WHEN THE MOON TURNS TO BLOOD-Leah Sottile

with a search warrant, she too is gone. As the police begin to close in a larger web of mystery, murder, fanaticism, and deceit begins to unravel. Valo's case is sinuously complex. As investigators prod further, they find the accused black widow has an unusual number of bodies piling up around her. When the Moon Turns to Blood tells the gripping story of extreme beliefs, snake oil profits, and explores the question if it feels like the world is ending, how are

people supposed to act? The book that we're featuring this evening is When the Moon Turns to Blood Lori Valo, Chad Dabell, and A story of murder, Wild faith and End Times with my special guest and author, Leah Saudile. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Leah Satilli, Thanks for having me, Thank you so much, and congratulations. As I mentioned, on this incredible book.

First off, just tell us briefly how you came to want to write this story, and we're in a position to write this book.

was occurring in Idaho. I'm a reporter that spends most of my time writing about the northwestern United States, and what really caught my attention beyond the fact that Laurie and her husband Chad were missing and her children were missing, was that someone said that they thought that it might have to do with her strange cult like religious beliefs, that their disappearance maybe could be attributed to some sort of ideology that she held, And that kind of raised

my flag because I write predominantly about extremism, political and religious extremism, and I knew that Laurie Vallo is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and I had written some about the fringes of the church. So it seemed like there might be some knowledge that I had that was familiar to me. And it turned out I was right. There were things about Lorie Vallo's story and about the things that Chad Davel wrote about that had come up before in my own reporting.

I was becoming a reporter. I was learning how to do that job, which so much of it is done on the job, learning how to do the work of journalism, and that case really stuck with me because it seemed like they would never be found again. And then in July two thousand and five, Shastergroni was found. She was found with the killer of her family in a diner in a small North Idaho town, and the story that

unfolded was worse than anyone could imagine. It was just this horrific case of abuse and you know, mind control and murder, and it was just more horrible than anyone else could imagine that it would be. And that case really stuck with me. And at the time, I really just didn't have the ability to report on something like that, but I did feel like I needed to know how to report on something terrible because it would inevitably happen again. And so the case of Lori Vallo and Chad Dabel

very quickly reminded me of that case. In the same way that there were two missing children, their faces were being shown everywhere on television. No one had any idea where they were. And it also happened in Idaho, a very different part of Idaho. So I start the book with that story, kind of giving that background.

United States. And in that work I started writing more about religious extremism, particularly during the COVID nineteen pandemic. There were different evangelical preachers that I was writing about that

were pushing using COVID to push far right ideologies. So I saw these, you know, in my regular news cycle of read reading the headlines, I saw these two photographs of these two children pop up in my feed and those children were JJ Valo and Tyler Ryan Lori Valo's children, And I pretty quickly got to work and realized that it was something that was well within my expertise, but a story that I felt like wasn't being told completely.

different from the people that I knew. You Know, what I came to learn was that I grew up around people who are very mainstream Mormons, but that there is this extremist fringe of the church that has birthed many splinter sects, many fundamentalist movements that really don't resemble at all what the mainstream Mormon churches. And that's that's what this book gets into. So I felt like to understand Chad and Laurie's Mormon belief systems, you have to understand

mainstream Mormonism. That is a very recent religion, you know, only about two hundred years old, and it is firmly grounded in a part of the Bible, the Book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation is a very I mean, it's a fascinating book of the Bible in that you know, I like to say that that if the Book of Revelation were a modern day movie, it would be directed by Michael Bay. You know, it's got explosions and blood, you know, falling from the sky and oceans turning red

and people's skin melting off. And the Book of Revelation is about the end, the end of days, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints that that

meme Latter Day suggests the end and times. Having said that, the Mormon religion is very much about talking and thinking about these you know, what could happen, and preparing for what could be a theoretical end of the world and living in a wholesome enough way to then be able to go into the celestial Kingdom, which is their belief about heaven, to kind of reduce it down and to you know, be good citizens and good stewards, and to have a family that will then follow you into the

