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Speaker 4: You are now listening to true Murder the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
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Speaker 3: Good Evening. When the Moon Turns The Blood examines the
Speaker 3: culture of end Time's paranoia in a trail of mysterious
Speaker 3: deaths surrounding former beauty queen Lori Vallo and her husband,
Speaker 3: Gravedigger turns Doomsday novelist Chad Davell. When police in Rexburg, Idaho,
Speaker 3: perform a wellness check on seven year old JJ Valo
Speaker 3: and his sister, sixteen year old Tyleee Ryan, both children
Speaker 3: are nowhere to be found. Their mother, Lori Valo, gives
Speaker 3: a phony explanation, and when officers return the following day
Speaker 3: with a search warrant, she too is gone. As the
Speaker 3: police begin to close in a larger web of mystery, murder, fanaticism,
Speaker 3: and deceit begins to unravel. Valo's case is sinuously complex.
Speaker 3: As investigators prod further, they find the accused black widow
Speaker 3: has an unusual number of bodies piling up around her.
Speaker 3: When the Moon Turns to Blood tells the gripping story
Speaker 3: of extreme beliefs, snake oil profits, and explores the question
Speaker 3: if it feels like the world is ending, how are
Speaker 3: people supposed to act? The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 3: evening is When the Moon Turns to Blood Lori Valo,
Speaker 3: Chad Dabell, and A story of murder, Wild faith and
Speaker 3: End Times with my special guest and author, Leah Saudile.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 3: this interview. Leah Satilli, Thanks for having me, Thank you
Speaker 3: so much, and congratulations. As I mentioned, on this incredible book.
Speaker 3: First off, just tell us briefly how you came to
Speaker 3: want to write this story, and we're in a position
Speaker 3: to write this book.
Speaker 5: Sure. So in December twenty nineteen, I started to hear
Speaker 5: about the case of Lorie Valo and Chad davel. This
Speaker 5: was occurring in Idaho. I'm a reporter that spends most
Speaker 5: of my time writing about the northwestern United States, and
Speaker 5: what really caught my attention beyond the fact that Laurie
Speaker 5: and her husband Chad were missing and her children were missing,
Speaker 5: was that someone said that they thought that it might
Speaker 5: have to do with her strange cult like religious beliefs,
Speaker 5: that their disappearance maybe could be attributed to some sort
Speaker 5: of ideology that she held, And that kind of raised
Speaker 5: my flag because I write predominantly about extremism, political and
Speaker 5: religious extremism, and I knew that Laurie Vallo is a
Speaker 5: member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
Speaker 5: and I had written some about the fringes of the church.
Speaker 5: So it seemed like there might be some knowledge that
Speaker 5: I had that was familiar to me. And it turned
Speaker 5: out I was right. There were things about Lorie Vallo's
Speaker 5: story and about the things that Chad Davel wrote about
Speaker 5: that had come up before in my own reporting.
Speaker 3: So tell us how you start the book and what
Speaker 3: story you tell in the beginning.
Speaker 5: So I tell a story in the beginning of how
Speaker 5: when I was a young reporter, I worked in the
Speaker 5: city of Spokane, Washington, and a really horrific case of
Speaker 5: murder happened in our coverage zone involving a little girl
Speaker 5: named Shasta Groney. It was a terrifying case that her
Speaker 5: family had been murdered and her and her brother were
Speaker 5: kidnapped and for months, no one knew where they were.
Speaker 5: And it was a really formative time in my life.
Speaker 5: I was becoming a reporter. I was learning how to
Speaker 5: do that job, which so much of it is done
Speaker 5: on the job, learning how to do the work of journalism,
Speaker 5: and that case really stuck with me because it seemed
Speaker 5: like they would never be found again. And then in
Speaker 5: July two thousand and five, Shastergroni was found. She was
Speaker 5: found with the killer of her family in a diner
Speaker 5: in a small North Idaho town, and the story that
Speaker 5: unfolded was worse than anyone could imagine. It was just
Speaker 5: this horrific case of abuse and you know, mind control
Speaker 5: and murder, and it was just more horrible than anyone
Speaker 5: else could imagine that it would be. And that case
Speaker 5: really stuck with me. And at the time, I really
Speaker 5: just didn't have the ability to report on something like that,
Speaker 5: but I did feel like I needed to know how
Speaker 5: to report on something terrible because it would inevitably happen again.
Speaker 5: And so the case of Lori Vallo and Chad Dabel
Speaker 5: very quickly reminded me of that case. In the same
Speaker 5: way that there were two missing children, their faces were
Speaker 5: being shown everywhere on television. No one had any idea
Speaker 5: where they were. And it also happened in Idaho, a
Speaker 5: very different part of Idaho. So I start the book
Speaker 5: with that story, kind of giving that background.
Speaker 3: Now you say that it was many years later and
Speaker 3: you were working writing about other things when the faces
Speaker 3: of two children appeared on your screen. Tell us about
Speaker 3: this incident, right.
Speaker 5: So, I know about fifteen years elapsed between when the
Speaker 5: affair with Shastagrony happened and when the case of Lori
Speaker 5: Valo and Chad Dabel came into my life. In that time,
Speaker 5: I started to specialize writing on far right extremism, and
Speaker 5: particularly in the United States West. That work has entailed
Speaker 5: writing about preppers and survivalists, writing militia groups, anti government groups,
Speaker 5: sovereign citizens, all kinds of people that make up the
Speaker 5: very unique ecosystem of the far right in the Western
Speaker 5: United States. And in that work I started writing more
Speaker 5: about religious extremism, particularly during the COVID nineteen pandemic. There
Speaker 5: were different evangelical preachers that I was writing about that
Speaker 5: were pushing using COVID to push far right ideologies. So
Speaker 5: I saw these, you know, in my regular news cycle
Speaker 5: of read reading the headlines, I saw these two photographs
Speaker 5: of these two children pop up in my feed and
Speaker 5: those children were JJ Valo and Tyler Ryan Lori Valo's children,
Speaker 5: And I pretty quickly got to work and realized that
Speaker 5: it was something that was well within my expertise, but
Speaker 5: a story that I felt like wasn't being told completely.
Speaker 3: So in attempting to write that completely, you say that
Speaker 3: it is vital to understand the workings of the Latter
Speaker 3: day Saints and what they believe, and the Book of
Speaker 3: Revelation is important to understand this story as well, So
Speaker 3: tell us about.
Speaker 5: That, sure, what I you know, I grew up in Oregon,
Speaker 5: so I grew up in firmly in the Western United
Speaker 5: States and have lived my whole life in the Western
Speaker 5: United States. And I knew Mormons my whole life. And
Speaker 5: when I started writing that extremism, I would hear about
Speaker 5: the way that Mormons were characterized, and it was very
Speaker 5: different from the people that I knew. You Know, what
Speaker 5: I came to learn was that I grew up around
Speaker 5: people who are very mainstream Mormons, but that there is
Speaker 5: this extremist fringe of the church that has birthed many
Speaker 5: splinter sects, many fundamentalist movements that really don't resemble at
Speaker 5: all what the mainstream Mormon churches. And that's that's what
Speaker 5: this book gets into. So I felt like to understand
Speaker 5: Chad and Laurie's Mormon belief systems, you have to understand
Speaker 5: mainstream Mormonism. That is a very recent religion, you know,
Speaker 5: only about two hundred years old, and it is firmly
Speaker 5: grounded in a part of the Bible, the Book of Revelation.
Speaker 5: The Book of Revelation is a very I mean, it's
Speaker 5: a fascinating book of the Bible in that you know,
Speaker 5: I like to say that that if the Book of
Speaker 5: Revelation were a modern day movie, it would be directed
Speaker 5: by Michael Bay. You know, it's got explosions and blood,
Speaker 5: you know, falling from the sky and oceans turning red
Speaker 5: and people's skin melting off. And the Book of Revelation
Speaker 5: is about the end, the end of days, and the
Speaker 5: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints that that
Speaker 5: meme Latter Day suggests the end and times. Having said that,
Speaker 5: the Mormon religion is very much about talking and thinking
Speaker 5: about these you know, what could happen, and preparing for
Speaker 5: what could be a theoretical end of the world and
Speaker 5: living in a wholesome enough way to then be able
Speaker 5: to go into the celestial Kingdom, which is their belief
Speaker 5: about heaven, to kind of reduce it down and to
Speaker 5: you know, be good citizens and good stewards, and to
Speaker 5: have a family that will then follow you into the
Speaker 5: next life. So that I really get into the Book
Speaker 5: of Revelation in the in the book to underso a
Speaker 5: reader can understand the foundation of the LDS religion, but
Speaker 5: also understand how many many millenarian groups, which are otherwise
Speaker 5: known as cults by the public, how those groups have
Speaker 5: also used the Book of Revelation to really scare people
Speaker 5: into submission. So I talk a lot about how there
Speaker 5: have been you know, breakaway LDS sects who have used
Speaker 5: the Book of Revelation in that way. There have been
Speaker 5: you know, Charles Manson, the famous American serial killer who
Speaker 5: got people to do his bidding for him, very much
Speaker 5: invigorated by the Book of Revelation. So I just want
Speaker 5: to be really clear that what Laurie Vallo and Chad
Speaker 5: dabol believe is not mainstream Mormonism. They believe themselves to
Speaker 5: be a part of the mainstream Mormon Church. But they
Speaker 5: were entertaining this fringe ideologies that have existed at the
Speaker 5: edges of the church for a long time that the
Speaker 5: mainstream church continually says, do not entertain these ideas, these
Speaker 5: are not what we believe. But they very much were
Speaker 5: doing that.
