The Cult of Lori Vallow Daybell

For the past three years, the mysteries surrounding Lori Vallow Daybell and her family have been a surge of confusion. The case is widely recognized, nationally and locally, and to this day, still awaiting a proper trial to finally sentence Lori and Chad Daybell. The trial has been postponed twice now and people around the country are eager to know what happens next. With what has been disclosed- Tylee Ryan (Lori’s biological daughter) and JJ Vallows’ (Lori’s adopted son) dismembered bodies dug up from Chad’s property, along with many other deaths in the family- people can assume what truly happened. This case, however, is not a simple serial killing event; evidence alludes to the whole situation being a cult. Everything went downhill when Chad and Lori became acquainted at an LDS conference in St. George Utah where Lori witnessed Chad’s speech talking about his newly released book titled, “Living on the Edge of Heaven.” This book details events of Chad’s near death experience where he allegedly travells into another dimension. 

After Lori and Chad became friends and eventually lovers, they began to develop a belief system that contradicted LDS teachings. Among them was the belief that people could be possessed by evil spirits, referred to as “zombies” by the couple. Fully believing in this, they attempt to justify the killings of the children and Chad’s wife, who died mysteriously around the same time Chad and Lori began hanging out together. 

The information about the cult practices and the couples beliefs were revealed in the Netflix documentary titled “The Sins of Our Mother.” Lori and Chad’s beliefs are based on a numbering system; they would number everyone they knew with a scale of light to dark. The farther dark the person was, Lori and Chad believed the person had an evil spirit in them, therefore making them a zombie in their eyes. To extract the evil spirit, they believed they had to kill the person. With the evidence presented to the public- the documentary and coverage from EastIdahoNews- people around the country have been able to put the pieces together to figure out the true story, so why wait with the long awaited trial? Why not put Lori and Chad in their rightful place of prison? Only time will tell with this long, confusing, and unique case.