PHOENIX — A woman whose doomsday religious beliefs led her to kill her two youngest children and engage in a plot to kill a romantic rival in Idaho was convicted Tuesday in Arizona for conspiring to murder her estranged husband.
Jurors found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty after deliberating for about three hours, and she faces another possible life sentence on top of the three she is already serving in Idaho. She will not be sentenced in Arizona until after she goes on trial in another alleged murder conspiracy.
Prosecutors said Vallow Daybell had help from her brother, Alex Cox, in the July 2019 shooting death of Charles Vallow at her home in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. They say she was motivated by an opportunity to cash in on Vallow's life insurance policy and a marriage to then-boyfriend Chad Daybell who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
Chad Daybell is also serving life sentences for the deaths of Vallow Daybell's children, 7-year-old Joshua "JJ" Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, and his wife, Tammy. Authorities in Idaho said the case included bizarre claims by Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell that the children were zombies and that Vallow Daybell was a goddess tasked with ushering in an apocalypse.
Vallow Daybell, who isn't an attorney but chose to defend herself at trial in Arizona, sat mostly still as the verdict was read but glanced occasionally at jurors as they were asked to confirm they found her guilty on the single charge.
One of the jurors, Victoria Lewis, said outside the courthouse that Vallow Daybell didn't do herself any favors by choosing to represent herself.
"Many days she was just smiling and laughing and didn't seem to take anything very seriously," Lewis told reporters.
Vallow Daybell told the jury that Vallow chased her with a bat inside her home, and her brother shot Vallow in self-defense as she left the house. She told jurors the death was a tragedy, not a crime.
Cox died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs.
Vallow's siblings, Kay Woodcock and Gerry Vallow, told reporters outside court that they are grateful for the jury's decision.
"We gotcha, and you're not the smartest person in the room," Woodcock said when asked if she has a message for Vallow Daybell. "Everybody's going to forget about you."
The Associated Press left email messages seeking comment Tuesday from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, which prosecuted the case, and the lawyers who served as legal advisers to Vallow Daybell during the trial.
Last week Adam Cox, another brother of Vallow Daybell, testified on behalf of the prosecution, telling jurors that he had no doubt that his siblings were behind Vallow's death.
Adam Cox said the killing happened just before he and Vallow were planning an intervention to bring his sister 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.
Vallow Daybell is scheduled to go on trial again in early June, accused in a plot to kill Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell's niece. Boudreaux survived.
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