Inside Child Killer Lori Vallow’s Claim that Shooting Death of Her Husband Was Case of Self-Defense

Lori Vallow Daybell told an Arizona jury on Monday, April 7, that the death of her fourth husband Charles Vallow was a case of self-defense.

“Self-defense is not a crime,” she said. “A family tragedy is not a crime, it’s a tragedy.”

Lori, who is representing herself at trial for allegedly conspiring to kill Charles, told the jury during opening statements that her brother, Alex Cox, fatally shot Charles twice in the chest while protecting her and her daughter, Tylee Ryan — the same daughter Lori was later convicted of murdering.

The fatal shooting occurred at Lori’s Chandler, Ariz., home on July 11, 2019.

The trial comes almost two years after Lori was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murders of her children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee, 16.

On the day of the shooting, Lori claimed Charles showed up at the home in a rental car to pick up their son J.J., and that when he came inside, he started yelling at Lori when she refused to hand him his cell phone.

She alleged Tylee came out of her room with a baseball bat and tried to protect her.

“The evidence will show that Tylee and Charles fought over the bat, and that after a struggle over the bat, Tylee fell onto the ground and Charles lifted up the bat to hit Tylee with the bat,” Lori claimed in court. “The evidence will show that Alex then intervened to protect Tylee from being hit with the bat.”

She claimed Cox and Charles “got into a physical struggle for the bat and fell onto the ground.”

“The evidence will show that after the struggle on the ground between Charles and Alex, that Charles prevailed with the bat and began to come towards me with the bat as I ran away from him into the kitchen,” she said. “The evidence will show that at some point while I was running away from Charles who was chasing me with a bat, that Alex apparently retrieved his gun.”

Charles, she claimed, was shot by Cox when she and Tylee ran outside the home.

Prosecutors have alleged that Lori wanted Charles dead for his life insurance payout so she could marry her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, an author of religious doomsday books.

“She would get a million-dollar life insurance policy from Charles Vallow,” prosecutor Treena Kay told the jury. “She would get social security for herself and their son, J.J., as a child of a dead spouse. And all of this would be true if Charles Vallow was dead.”

The killing, Kay said, was not in self-defense.

“Charles was on the ground when Alex Cox fired that second shot,” Kay said. “The injuries to Charles, the location of the bullet strikes, the trajectory of the injuries, both in Charles and in the house: All show this was not self-defense. This was a staged murder scene.”

After the shooting, Kay said Charles lay dead on the floor for 47 minutes before Alex called 911.

Cox, who claimed self-defense, was never charged before his own death of natural causes on Dec. 12, 2019.

Cox was also implicated in the deaths of J.J. and Tylee, who vanished in September 2019.

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Their remains were found buried on Chad’s Idaho property in June 2020. Tylee had been dismembered and burned. J.J. was found wrapped in plastic and bound by duct tape. His cause of death was asphyxiation.

Prosecutors said Chad and Lori embraced the same end-of-times prophecies, which entailed eliminating people whose spirits had turned “dark.”

Lori told a friend that J.J. and Tylee had become “zombies,” and that she was on a religious mission with Chad “to rid the world of ‘zombies,'” according to a probable cause affidavit.

Lori was also found guilty of conspiring to kill Chad’s first wife, Tamara Daybell, who died from asphyxiation at the home she shared with Chad in October 2019. 

Chad was later convicted in the deaths of Tylee and J.J. and his wife and sentenced to death.

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