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Chad Daybell's Neighbor Describes Seeing Large Bonfires At Home Where Kids' Bodies Were Found
The bodies of Lori Vallow's children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, were recently discovered after a months-long investigation.
A neighbor who lives across the street from Chad Daybell’s property, where the remains of Lori Vallow’s missing kids were found earlier this week, said he noticed several large bonfires at the home following the children’s disappearance.
"We noticed they were having a few bonfires that were kind of out of the ordinary," Matthew Price told Salt Lake City’s KNXV-TV this week. "They had a big bonfire last fall, and they had two or three big bonfires this spring."
The neighbor said he noticed that bonfires seemingly took place in the very same area of the Salem, Idaho home where investigators dug and recovered two sets of children’s human remains found on Tuesday. While investigators haven’t identified the remains, the family has confirmed that they are indeed Vallow’s missing children, Tylee Ryan, 17, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, who would have recently turned 8 years old. The children vanished in September and Vallow has been unable to produce them despite a court order to do so, sparking widespread worry about their well-being.
Price told KNXV-TV that nothing seemed off at the time, minus a somewhat strange interaction he had with Daybell and his late wife, Tammy Daybell, last fall when they came over to Price’s home to buy pumpkins.
"He was strange, he was different," Price, who attributed the behavior to an off day, told the outlet. "He didn't talk a lot, didn't make eye contact with us very much. Normally he would."
Just one week later, Tammy was dead. While it was first believed that she died in her sleep last October from apparent natural causes, officials had her body exhumed in December and now deem her death as possibly suspicious. Vallow’s ex-husband Charles Vallow also died under strange circumstances last year. He was shot to death by Vallow's brother, Alex Cox, last summer. Cox claimed the shooting was in self-defense, then died in December from an apparent blood clot.
Daybell was charged this week with two counts of destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Oxygen.com.
The first count relates to alleged concealment of evidence which occurred between September 8, 2019 and Tuesday. Tylee has been missing since Sept. 8. The second count pertains to alleged evidence concealment which occurred sometime between Sept. 22 and Tuesday. J.J. has been missing since Sept. 24.
A bail for Daybell, who has not yet entered a plea to the charges, was set at $1 million. Vallow — sometimes referred to as Lori Daybell or Lori Vallow Daybell — has been in custody since her February arrest in Kauai after she failed to prove to a court that her children were OK. While she was initially booked on a $5 million bond for felony child abandonment, misdemeanor resisting and obstructing an officer, solicitation of a crime and contempt of court charges, her bond was later reduced to $1 million.
