BOISE, Idaho — The murder trial of Lori Vallow, or Lori Vallow Daybell, is underway again Tuesday in Boise -- a former friend told the jury that when she asked about Lori Vallow's missing daughter, Chad Daybell told her, "She didn't like people and she didn't like me."
Lori Vallow is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and grand theft in connection to the deaths of two of her children, JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and the death of her current husband's late wife, Tammy Daybell. This is the fourth week of testimony in the murder trial.
If convicted, Lori Vallow could face up to life in prison.
Cameras are not allowed in the courtroom, but investigative and courts reporter Alexandra Duggan was there:
Live updates
Lori Vallow's podcast is played
3:20 p.m.: Lori Vallow is heard on the podcast saying she has a job to "wake up the women warriors."
"I too, have seen the resurrected Jesus Christ and he has told me my mission, and he has sent me to help people and lift them in their missions," Vallow says.
"I'm just a normal person that grew up in the church... My life turned bad, really bad. I wanted to give up," she is heard saying. "I fought with Satan. He hates me."
"He showed me so that I too, could be the warrior I was sent here to be... We came here to fight this war. I know directly from Jesus Christ... Angels that came to me... The war has started... Things are gonna change, and we need to be ready for that change," Vallow is heard saying.
One day, she said, she went to the temple because she was expecting a message from an angel. She shook hands with a man and said she asked him if he had a message for her.
"He was probably thinking, 'What is this crazy lady doing?'" Vallow says. The podcast participants laugh.
"(Jesus) is building his army. He is calling people to do certain missions...They are to go forward in faith... This is how the Lord works," she said in the podcast. "Sometimes he sends me messages to give them."
2:10 p.m.: The jury is listening to an episode of the podcast Lori Vallow was a part of, hosted by her friend, Melanie Gibb. The audio is difficult to hear.
"I had learned Melanie is a fire and never gives up," Gibb is heard saying. "Father told me who I am, he tells me what I can become."
A man called "Thor" is speaking on the podcast. He says he had problems with drinking growing up on a reservation because "everybody" did it. He said his life was changed through Jesus Christ.
"Love yourself," Thor is heard saying.
He says he can always feel Satan in the room if there is negative energy. A joke is made and the participants laugh. The audio is still hard to hear.
Jason Mow, a former police officer in Arizona, is heard speaking. He said he was having a hard time in his life because he was wounded in the military, so he turned to God.
"I was crippled, unemployed," Mow is heard saying. He says he went through difficult tribulations so he could educate others about Jesus Christ and his experience. He says people have to be prepared and children have to prepare to fight against Satan.
"If you are unprepared... You will not survive," Mow says. "If Satan has put so much energy on me, that is a testament."
Friends say Chad Daybell made concerning comments
1:30 p.m.: Jim Archibald, Lori Vallow's defense attorney, questions Todd Gilbert -- who had heard of Lori Vallow before when she was on a religious podcast with her friends. The defense asks to publish this podcast during cross-examination. It is almost two hours long.
The prosecution objects for the relevance of the podcast with this witness and the fact that Lori Vallow is speaking in it, so it would be classified as testifying on her own behalf. There would be no opportunity to cross-examine her, the state says.
Judge Steven Boyce is allowing the first 40 minutes of the podcast to be played in front of the jury.
11:30 a.m.: Todd Gilbert, Alice Gilbert's husband, is now on the stand. Todd Gilbert said that he would see Chad Daybell around once a week.
He said Chad Daybell told him he had a vision that Tammy Daybell was going to die before her 50th birthday. Like Todd Gilbert's wife said, the two went to the Daybell residence and funeral preparations were already in play. Chad didn't seem as emotional as Todd Gilbert would've thought, he said.
"He seemed real business-like," he said.
11:10 a.m.: Gilbert said Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell came to her home sometime after they were married. They showed her wedding photos, Gilbert said.
"They got married so soon," she told the jury.
When Lori Vallow was arrested in Hawaii in February of 2020, Chad Daybell came back to Rexburg and asked to live in one of Gilbert's spare bedrooms. She told him no.
He would come over sometimes while Lori Vallow was in jail, Gilbert said.
Lori Vallow had a bond hearing -- Gilbert said Chad Daybell asked her and other friends' for money to post the bail. The next day, he said he arranged for a bondsperson to come speak with Gilbert to arrange options to bail Lori Vallow out. At this point, Gilbert knew Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow were missing.
"I asked him, 'Where are the kids, Chad? Didn't she deserve a life, a car, a boyfriend?''"