Speaker 3: The book title is when the Moon turns to Blood
Speaker 3: tell us its relation this term in the Book of Revelations.
Speaker 5: So there are several things that happen in the Book
Speaker 5: of Revelations. There's sort of this gradual unfolding of everything
Speaker 5: in the landscape changing in a way that is not
Speaker 5: beneficial to humans, that doesn't nurture human life anymore. So,
Speaker 5: like I said, before rivers turn from water into blood,
Speaker 5: the bounty from all the trees that humans need to survive,
Speaker 5: to eat and to nourish themselves falls away in rots.
Speaker 5: And the moon turns to red. It goes red, it
Speaker 5: turns to blood. And this was something that the prophet
Speaker 5: and founder of the ld S Church, Joseph Smith, he
Speaker 5: wrote about in his foundational documents for the church, that
Speaker 5: the moon turns to blood. The title is also a
Speaker 5: riff on a very fringe piece of LDS literature called
Speaker 5: and the Moonshell Turned to Blood, and that is seen
Speaker 5: as a very scary book by a lot of people.
Speaker 5: It was something that predicted apocalypse, It predicted the fall
Speaker 5: of humanity, and it was really kind of the sort
Speaker 5: of book that would be found in households maybe in
Speaker 5: the seventies and eighties, where people really entertained these fringe
Speaker 5: ideas that they were going to be the survivors of
Speaker 5: the apocalypse and the one the chosen ones that would
Speaker 5: weather that storm.
Speaker 3: What part of explaining that part of theld Yes philosophy
Speaker 3: with this personal relationship with God and a more special
Speaker 3: sort of communication with God.
Speaker 5: So one big thing that's very makes you Mormonism very
Speaker 5: unique and special in a way is that the leaders
Speaker 5: of the church teach people that you can receive revelation
Speaker 5: from God. This, I think is a way of saying
Speaker 5: that you will have a very unique and personal relationship
Speaker 5: to God. Maybe if you feel like you can talk
Speaker 5: to God. I think that's something that could be shared
Speaker 5: in many ways by lots of Christians. And what the
Speaker 5: Eldas Church says is that you may receive revelation from
Speaker 5: God that feels like very firm direction about maybe what
Speaker 5: you should do or a problem you're having. But they're
Speaker 5: very clear to say, if you receive revelation from God,
Speaker 5: go ahead and keep it to yourself. Maybe share it
Speaker 5: with your wife, maybe share it with your your you know,
Speaker 5: your partner, your children. But that revelation should not walk
Speaker 5: out the front door, because when it does and you
Speaker 5: start to say I'm speaking to God, then you're subverting
Speaker 5: really the hierarchy, hierarchical structure of the LDS Church, because
Speaker 5: the way it works is that the LDS leadership is
Speaker 5: like a pyramid. So at the very very top of
Speaker 5: that pyramid is one man, the President of the LDS Church,
Speaker 5: and that president is seen as the living, breathing prophet,
Speaker 5: the only person within Mormonism that has a direct line
Speaker 5: to God and the only person that's allowed to receive
Speaker 5: prophecy and revelation for the entire church. So when you
Speaker 5: know a man in a small town in Utah starts
Speaker 5: to say I'm receiving revelation and begins publishing that, as
Speaker 5: Chad Dabelt started to do with his books, that is
Speaker 5: that is seen as very controversial. It can be even
Speaker 5: grounds if it goes too far for excommunication. And this
Speaker 5: is one very unique aspect of Mormonism. This receiving of
Speaker 5: revelation that is makes it a vibrant faith, that makes
Speaker 5: it a very attractive faith to people, but it also
Speaker 5: makes it a little bit of a tough thing to
Speaker 5: keep in the bed because some people believe that they
Speaker 5: receive revelation that affects a lot of people. They think
Speaker 5: that they see, you know, in this case, that the
Speaker 5: world could collapse and they're a receiving direction on how
Speaker 5: to weather that. And I talk about in the book
Speaker 5: that if you believe you're receiving revelation like that, you
Speaker 5: might take a chance and take that out the front
Speaker 5: door to let other people know.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the early life of Chad Dabell and
Speaker 3: the influence from his parents and the church itself, Barry
Speaker 3: Cox and his wife, and talk about his siblings and
Speaker 3: their life growing up.
Speaker 5: Sure, do you want me to talk about Chad Dabell
Speaker 5: or Lori Valo because the Coxes are Lori's family.
Speaker 3: Oh, pardon me, sorry, talk about the day Bell's pardon me?
Speaker 5: Sure? So. Chad Daybell grew up in a small town
Speaker 5: south of Salt Lake City, about forty five minutes away
Speaker 5: called Springville, Utah. Raised in a very traditional Mormon family,
Speaker 5: a few brothers and his sister parents who were very religious.
Speaker 5: You know, his dad at one point was a bishop
Speaker 5: in their local ward. He grew up, you know, really
Speaker 5: being a by all means, a very normal Mormon person.
Speaker 5: You have to understand, in some of these towns in
Speaker 5: Utah they are like ninety ninety five percent LDS, so
Speaker 5: so really Chad Dabel's community was the LDS community, and
Speaker 5: you know, he went on to kind of go on
Speaker 5: the track that a lot of LDS men do. He
Speaker 5: went to Brigham Young University in Provo, which is just
Speaker 5: a few minutes north of where he grew up. That
Speaker 5: is the church church run university. He worked at the
Speaker 5: student paper there. He went on a mission in New Jersey,
Speaker 5: which is a very traditional thing for a Mormon man
Speaker 5: to do. The church dispatches missionaries all over the world
Speaker 5: to sort of spread the gospel of Mormonism, and he
Speaker 5: did that. He came back home to Springdale, Utah. He
Speaker 5: met a woman that also went to his high school
Speaker 5: named Tammy. They were married, they were married in a
Speaker 5: Mormon temple, and they started to have children. So by
Speaker 5: all means, you know, for much of his life. It
Speaker 5: was very you know, very typical, very kind of by
Speaker 5: the book when it comes to LDS folks, you start
Speaker 5: to see a turn at a certain point when Chad
Speaker 5: started to write his own fiction, which was a dream
Speaker 5: of his. He started to publish fictional books that really
Speaker 5: dealt in kind of started to dabble in a little
Speaker 5: bit more in this fringe, in this sort of scary
Speaker 5: apocalyptic version of events, and book by book he started
Speaker 5: to say, you know, these things that I'm talking about
Speaker 5: seem to be happening. And then you know, in the
Speaker 5: next book he would start to kind of say, I
Speaker 5: don't think it's any accident. I think I'm starting to
Speaker 5: kind of predict these things. And then of course he
Speaker 5: starts to write about his own near death experiences, which
Speaker 5: is sort of this own subculture that I discovered in
Speaker 5: the reporting of this book that's also really controversial in
Speaker 5: the church, which is people who believe that they have
Speaker 5: died and come back to life. And you'll often see
Speaker 5: within the Ldias Church this authors who say, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm bringing back knowledge that we need to know. I
Speaker 5: can see beyond the veil, I can speak to our ancestors,
Speaker 5: and I can predict what might happen. And again this
Speaker 5: is very controversial, but despite the controversy, these near death
Speaker 5: experience authors sell a lot of books. They're very popular
Speaker 5: within Mormon circles, and I think Chaddabel saw an opportunity there,
Speaker 5: potentially a financial opportunity to start pushing himself as a
Speaker 5: near death experienced survivor somebody who could see beyond the
Speaker 5: veil and who should be listened to.
Speaker 3: The LDS has a history of, I would say, people
Speaker 3: speaking about the end times, and not very much like
Speaker 3: Christians would say this was very urgent talk. Was that
Speaker 3: in the incorporation into his novels For Chad Dabel, it's essential.
Speaker 5: I don't think Chad Dabel would have been a novelist
Speaker 5: about this sort of surmising of what the end times
Speaker 5: could look like, what they might, you know, the things
Speaker 5: that might occur before they happen. It's something that's been
Speaker 5: very difficult for the LDS Church to sort of reconcile
Speaker 5: because when you've firmly ground your faith in this idea
Speaker 5: that the end times could come, that really can scare people.
Speaker 5: And within the last few years, church leadership, the apostles
Speaker 5: of the church have given speeches where they said, look,
Speaker 5: you should go have children, have grandchildren, get a college education,
Speaker 5: buy a house, go you to do the things you
Speaker 5: want to do. Take your focus off of this idea
Speaker 5: that doom and gloom are coming for you. And it's
Speaker 5: a message that was heard by the majority of the
Speaker 5: LDS church. But again, this fringe element, the sort of
Speaker 5: survivalist prepper, near death experience fringe of the church, it's
Speaker 5: really an extremists who kind of didn't want to hear it.
