An Arizona jury has found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty of conspiring to murder her estranged husband, meaning the mother with doomsday religious beliefs faces another life sentence after she was already convicted in Idaho in the killings of her two youngest children and a romantic rival.
Prosecutors said she conspired with her brother, Alex Cox, in the July 2019 shooting death of Charles Vallow at her home in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler.
She was trying to collect money from his life insurance policy and planned to marry her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world, prosecutors said.
Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Vallow, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.
Jurors deliberated for a total of three hours over two days.
Vallow Daybell, who isn’t an attorney but chose to defend herself at trial, told jurors that during the encounter inside the house, Vallow chased her with a bat, and Alex shot Vallow in self-defense after she left the house.
The trial marked the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell. She’s scheduled to go on trial again in early June on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski. Boudreaux survived the attempt.
She will be sentenced in Vallow’s death after her second trial. She faces a life sentence.
Vallow Daybell is already serving three life sentences in the Idaho case.
Last week at the Arizona trial, Adam Cox, another brother of Vallow Daybell, testified on behalf of the prosecution, telling jurors that he had no doubt that Vallow Daybell and his brother Alex were behind Vallow’s death.
Adam Cox said Vallow’s killing occurred just before he and Vallow were planning an intervention to bring Vallow Daybell back into the mainstream of their shared faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He testified that before Vallow’s death, his sister had told people her husband was no longer living and that a zombie was living inside his body.
Four months before he died, Vallow filed for divorce from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets. He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.
