Idaho "cult mom" Lori Vallow Daybell's only surviving child appeared in court to listen to a phone call in which he begged his mother to explain why she killed his siblings.
Vallow Daybell and her husband, Chad Daybell, are charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and grand theft in connection to the deaths of her children, Joshua "JJ" Vallow and Tylee Ryan, along with Tammy Daybell, who is the ex-wife of Chad Daybell. Her trial, separate from her husband's, began on April 11 in Boise, Idaho.
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JJ was seven years old, and Tylee was almost 17 when they were last seen alive in September 2019. Their bodies were discovered in June 2020. Tammy Daybell died in October 2019, two weeks after the indicted couple got married, with an autopsy concluding that she had been asphyxiated.
Colby Ryan, Vallow Daybell's oldest child, took the witness stand on Tuesday. Prosecutors played a phone call between himself and Vallow Daybell that happened after the children's bodies were discovered in a yard on Chad Daybell's property.
In the phone call, Colby Ryan asked his mother if she could keep hiding from him.
“I’m not hiding; why would you think I’m hiding?” Vallow Daybell said to Colby Ryan.
“Probably because you murdered my siblings! Maybe you should understand,” Colby Ryan continued, before his mother interrupted, saying, “I didn’t. I’m sorry you feel that way."
Vallow Daybell insisted for several minutes on the call that Colby Ryan could not know what happened to his siblings because he wasn't there, but that the children were happy and all would become clear in the afterlife, according to reports from within the courtroom via NBC News.
Her views on the afterlife have been pushed as a motive for the murders and a consistent theme in the trial, along with her beliefs in "zombie children." Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell believed the children were possessed by evil spirits and that the parents believed if they prayed, a possessed person would physically die, freeing their trapped souls from "limbo."
In the phone call, Colby Ryan told his mother he was praying for her and warned her against blasphemy. In response, Vallow Daybell laughed.
“I love you, I always will. One day you will see, and one day you will understand,” Vallow Daybell told her son in the call, adding that his dead siblings were “fine.”
"They love me, and they are fine ... You can go ahead and judge me all day long,” she said in the call.
Colby Ryan accused his mother of lying to him multiple times while his brother and sister were missing.
“To know that they’re gone, and you knew! And my phone is being texted by my little sister, who’s not even alive!” Ryan said, his voice rising. “My poor brother, who is the sweetest little kid ever — for what purpose? You tell me this is God’s will: For my whole family, including my stepfather, to be dead.”
Charles Vallow, Colby Ryan's stepfather, was shot and killed in Arizona in July 2019 by Vallow Daybell's brother, Alex Cox, who claimed it was self-defense. He was never charged with the death, dying from natural causes later that year. Vallow Daybell has been charged in connection with the murder, but the case has been paused while the Idaho trial plays out.
Colby Ryan cried on the stand before his mother while prosecutors showed him photos of his siblings and showed the jurors text messages regularly sent by Tylee Ryan after she had disappeared but before she was reported missing to show the change in punctuation, alleging that Vallow Daybell posed as her daughter to keep Colby Ryan from knowing she was dead.
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Prosecutors argued that Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell also killed the children and his ex-wife to collect Social Security benefits. The pair is accused of collecting nearly $6,000 a month from the kids' Social Security, and survivor benefits that they received from their fathers: Charles Vallow, father to JJ, and Joe Ryan, father to Colby and Tylee Ryan, who died in 2018.
Vallow Daybell never reported to the Social Security Administration that her children were missing, SSA special agent Mark Saari told jurors, despite federal rules requiring her to do so. JJ and Tylee each received about $3,800 a month, and Vallow Daybell was receiving $1,900 a month in benefits due to Charles Vallow's death. All payments were stopped in January 2020 after police declared the children were missing.