Speaker 5: And that's something that we start to see with Chad's writing,
Speaker 5: with his starting to get more and more cozy with
Speaker 5: other near death experience authors, to start going and speaking
Speaker 5: on the prepper circuit and attending these conferences and hosting
Speaker 5: podcasts we're talking about what the end times might look like.
Speaker 5: That really really starts to escalate more and it really
Speaker 5: starts to put distance between Chad Dabel's traditional Mormon upbringing
Speaker 5: and where he ended up where he is now.
Speaker 3: You talk about him also being censored and spoken to
Speaker 3: by the officials at LDS for some of the things
Speaker 3: that he writes about, but also tell us about what
Speaker 3: marriage really entails in LDS.
Speaker 5: So marriage is one of the things that is very
Speaker 5: central to the to the LDS Faith, marriage and marriage
Speaker 5: meaning between a man and a woman. The LDS Faith
Speaker 5: has a major issue on its hands when it comes
Speaker 5: to same sex relationships. It's something that is not seen
Speaker 5: as appropriate in the church and is really really a
Speaker 5: point of controversy right now. So in it's uh, I
Speaker 5: believe nineteen ninety five Proclamation to the World on Family,
Speaker 5: the Church is very clear that that the family is
Speaker 5: the center of the faith. It is the way the
Speaker 5: faith continues. It is the way you know, individuals, you know,
Speaker 5: you have a family, you have children, that doesn't just
Speaker 5: end on this this life, that that transcends into the
Speaker 5: eternal life, into the celestial kingdom. So family, family is
Speaker 5: really everything. And you know, as we see in the
Speaker 5: story that I wrote that that was also the center
Speaker 5: of Lori Valo's life. Was this sort of continual search
Speaker 5: for a husband that would that would work, for a
Speaker 5: marriage that would work, to have children, and to kind
Speaker 5: of you know lead you see sort of a desperation
Speaker 5: on both of their parts just to really lead that
Speaker 5: mainstream Mormon life, and really they both did to an extent,
Speaker 5: but I believe it sort of acted as a mask
Speaker 5: for their more nefarious intentions and extremist ideologies.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Barry Cox and her father and Janice
Speaker 3: Connor and the how Lorivallo grew up in.
Speaker 5: Her So, Laurie Vallo grew up in a very different
Speaker 5: place than Chad day Bell. Whereas he grew up kind
Speaker 5: of in the you know, the bread basket, I guess
Speaker 5: you could say, of the Ildia's Church right there in Utah.
Speaker 5: Laurie Vallo grew up in Rialto, California, in the San
Speaker 5: Bernardino area, very much a California girl, living in a
Speaker 5: beautiful modern home in a planned kind of country club community.
Speaker 5: And she was the daughter of Barry Cox and Janice Connor,
Speaker 5: who met when they were young in high school. Barry
Speaker 5: Cox was somebody who was seen as a little bit
Speaker 5: of a paragon of the community. He ran for city
Speaker 5: council peace old life insurance policies through a church, Mormon
Speaker 5: church owned company, and again they had a vied for
Speaker 5: the traditional Mormon family. They got married, they had children,
Speaker 5: He had a good job. Janice the mother, did what
Speaker 5: Eldia's mothers are expected to do. She was a nurturer.
Speaker 5: She'd stayed home and they had they had several children. Uh.
Speaker 5: Laurie grew up, you know, going to uh she was
Speaker 5: a softball player, she became a cheerleader. She was seen
Speaker 5: as very beautiful, very popular in high school, but also
Speaker 5: somebody who was really kind.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: People told me stories about how she would drive everyone
Speaker 5: to lunch in her car. They'd all go to Taco
Speaker 5: Bill together. She also was raised very devouted before school.
Speaker 5: Every morning before high school started, she would go to
Speaker 5: an LDAs seminary before you know, her regular classes and
Speaker 5: take LDS teachings in the morning. So she was very
Speaker 5: much raised in the church and taught to be a
Speaker 5: Mormon mother. And yeah, that's kind of that's where her
Speaker 5: story started. Now. Barry Cox is very interesting because when
Speaker 5: he ran for city council, he started to see he
Speaker 5: had very early days kind of maybe tea partys can
Speaker 5: maybe a libertarian sort of ideology coming from him, where
Speaker 5: he said, you know, there's just too much government. If
Speaker 5: I was to win, you know, we would kind of
Speaker 5: get rid of a lot of that stuff. You know,
Speaker 5: he didn't win. He didn't win that election, but later
Speaker 5: on I started to dig into writings that he did
Speaker 5: that really entertained quite a bit of fringe ideas about
Speaker 5: the LDS people being the chosen people who would weather
Speaker 5: the end times and who would save the Constitution from
Speaker 5: the brink of ruin.
Speaker 3: You talk about the rise of the white Horse prophecy.
Speaker 5: As well, right, this was something. White Horse prophecy is fascinating.
Speaker 5: It came into my life when I was writing a
Speaker 5: bit about the Bundee family, which was a very high
Speaker 5: profile family that led to very public anti government arms
Speaker 5: standoffs with the federal government, once in Nevada and once
Speaker 5: in Oregon, and I asked them at one point if
Speaker 5: they thought that their actions against the government were inspired
Speaker 5: by the white Horse prophecy of something I had heard about,
Speaker 5: and they told me yes. So this was when I
Speaker 5: started to understand the white Horse prophecy is not a prophecy.
Speaker 5: In fact, it's a fake prophecy. The LDS Church hierarchy
Speaker 5: says it is not acceptable, it is not something that
Speaker 5: Joseph Smith said. It's fake. It's an urban legend. And
Speaker 5: yet despite the LDS Church saying this is not what
Speaker 5: we believe. After I did my recording on the Bundies,
Speaker 5: I started to hear a lot from people who said
Speaker 5: this is more mainstream than you think that more people
Speaker 5: in the United States believe this than you would think.
Speaker 5: And what the White Horse prophecy says is that in
Speaker 5: the end times the Constitution will be whittled down so
Speaker 5: much it will be at the point of ruin that
Speaker 5: will hang by a thread as fine as silk fiber,
Speaker 5: and it will be up to the White Horse aka
Speaker 5: the Mormon people to save it. So really what you
Speaker 5: see there is not just religion, but sort of a
Speaker 5: braiding together of patriotism and country with the LDS religion,
Speaker 5: and that's been very attractive in recent years to people
Speaker 5: who are extremists. That's been attractive to it was attractive
Speaker 5: to the bundies. So that was a big aha moment
Speaker 5: for me when I found a piece of writing that
Speaker 5: Barry Cox put out about his anti government ideologies, his
Speaker 5: anti tax ideologies, believing that the irs is fink and
Speaker 5: using the language of the white Horse prophecy, particularly the
Speaker 5: Constitution hanging by a thread. When I found that, it
Speaker 5: made me understand that Lori Vello was perhaps raised in
Speaker 5: a household that was entertaining some fringe before that was
Speaker 5: the thing we were all talking about in the news.
Speaker 3: You talk about Lori Vallo and how she grew up
Speaker 3: and what she heard and was potentially influenced by. But
Speaker 3: by two thousand and four she had changed her name
Speaker 3: to she had been married to mister Ryan, and she
Speaker 3: appeared on Wheel of Fortune, and she was a hairdresser
Speaker 3: in Austin, Texas. So she was not all caught up
Speaker 3: very much like Chad Dabel at that time thousand and four.
Speaker 5: Was she absolutely not? I mean, whereas Chad Davel was
Speaker 5: sort of living that very traditional family you know, LDS
Speaker 5: lifestyle right there in Utah, Yeah, Lori Valo was very
Speaker 5: much living the California dream. You know, she was a model.
Speaker 5: She was someone who had competed in beauty pageants. You
Speaker 5: have to picture this woman. I mean, she's what a
Speaker 5: scene is the classic beauty in America. Blonde hair, blue eyes,
Speaker 5: very thin, very fit, big bright white smile. And in
Speaker 5: two thousand and four she was a contestant on Wheel
Speaker 5: of Fortune. She talked about her kids, you know, in
Speaker 5: her introduction to Pat Saja, And she was working as
Speaker 5: a hairdresser in Austin, Texas at that point and married
Speaker 5: to a man named Joseph Bryant, who was the father
Speaker 5: of her daughter Tylie Ryan.
Speaker 3: You say that the marriage was great. It looked like
Speaker 3: a forty five hundred square foot home, but in three
Speaker 3: years the marriage was soured. What were some of the
Speaker 3: accusations in the custody battle.
Speaker 5: The custody battle was was very messy. You know, I
Speaker 5: want to be clear. There are there are points when
Speaker 5: in this story that Lorie Valo is very much the
Speaker 5: aggressor that that evidence shows, you know, her own actions.
