An Arizona jury on April 22 convicted an Idaho mother of conspiring to murder her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, who was shot and killed by her late brother, Alex Cox, in Phoenix on July 11, 2019.
Lori Vallow Daybell, 51, is currently serving three consecutive life sentences in Idaho after being found guilty of killing her two youngest children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 16, as well as Tammy Daybell, the first wife of her current husband, Chad Daybell.
Dubbed the “Doomsday Mom” by the media, Vallow Daybell now faces another life sentence over the death of Charles Vallow.
Maricopa County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Treena Kay argued on behalf of the state that Vallow Daybell and her brother planned to kill Charles Vallow so Vallow Daybell could collect on a life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend, Chad Daybell.
At the time, Cox told law enforcement that he had fatally shot Vallow in self-defense.
Vallow Daybell, Cox, and Chad Daybell were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Chad Daybell was an Idaho author who had written several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
Vallow Daybell married Daybell in November 2019. Cox died of a blood clot in his lungs in December 2019, before he could be prosecuted. Vallow Daybell was subsequently arrested in Hawaii on Feb. 20, 2020.
Vallow Daybell, who is not an attorney, pleaded not guilty to conspiring to kill Charles Vallow and represented herself during the trial that began two weeks ago on March 31 in Maricopa County.
The jury began deliberations on Monday afternoon, April 21, and reconvened on April 22.
In her closing arguments, Vallow Daybell reiterated the premise of her April 7 opening statement that her estranged husband’s death was a family tragedy and not a crime.
“The state put forth a bunch of evidence in this trial in an effort to make you dislike me and to attack my character so that you would just say guilty no matter what evidence they showed you,” Vallow Daybell said.
“The state did not show you evidence of an agreement to commit murder. They showed you evidence of a family tragedy and then they showed you the sad effects of a family torn apart because of that tragedy.”
Chad Daybell is currently awaiting the death penalty after an Idaho jury sentenced him for the murders of his wife, Tammy, and Vallow Daybell’s children, whose remains were found buried on his property.
“The execution of Charles Vallow is not a family tragedy,” Kay told jurors on April 21. “There is nothing that you can say about shooting a man as he lay on the ground that you can try to construe in any way to make that a family tragedy.”
