Chad Daybell, the Idaho man charged along with his wife in the disappearance of two children whose bodies were found buried on his property in June, will stand trial for allegedly hiding their remains, a judge ruled Tuesday, citing enough evidence for the case to move forward.
Daybell, 52, has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of destruction and concealment of evidence after authorities raided his eastern Idaho home with cadaver dogs and found the remains of 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, who were both last seen nearly a year ago in September.
Daybell’s preliminary hearing lasted two days and included graphic testimony about the duct-tape bound body of the boy and the charred and dismembered remains of the girl, according to The Associated Press.
The children’s mother, 46-year-old Lori Vallow, was arrested in Hawaii in February on felony abandonment charges and has refused to cooperate with investigators. She was extradited back to Rexburg, Idaho, in March and remains jailed on a $1 million bond she can’t afford to pay.
Vallow faces a hearing next week on whether the case against her will proceed.
Her arrest was the culmination of months of efforts by federal, state and local agencies working around the clock to find the children.
Prosecutors have not yet filed charges directly related to the deaths of Tylee and Joshua.
They also have yet to say how or when the children died, but the prosecuting attorney on Tuesday during closing arguments called both deaths homicides based on the condition of the bodies.
Documents in the case, including the warrants to search Daybell’s property, have been sealed.
Call from jail
Lori called Chad Daybell from jail on June 9, the day authorities arrived to search his property, according to testimony at Tuesday’s hearing.
“I love you so much,” Chad Daybell said somberly after telling her police were searching the field behind the house.
“I love you,” she responded. “Should I try to call you later?
“I don’t know,” he said. “You can try.”
The bizarre saga involves many other twists, including several suspicious deaths and accusations by friends and family that Daybell and Vallow were involved in a doomsday cult and may have believed their children had become possessed by zombies.
Daybell is the author of several esoteric novels about the apocalypse that are based loosely on principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to reports.
A friend of Lori Daybell, Melanie Gibb, testified during Daybell’s hearing about how the couple became acquainted through a doomsday belief system.
Previous wife dead
Daybell also has five children with his previous wife of 30 years, Tammy, who died mysteriously in her sleep Oct. 19.
Two weeks after her death, Daybell eloped to Hawaii with his new bride, Lori, where they had a beach wedding.
An FBI analyst who reviewed cellphone records testified that on Sept. 9, before Tammy’s death, Chad Daybell sent a text to her, saying he was burning debris and that he had also shot and buried a large raccoon on his property. The analyst said that was notable because Tylee Ryan was last seen alive on Sept. 8 in Yellowstone National Park.
Raising more suspicions, Amazon shopping records unearthed the following March show a wedding ring was purchased a little more than two weeks before Tammy died, and that Chad Daybell also shopped online for wedding dresses the day after she passed away.
Tammy Daybell’s body was exhumed from the Springville Evergreen Cemetery in Utah for further examination, but the results of the autopsy have not been released.
Neither Daybell nor Vallow has been formally charged in her death, but prosecutors were considering possible conspiracy, attempted murder and murder counts, according to East Idaho News, which has followed the case closely from the outset.
Honeymoon in Hawaii
Back in Idaho in November, authorities carrying out a search warrant for the children at the Vallow home arrived to find no one there.
Daybell and Vallow were 3,000 miles away at the time, enjoying a monthslong honeymoon at an exclusive resort before authorities finally tracked them down to Kauai.
There were no signs the children were ever with them.
Police: Brother likely involved
In December, two months after Tammy Daybell died, Lori’s brother Alex Cox also died of an apparent blood clot in his lung at his Arizona home, according to reports.
Cox, who appeared with Vallow and the children in Sept. 8 family photos at Yellowstone National Park, claimed self-defense in the July 2019 shooting death of Lori’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who was Joshua’s adoptive father. Police said they now believe Cox was involved in the conspiracy to hide the children’s remains.
He was never arrested or charged in Charles Vallow’s death, but Arizona authorities are continuing to investigate.
Prosecutors said this week that cellphone location records indicated that the day after Joshua was last seen alive in late September, Cox showed up at Chad Daybell’s property just as he had shown up at Tylee Ryan’s gravesite the day after she disappeared.
A grim timeline
Before June, Chad Daybell had never been charged in the case, although police previously raided his house in early January and collected 43 items of evidence, East Idaho News reported.
In early March, Daybell told news media in Hawaii that “the kids are safe.”
Joshua’s eighth birthday passed May 25 with no signs of him or Tylee.
A neighbor said Daybell, who once worked as a gravedigger at a Utah cemetery, had lit several bonfires in recent months.
“We noticed they were having a few bonfires that were kind of out of the ordinary,” said Matthew Price, who lives across the street. “They had a big bonfire last fall, and they had two or three big bonfires this spring,” he said, adding that Daybell, a once-talkative-and-friendly neighbor, became distant and aloof after the children vanished.
Next, several backhoes were seen entering Daybell’s property in Idaho on June 9.
Aerial photos at the rural home showed investigators conducting a grid search, with detectives paying particular attention to a circular fire pit.
Nearby, mounds of dirt were excavated with a little more than a dozen 5-gallon buckets. Blue tarps and tents peppered the landscape around a large barn-like structure.
Parked on the street were dozens of crime scene investigative vehicles.
— Information provided by The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