Speaker 5: But she had a series of marriages that didn't seem
Speaker 5: so great, and marriage number three to Joseph Bryan was
Speaker 5: one of them. Joe Ryan was a businessman, very good
Speaker 5: looking guy. They were seen as a beautiful couple, but
Speaker 5: things were very tense. His own sister has talked a
Speaker 5: lot about how her brother had a temper. He would
Speaker 5: punch holes in walls, He would, you know, really really
Speaker 5: lose it over over pretty small things. So Laurie Valo
Speaker 5: in their divorce, alleged that Joseph Ryan molested her children.
Speaker 5: So at that point when when she married Joseph Bryan,
Speaker 5: she had a son named Polby and then they had
Speaker 5: ty Lee together, and she alleged that Joseph Bryan molested
Speaker 5: both children. And it's interesting because a lot of time
Speaker 5: has passed since those allegations were made. It's thing that
Speaker 5: even went to trial, you know, which is not normal
Speaker 5: when it comes to these civil cases, and it was
Speaker 5: never found to be true. Even today, mental health professionals
Speaker 5: that worked on that case, they appeared on Dateline and
Speaker 5: they told their reporters. We still to this day think
Speaker 5: that Lori Valo made that story up, that she planted
Speaker 5: that story in her children's heads. There was just never
Speaker 5: any evidence to prove it. But even so, even when
Speaker 5: Joseph Bryan was granted some custody of Tylee, she continued
Speaker 5: to tell Tylee and other people that he had molested
Speaker 5: her and that he was a really bad guy.
Speaker 3: She told somebody in particular about these abuse allegations, and
Speaker 3: that person took it upon themselves to do something. Who
Speaker 3: was that?
Speaker 5: That was her brother. So Laurie had a couple of brothers,
Speaker 5: and his sister and her brother Alex and her. I
Speaker 5: write a lot about how Alex Cox and Marivello had
Speaker 5: a very unique relationship. She saw him as something of
Speaker 5: a guardian angel in her life and tended to call
Speaker 5: Alex when she needed something. And she also told this
Speaker 5: story true or not true about Joseph Bryan molesting her
Speaker 5: her children to her brother. And at one point Joseph Bryan,
Speaker 5: after all was said and done with the court proceedings,
Speaker 5: he was allowed to see ty Lee. And the way
Speaker 5: that began was he would go see her in a
Speaker 5: neutral facility, so that way, you know, there could be
Speaker 5: people monitoring their meeting and.
Speaker 3: That kind of thing.
Speaker 5: So he went and saw Tylee one day and he
Speaker 5: was leaving the facility afterwards, walking out to his car
Speaker 5: and Alex Cox was there waiting for him, and you know,
Speaker 5: they traded words and alex Cox pulled out a taser
Speaker 5: and tased Joseph Bryan, and this really dramatic scene unfolds.
Speaker 5: You know, he gets tased, he falls to the ground,
Speaker 5: he gets up, he runs away, alex Cox chases him
Speaker 5: in the parking lot. He tases him again, where Joseph
Speaker 5: ran falls again and fractures his wrists and you know,
Speaker 5: he's screaming, you know, call the police, call the police.
Speaker 5: And nearby people here and call the police and alex
Speaker 5: Cox walks away, gets an drives away. He later, you know,
Speaker 5: is found that he assaulted Joseph Brian and he does
Speaker 5: prison time for this. But all the while, you know,
Speaker 5: he's writing to friends from jail saying, you know, I
Speaker 5: need you to send me Joseph Brian's address. I need
Speaker 5: you to send me a photo of him. He became
Speaker 5: obsessed with Laurie's ex husband and this idea that he
Speaker 5: believed that he was a child molester and that he
Speaker 5: needed to do something to fix that.
Speaker 3: You talk a little bit about Alex and he is
Speaker 3: a contrast in character. He's a truck driver, I believe
Speaker 3: you right, but also he has something that he does
Speaker 3: on the side he's very serious about as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's he's you know, in this story of very
Speaker 5: traditional more than people. Alex Cox is the opposite of that.
Speaker 5: Like you said, he dress truck for a living. He's
Speaker 5: also a stand up comic. The interesting thing is that
Speaker 5: he tells these tells jokes on barroom stages, but he
Speaker 5: maintains his faith all the while. He doesn't swear, he
Speaker 5: doesn't drink or anything like that, and that makes some
Speaker 5: kind of unique. He's on doing impressions of cartoon characters
Speaker 5: or you know, Missus doubtfire and things like that, and
Speaker 5: by all means it scene is a very funny guy.
Speaker 5: But a very strange guy, somebody that even his own
Speaker 5: family members said there's just something kind of off about him.
Speaker 5: And there was something kind of off about his relationship
Speaker 5: with Laurie. It really seemed like he would do anything
Speaker 5: that she said.
Speaker 3: You talk about. April twenty and eighteen, there was a
Speaker 3: smell from Joe Ryan's Phoenix apartment. A neighbor calls the
Speaker 3: police to do a welfare check. What do they find?
Speaker 3: What's his condition?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, very sadly, Joseph Ryan is found dead in
Speaker 5: his apartment and the police, you know, pretty quickly deduced
Speaker 5: that they think that he had maybe a heart attack
Speaker 5: and he died. He did not have a lot of
Speaker 5: people around him. He didn't have you know, no one
Speaker 5: lived with him. He didn't have real friends or family.
Speaker 5: He really only lived in Phoenix. He'd moved there from
Speaker 5: Texas because he wanted to be close to his daughter, Tylie,
Speaker 5: and he had he had the ability to see her,
Speaker 5: he had custody of her. So at that point Tylee
Speaker 5: had actually severed her relationship with her father, really really
Speaker 5: really disliked her dad, and so there was just no
Speaker 5: one to know, and police believed that he had been
Speaker 5: there dead for a few days. By the time they
Speaker 5: found him, you know, they pretty quickly processed the scene
Speaker 5: and just said welcome, She's a guy who just died,
Speaker 5: and that was that. But that story kind of comes
Speaker 5: back later in my books. Maybe a curiosity. Maybe it
Speaker 5: wasn't that clean cut.
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Speaker 3: Now, Lea, we were speaking about the mysterious death of
Speaker 3: Joseph Ryan and but police conclude that and with an
Speaker 3: autopsy he had a heart attack. You talk about about
Speaker 3: pardon Me voices in twenty seventeen. Again about Chad Dabell.
Speaker 3: We had already you'd already mentioned about the podcast that
Speaker 3: he was doing and the people that he was aligning with.
Speaker 3: There were near death experience authors. Tell us where Laurie
Speaker 3: is at this time, that Chad is rising in this
Speaker 3: community with his books and his podcasts.
Speaker 5: So Laurie's living in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona at
Speaker 5: this point and is going going about the business of
Speaker 5: her life. She is nurturing her children as she is
Speaker 5: meant to. She becomes very involved in her church, she
Speaker 5: teaches Sunday school. She is very active. She helps a
Speaker 5: friend who is a nonprofit that helps refugees move into apartments,
Speaker 5: you know, she helps set those up. When people are
Speaker 5: down on their look, she shows up sometimes on their
Speaker 5: doorstep with money and gives them to them. So, by
Speaker 5: all means is seen as a very generous member of
Speaker 5: her church and a very faithful person. But it's around
Speaker 5: this time that she also starts to entertain these podcasts
Speaker 5: about people who claim they have near death experiences and
Speaker 5: the ability to see beyond the veil. She starts to
Speaker 5: kind of read more about these these fringe ideologies that
Speaker 5: we've talked about that have sort of long simmered at
Speaker 5: the edges of the church, and she starts to attend
Speaker 5: these conferences. So there are conferences helped by several organizations
Speaker 5: that largely take place in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, and
Speaker 5: they are really devoted to this extremist, right wing part
Speaker 5: of the fringe. So we're talking about the fringe of
Speaker 5: the fringe at this point. And these are people who
Speaker 5: are preppers, you know, which is something that's very much
Speaker 5: encouraged by the LDS church. But they're extreme preppers. They're
Speaker 5: prepping because they believe the world could end at any moment.
Speaker 5: They're talking about things like you know, the quote unquote elect,
Speaker 5: which is sort of codeword for the people who will
Speaker 5: be chosen by God or chosen by the Church to
Speaker 5: sort of survive the perils of the Book of Revelation.
Speaker 5: She starts to really kind of spiral further and further
Speaker 5: down this funnel, starting with near death experiences, getting into
Speaker 5: these conferences, meeting more people, assembling a community around her
Speaker 5: that also is willing to entertain these ideas, and then
Speaker 5: pretty quickly starts having her own home meetings with other
Speaker 5: women who are interested in these ideas and want to
Speaker 5: hear more about them. You hear people use the language
Speaker 5: of leveling up their faith that maybe you know they're
Speaker 5: not getting enough in church on Sundays or by going
Speaker 5: to the temple. They want something more, And this is
Speaker 5: specifically something that church leadership, mainstream LBS church leadership has
Speaker 5: said that is a big red flag for them, that
Speaker 5: when people want more than what they feel they're being
Speaker 5: offered in church, that that's something that's when it starts
Speaker 5: to get a little dangerous, and that's that's sort of
Speaker 5: the area that Laurie is treading in.