next life. So that I really get into the Book of Revelation in the in the book to underso a reader can understand the foundation of the LDS religion, but also understand how many many millenarian groups, which are otherwise known as cults by the public, how those groups have also used the Book of Revelation to really scare people into submission. So I talk a lot about how there have been you know, breakaway LDS sects who have used

the Book of Revelation in that way. There have been you know, Charles Manson, the famous American serial killer who got people to do his bidding for him, very much invigorated by the Book of Revelation. So I just want to be really clear that what Laurie Vallo and Chad dabol believe is not mainstream Mormonism. They believe themselves to

be a part of the mainstream Mormon Church. But they were entertaining this fringe ideologies that have existed at the edges of the church for a long time that the mainstream church continually says, do not entertain these ideas, these are not what we believe. But they very much were doing that.

turns to blood. And this was something that the prophet and founder of the ld S Church, Joseph Smith, he wrote about in his foundational documents for the church, that the moon turns to blood. The title is also a riff on a very fringe piece of LDS literature called and the Moonshell Turned to Blood, and that is seen as a very scary book by a lot of people.

It was something that predicted apocalypse, It predicted the fall of humanity, and it was really kind of the sort of book that would be found in households maybe in the seventies and eighties, where people really entertained these fringe ideas that they were going to be the survivors of the apocalypse and the one the chosen ones that would weather that storm.

in many ways by lots of Christians. And what the Eldas Church says is that you may receive revelation from God that feels like very firm direction about maybe what you should do or a problem you're having. But they're very clear to say, if you receive revelation from God, go ahead and keep it to yourself. Maybe share it with your wife, maybe share it with your your you know,

your partner, your children. But that revelation should not walk out the front door, because when it does and you start to say I'm speaking to God, then you're subverting really the hierarchy, hierarchical structure of the LDS Church, because the way it works is that the LDS leadership is

like a pyramid. So at the very very top of that pyramid is one man, the President of the LDS Church, and that president is seen as the living, breathing prophet, the only person within Mormonism that has a direct line to God and the only person that's allowed to receive prophecy and revelation for the entire church. So when you know a man in a small town in Utah starts to say I'm receiving revelation and begins publishing that, as Chad Dabelt started to do with his books, that is

that is seen as very controversial. It can be even grounds if it goes too far for excommunication. And this is one very unique aspect of Mormonism. This receiving of revelation that is makes it a vibrant faith, that makes it a very attractive faith to people, but it also makes it a little bit of a tough thing to keep in the bed because some people believe that they

receive revelation that affects a lot of people. They think that they see, you know, in this case, that the world could collapse and they're a receiving direction on how to weather that. And I talk about in the book that if you believe you're receiving revelation like that, you might take a chance and take that out the front door to let other people know.

You have to understand, in some of these towns in Utah they are like ninety ninety five percent LDS, so so really Chad Dabel's community was the LDS community, and you know, he went on to kind of go on the track that a lot of LDS men do. He went to Brigham Young University in Provo, which is just a few minutes north of where he grew up. That is the church church run university. He worked at the

student paper there. He went on a mission in New Jersey, which is a very traditional thing for a Mormon man to do. The church dispatches missionaries all over the world to sort of spread the gospel of Mormonism, and he did that. He came back home to Springdale, Utah. He met a woman that also went to his high school named Tammy. They were married, they were married in a Mormon temple, and they started to have children. So by

all means, you know, for much of his life. It was very you know, very typical, very kind of by the book when it comes to LDS folks, you start to see a turn at a certain point when Chad started to write his own fiction, which was a dream

of his. He started to publish fictional books that really dealt in kind of started to dabble in a little bit more in this fringe, in this sort of scary apocalyptic version of events, and book by book he started to say, you know, these things that I'm talking about seem to be happening. And then you know, in the next book he would start to kind of say, I don't think it's any accident. I think I'm starting to

kind of predict these things. And then of course he starts to write about his own near death experiences, which is sort of this own subculture that I discovered in the reporting of this book that's also really controversial in the church, which is people who believe that they have died and come back to life. And you'll often see within the Ldias Church this authors who say, you know, I'm bringing back knowledge that we need to know. I can see beyond the veil, I can speak to our ancestors,

and I can predict what might happen. And again this is very controversial, but despite the controversy, these near death experience authors sell a lot of books. They're very popular within Mormon circles, and I think Chaddabel saw an opportunity there, potentially a financial opportunity to start pushing himself as a near death experienced survivor somebody who could see beyond the veil and who should be listened to.

