Tylee Ryan & Joshua 'JJ' Vallow

Case background and investigation

Tylee Ryan, 16, and her adopted brother Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, 7, were the children of Lori Vallow, a Chandler, Arizona, mother who by 2019 had embraced increasingly extreme apocalyptic beliefs adjacent to her Latter-day Saint faith. Tylee was last seen alive on September 8, 2019, during a family outing to Yellowstone National Park, and JJ was last confirmed alive around September 23, 2019, in Rexburg, Idaho, where the family had relocated. Their disappearance drew scrutiny only in late November 2019, when relatives requested a welfare check and police found the children gone; Lori and her new husband, author Chad Daybell, gave misleading accounts and then fled to Hawaii rather than cooperate.

The case became defined by the couple's 'doomsday' religious beliefs. Investigators and prosecutors described a fringe ideology in which Chad Daybell claimed prophetic authority and rated people as 'light' or 'dark,' with some individuals allegedly 'zombies' possessed by evil spirits. Lori came to view herself as an exalted figure destined to lead survivors of an anticipated end times. Both children, prosecutors argued, had been reclassified as obstacles or 'dark,' providing a religious rationale that overlapped with financial motives, including Social Security survivor benefits and life insurance.

A cluster of suspicious deaths surrounded the couple. On July 11, 2019, Lori's estranged husband, Charles Vallow, was fatally shot by Lori's brother, Alex Cox, who claimed self-defense. On October 19, 2019, Chad Daybell's first wife, Tammy Daybell, was found dead at home; initially attributed to natural causes, her death was later ruled a homicide by asphyxiation. Chad and Lori married in Hawaii on November 5, 2019, roughly two weeks after Tammy's death. Alex Cox died of natural causes in December 2019. On June 9, 2020, the children's remains were discovered buried on Chad Daybell's Idaho property; Tylee's body had been burned and dismembered, and JJ had been asphyxiated, wrapped in plastic and bound.

Lori Vallow Daybell was convicted, not merely accused. On May 12, 2023, an Idaho jury found her guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Tylee and JJ and of conspiracy to murder Tammy Daybell. On July 31, 2023, she was sentenced to consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole. She was subsequently extradited to Arizona, where she represented herself and was convicted on April 22, 2025, of conspiracy to murder Charles Vallow, and on June 12, 2025, of conspiracy to murder her niece's ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux, who survived a 2019 shooting. On July 25, 2025, an Arizona judge imposed two additional life sentences.

Chad Daybell was tried separately in Idaho. On May 30, 2024, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the deaths of Tylee Ryan, JJ Vallow, and Tammy Daybell, along with conspiracy and grand theft/insurance-fraud counts. On June 1, 2024, he was sentenced to death. As of mid-2026, Lori Vallow Daybell is serving multiple life sentences across Idaho and Arizona, and Chad Daybell remains under a death sentence; both have pursued appeals of their convictions.