Speaker 3: She is married to a person named Charles Valo, and
Speaker 3: he has been asked to convert as condition of marriage,
Speaker 3: just as Joseph Ryan was to convert to LDS. So
Speaker 3: he didn't grow up with this. So what does he
Speaker 3: think about this emerging interest that his wife has.
Speaker 5: You know, it's really interesting because Charles Vallo he becomes,
Speaker 5: you know, he's also very well known in their local
Speaker 5: church and very well liked. And when Laurie starts talking
Speaker 5: about some of these ideas that she's finding, some of
Speaker 5: these books that she's reading in the podcast that she's
Speaker 5: listening to, and these people that she's starting to really idolize,
Speaker 5: she starts to tell Charles some really odd things, particularly
Speaker 5: that she doesn't need to eat or sleep anymore, that
Speaker 5: she's sort of believing herself to be transcending human you know,
Speaker 5: basic human needs. She starts going to the temple every day.
Speaker 5: She starts to believe that she can control things with
Speaker 5: her mind, and as their marriage starts to fall apart,
Speaker 5: she starts to become really threatening. She says that he
Speaker 5: been possessed by a dark spirit. She starts calling him
Speaker 5: by a new name of which he has no one
Speaker 5: understanding what that means. She says, you know, he needs
Speaker 5: to be careful, that she could kill him. If she
Speaker 5: needed to that she was a goddess. And so all
Speaker 5: of a sudden he finds himself, you know, sort of
Speaker 5: his head is spinning, saying, what happened to you? What
Speaker 5: happened to my wife? And in Charles starts to kind
Speaker 5: of try and wring alarms. He talks to people at
Speaker 5: church and says, you know, why is she saying these things?
Speaker 5: This is really weird. He talks to her family and
Speaker 5: no one will listen to Charles. You know, Laurie is
Speaker 5: is very manipulative and starts to tell people, you know,
Speaker 5: he's trying to be controlling of me. And you know what,
Speaker 5: if you take away the religion from this, you just
Speaker 5: have a story of two people's marriage falling apart, but
Speaker 5: where with Laurie Vallo, it becomes something stranger because one
Speaker 5: of the reasons their marriage starts falling apart is because
Speaker 5: she's entertaining these extremist ideologies and really doubling down on
Speaker 5: them and saying, you know that this is kind of
Speaker 5: more important to her than the mainstream Mormonism that her
Speaker 5: and Charles have been practicing and living together. At one point,
Speaker 5: she disappears for a couple of months. He has no
Speaker 5: idea where she went. We know now that she disappeared
Speaker 5: to Hawaii and was telling people that she knew there.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm the leader of the one hundred and
Speaker 5: forty four thousand, and it's prophesied in the Book of
Speaker 5: Revelation as the sort of people who will survive the apocalypse,
Speaker 5: and I want to recruit you to be in that group.
Speaker 5: And people are saying, what are you talking about? You know,
Speaker 5: so she was not being quiet about her views, and
Speaker 5: you know, she Charles Ello files for divorce at a
Speaker 5: certain point, but then she returns back to Arizona. He
Speaker 5: revokes that and says, you know, I think that there's
Speaker 5: a chance that we can fix our marriage. And that's
Speaker 5: really what he tries to do.
Speaker 3: Now, tell us about this faithful meeting of Charles pardoning
Speaker 3: at Chad Davel and Lori Vallo where do they meet,
Speaker 3: and tell us about those circumstances.
Speaker 5: So it's very interesting. I mean, you could picture it
Speaker 5: as that Chad Davel droves through Utah from where he
Speaker 5: lived in Idaho, and Lori Vallo and a friend drove
Speaker 5: north from Arizona, and they were all going to attend
Speaker 5: a conference in the small city of Saint George, Utah
Speaker 5: there on the Arizona Strip. It was a meeting of
Speaker 5: a organization called Preparing People. This was an organization that's
Speaker 5: holding these prepper conferences and Chad Dabell was going to
Speaker 5: be there. He was selling his books and he was
Speaker 5: speaking about his near death experiences, and so there was
Speaker 5: this pretty distinct scene in the book where he's standing
Speaker 5: at his table selling his books just like he usually would,
Speaker 5: and here comes this just beautiful beauty queen, a woman
Speaker 5: walking up to his table and wants to introduce herself,
Speaker 5: and she says that she's a huge fan of his books,
Speaker 5: and that meeting is just such a faithful meeting. It's
Speaker 5: a meeting that would just change so many lives because
Speaker 5: right then he just felt that he had met the
Speaker 5: woman that he wanted to be with for the rest
Speaker 5: of his life. Now, remember, Chadda Bell is married. He's
Speaker 5: been married for twenty nine years to the same woman, Tammy,
Speaker 5: and they have several children together. And Laurie's also married.
Speaker 5: She's married to Charles Vello. Their marriage is very much
Speaker 5: on the rocks at this point. But that's when they meet,
Speaker 5: and they would continue to meet that they would meet
Speaker 5: at these Prepper conferences, and I mean it seems from
Speaker 5: the text messages and the evidence that I've seen, it
Speaker 5: seemed that they were starting to have it at fair.
Speaker 5: But what they because they both held these radical fringe ideologies,
Speaker 5: they applied something much bigger to that.
Speaker 3: Laurie has spoken out in these groups, but she talks
Speaker 3: about a doctrine and covenance a section ninety eight. Tell
Speaker 3: us what she said with that or what it says.
Speaker 5: She started to say. So she started to have these
Speaker 5: home meetings with other women who were interested in in
Speaker 5: fringe ideologies, and at one particular meeting, she is recorded
Speaker 5: giving her a testimony of her faith, and she starts
Speaker 5: to say that, you know, she tells the people at
Speaker 5: the meeting about her belief that her ex husband, Joseph Bryan,
Speaker 5: was molesting her children, that she was just absolutely broken
Speaker 5: by the fact that she had to share custody with him,
Speaker 5: that she believed him to be a monster, and a
Speaker 5: monster she just couldn't get rid of from her life.
Speaker 5: And she starts to say that she's just going continually
Speaker 5: to the Temple and to the Book of Mormon into
Speaker 5: the doctrine in covenance. Mormon scripture to understand what is
Speaker 5: happening to her and to seek relief and advice. And
Speaker 5: in this meeting, she talks about that she believes that
Speaker 5: she found an excuse to kill someone within Mormon scripture,
Speaker 5: and she tells the women at this meeting, I was
Speaker 5: going to murder my husband. I believe that I had found,
Speaker 5: you know, within the Mormon stories that I that I
Speaker 5: could kill him and that would be okay in the
Speaker 5: eyes of God. She says that she didn't do it
Speaker 5: because she didn't have a murderous heart. The notable thing
Speaker 5: about this is that Joseph Ryan had died at this point.
Speaker 5: She admitted that from her story as she was sharing
Speaker 5: her testimony of faith. But he had been found dead
Speaker 5: in his apartment at this point, and it was very
Speaker 5: notable that she was saying that.
Speaker 3: You fast forward to winter twenty and nineteen and Charles
Speaker 3: arrives back in Phoenix after a business trip. His truck
Speaker 3: is gone and he can't get into his own home,
Speaker 3: so he calls police wondering where his wife and his
Speaker 3: kids are and he's concerned. This is bizarre. Tell us
Speaker 3: what happens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is really when you start to see Charles
Speaker 5: and Laurie's marriage just crumbling between their fingers. So, like
Speaker 5: you said, Charles gets home from a business trip, his
Speaker 5: truck is gone. He goes to his house, he can't
Speaker 5: get in, the locks are changed, and he calls the police.
Speaker 5: And you know, this is all on body camera footage.
Speaker 5: Is how I wrote it in the book. Was he
Speaker 5: was telling the officer like, look, you got to understand,
Speaker 5: like my wife is there's something happening to her. She
Speaker 5: started talking about all these crazy ideas about about being
Speaker 5: a warrior, that she can control me or she can
Speaker 5: kill me with her mind, and that she's the leader
Speaker 5: of the one hundred and forty four thousand, And the
Speaker 5: police officer is like, I'm sorry, what are you talking about?
Speaker 5: Like he's very confused, and you start to see the
Speaker 5: desperation in Charles that he knows that something is going on,
Speaker 5: and he's trying to get people to pay attention that
Speaker 5: he could see that there's there's something dangerous here, and
Speaker 5: it's kind of the beginning of people not listening to him.
Speaker 5: Pretty quickly after that is when Laurie disappears for a
Speaker 5: couple of months, and then you know, things really start
Speaker 5: to pray more from there.
Speaker 3: What happens next in this tragic saga.
Speaker 5: So by this summer, you know, after Laurie's return from Hawaii,
Speaker 5: Charles says, okay, I'm not going to seek a divorce.
Speaker 5: We're going to work on our marriage. Things just continue
Speaker 5: to fall apart. You know, it's just it's just beyond
Speaker 5: what's fixable, and you start to see Laurie continue to
Speaker 5: make threats against him. She starts to assemble more groups
Speaker 5: on the side, a group of women who get together
Speaker 5: and they try to use the power of their own
Speaker 5: prayer and their own faith to kind of, you know,
Speaker 5: cleanse dark spirits from the earth. They start to assign,
Speaker 5: you know, say some people are light and some people
Speaker 5: are dark, and of course Laurie really focuses on her husband,
Speaker 5: Charles Bell, and said he's dark, he's possessed by demon.
