Lori Vallow Calls Conviction for Murdering Husband 'a Bit of a Surprise,' Has Bizarre Excuse for Daughter's Death

Lori Vallow Daybell is speaking out for the first time after being found guilty of conspiring to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in Arizona.

Speaking exclusively with True Crime Arizona correspondent Briana Whitney, Lori said she was surprised that jurors found her guilty on Tuesday, April 22, after deliberating for three hours over two days. She’s still awaiting sentencing.

“I mean, obviously I knew that was a possibility, yeah, so, it was a bit of a surprise actually,” she said in the interview published on Thursday, April 24.

Lori represented herself at trial and told the jury during opening statements that her brother, Alex Cox, fatally shot Vallow on July 11, 2019, while protecting her and her daughter, Tylee Ryan. Lori would later be convicted of murdering Tylee.

Cox was never charged in Vallow’s death and died in December 2019 from what the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office determined were natural causes.

Prosecutors said that Lori wanted Vallow, who had filed for divorce, dead in order to collect a life insurance policy and marry Chad Daybell, who authored religious doomsday books.

Lori, along with her husband Chad, was convicted of murdering Lori’s children 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua J.J. Vallow. The siblings disappeared in September 2019 before their remains were discovered on Chad’s Idaho property in 2020. 

Lori, who is currently serving a life sentence in Idaho for the murders, also addressed her late daughter’s death in the interview after Whitney asked her what it was like seeing Tylee in body camera footage shown during the trial.

“Well, I understand where Tylee is in heaven,” Lori said. “I know what she’s doing and where she is, so it’s been almost six years since she passed away.”

She added, “I mean, this is the catalyst, right? What happened with her and Charles was the catalyst of her killing herself. So I was precluded from talking about that. I was precluded from bringing that up. But the detectives obviously don’t say that she killed herself.”

Lori further claimed that she told her surviving son, Colby Ryan, that Tylee died by suicide after killing her younger brother J.J., per the outlet.

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Idaho prosecutors have said that Lori was a follower of Chad’s religious doomsday writings and beliefs, which held that Lori’s children were zombies and Lori was a “goddess,” among other outlandish theories. 

Two years ago, Lori was also convicted of conspiring to kill Chad’s first wife, Tammy Daybell. Chad was sentenced to death in 2024 for killing Tammy and Lori’s two children.

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