s legal team doesn’t appear interested in doing Lori the same courtesy. 

The first prosecution witness, Rexburg Police Detective Ray Hermosillo, took to the stand after opening arguments on Wednesday and continued his testimony through Thursday. His testimony centered on the events leading up to the discoveries of JJ and Tylee’s bodies in Chad’s backyard.

In November 2019, Mr. Hermosillo went to do a welfare check for JJ at Lori’s home, after JJ’s grandparents in Louisiana (Charles’s parents) had reported him missing. There, he found Chad and Alex “unloading a pickup near the garage area.” That’s when he asked Alex if Lori was home – to which he replied no – and followed up by asking if JJ was home. 

“At that point, Alex got a surprised, frightened look on his face, looked over across the pickup at defendant Daybell,” Mr. Hermosillo said. “Daybell then looked back at Alex and initially neither one of them answered my question.”

Eventually, Alex said JJ was with his grandmother in Louisiana – an answer Mr. Hermosillo said was “unlikely” because it was the grandmother who had called for the welfare check in the first place. 

Alex then told Mr. Hermosillo he could find Lori a few apartments down in the same complex but denied having his sister’s cell phone number – that’s when the detective “assumed” Alex was lying to him.

Chad, allegedly, didn’t do much better in the honesty department. When Mr. Hermosillo questioned him, Chad said he had only met Lori a couple times and didn’t have her phone number – more lies, considering the fact that Chad and Lori were married by this point. Eventually, Chad conceded that he didn’t give Mr. Hermosillo Lori’s number the first time he asked for it because he felt the detective was accusing him of something.

Fast forward to December 2019 and JJ and Tylee were entered into the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, due to pressure from JJ’s grandparents. But efforts to contact Chad and Lori were unsuccessful and it appeared that both of their phones were shut off. 

After learning the couple was in Hawaii in January, Mr. Hermosillo went to the island of Kauai to assist in serving a court order for Lori to produce her missing children. By that point, the media was aggressively covering the story. Pursued by TV cameras, Lori and Chad refused to say where the kids were, only that they were “safe”.

Lori was eventually arrested for child endangerment and brought back to Idaho, where she sat in jail for months, refusing to divulge the whereabouts of the children.

But it wasn’t until a June search of Chad’s backyard that JJ and Tylee’s remains were found in his family pet cemetery. As it became apparent that detectives had found something, Chad, a former gravedigger, who was watching from across the street, started driving away  “at a high rate of speed.” Police followed him from there and took him into custody.

(According to prosecutors, Chad told Tammy via text message, around the time a large bonfire was underway in his backyard, that he had shot a large raccoon and was disposing of the corpse.)

After JJ’s body was found in the backyard, wrapped in duct tape and plastic, the search for Tylee’s commenced. Eventually, Mr. Hermosillo and investigators found “burnt pieces of flesh, charred bone, fatty tissue.” Then they found what appeared to be a “green melted bucket” with remains in it they assumed belonged to Tylee. Buried under that was part of a human skull and some teeth.

Once Mr. Wood was done with his witness, Mr. Prior, Chad’s attorney, started to question the detective and told the jury he planned to call Mr. Hermosillo back to the witness stand later on in the trial. During his cross examination, Mr. Prior asked him if Chad was involved in the death of Lori’s then-husband Charles, the attempted shooting of Lori’s former nephew-in-law Mr. Boudreaux, and an assault by Alex on Lori’s third husband Joseph Ryan years before (all these events took place in the Phoenix, Arizona area, where Lori lived before moving to Rexburg, Idaho, which is 95 percent Mormon.) 

Mr. Hermosillo said Chad was not facing any criminal charges related to those events. It’s likely, based on with this type of questioning, that Mr. Prior is seeking to portray how Lori and Alex had a checkered past, unlike Chad. 

Chad’s trial was put on hold until Monday after Thursday’s session. According to Mr. Eaton, “Boyce says jury selection went quicker than anticipated so the next witness is not here. We are dismissing for the day and no court tomorrow. Court will resume Monday.”

The results of this trial could be vastly different from that of Lori’s first trial because, in this case, Chad could face the death penalty if convicted. That means his children could ultimately play a huge role whether or not he is convicted. They will likely have to argue for saving his life if a jury does find him guilty.

Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty for Lori, in part because for months she was declared mentally unfit for trial. At her sentencing, she told the court that her children and her “friend” Tammy are “happy and busy” in the spirit world.