Speaker 5: We need to cast out the evil spirits from within
Speaker 5: his soul. And these women get together and kind of
Speaker 5: get in a circle and hold hands and do this.
Speaker 5: You know, again, we are so far away from Mormonism
Speaker 5: at this point. This is just the sort of bizarre
Speaker 5: thing that they're doing. And she really turns everybody against Charles,
Speaker 5: and Charles realizes the only way I think that I
Speaker 5: can get Laurie to come to her senses is for
Speaker 5: me to get the church involved, because it's the only
Speaker 5: thing that she cares about and it is the only
Speaker 5: thing she'll listen to. So he hatches a plan in
Speaker 5: July of nineteenth, twenty nineteen with her other brother so
Speaker 5: not Alex, that they will kind of have something of
Speaker 5: an intervention that they're going to record Laurie talking about
Speaker 5: these very fringe things she believes, and that the idea
Speaker 5: is that they would play it for somebody in the
Speaker 5: church and try and get her excommunicated or get the
Speaker 5: church involved with waking her out of this trance they
Speaker 5: believe she's in. Laurie gets wind of this plant to
Speaker 5: come over to their house in the morning, because they're
Speaker 5: of course separated at this point. She calls in Alex
Speaker 5: this is the brother that is seen as the guardian
Speaker 5: angel and who tased her other husband. He is there
Speaker 5: in the morning on in morning in July when Charles
Speaker 5: shows up, and pretty quickly a scuffle unfolds and that
Speaker 5: ends in Alex Cox shooting Charles Valow and killing him.
Speaker 5: And that is it's very unclear whether or not that
Speaker 5: happened in front of Tylee and JJ the children or
Speaker 5: if they were outside, the clipment was clear. That's they
Speaker 5: knew something happened though. And what happens after that is
Speaker 5: the police are called and Alex and Laurie tell a
Speaker 5: story of self defense that Charles was coming after Alex,
Speaker 5: that he was attacking him, that he was going to
Speaker 5: attack her sister, and so they shot out and killed
Speaker 5: him and self to events. And the notable thing is
Speaker 5: that story really works. Much later investigators look into that
Speaker 5: again and realize that they were fed a story.
Speaker 3: Let's es this as an opportunity to stop for these messages.
Speaker 3: So you say, police realize that this self defense story
Speaker 3: doesn't add up forensically, and just the story doesn't add
Speaker 3: up at all. So what do police? What? Police? What
Speaker 3: do police do?
Speaker 5: Police? You know, they bring Alex in, they bring Glory in,
Speaker 5: They bring Tyly in, as you know, sixteen year old.
Speaker 5: They all come into the station and they give their
Speaker 5: version of events. They say that Charles was, you know,
Speaker 5: came in, he was he was yelling at Laurie. He
Speaker 5: was being really aggressive with her that you know. At
Speaker 5: one point, Tyle Ryan, her daughter, tried to get between
Speaker 5: Charles and Laurie with a baseball bat and that you know,
Speaker 5: Charles yanked the bad away from Tylee and she fell
Speaker 5: on the ground and is this is just sort of
Speaker 5: horrible story. And the detectives really they they bought it.
Speaker 5: They they thought that you know, Charles was being very aggressive,
Speaker 5: he was threatening people with a bat. He was saying
Speaker 5: that he was going to you know, hurt Laurie potentially,
Speaker 5: and that they did what they felt like they had
Speaker 5: to do so that that story really worked and no
Speaker 5: one was arrested. Charles, you know, was dead and that
Speaker 5: was that, and they started really just going about the
Speaker 5: business of their lives again. And in Laurie's case, that
Speaker 5: meant she continued to hold these meetings that were not
Speaker 5: okay to have in the eyes of the mainstream LDS church.
Speaker 5: She continued her relationship with Chad Dabell, which was, you know,
Speaker 5: something that she was having at a long distance. She
Speaker 5: had a special cell phone that she talked to him on.
Speaker 5: When she was still married to Charles, she started to
Speaker 5: make plans to leave Arizona and to uproot her life
Speaker 5: and her children's lives and moved north to the small
Speaker 5: city of Rerexburg. Idaho, which she would do in late
Speaker 5: August of twenty nineteen, and along with her would come
Speaker 5: her children, Kylie and JJ and her brother Alex and
Speaker 5: also her niece Melanie Boudreau. She really they all lived
Speaker 5: moved north to Rexburg, and they all lived in this
Speaker 5: townhouse community and it was just a few miles away
Speaker 5: from where Chad dabel lived with his family.
Speaker 3: What were the ideas that Chad and now Laurie were
Speaker 3: espousing once they were official together.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of things. I mean, the one big
Speaker 5: thing that was a big plot point in one of
Speaker 5: Chad Dabell's fictional books that he sort of said, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's fiction, but it's also things that I've seen in
Speaker 5: my experiences speaking to spirits on the other side of
Speaker 5: the veil. He started to say that potentially that Rexburg,
Speaker 5: Idaho could be the new Zion. Zion is kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, more in vocabulary for the promised land, for
Speaker 5: the for the sort of place that will of peace
Speaker 5: and safety, that will keep everyone safe in the end times.
Speaker 5: So he started to believe that, you know that that
Speaker 5: wouldn't be utaught, that it would be Rexburg, Idaho. He
Speaker 5: had moved his family up there, and then by the time,
Speaker 5: you know, Charles Vallo was dead and he had this
Speaker 5: clear relationship happening with Lorii Vello. He was telling people,
Speaker 5: come up to Rexburg, We're going to assemble Zion here,
Speaker 5: the people of Zion, and we're going to be ready
Speaker 5: in case something happened. So start you start to sort
Speaker 5: of see these people trickle up to Rexburg potentially to
Speaker 5: assemble Zion. Laurie, her children, Alex, other people start to
Speaker 5: come up to attend conferences and look at real estate
Speaker 5: and start to decide if they're going to move their
Speaker 5: lives there too.
Speaker 3: What happens that Laurie takes JJ out of school.
Speaker 5: So when they get to Rexburg in early September twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: the family goes and they visit Yellowstone and they take
Speaker 5: a bunch of photos. This is near Yellowstone Now Park
Speaker 5: and those photos are the last time Tylie Ryan is
Speaker 5: ever seen. In early September, and then in late September,
Speaker 5: Laurie has some friends in town who are looking at
Speaker 5: real estate in the area to potentially move there. They're
Speaker 5: attending some classes and conferences together and Laurie tells those friends,
Speaker 5: you know, JJ is getting really out of hand, he's
Speaker 5: getting to be more than I can handle by myself.
Speaker 5: Charles and Laurie had adopted JJ and he it was
Speaker 5: on the autism spectrum and had really high needs. Before
Speaker 5: they moved to Arizona or from Arizona, excuse me, he
Speaker 5: attended a special school, He had a service dog. He
Speaker 5: had a lot of infrastructure built into his life that
Speaker 5: would sort of meet him where he was with his autism.
Speaker 5: But that was really uprooted when they went to Rexburg.
Speaker 5: There was no school that he could go to. He
Speaker 5: went to a regular public school. He didn't have a
Speaker 5: service dog anymore. And he was he was, you know,
Speaker 5: a big kid with some really high energy, and it
Speaker 5: was it was getting She's said, it was getting to
Speaker 5: be too much. And she said that for her, the
Speaker 5: thing that sort of was the straw that broke the
Speaker 5: camel's back for him, which she believed that he had
Speaker 5: become a dark spirit, was that he'd climbed up on
Speaker 5: top of the counter and up onto the refrigerator and
Speaker 5: he knocked a picture of Jesus on the ground, and
Speaker 5: that was that was a major moment for her when
Speaker 5: she started to see her son not as her son anymore,
Speaker 5: but as somebody who had been possessed by a demon,
Speaker 5: just like she had said about Charles Fallow. And that
Speaker 5: was the last time that JJ was ever seen. He
Speaker 5: never went to school again. She took him, she withdrew
Speaker 5: him from school, and that's something you can do in
Speaker 5: Idaho and say you're going to homeschool them. And that
Speaker 5: was it. That was the last time he was seen.
Speaker 3: Witnesses said that she had said something concerning children with
Speaker 3: her faith in that they were only loan to us
Speaker 3: and that there were adults. Maybe you can tell us
Speaker 3: explain further.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in one of her meetings that she had with
Speaker 5: these other women where they were sort of entertaining these
Speaker 5: fringe scriptures and ideologies, or not fringe scriptures, but interpreting
Speaker 5: Mormon scripture in really fringe ways, she had said, you know,
Speaker 5: you don't have to worry about your children. You need
Speaker 5: to remove that worry from yourself because they're actually adults.
