•Greenthumb Þ279•

Cops found this mom tanning by a pool in Hawaii and handed her a court order: bring your kids back in 5 days. Her 7-year-old son hadn’t been seen in four months. Neither had her 16-year-old daughter. She read it in her bikini, glanced up at the cop and never brought them back: She knew exactly where they were. That June police dug up her new husband’s backyard. Her son was by the pond, wrapped in plastic. Her daughter was in the family’s “pet cemetery.” The first time police asked about the boy, she said he was at the movies watching Frozen 2: That was November 2019 in Rexburg, Idaho. JJ, who had autism, hadn’t been seen for two months. Lori Vallow told the officers he was with a friend in Arizona, and that her daughter Tylee was studying at BYU-Idaho. The school had never heard of Tylee. As soon as the police left, Lori called the friend and asked her to send a random photo of some kids. The next day her apartment was empty. By then three people around her were already dead or nearly so. In July her husband Charles was shot dead by her brother, who said it was self-defense. In October someone fired at the ex-husband of her niece. That same month Tammy Daybell, wife of doomsday author Chad Daybell, was found dead. It was ruled natural, until an exhumation showed she had been asphyxiated. Two weeks after Tammy died, Lori married Chad in Hawaii. They believed dark spirits could take over a person and turn them into a “zombie,” and that killing that person was the only way out. Lori believed she was a goddess chosen to lead the survivors of the apocalypse. Prosecutors said the money mattered too: life insurance and her kids’ Social Security benefits. JJ had been killed with a plastic bag and duct tape. Tylee’s remains were so damaged that her cause of death couldn’t even be determined. In 2023 a jury convicted Lori of murdering both of her children and conspiring to kill Tammy. She got life without parole. Before the judge read the sentence, she stood up and said: “Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case.” Chad was sentenced to death. In the video below is the police bodycam from January 2020. Lori and Chad are sitting by the pool in Kauai in their swimsuits, reading the order to bring her kids back. Both children had already been dead for about four months. Her husband, her two kids and her new husband’s wife, all dead within a year. Who should have stopped her first?