Lori Vallow trial: pathologist found 7-year-old JJ had alcohol and a date rape drug in his body when he was killed
John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register via AP, Pool, File
- JJ Vallow died from asphyxiation while a plastic bag was over his head, a pathologist testified.
- He testified during Lori Vallow's Idaho trial that there was date rape drug in JJ's system.
- Vallow is accused of conspiring with her 5th husband to kill JJ, his teenage sister, and her husband's late wife.
BOISE, Idaho — JJ Vallow, the 7-year-old Idaho boy allegedly killed by his mother, Lori Vallow, had alcohol and a chemical known as a "date rape drug" in his system when he died, a forensic pathologist testified on Wednesday.
Garth Warren, who conducts autopsies in Ada County, Idaho, revealed JJ's cause of death to an Ada County jury for the first time.
"Asphyxia by plastic bag to the head and duct tape over the mouth," Warren said on the stand.
Warren autopsied JJ on June 11, 2020, two days after his remains were found on the Salem, Idaho property of Chad Daybell,a doomsday prepper and preacher who became Lori Vallow's fifth husband in late 2019.
The couple is accused of conspiring that autumn in the murders of the youngest two of Vallow's three children as well as Daybell's wife of 28 years. The woman, Tammy Daybell, was also asphyxiated, prosecutors say.
Vallow is accused separately in Arizona for the summer 2019 murder of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow.
Warren said liver samples showed that in JJ's system were "ethanol alcohol," caffeine, theobromine — which is common in cocoa and tea— and gamma-hydroxybutyric acid. GHB, a sedative, can treat epilepsy and is commonly called a "date rape drug" and "liquid ecstasy."
Warren testified that GHB can appear naturally in human systems and that he could not determine by examining the decomposing body whether JJ had been drugged.
"There was no way for me to tell for sure whether this is naturally occurring product," he said, "or if JJ had been given GHB."
He did not say how the alcohol may have entered JJ's system.
Warren also testified to finding scratches on JJ's neck that made him suspicious. The boy's head had been wrapped in multiple layers of plastic bags and his forearms and ankles were wrapped in duct tape.
"That's a red flag," he said. "Was JJ trying to get the bag off his head?"
Warren also said that he determined that Tylee Ryan's cause of death was "homicide by unspecified means." He testified that her remains had been too thoroughly burned and mutilated for him to determine anything more specific."The cause of death was by homicide but I just can't pinpoint what that was," he said.
Skeletal muscle tissue samples showed that Tylee had in her system ibuprofen, iron, and carbon monoxide. He said the small amount of carbon monoxide suggested that she was dead before she was set on fire.
Earlier, FBI Special Agent Steve Daniels testified about unearthing the remains of JJ and his teenage sister, Tylee, in back of Daybell's home in June 2020.
His testimony was accompanied by gruesome images of JJ's plastic-wrapped corpse in a grave near a pond. Tylee's remains, which were found in a melted green plastic bucket in the Daybell pet cemetery, were also displayed.
"Such a big contrast for us as a team going from JJ's remains to Tylee's melted, charred mass," Daniels said.
Daniels said that with JJ was buried under fitted rocks and wooden planks, in a mound so there would be no land depression after the body rotted.
He said he had never in his 25-year career seen anyone take such care to hide an illicit grave.
"Someone's taken the most effort to bury these remains," he said.
On Wednesday, Judge Steven Boyce prohibited the public from seeing photographs of JJ's autopsy, saying there were "prejudicial and inflammatory" because of their "graphic nature." Judge Boyce allowed jurors and attorneys to see them on their personal monitors.
Vallow, dressed in a black jacket and flowing white shirt, shook her head and did not look at her monitor.
One of her lawyers rubbed his eyes.
When similar images were publicly shown the first week of the trial, Vallow asked that she be recused for her "mental health." Boyce declined.