Speaker 5: They're adults in small bodies, and they they don't really
Speaker 5: need us. They're just loan to us temporarily and we'll
Speaker 5: all be together in the celestial kingdom. But you just
Speaker 5: don't need to worry too much about them. It seemed
Speaker 5: like a strange thing to say, you know, and maybe
Speaker 5: what does that even mean? I guess it became came
Speaker 5: those words really came to have a much darker meaning
Speaker 5: when you know what happens with the story that maybe
Speaker 5: she was not just reading LDAs scripture trying to find
Speaker 5: an excuse to kill her ex husband, which you know,
Speaker 5: we don't know whether or not that what happened to
Speaker 5: Joseph Brian, if he was killed or if he did
Speaker 5: die by you know, natural causes, as the medical examers
Speaker 5: first thought, but appeared she was reading scripture to also
Speaker 5: maybe find find ways to sort of wiggle out of
Speaker 5: these roles that she had to fill in her life,
Speaker 5: because the reality was, you know, Charles Vello, she may
Speaker 5: have thought he was possessed by a dark spirit and
Speaker 5: his brother, her brother killed him, but the reality was
Speaker 5: she was a single mother all of a sudden. Cad
Speaker 5: Dave Bell was in a marriage of his own with
Speaker 5: his own children, and he was still in that marriage
Speaker 5: when Charles died. And here she was, all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: needing to take care of a child with very high
Speaker 5: needs by herself, who was not getting the education that
Speaker 5: he needed. There is some evidence to suggest that perhaps
Speaker 5: he was not getting the medication that he needed. So
Speaker 5: she had she had a real she had a real
Speaker 5: situation on her hands with caring for her son, and
Speaker 5: maybe was reading the scripture trying to understand how she
Speaker 5: could work her way out of that.
Speaker 3: You're right that October nineteen twenty and nineteen, Tammy dies
Speaker 3: tell us all the particulars.
Speaker 5: This is Tammy day Bell. This is Chad's wife of
Speaker 5: twenty nine years. She had a strange couple of weeks,
Speaker 5: you know, at the end of her life. In October
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen, she wrote on Facebook one day that she
Speaker 5: had come home from the meeting of the Relief Society,
Speaker 5: which is the LDS women's organization, where she had been
Speaker 5: preparing freezer meals, so you know, meals that you can
Speaker 5: get out of the freezer after a busy day work
Speaker 5: and pop in the oven and dinners on the table.
Speaker 5: She came home one night and got out of her
Speaker 5: car and there was a man dressed in all black
Speaker 5: standing by her car, and all of a sudden started
Speaker 5: shooting at her. She starts screaming and calling, you know, Chad,
Speaker 5: come out here and help me. And she wrote on
Speaker 5: Facebook that she thought, this is just so weird that
Speaker 5: it must have been a paintball gun. It was just
Speaker 5: some prankster with a paintball gun that was just scaring
Speaker 5: her and ran away and she screamed. Investigators now think
Speaker 5: that that was Alex Cox and that actually was not
Speaker 5: a paintball gun. That was a real gun. But you know,
Speaker 5: he missed, and Tammy kind of went back to the
Speaker 5: business of her life. She was working as a librarian
Speaker 5: at a local elementary school, and then on October nineteenth.
Speaker 5: There's really conflicting accounts, but go long and short of
Speaker 5: it is that Cammy Davill, somebody who was very great
Speaker 5: physical he how you know, this really perky, beloved woman
Speaker 5: just died her. Chad has told conflicting stories about how
Speaker 5: that happened. In one account, he said, all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: she just dropped dead, and he called for their eldest son,
Speaker 5: and he came in the room and there was his mother,
Speaker 5: just half in the bed, half out of the bed,
Speaker 5: but clearly dead. Another account is that Chad said he
Speaker 5: woke up in the morning and she clearly just died
Speaker 5: in her sleep, which is, you know, not really normal
Speaker 5: for a woman in her forties. So the unique thing
Speaker 5: about this, though, is that when the family, the DeBell
Speaker 5: family called the police and the medical examiner, they asked
Speaker 5: whether or not they wanted to have an autopsy if
Speaker 5: the family wanted one. That's very unique to Idaho. You
Speaker 5: don't necessarily have to have an autopsy if you don't
Speaker 5: want one, and they said no, they said, we don't
Speaker 5: want to have an autopsy. And that was that. Tammy's
Speaker 5: body was taken to Utah, to the place where she
Speaker 5: and Chad grew up, and she was buried in a
Speaker 5: graveyard that Chad Dabel actually used to work at as
Speaker 5: a grave digger, and that seemed like it was the
Speaker 5: end for her by the end of her story.
Speaker 3: You talk about November fifth, twenty nineteen, there's a marriage
Speaker 3: tell us about this wedding in Hawaii, two.
Speaker 5: Weeks after Tammy Dabell's death. Chad and day Bill and
Speaker 5: Laurie Bello are married on a beach in Hawaii. They're
Speaker 5: wearing white clothes and purple lays around their necks and
Speaker 5: no one is there. They don't tell anyone that they're
Speaker 5: getting married. It's just them in a photographer on beach.
Speaker 5: So they get married and come back to Rexburg. Laurie
Speaker 5: moves back into her townhouse and Chad goes back to
Speaker 5: live in his house and they tell his children, we
Speaker 5: just got married, and even they're very shocked. You know,
Speaker 5: most of Chad's children are grown, they're much older than
Speaker 5: than Laurie's children, but even there like, hang on, you
Speaker 5: just got married. Her mom just died, So they're very
Speaker 5: surprised by that. But ultimately, you know, they are their
Speaker 5: eldest kids who listen to their father as the leader
Speaker 5: of their family, and they accept her as their new stepmother.
Speaker 3: Let's introduce Kay Woodcock. This is Charles's mother, I believe,
Speaker 3: and she has some concern about the children. What does
Speaker 3: she do?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so Kayoocock's relationship is actually really kind of complicated.
Speaker 5: Kay is Charles's sister, and she's also the grandmother of
Speaker 5: JJ Bell. So sort of the very long short story
Speaker 5: there is that her son was not able to care
Speaker 5: for JJ for whatever reason, and Charles and Laurie adopted
Speaker 5: JJ and leased him as their own. So Kay has
Speaker 5: really maintained a very close relationship with JJ throughout his life.
Speaker 5: You know, he's this very precocious kid and her and
Speaker 5: her husband, Larry, just love him. There's just these beautiful
Speaker 5: videos of them singing with him, and just just the
Speaker 5: most loving grandparents and grandchild relationship. But the last time
Speaker 5: they've heard from JJ is on a FaceTime call in
Speaker 5: August of twenty nineteen. The call only lasts a few seconds,
Speaker 5: and then they don't hear from him after that, and
Speaker 5: they're very bothered by that, and they can't get a
Speaker 5: hold of Laurie. They can't get a hold of JJ.
Speaker 5: They don't know what's going on, and so Kay starts
Speaker 5: trying to figure out what the heck happened. Laurie didn't
Speaker 5: attend the funeral for Charles. She seemed very you know,
Speaker 5: nonplussed over the death of her husband. And Kay is
Speaker 5: getting very suspicious and she starts poking around, you know,
Speaker 5: doing what anybody would do to try and understand how
Speaker 5: they can get to their grandson. And what she comes
Speaker 5: to understand is that Laurie has moved. That she's not
Speaker 5: in Arizona anymore. She's in Idaho, And it's so notable
Speaker 5: the way that she figures it out. She somehow gets
Speaker 5: into Charles' Amazon account and sees that Laurie has been
Speaker 5: using the Amazon account to ship packages to Rexburg, Idaho,
Speaker 5: of all places, and she's thinking Rexburg, Idaho, Oh my god,
Speaker 5: Laurie moved. So she calls the police in Rexburg and says, look,
Speaker 5: I haven't heard from my grandson in months, and I'm
Speaker 5: so worried. Can you go to this address and do
Speaker 5: a welfare check. We think he you know, we haven't
Speaker 5: heard her him. He's missing in our minds, and that's
Speaker 5: kind of when the story begins. The detectives go and
Speaker 5: knock on Laurie's door and they say, where's your son.
Speaker 5: You know we've heard he's missing, and Laurie lies to them, says, oh,
Speaker 5: don't worry about it. He's just visiting a friend in Arizona.
Speaker 5: I'll have them call. This whole mess will get figured out.
Speaker 5: Don't worry about it. They don't hear anything. In the
Speaker 5: next day. They go back to her house to see
Speaker 5: if they can get eyes on JJ again, get an
Speaker 5: explanation for where he is, and then Laurie's gone and
Speaker 5: everyone has disappeared at this point, and they don't know
Speaker 5: what they're dealing with.
Speaker 3: Eventually, they have someone that's close to her, previously very
Speaker 3: close to her, speak to her on the phone, and.
Speaker 5: That call is recorded right right A good friend of
Speaker 5: Chad and Laurie's somebody who's been something of an acolyte,
Speaker 5: who's been at these meetings, who's been following them, who's
Speaker 5: who was entertaining the idea of moving to Rexpert. She
Speaker 5: decides to call Chad and Laurie because she knows something
Speaker 5: is up and Laurie. When Laurie said, don't worry about
Speaker 5: JJ to the police, he's with my friend in Arizona.
