‘Doomsday mum’ confronted by son in harrowing call: ‘You murdered my siblings’
The son of a woman accused of murdering her two other children told her ‘You ripped my heart out’ in a harrowing prison phone call shortly after she was arrested.
Lori Vallow – dubbed the ‘doomsday mum’ – is charged along with her partner Chad Daybell with killing Tylee Ryan, 16, and seven-year-old Joshua ‘JJ’ Vallow.
Her oldest son Colby Ryan confronted her about their deaths weeks after their bodies were found buried in Daybell’s eastern Idaho yard in June 2020.
Played to jurors during her trial, it begins with Ryan asking his mother: ‘Do you think you can hide from me?’
Vallow, 49, responds, ‘I’m not hiding. Why would you think I’m hiding?’ before Ryan says: ‘Probably because you murdered my siblings.’
Prosecutors claim Vallow and Daybell, 54, driven by warped beliefs in the second coming of Jesus Christ, demons, and the apocalypse, decided the children were ‘zombies’ and had them killed.
They are also accused of collecting life insurance money and nearly $6,000 a month from the kids’ social security and survivor benefits following the deaths of their fathers.
The pair are further charged with plotting to murder Daybell’s previous wife, Tammy, who died in October 2019 – just two weeks before they married in Hawaii.
Ryan, 27, is Vallow’s only surviving child. Reporters in court said she mouthed ‘Oh, my baby’ when he entered the room, refusing to meet her gaze.
He told jurors he had a happy childhood but broke down in tears on the stand when shown photos of Tylee and JJ.
The court has heard how the children were murdered around September 22, 2019.
JJ was found buried in a pet cemetery in Daybell’s yard, his arms and legs duct-taped and his body wrapped in a garbage bag. Tylee’s dismembered remains were found in a fire pit nearby.
Ryan described how, around the time they disappeared, he tried to Facetime and call his sister only to be rebuffed with messages ‘in a different language than how Tylee would talk and type’.
After being contacted by police over their whereabouts in November 2019, he said he asked Vallow what was going on and she would only tell him that they had moved.
Jurors heard he was unable to reach her again for months – until the jailhouse call played in court.
Pleading with her to tell him the truth about what happened to the children, he says: ‘My siblings, my whole family, my dad — everyone is gone except my mom and you’re in jail because of it.
‘You ripped my heart out. You ripped everyone’s heart out.’
He went on: ‘To know that they’re gone, and you knew! And my phone is being texted by my little sister, who’s not even alive.
‘My poor brother, who is the sweetest little kid ever — for what purpose? You tell me this is God’s will: For my whole family, including my stepfather, to be dead.’
Ryan told his mother: ‘I have prayed for you in my worst moments. I have prayed for my siblings who you swore to me were OK.
‘I thought I could trust you. I thought that you were a completely different person.’
Vallow can be heard laughing on the call, insisting her son could not understand what happened to his siblings.
‘I love you, I always will. One day you will see and one day you will understand,’ she said, adding the children were ‘fine’.
‘They love me and they are fine … You can go ahead and judge me all day long.’
Earlier in the trial, former friends of Vallow told jurors the couple claimed to be able to differentiate between people who were ‘light’ and others who were ‘dark’ and had been taken over by evil spirits.
They are said to have explained how the only way to free the souls of these dark ‘zombies’ was to kill the body.
Daybell is also charged in the triple murder case. Like Vallow, he has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. He is expected to stand trial several months from now.
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