Who Was Lori Vallow's Brother Alex Cox From Netflix's New Docuseries 'Sins of Our Mother'?

“Sins of Our Mother,” a new Netflix docuseries, looks at new aspects of the Lori Vallow case by including new interviews and footage of the family

It’s a complicated case involving several deaths and murder accusations. Most infamously, Vallow has been accused of killing her two children Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7. The two siblings were discovered in 2020 on an Idaho property owned by Vallow’s fifth husband, doomsday religious author Chad Daybell.

Daybell, like Vallow, is facing charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with their deaths. They've pleaded not guilty in the case.

Both Vallow and Daybell also stand accused of having something to do with their former spouses’ deaths. Daybell is accused of killing his former wife Tammy Daybell, who was found dead in the former couple’s home in October 2019 — shortly before he wed Vallow. Meanwhile, Vallow has been indicted with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder for the 2019 killing of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Vallow and Daybell have likewise pleaded not guilty in those cases as well.

Vallow’s brother Alex Cox fatally shot Charles to death at an Arizona home where Lori and her then-living children were living following the couple's split. Cox had claimed that the killing was in self-defense.

Court documents, however, alleged that Cox waited 43 minutes to call 911 after shooting Charles. In addition, immediately following the shooting, Lori allegedly took a trip to Burger King while Charles lay dying.

But before Charles’ killing, Cox spoke about attacking another one of his sister’s husbands while doing standup. The footage was previously obtained by the tabloid Daily Mail.

“I'll confess to you guys — you ever had something that you knew was the right thing to do, but later on, it turns out it's a felony?” Cox said in the footage, taken at a 2010 stand-up event. He went on to detail how he attacked Lori’s third husband Joseph Ryan with a taser to the groin. Cox was convicted of aggravated assault in Travis County, Texas in 2007 for the attack and served three months as a result, Fox10 Phoenix reported. He also allegedly threatened to kill Ryan.

“While I was in jail, I also had a religious experience. I found Jesus,” he said during the standup routine.

As the docuseries shows, Cox believed that Joseph had molested Vallow’s children. Court records from 2008 obtained by Law&Crime reveal that a social worker reported that Tylee Ryan, then 5, alleged that her father molested her.

Ryan died in 2018 of an apparent heart attack but his death was reopened after the other charges against Lori Vallow surfaced, KTVB reported last year. Phoenix police concluded that he did indeed die of natural causes.

Cox was never charged with Charles’ death. He died the same year of an apparent pulmonary embolism.

“Alex was the oddball” Colby Vallow, one of Lori's surviving children, said in the docuseries. Cox’s ex-wife from the early 1990s had accused him of having an inappropriate relationship with Lori. She told a police detective in 2020 that “there was a lot of inappropriate sexual touching and things going on in the family, particularly between him and his sister Lori," EastIdahoNews.com reports.