And within the last few years, church leadership, the apostles of the church have given speeches where they said, look, you should go have children, have grandchildren, get a college education, buy a house, go you to do the things you want to do. Take your focus off of this idea that doom and gloom are coming for you. And it's a message that was heard by the majority of the

LDS church. But again, this fringe element, the sort of survivalist prepper, near death experience fringe of the church, it's really an extremists who kind of didn't want to hear it. And that's something that we start to see with Chad's writing, with his starting to get more and more cozy with other near death experience authors, to start going and speaking on the prepper circuit and attending these conferences and hosting podcasts we're talking about what the end times might look like.

That really really starts to escalate more and it really starts to put distance between Chad Dabel's traditional Mormon upbringing and where he ended up where he is now.

the center of the faith. It is the way the faith continues. It is the way you know, individuals, you know, you have a family, you have children, that doesn't just end on this this life, that that transcends into the eternal life, into the celestial kingdom. So family, family is really everything. And you know, as we see in the story that I wrote that that was also the center

of Lori Valo's life. Was this sort of continual search for a husband that would that would work, for a marriage that would work, to have children, and to kind of you know lead you see sort of a desperation on both of their parts just to really lead that mainstream Mormon life, and really they both did to an extent, but I believe it sort of acted as a mask for their more nefarious intentions and extremist ideologies.

who met when they were young in high school. Barry Cox was somebody who was seen as a little bit of a paragon of the community. He ran for city council peace old life insurance policies through a church, Mormon church owned company, and again they had a vied for the traditional Mormon family. They got married, they had children, He had a good job. Janice the mother, did what Eldia's mothers are expected to do. She was a nurturer.

She'd stayed home and they had they had several children. Uh. Laurie grew up, you know, going to uh she was a softball player, she became a cheerleader. She was seen as very beautiful, very popular in high school, but also somebody who was really kind.

story started. Now. Barry Cox is very interesting because when he ran for city council, he started to see he had very early days kind of maybe tea partys can maybe a libertarian sort of ideology coming from him, where he said, you know, there's just too much government. If I was to win, you know, we would kind of get rid of a lot of that stuff. You know,

he didn't win. He didn't win that election, but later on I started to dig into writings that he did that really entertained quite a bit of fringe ideas about the LDS people being the chosen people who would weather the end times and who would save the Constitution from the brink of ruin.

and they told me yes. So this was when I started to understand the white Horse prophecy is not a prophecy. In fact, it's a fake prophecy. The LDS Church hierarchy says it is not acceptable, it is not something that Joseph Smith said. It's fake. It's an urban legend. And yet despite the LDS Church saying this is not what

we believe. After I did my recording on the Bundies, I started to hear a lot from people who said this is more mainstream than you think that more people in the United States believe this than you would think. And what the White Horse prophecy says is that in the end times the Constitution will be whittled down so much it will be at the point of ruin that will hang by a thread as fine as silk fiber, and it will be up to the White Horse aka

the Mormon people to save it. So really what you see there is not just religion, but sort of a braiding together of patriotism and country with the LDS religion, and that's been very attractive in recent years to people who are extremists. That's been attractive to it was attractive

to the bundies. So that was a big aha moment for me when I found a piece of writing that Barry Cox put out about his anti government ideologies, his anti tax ideologies, believing that the irs is fink and using the language of the white Horse prophecy, particularly the Constitution hanging by a thread. When I found that, it made me understand that Lori Vello was perhaps raised in a household that was entertaining some fringe before that was the thing we were all talking about in the news.

very thin, very fit, big bright white smile. And in two thousand and four she was a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. She talked about her kids, you know, in her introduction to Pat Saja, And she was working as a hairdresser in Austin, Texas at that point and married to a man named Joseph Bryant, who was the father of her daughter Tylie Ryan.

