(CN) — A 12-person jury convicted doomsday author Chad Daybell of eight felonies on Thursday, including those involving the first-degree murders of his previous wife and the two youngest children of his mistress, Lori Vallow Daybell.
The jury verdict arrived after six hours of deliberation following closing arguments that took place at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, on Wednesday. The lengthy trial, which began in early April, arrived nearly a year after an Idaho jury convicted 50-year-old Lori Vallow Daybell of murder, conspiracy and grand theft charges arising from the same deaths.
The full convictions against Daybell include three counts of first-degree murder for the 2019 deaths of 49-year-old Tammy Daybell, 7-year-old Joshua Jackson “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan. They also included three counts of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of insurance fraud — the latter of which involved Daybell increasing his late wife’s life insurance policy just before her suspicious death.
JJ’s grandfather Larry Woodcock reportedly told several news outlets on Thursday that he was happy and satisfied with the verdicts, though saddened by the needless losses.
Following the convictions, the jury will now decide whether Daybell will be sentenced to death. The jurors are expected to return to the courthouse early Friday morning.
Fremont County District Judge Steven Boyce presided over the couple’s trial separately after Daybell requested his trial be separate from his wife’s and waived his right to a speedy trial. Boyce removed the option of the death penalty from Vallow before her trial began.
Vallow is currently serving three life sentences without parole and has since been extradited from Idaho to Arizona to face additional conspiracy to commit murder charges in the death of her former husband Charles Vallow and the 2019 attempted murder of Brandon Boudreaux, Vallow’s niece’s former husband.
The case began in 2019 when law enforcement began investigating reports that Vallow’s children had not been seen by family in weeks but were not reported missing by their mother. Police soon discovered that the couple had married in Hawaii while authorities were looking for Vallow’s children — and just two weeks after the death of Daybell’s former wife.
Authorities eventually located the children’s remains in Daybell’s backyard on June 9, 2020, and further investigation linked the couple to other mysterious deaths, including Vallow’s fourth husband Charles Vallow — who was shot and killed in 2019 by Lori Vallow’s brother.
By the time Vallow and Daybell were named suspects, revelations the two belonged to a doomsday cult had surfaced. Before the children’s disappearance, Vallow asked Daybell, a self-published doomsday author, to determine the “light or dark spirits” of JJ and Tylee.
In October 2018, when both Daybell and Vallow were still married to other people, Daybell sent Vallow an email less than 11 months before the children disappeared that contained a rubric that could be used to determine the light or dark spirit value of the children.
Daybell told Vallow in the email that one of her children was a "dark spirit" they believed turned people into “zombies” that needed to be killed. Additional text messages between the couple revealed plans to “take care of the children.”
These exchanges, coupled with GPS data, brought police to Chad’s east Idaho property, where they found both Tylee and JJ's bodies. A strand of Lori’s hair was recovered from the duct tape around JJ and DNA from Tylee was found on a nearby pickaxe.
The search also led police to investigate the death of Tammy, especially since Daybell had taken out a larger life insurance policy on her. He also told Vallow while they were having an affair that Tammy was not going to be here much longer. Police conducted an autopsy of Tammy and found she had died from asphyxiation.
Authorities charged Vallow and Daybell in the murders of Tammy, JJ and Tylee in 2021. Both pleaded not guilty.
Despite the vast evidence around Daybell’s strange beliefs and text messages to Vallow, Daybell’s attorney John Prior emphasized to the jury on Wednesday that Daybell must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
“You can hear all the testimony in the world about dark spirits,” Prior said, who repeated similar statements about “light and dark” and “death percentages” — all of which Prior described as common, traditional concepts within The Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints.
The state, Prior said, had twisted Daybell’s religious and personal writings and misconstrued them into admissions of murder. The jury clearly did not agree.
Whether or not the jury sentences Daybell to death, he could still appeal convictions at a later date.
Follow @alannamayhampdx
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