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Lori Vallow Committed To Mental Health Facility As Chad Daybell Pleads Not Guilty To Killings
A judge has ordered Lori Vallow to enter a mental health facility as Chad Daybell denies killing her kids and his former wife in an Idaho courtroom.
Chad Daybell has told an Idaho court he is innocent of killing his former wife and the children of his most recent wife, Lori Vallow, who has now been sent to a mental health facility.
Daybell pleaded not guilty to all nine charges brought against him in court on Wednesday, the East Idaho News reports. The 52-year-old author of doomsday books entered a not guilty plea for first-degree murder charges related to the death of his first wife Tammy Daybell, who died in her sleep in 2019. He also pleaded not guilty for the death of Vallow’s two children — 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow — Lori’s two children. Authorities found the kids’ bodies on Daybell’s property in 2020.
Three of Daybell’s five children from his marriage to Tammy Daybell were present during the pleas. A sibling of Tylee and JJ was also present.
On Tuesday, Vallow was sent to a mental health facility by a judge, NBC News reports. she had been declared mentally unfit to stand trial back in May. Vallow will enter the care of the Department of Health and Welfare to undergo treatment to restore her mental competency starting on Thursday.
The couple were both indicted last month on first-degree murder charges and other counts in the deaths of Lori’s two children, who were last seen alive in 2019. In divorce paperwork filed in 2019 and obtained by the Arizona Republic in 2020, Lori Vallow’s former husband, Charles Vallow — who was shot and killed last year under strange circumstances — claimed that Lori told him she was "a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ's second coming in July 2020.”
Chad Daybell wrote about apocalyptic visions in his 2007 doomsday book, “The Great Gathering.”
The couple is accused of adopting an unorthodox set of religious beliefs before the 2019 disappearance of Vallow’s children. Vallow’s friend, Melanie Gibb, told investigators that Vallow had become convinced that many of her family members — including JJ and Tylee — had become “zombies,” according to a probable cause statement obtained by Oxygen.com.
Daybell is due back in court on June 23. Lori Vallow can be held for up to 90 days to restore her competency. If that is accomplished, court proceedings will resume as normal. If not, she will continue undergoing mental health treatment.
