Lori Vallow Daybell, the "doomsday mom" who received multiple life sentences for the murders of her two children and romantic rival, gave her opening statement Monday in a separate trial over the death of her fourth husband.
Vallow Daybell, who is serving as her own counsel, presented a timeline of the events leading to the July 11, 2019, fatal shooting of Charles Vallow, 62, by her brother, Alex Cox, characterizing them as tragic but far from criminal or planned.
She said that the day Cox shot Vallow, her husband got into an argument with her daughter, Tylee Ryan, who was then 16, and threatened her with a bat.
Though the couple were estranged, Vallow had come to her residence in Chandler, Arizona, about 25 miles southeast of downtown Phoenix, to pick up his son, police said in a statement. According to the police account, an argument between Charles Vallow and Vallow Daybell started, and her brother intervened.
"Charles lifted up the bat to hit Tylee," she said Monday in her opening remarks. "Alex then intervened."
She said a struggle for the bat ended with her husband in control of the weapon. "Charles prevailed with the bat and began to come toward me," she said.
She said that "at some point" during her effort to flee, "Alex apparently retrieved his gun."
"Alex shot Charles in self-defense," she said.
But, she said, it wasn't until she returned from taking son Joshua "JJ" Vallow, 7, to school that she learned from police that Charles had died.
Vallow Daybell said she was interrogated by police and paired with a victim's advocate, "who was very kind to us."
A Maricopa County, Arizona, grand jury indicted Vallow Daybell, 51, in June 2021 on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. It was later upgraded to first-degree murder.
She has pleaded not guilty.
In her opening statement, she said there is no evidence that she and her brother planned the killing of her husband. She doesn't dispute that Cox fatally shot Vallow, but she said he did so in self-defense and in defense of her daughter.
What happened that summer morning, she suggested in her opening statement, was spontaneous family violence sparked by Charles' anger and problems with Tylee.
"A family tragedy is not a crime," she concluded.
Prosecutor Treena Kay said earlier in her opening statement that Vallow Daybell wanted Vallow dead "to better her life."
Kay accused Vallow Daybell of conspiring with Cox, who died later that year from a pulmonary embolism and was never charged.
"Lori ... used religion ... as justification to kill Charles Vallow," Kay said.
In the months before his death, Charles Vallow had filed for divorce and expressed concern for his safety. In a police body camera video from a January 2019 incident, he told officers that his wife had "lost her mind."
He said that he had returned home from a business trip and that she had taken his car and locked him out of their home. He told police that Vallow Daybell was dangerous and that she had threatened to kill him. The video showed an officer asking Charles Vallow how she posed a threat to their children, JJ and Tylee.
"I don’t know what she’s going to do with them," he said at the time. "Flee with them. Hurt them."
Police eventually told Charles Vallow that the situation wasn't criminal and that they weren't able to require a mental health check on her at the time. He was dead six months later.
Vallow Daybell was sentenced in 2023 to life in prison without the possibility of parole after she was convicted in the murders of JJ and Tylee, as well as conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Tammy Daybell.
At her trial, witnesses described how she believed some people were "zombies" or possessed by evil spirits, including JJ, Tylee and Charles Vallow.
The children disappeared in September 2019, sparking a monthlong search that ended when police found their remains on property belonging to Vallow Daybell's fifth and current husband, Chad Daybell.
Tammy Daybell was Chad Daybell's wife. She died in 2019, weeks before he married Vallow Daybell. In a trial last year, he was convicted in the deaths of Tammy Daybell, JJ and Tylee. He was sentenced to the death penalty.
In an exclusive interview with NBC's "Dateline," Vallow Daybell said she was falsely accused and convicted in the deaths of her children and Tammy Daybell. She said she and Chad Daybell would be exonerated because Jesus showed her the future, and they were not behind bars.
Asked about the Arizona trial, she said she felt "great" acting as her own attorney.
Separately, Vallow Daybell is charged with conspiring to kill Brandon Boudreaux, her niece's estranged husband. A trial date has not been set. She has pleaded not guilty.