lot about how her brother had a temper. He would punch holes in walls, He would, you know, really really lose it over over pretty small things. So Laurie Valo in their divorce, alleged that Joseph Ryan molested her children. So at that point when when she married Joseph Bryan, she had a son named Polby and then they had ty Lee together, and she alleged that Joseph Bryan molested both children. And it's interesting because a lot of time

has passed since those allegations were made. It's thing that even went to trial, you know, which is not normal when it comes to these civil cases, and it was never found to be true. Even today, mental health professionals that worked on that case, they appeared on Dateline and they told their reporters. We still to this day think that Lori Valo made that story up, that she planted that story in her children's heads. There was just never

any evidence to prove it. But even so, even when Joseph Bryan was granted some custody of Tylee, she continued to tell Tylee and other people that he had molested her and that he was a really bad guy.

he was allowed to see ty Lee. And the way that began was he would go see her in a neutral facility, so that way, you know, there could be people monitoring their meeting and.

in the parking lot. He tases him again, where Joseph ran falls again and fractures his wrists and you know, he's screaming, you know, call the police, call the police. And nearby people here and call the police and alex Cox walks away, gets an drives away. He later, you know, is found that he assaulted Joseph Brian and he does prison time for this. But all the while, you know, he's writing to friends from jail saying, you know, I need you to send me Joseph Brian's address. I need

you to send me a photo of him. He became obsessed with Laurie's ex husband and this idea that he believed that he was a child molester and that he needed to do something to fix that.

kind of unique. He's on doing impressions of cartoon characters or you know, Missus doubtfire and things like that, and by all means it scene is a very funny guy. But a very strange guy, somebody that even his own family members said there's just something kind of off about him. And there was something kind of off about his relationship with Laurie. It really seemed like he would do anything that she said.

he had custody of her. So at that point Tylee had actually severed her relationship with her father, really really really disliked her dad, and so there was just no one to know, and police believed that he had been there dead for a few days. By the time they found him, you know, they pretty quickly processed the scene and just said welcome, She's a guy who just died, and that was that. But that story kind of comes back later in my books. Maybe a curiosity. Maybe it wasn't that clean cut.

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doorstep with money and gives them to them. So, by all means is seen as a very generous member of her church and a very faithful person. But it's around this time that she also starts to entertain these podcasts about people who claim they have near death experiences and the ability to see beyond the veil. She starts to kind of read more about these these fringe ideologies that we've talked about that have sort of long simmered at the edges of the church, and she starts to attend

these conferences. So there are conferences helped by several organizations that largely take place in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, and they are really devoted to this extremist, right wing part of the fringe. So we're talking about the fringe of the fringe at this point. And these are people who are preppers, you know, which is something that's very much encouraged by the LDS church. But they're extreme preppers. They're prepping because they believe the world could end at any moment.

They're talking about things like you know, the quote unquote elect, which is sort of codeword for the people who will be chosen by God or chosen by the Church to sort of survive the perils of the Book of Revelation.

She starts to really kind of spiral further and further down this funnel, starting with near death experiences, getting into these conferences, meeting more people, assembling a community around her that also is willing to entertain these ideas, and then pretty quickly starts having her own home meetings with other women who are interested in these ideas and want to

hear more about them. You hear people use the language of leveling up their faith that maybe you know they're not getting enough in church on Sundays or by going

to the temple. They want something more, And this is specifically something that church leadership, mainstream LBS church leadership has said that is a big red flag for them, that when people want more than what they feel they're being offered in church, that that's something that's when it starts to get a little dangerous, and that's that's sort of the area that Laurie is treading in.

church and very well liked. And when Laurie starts talking about some of these ideas that she's finding, some of these books that she's reading in the podcast that she's listening to, and these people that she's starting to really idolize, she starts to tell Charles some really odd things, particularly that she doesn't need to eat or sleep anymore, that she's sort of believing herself to be transcending human you know, basic human needs. She starts going to the temple every day.

