(NationalUSNews.com) — Following a riveting trial that made national headlines, a jury has convicted doomsday cult prophet Chad Daybell of three different murders.
Daybell’s conviction comes after his second wife, Lori Vallow, was sentenced to life in prison for killing her children alongside Daybell. Daybell received a harsher sentence than Vallow, as the judge overseeing his case instituted the death penalty against Daybell. Daybell likely plans to appeal the death sentence ruling, but many legal experts believe an appeal effort would prove unsuccessful, given the evidence against the convicted triple murderer.
The murders occurred back in 2019 when Daybell helped Vallow kill her children, Tylee Ashlyn Ryan and Joshua Jaxon Vallow, and bury them on his property. A month after the initial double murder, Daybell killed his first wife, Tamara Daybell. Shortly after the murder of Vallow’s children, people reported the children missing, as they noticed Vallow and Daybell had returned from a vacation to Yellowstone National Park without them. Following a brief investigation, police arrested Lori Vallow in Hawaii due to their belief that she intentionally abandoned her children.
Four months after Vallow’s arrest, police began investigating Chad Daybell’s property, where they found the missing children’s bodies. The discovery of the children’s bodies prompted authorities to reinvestigate the death of Tamara Daybell, whom they initially believed died from natural causes. After reopening Tamara Daybell’s case, police determined that foul play was involved and charged Chad Daybell with her murder. Both Daybell and Vallow faced multiple felony charges, including murder, conspiracy, and theft via deception. The couple began criminal proceedings as co-defendants but moved forward as lone defendants in 2023.
Daybell and Vallow’s case made national headlines due to their connection to a doomsday cult, which started when the murderous couple met at a conference in 2018. Daybell and Vallow believed they had been married to one another in a prior life and that people had either dark or light energies. Vallow claimed that people with dark energy could become “zombies” through possession and that once someone became a zombie, they couldn’t be saved.
Vallow eventually came to believe her children had become zombies, prompting her to conspire with Daybell to kill them as a means of saving them from possession. The doomsday cult couple also believed that Tamara Daybell had become a zombie and chose to kill her as well. Once their criminal cases became separate, Daybell and Vallow attempted to blame one another for the heinous killings, but each maintained their innocence regarding the triple murder plot.
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