"She didn't like people and she didn't like me," Gilbert said Chad Daybell told her.
10:56 a.m.: Gilbert reached out to Chad Daybell to talk. He came over on Oct. 26, 2019, just a week after his wife died.
"We asked him how he was doing and he said 'actually I'm doing really good,'" and indicated he met the woman he was going to marry, Gilbert said.
"We were shocked," she told the jury.
Gilbert met Lori Vallow when she came to a gathering with Chad Daybell. Gilbert observed them laughing and being flirtatious "like teenagers," she said, much different than how Chad Daybell treated his wife.
Chad Daybell told Gilbert that his new girlfriend "had recently just lost a daughter." Gilbert asked how many children Lori Vallow had.
"She stammered," Gilbert said. "I was under the impression she had no other children, that she was an empty nester. I thought the daughter who died was an older daughter, maybe of cancer or illness."
10:10 a.m.: The state calls Alice Gilbert, who is a friend of the Daybells from the LDS Church. The two were close, Gilbert said, seeing each other about twice a week for two years. They were also neighbors.
"Whenever we planned an activity she'd always say, 'keep it simple'... That's how she lived. Keep it simple," Gilbert said.
When Gilbert observed the Daybell couple in the beginning, she said it was great. But in 2019, "it kind of changed."
"He was more distant to her. That was noticeable," Gilbert said. Tammy Daybell never mentioned anything regarding her marriage or finances.
Chad Daybell told Gilbert "not to tell anybody" about his wife's death when it happened. Gilbert went over to the Daybell home on Oct. 19, 2019 in the early morning. Chad Daybell answered the door and he gave her a hug, she said.
"The children were stunned. They were all on the couch... They were stunned," Gilbert said. "He said she fell out of the bed and died at midnight, but the kids didn't say anything. I think they were too stunned to talk."
Gilbert said the funeral seemed awfully quick -- it was about three days after Tammy Daybell's death. Gilbert attended Tammy Daybell's funeral in Utah.
"I had to go see her in the casket," Gilbert said as she cried on the stand. She told the jury Chad Daybell didn't seem very emotional. The memorial for Tammy Daybell in Idaho was held on a Wednesday, put on by her friends from school. On that day, Gilbert said Chad Daybell told her he was moving out of the home and staying with a friend in Rexburg.
Gilbert visited the Daybell children two days later. They were struggling, she said.
Emma Daybell said her father "doesn't want anything to do" with her anymore, Gilbert said. A week after checking on the children, who were still living in the Daybell home, Gilbert called up Chad Daybell.
More testimony about Tammy Daybell
9:40 a.m.: Tammy Daybell had two life insurance policies, Mattingly said. One policy on her was worth $300,000. It was paid out to Chad Daybell, Mattingly said. The other policy was worth $80,000. It was also paid out to Chad Daybell.
9:35 a.m.: Mattingly said it looked like Tammy Daybell very rarely wore her Fitbit to bed at night, which was disappointing because he wanted to narrow down the time of death.
A list of how many steps she had taken, as tracked through the Fitbit throughout 2019, is shown to the jury.
"Tammy was very active up until the point of her death," Mattingly said.
Previous testifiers said that she was fit, involved in workout classes and training for a run. There was nothing to indicate that she was in poor health.
9:20 a.m.: The state calls Det. Bruce Mattingly with the Fremont County Sheriff's Office. He has testified already.
Mattingly became involved in the Tammy Daybell case around December of 2019, when her body was exhumed.
Mattingly reviewed Tammy Daybell's medical records -- he said from an investigative standpoint, nothing stood out to him. Nothing corroborated the statements Chad Daybell made to others about his wife being extremely sick, Mattingly said.
"We reviewed pictures from the scene of Tammy's death, and we saw there was a Fitbit on her nightstand," Mattingly said. Police obtained the records from Fitbit.
8:50 a.m.: Dr. Erik Christensen, the medical examiner for the State of Utah, is back on the stand to be cross-examined by the defense, John Thomas, about the autopsy of Tammy Daybell.
She was exhumed in December of 2019 after an investigation was opened into the circumstances surrounding her death. Her death was later ruled a homicide by asphyxiation.
Christensen documented no history or sign of seizures when it came to Tammy Daybell's body, but she took a generic form of Prozac -- Thomas asks Christensen if it's true this medication can cause seizure activity. Christensen says it's possible, but due to her age and medical records, "it's very very unlikely."
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