Community Corner

Lori Vallow's Tangled 'Doomsday Mom' Story Told In Lifetime Movie

Movie explores the disappearance and subsequent discovery of the bodies of Lori Vallow's children on doomsday prepper Chad Daybell's land.

REXBURG, ID — The tangled story of Lori Vallow’s missing children, whose remains were found in shallow graves on the property of her new husband Chad Daybell last June, will be told in a Lifetime movie, “Doomsday Mom,” that will air June 26.

Vallow and Daybell, whose spouses died under circumstances authorities now consider suspicious, are jailed on felony charges in Idaho, where they are accused of covering up the deaths of Vallow’s children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17.

The investigation into the children's disappearance spanned five states and had the hallmarks of a made-for-television movie, complete with rumors of the former Mrs. Texas beauty pageant contestant’s fall into a religious cult, doomsday preparations, several suspicious deaths — including Daybell’s wife two weeks before he married Vallow — and Vallow’s fourth husband four months before that.

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Neither Vallow nor Daybell is charged with causing the death of the children, one of whose remains had been concealed in what investigators said was a “particularly egregious” way on Daybell’s rural Idaho property. However, the East Idaho News reports that prosecutors are considering elevating the charges to include conspiracy to commit murder.

Investigations into the deaths of their spouses, Charles Vallow and Tammy Daybell, are continuing. The East Idaho News, which has extensively covered the case, reported in November that it had obtained an October 2018 audio recording in which Lori said she “was going to murder” her third husband, Joe Ryan, “like the scriptures say … just to stop the pain and to stop him coming after me and to stop him coming after my children,” but turned to her faith instead.

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The tape and growing suspicion about Charles Vallow’s death was enough for Phoenix police reopen the investigation into Ryan’s death, but their findings upheld the original conclusion, that he died of a heart attack.

The strange case began to unfold on July 11, 2019, after Alex Cox claimed that he had shot Charles Vallow, his sister’s estranged husband, in self-defense during an argument in the couple’s suburban Phoenix home. Charles Vallow had filed for divorce, but never followed through with it, after she claimed to be a “translated being” and “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020,” according to court documents.

By Aug. 31, the newly widowed Vallow had packed up her children and moved to eastern Idaho. Investigators putting together a timeline of her movements learned that by November, she had married doomsday prepper Daybell. He has written several apocalyptic novels loosely based on Mormon religious theology, and both had been involved in a group that promotes preparedness for biblical Armageddon.

Within less than a month, the children disappeared, and Larry and Kay Woodcock, J.J.’s grandparents, grew increasingly worried several states away in Louisiana and prodded authorities in Idaho to launch an investigation.

"The only word coming to mind right now is 'monster,' " Kay Woodcock said at a January 2020 news conference. "All this has been very disheartening … I'm a lot less optimistic at the moment."

Lori Vallow was arrested in Hawaii in February 2020 for failing to comply with a court order to return the children to Idaho.

Larry and Kay Woodcock listen during a March 2020 hearing for Lori Vallow. Vallow and doomsday prepper husband Chad Daybell face multiple charges in the deaths of Vallow's children, J.J. Vallow, the Woodcocks' grandson, and Tylee Ryan. (John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register via AP, Pool)

Vallow and Daybell’s trial, originally scheduled for July, has been pushed back indefinitely. Each has pleaded not guilty to felonies related to the alteration, destruction and concealment of J.J. and Tylee’s bodies. John Prior, Daybell’s attorney, may ask that his case be severed from Vallow’s, according to the East Idaho News.

The A&E Network Lifetime movie on Vallow is part of its “Summer of Secrets” lineup. Set partly in Rexburg, Idaho, where Vallow was living in September 2019 when J.J. and Kylee were last seen, the movie’s focus is on “an Idaho mother whose two missing children lead authorities through a web of death and deceptions as they try to uncover the truth of their disappearance,” according to a news release.

The case has attracted worldwide attention and has been covered in true crime programs and news magazines, but “Doomsday Mom” is the first dramatization of the events that led up to Vallow and Daybell’s arrests.

Lauren Lee Smith plays Vallow in the film; Marc Blucas is cast as doomsday prepper Daybell. Linda Purl and Patrick Duffy also star.

» For a Vallow-Daybell case timeline, go to the East Idaho News.


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