The autistic 7-year-old son of “Doomsday Mom” Lori Vallow Daybell was asphyxiated with a plastic bag and duct tape over his mouth, according to chilling new testimony revealing his cause of death Wednesday.
Little J.J. Vallow had scratch marks on his neck and bruises on his wrists and ankles where he was bound by duct tape, forensic pathologist Dr. Garth Warren said during Vallow Daybell’s Idaho murder trial.
“Was J.J. trying to get the bag off his head? It could be scratch marks of him trying to get it off his head,” Warren said on the stand, according to KTVB.
The child’s autopsy was conducted two days after the remains of J.J. and his 16-year-old sister, Tylee Ryan, were found buried on the property of Chad Daybell, Vallow Daybell’s fifth husband, in June 2020.
Tylee’s cause of death was undetermined, and her autopsy proved to be a grisly challenge, said Warren.
“The vast majority of the time when I perform an autopsy, I get an entire body and there’s a process we go through. Tylee’s case was different. Her remains were received in three separate sealed bags,” he said, according to the East Idaho News.
Prosecutors have explained how Tylee’s body was so dismembered and burned investigators weren’t initally sure they had found a body, until they uncovered a skull under a melted plastic bucket.
Warren said he searched the remains as best he could for bullets and knife fragments but didn’t find any, and ultimately ruled her death a “homicide by unspecified means.”
Vallow Daybell, 49, is being tried in connection to the murders of her children and Daybell’s ex-wife, Tammy. Prosecutors say she was motivated to kill them by her belief in a “doomsday” religious cult, along with “money, power and sex.” She has pleaded not guity to the crimes.
During the weeks-long trial, family members of Vallow Daybell have testified she didn’t want to raise J.J. and instead became obsessed with religion and her new romance with Daybell.
The couple — who believe the end is nigh and Christ will return — collected life insurance money and social security cash related to the three deaths, prosecutors charged.
Tammy’s cause of death was also asphyxiation, Fremont County Prosecuting Attorney Lindsey Blake revealed during opening statements.
Vallow Daybell was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of conspiracy in the deaths along with grand theft for collecting government benefits on behalf of her children after they were killed.
Daybell was also charged in connection with the deaths of Tylee, J.J. and Tammy, and will be tried separately.