She starts to believe that she can control things with her mind, and as their marriage starts to fall apart, she starts to become really threatening. She says that he been possessed by a dark spirit. She starts calling him by a new name of which he has no one understanding what that means. She says, you know, he needs to be careful, that she could kill him. If she needed to that she was a goddess. And so all of a sudden he finds himself, you know, sort of

his head is spinning, saying, what happened to you? What happened to my wife? And in Charles starts to kind of try and wring alarms. He talks to people at church and says, you know, why is she saying these things? This is really weird. He talks to her family and no one will listen to Charles. You know, Laurie is is very manipulative and starts to tell people, you know,

he's trying to be controlling of me. And you know what, if you take away the religion from this, you just have a story of two people's marriage falling apart, but where with Laurie Vallo, it becomes something stranger because one of the reasons their marriage starts falling apart is because she's entertaining these extremist ideologies and really doubling down on them and saying, you know that this is kind of more important to her than the mainstream Mormonism that her

and Charles have been practicing and living together. At one point, she disappears for a couple of months. He has no idea where she went. We know now that she disappeared to Hawaii and was telling people that she knew there. You know, I'm the leader of the one hundred and forty four thousand, and it's prophesied in the Book of Revelation as the sort of people who will survive the apocalypse, and I want to recruit you to be in that group.

And people are saying, what are you talking about? You know, so she was not being quiet about her views, and you know, she Charles Ello files for divorce at a certain point, but then she returns back to Arizona. He revokes that and says, you know, I think that there's a chance that we can fix our marriage. And that's really what he tries to do.

be there. He was selling his books and he was speaking about his near death experiences, and so there was this pretty distinct scene in the book where he's standing at his table selling his books just like he usually would, and here comes this just beautiful beauty queen, a woman walking up to his table and wants to introduce herself, and she says that she's a huge fan of his books,

and that meeting is just such a faithful meeting. It's a meeting that would just change so many lives because right then he just felt that he had met the woman that he wanted to be with for the rest of his life. Now, remember, Chadda Bell is married. He's been married for twenty nine years to the same woman, Tammy, and they have several children together. And Laurie's also married. She's married to Charles Vello. Their marriage is very much

on the rocks at this point. But that's when they meet, and they would continue to meet that they would meet at these Prepper conferences, and I mean it seems from the text messages and the evidence that I've seen, it seemed that they were starting to have it at fair. But what they because they both held these radical fringe ideologies, they applied something much bigger to that.

monster she just couldn't get rid of from her life. And she starts to say that she's just going continually to the Temple and to the Book of Mormon into the doctrine in covenance. Mormon scripture to understand what is happening to her and to seek relief and advice. And in this meeting, she talks about that she believes that she found an excuse to kill someone within Mormon scripture, and she tells the women at this meeting, I was

going to murder my husband. I believe that I had found, you know, within the Mormon stories that I that I could kill him and that would be okay in the eyes of God. She says that she didn't do it because she didn't have a murderous heart. The notable thing about this is that Joseph Ryan had died at this point. She admitted that from her story as she was sharing her testimony of faith. But he had been found dead in his apartment at this point, and it was very notable that she was saying that.

like my wife is there's something happening to her. She started talking about all these crazy ideas about about being a warrior, that she can control me or she can kill me with her mind, and that she's the leader of the one hundred and forty four thousand, And the police officer is like, I'm sorry, what are you talking about?

Like he's very confused, and you start to see the desperation in Charles that he knows that something is going on, and he's trying to get people to pay attention that he could see that there's there's something dangerous here, and it's kind of the beginning of people not listening to him. Pretty quickly after that is when Laurie disappears for a couple of months, and then you know, things really start to pray more from there.

cleanse dark spirits from the earth. They start to assign, you know, say some people are light and some people are dark, and of course Laurie really focuses on her husband, Charles Bell, and said he's dark, he's possessed by demon. We need to cast out the evil spirits from within his soul. And these women get together and kind of get in a circle and hold hands and do this. You know, again, we are so far away from Mormonism at this point. This is just the sort of bizarre

thing that they're doing. And she really turns everybody against Charles, and Charles realizes the only way I think that I can get Laurie to come to her senses is for me to get the church involved, because it's the only thing that she cares about and it is the only

thing she'll listen to. So he hatches a plan in July of nineteenth, twenty nineteen with her other brother so not Alex, that they will kind of have something of an intervention that they're going to record Laurie talking about these very fringe things she believes, and that the idea is that they would play it for somebody in the church and try and get her excommunicated or get the church involved with waking her out of this trance they

believe she's in. Laurie gets wind of this plant to come over to their house in the morning, because they're of course separated at this point. She calls in Alex this is the brother that is seen as the guardian angel and who tased her other husband. He is there in the morning on in morning in July when Charles shows up, and pretty quickly a scuffle unfolds and that ends in Alex Cox shooting Charles Valow and killing him.