Speaker 5: She gives this woman's name and her name is Melanie Gibb,
Speaker 5: and Melanie says, hang on a second, why are you
Speaker 5: pulling me into this? Where is JJ? I don't understand
Speaker 5: what's going on. So in December of twenty nineteen, she
Speaker 5: makes a call. She reaches Chad and Laurie. They put
Speaker 5: it on speaker phone and they have this very interesting
Speaker 5: phone call where Melanie gives saying where are you guys?
Speaker 5: Where is JJ? What is going on here? And that
Speaker 5: pretty quickly turns into a conversation with Lorie getting very
Speaker 5: upset that she's being questioned, that her intentions, that her
Speaker 5: words are being questioned, and ultimately she doesn't say where
Speaker 5: they are They just say that they're really far away
Speaker 5: from Idaho, that JJ's safe, and that she shouldn't be
Speaker 5: questioning where Laurie's telling her that she says she's safe.
Speaker 5: She says the children are safe, and that's all that
Speaker 5: Melanie needs to know.
Speaker 3: So what happens next in this search for these children?
Speaker 5: So at this point, you know, the police in Rexburg
Speaker 5: in December say, hold a press conference and they say,
Speaker 5: we've got two missed children on our hands. And this
Speaker 5: is when, you know, the sort of starts to come
Speaker 5: into my life, is that I see these press conferences
Speaker 5: where they're saying, we've got two missing kids. Lorie Vallo's missing,
Speaker 5: Chad Dabelle's missing. We don't know what's going on. We
Speaker 5: need the public's help to try and find these people.
Speaker 5: A couple of months pass and it's not until February
Speaker 5: of twenty twenty that the police track her down. Her
Speaker 5: and Chad are in not a bunker somewhere, not as
Speaker 5: through Dusty, you know, survivalist compound. They're in a condo
Speaker 5: in Kawaii and Hawaii they're relaxing on the beach. They're
Speaker 5: essentially on vacation, and there is no evidence that the
Speaker 5: children have ever been there with them. Pretty quickly, you know,
Speaker 5: Laurie's they talk and the police talk to her. She
Speaker 5: still won't say where JJ and ty we are. And
Speaker 5: so they extradite her back to Ida, arrest her and
Speaker 5: extradite her back to Idaho. They put her in a
Speaker 5: jail cell and the police are still searching for many
Speaker 5: months trying to figure out where these children are.
Speaker 3: What happens next in terms of a potential arrest for
Speaker 3: these people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so Laurie's in jail. You know, she's not saying anything.
Speaker 5: The case is just real kind of stagnant. It seems
Speaker 5: like in the eyes of the public, at least, there's
Speaker 5: just no answers for where these children have gone. In
Speaker 5: June of twenty twenty, the FBI and the police in
Speaker 5: Rexburg show up at the doorstep of Chad Daybell. Mind you,
Speaker 5: he's living at home. He's back, he's back in Rexburg,
Speaker 5: and they say, we have a warrant to search the property.
Speaker 5: You're gonna have to You're gonna have to stay here
Speaker 5: while we start searching. And they have dogs with them
Speaker 5: who start sniffing around the backyard. Not your traditional backyard,
Speaker 5: This is a very large open field, and pretty quickly
Speaker 5: those dogs hone in on two areas and the bodies
Speaker 5: of Tyler Ryan and Jjvallo are unearthed from two graves.
Speaker 5: They're dead, obviously, and they are in the backyard of
Speaker 5: Chad Daybell. That is when Chad Daybell gets arrested. And
Speaker 5: really this is when the case starts to roll forward.
Speaker 5: Chad's in jail, Laurie's and they have two dead bodies.
Speaker 5: They have all of a sudden, are looking at Charles
Speaker 5: Vallow's death, They're looking at Tammy Davell's death. They're looking
Speaker 5: at all these different things that have happened around them
Speaker 5: and trying to understand how it comes together. So charges
Speaker 5: aren't even filed for another year after that. When they do,
Speaker 5: they're very serious. Both Laurie and Chad are facing first
Speaker 5: degree murder charges conspiracy to commit murder, and prosecutors are
Speaker 5: seeking the death penalty for them.
Speaker 3: In Idaho, COVID put a monkey wrench into this whole thing.
Speaker 3: What is the status of those hearings now, So.
Speaker 5: It's been quite a lot, You're right, COVID kind of
Speaker 5: backed up the entire court system incutting in Idaho. But
Speaker 5: for a while Lorie Valo was not deemed competent to
Speaker 5: stand trial. She didn't understand the charges against her. She
Speaker 5: had to be restored to competency in a mental health facility.
Speaker 5: But the status now is that it's running full steam
Speaker 5: ahead toward a trial and that trial will occur in
Speaker 5: Idaho and Voysey, Idaho in January of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 5: and that's where they'll face charges unless things get moved.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a death penalty case. It's a big,
Speaker 5: big deal, and these cases tend to get moved now
Speaker 5: and then. But it's seeming like it's good. It's headed
Speaker 5: to trial in January.
Speaker 3: After this incredible read. I know this is not the
Speaker 3: way it was written, But what is the cautionary tale
Speaker 3: in all of this, if there is any?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think there's a few things I
Speaker 5: think that you know, given my expertise, I could pretty
Speaker 5: quickly see that this was a story of religious extremism.
Speaker 5: You know, it's in a way it's sort of wrong
Speaker 5: to call Chad Debo and Morivell and Mormons because they're
Speaker 5: taking an ideology and twisting it in a new direction.
Speaker 5: So I think one thing is that despite years and
Speaker 5: years of trying to sort of purge this extremist fringe
Speaker 5: from the eldest church. It's still there, there's still more
Speaker 5: work to do. I think that people don't like to
Speaker 5: talk about these stories because they start to think, well, oh,
Speaker 5: this is what you know. People are going to think
Speaker 5: this is what all Mormons are like. Obviously not true
Speaker 5: at all, but there has been a history of these
Speaker 5: fringe folks within in the culture of Mormonism that have
Speaker 5: have done some really horrible things, so that in itself
Speaker 5: isn't a cautionary tale. But I think that what is
Speaker 5: is this sort of reckoning that we're having nationwide with
Speaker 5: extremism and what that looks like. What my reporting over
Speaker 5: the years has found is that, you know, I think
Speaker 5: for a long time, we all thought that that racism,
Speaker 5: that extremism would be very recognizable to us. You know,
Speaker 5: it would be somebody burning across or wearing a hood
Speaker 5: or you know, a swastika arm band and things like that,
Speaker 5: and certainly is. But I think what this story shows
Speaker 5: us is that extremism can also look very normal and
Speaker 5: living normal lives, but really nurturing ideologies that are that
Speaker 5: are not only fringe, but dangerous and that's that's I
Speaker 5: think a very difficult and sobering thing for all of
Speaker 5: us to consider that extremism could be sitting next to
Speaker 5: us in the pews at church, and that's something that
Speaker 5: we need to be really vigilant about about understanding these
Speaker 5: ideologies and where they come from, what their history is,
Speaker 5: and watching for it. And that's just that's not to
Speaker 5: patrol people's religious beliefs or their ideologies, but I think
Speaker 5: it's to really understand when people are talking about things
Speaker 5: like violence. You know, why are we as a society
Speaker 5: so numb to that? When Laurie Vallis said I was
Speaker 5: considering murdering my husband on that recording, you don't hear
Speaker 5: anybody say, hang on a second, what, like that's crazy?
Speaker 5: They just keep listening. And I think that this is
Speaker 5: really a big meditation on our own tolerance and numbness
Speaker 5: to violence and why that is, and what we maybe
Speaker 5: as people need to understand about when violence is fanned
Speaker 5: by religious beliefs or it's something that's seen as very casual,
Speaker 5: what that might do in the end, Because there's some
Speaker 5: real victims here, real tangible victims that I think need
Speaker 5: to be thought about much further. Beyond the tabloid headlines.
Speaker 3: This case is kind of garnered, absolutely, and I think
Speaker 3: too that it's evident that this is more a philosophy
Speaker 3: that more and more people are embracing, especially given this
Speaker 3: last two years of isolation, and some of the things
Speaker 3: that were said by people like Chad Dave Bell seem
Speaker 3: to ring true to people that would again are on
Speaker 3: the fringe and ready to believe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, And it's it's really opportunity. You know, extremists
Speaker 5: see an opportunity in times of fear, and that's that's
Speaker 5: kind of when you know, people come along and offer
Speaker 5: solutions that are that are grounded in violence and hate
Speaker 5: and things like that. We've seen that so much with COVID,
Speaker 5: And Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's kind
Speaker 5: of what's happening in this story was there were people
Speaker 5: who capitalized on other people's fear to benefit themselves.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Leah Satilli for coming on and
Speaker 3: talking about when the Moon turns to Blood, Lori Vallo,
Speaker 3: Chad Daybell and a story of murder, wild faith and
Speaker 3: end times. Thank you so much. It's been an extraordinary
Speaker 3: discussion with you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: You're welcome thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you and good night.