And that is it's very unclear whether or not that happened in front of Tylee and JJ the children or if they were outside, the clipment was clear. That's they knew something happened though. And what happens after that is the police are called and Alex and Laurie tell a story of self defense that Charles was coming after Alex, that he was attacking him, that he was going to attack her sister, and so they shot out and killed him and self to events. And the notable thing is

that story really works. Much later investigators look into that again and realize that they were fed a story.

was being really aggressive with her that you know. At one point, Tyle Ryan, her daughter, tried to get between Charles and Laurie with a baseball bat and that you know, Charles yanked the bad away from Tylee and she fell on the ground and is this is just sort of horrible story. And the detectives really they they bought it. They they thought that you know, Charles was being very aggressive,

he was threatening people with a bat. He was saying that he was going to you know, hurt Laurie potentially, and that they did what they felt like they had to do so that that story really worked and no one was arrested. Charles, you know, was dead and that was that, and they started really just going about the business of their lives again. And in Laurie's case, that meant she continued to hold these meetings that were not okay to have in the eyes of the mainstream LDS church.

She continued her relationship with Chad Dabell, which was, you know, something that she was having at a long distance. She had a special cell phone that she talked to him on. When she was still married to Charles, she started to make plans to leave Arizona and to uproot her life and her children's lives and moved north to the small city of Rerexburg. Idaho, which she would do in late August of twenty nineteen, and along with her would come her children, Kylie and JJ and her brother Alex and

also her niece Melanie Boudreau. She really they all lived moved north to Rexburg, and they all lived in this townhouse community and it was just a few miles away from where Chad dabel lived with his family.

Idaho could be the new Zion. Zion is kind of, you know, more in vocabulary for the promised land, for the for the sort of place that will of peace and safety, that will keep everyone safe in the end times. So he started to believe that, you know that that wouldn't be utaught, that it would be Rexburg, Idaho. He had moved his family up there, and then by the time, you know, Charles Vallo was dead and he had this

clear relationship happening with Lorii Vello. He was telling people, come up to Rexburg, We're going to assemble Zion here, the people of Zion, and we're going to be ready in case something happened. So start you start to sort of see these people trickle up to Rexburg potentially to assemble Zion. Laurie, her children, Alex, other people start to come up to attend conferences and look at real estate and start to decide if they're going to move their lives there too.

real estate in the area to potentially move there. They're attending some classes and conferences together and Laurie tells those friends, you know, JJ is getting really out of hand, he's getting to be more than I can handle by myself. Charles and Laurie had adopted JJ and he it was on the autism spectrum and had really high needs. Before they moved to Arizona or from Arizona, excuse me, he

attended a special school, He had a service dog. He had a lot of infrastructure built into his life that would sort of meet him where he was with his autism. But that was really uprooted when they went to Rexburg. There was no school that he could go to. He went to a regular public school. He didn't have a service dog anymore. And he was he was, you know, a big kid with some really high energy, and it was it was getting She's said, it was getting to

be too much. And she said that for her, the thing that sort of was the straw that broke the camel's back for him, which she believed that he had become a dark spirit, was that he'd climbed up on top of the counter and up onto the refrigerator and he knocked a picture of Jesus on the ground, and that was that was a major moment for her when she started to see her son not as her son anymore, but as somebody who had been possessed by a demon, just like she had said about Charles Fallow. And that

was the last time that JJ was ever seen. He never went to school again. She took him, she withdrew him from school, and that's something you can do in Idaho and say you're going to homeschool them. And that was it. That was the last time he was seen.

all be together in the celestial kingdom. But you just don't need to worry too much about them. It seemed like a strange thing to say, you know, and maybe

what does that even mean? I guess it became came those words really came to have a much darker meaning when you know what happens with the story that maybe she was not just reading LDAs scripture trying to find an excuse to kill her ex husband, which you know, we don't know whether or not that what happened to Joseph Brian, if he was killed or if he did die by you know, natural causes, as the medical examers first thought, but appeared she was reading scripture to also

maybe find find ways to sort of wiggle out of these roles that she had to fill in her life, because the reality was, you know, Charles Vello, she may have thought he was possessed by a dark spirit and his brother, her brother killed him, but the reality was she was a single mother all of a sudden. Cad Dave Bell was in a marriage of his own with his own children, and he was still in that marriage

when Charles died. And here she was, all of a sudden, needing to take care of a child with very high needs by herself, who was not getting the education that he needed. There is some evidence to suggest that perhaps he was not getting the medication that he needed. So she had she had a real she had a real situation on her hands with caring for her son, and maybe was reading the scripture trying to understand how she could work her way out of that.

She came home one night and got out of her car and there was a man dressed in all black standing by her car, and all of a sudden started shooting at her. She starts screaming and calling, you know, Chad, come out here and help me. And she wrote on Facebook that she thought, this is just so weird that it must have been a paintball gun. It was just some prankster with a paintball gun that was just scaring

her and ran away and she screamed. Investigators now think that that was Alex Cox and that actually was not a paintball gun. That was a real gun. But you know, he missed, and Tammy kind of went back to the business of her life. She was working as a librarian at a local elementary school, and then on October nineteenth. There's really conflicting accounts, but go long and short of it is that Cammy Davill, somebody who was very great physical he how you know, this really perky, beloved woman

just died her. Chad has told conflicting stories about how that happened. In one account, he said, all of a sudden, she just dropped dead, and he called for their eldest son, and he came in the room and there was his mother, just half in the bed, half out of the bed, but clearly dead. Another account is that Chad said he woke up in the morning and she clearly just died in her sleep, which is, you know, not really normal

for a woman in her forties. So the unique thing about this, though, is that when the family, the DeBell family called the police and the medical examiner, they asked whether or not they wanted to have an autopsy if the family wanted one. That's very unique to Idaho. You don't necessarily have to have an autopsy if you don't want one, and they said no, they said, we don't

want to have an autopsy. And that was that. Tammy's body was taken to Utah, to the place where she and Chad grew up, and she was buried in a graveyard that Chad Dabel actually used to work at as a grave digger, and that seemed like it was the end for her by the end of her story.

just got married, and even they're very shocked. You know, most of Chad's children are grown, they're much older than than Laurie's children, but even there like, hang on, you just got married. Her mom just died, So they're very surprised by that. But ultimately, you know, they are their eldest kids who listen to their father as the leader of their family, and they accept her as their new stepmother.

her husband, Larry, just love him. There's just these beautiful videos of them singing with him, and just just the most loving grandparents and grandchild relationship. But the last time they've heard from JJ is on a FaceTime call in August of twenty nineteen. The call only lasts a few seconds, and then they don't hear from him after that, and they're very bothered by that, and they can't get a hold of Laurie. They can't get a hold of JJ. They don't know what's going on, and so Kay starts

trying to figure out what the heck happened. Laurie didn't attend the funeral for Charles. She seemed very you know, nonplussed over the death of her husband. And Kay is getting very suspicious and she starts poking around, you know, doing what anybody would do to try and understand how they can get to their grandson. And what she comes to understand is that Laurie has moved. That she's not in Arizona anymore. She's in Idaho, And it's so notable

the way that she figures it out. She somehow gets into Charles' Amazon account and sees that Laurie has been using the Amazon account to ship packages to Rexburg, Idaho, of all places, and she's thinking Rexburg, Idaho, Oh my god, Laurie moved. So she calls the police in Rexburg and says, look, I haven't heard from my grandson in months, and I'm so worried. Can you go to this address and do a welfare check. We think he you know, we haven't heard her him. He's missing in our minds, and that's

kind of when the story begins. The detectives go and knock on Laurie's door and they say, where's your son. You know we've heard he's missing, and Laurie lies to them, says, oh, don't worry about it. He's just visiting a friend in Arizona. I'll have them call. This whole mess will get figured out. Don't worry about it. They don't hear anything. In the

next day. They go back to her house to see if they can get eyes on JJ again, get an explanation for where he is, and then Laurie's gone and everyone has disappeared at this point, and they don't know what they're dealing with.

She gives this woman's name and her name is Melanie Gibb, and Melanie says, hang on a second, why are you pulling me into this? Where is JJ? I don't understand what's going on. So in December of twenty nineteen, she makes a call. She reaches Chad and Laurie. They put it on speaker phone and they have this very interesting phone call where Melanie gives saying where are you guys?

Where is JJ? What is going on here? And that pretty quickly turns into a conversation with Lorie getting very upset that she's being questioned, that her intentions, that her words are being questioned, and ultimately she doesn't say where they are They just say that they're really far away from Idaho, that JJ's safe, and that she shouldn't be questioning where Laurie's telling her that she says she's safe. She says the children are safe, and that's all that Melanie needs to know.

of twenty twenty that the police track her down. Her and Chad are in not a bunker somewhere, not as through Dusty, you know, survivalist compound. They're in a condo in Kawaii and Hawaii they're relaxing on the beach. They're essentially on vacation, and there is no evidence that the children have ever been there with them. Pretty quickly, you know, Laurie's they talk and the police talk to her. She still won't say where JJ and ty we are. And so they extradite her back to Ida, arrest her and

extradite her back to Idaho. They put her in a jail cell and the police are still searching for many months trying to figure out where these children are.

while we start searching. And they have dogs with them who start sniffing around the backyard. Not your traditional backyard, This is a very large open field, and pretty quickly those dogs hone in on two areas and the bodies of Tyler Ryan and Jjvallo are unearthed from two graves. They're dead, obviously, and they are in the backyard of Chad Daybell. That is when Chad Daybell gets arrested. And really this is when the case starts to roll forward.

Chad's in jail, Laurie's and they have two dead bodies. They have all of a sudden, are looking at Charles Vallow's death, They're looking at Tammy Davell's death. They're looking at all these different things that have happened around them and trying to understand how it comes together. So charges aren't even filed for another year after that. When they do,

they're very serious. Both Laurie and Chad are facing first degree murder charges conspiracy to commit murder, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for them.

But the status now is that it's running full steam ahead toward a trial and that trial will occur in Idaho and Voysey, Idaho in January of twenty twenty three, and that's where they'll face charges unless things get moved. I mean, it's a death penalty case. It's a big, big deal, and these cases tend to get moved now and then. But it's seeming like it's good. It's headed to trial in January.

work to do. I think that people don't like to talk about these stories because they start to think, well, oh, this is what you know. People are going to think this is what all Mormons are like. Obviously not true at all, but there has been a history of these fringe folks within in the culture of Mormonism that have have done some really horrible things, so that in itself isn't a cautionary tale. But I think that what is is this sort of reckoning that we're having nationwide with

extremism and what that looks like. What my reporting over the years has found is that, you know, I think for a long time, we all thought that that racism, that extremism would be very recognizable to us. You know, it would be somebody burning across or wearing a hood or you know, a swastika arm band and things like that,

and certainly is. But I think what this story shows us is that extremism can also look very normal and living normal lives, but really nurturing ideologies that are that are not only fringe, but dangerous and that's that's I think a very difficult and sobering thing for all of us to consider that extremism could be sitting next to us in the pews at church, and that's something that we need to be really vigilant about about understanding these

ideologies and where they come from, what their history is, and watching for it. And that's just that's not to patrol people's religious beliefs or their ideologies, but I think it's to really understand when people are talking about things like violence. You know, why are we as a society so numb to that? When Laurie Vallis said I was considering murdering my husband on that recording, you don't hear anybody say, hang on a second, what, like that's crazy?

They just keep listening. And I think that this is really a big meditation on our own tolerance and numbness to violence and why that is, and what we maybe as people need to understand about when violence is fanned by religious beliefs or it's something that's seen as very casual, what that might do in the end, Because there's some real victims here, real tangible victims that I think need to be thought about much further. Beyond the tabloid headlines.