‘Cult’ mom Lori Vallow pleads not guilty to conspiring to hide the remains of her children

‘Cult’ mom Lori Vallow has pleaded not guilty to charges related to the deaths of her children. 

Lori, 47, entered the pleas for two felony counts of conspiracy to conceal or destroy evidence on Thursday morning in Madison County District Court via a Zoom call from jail. 

Wearing a matching baby blue mask and long-sleeve blouse, Lori remained silent throughout the brief hearing, allowing her attorney Mark Means to speak on her behalf.  

District Judge Dane Watkins Jr scheduled a jury trial for April 2, 2021. Lori faces up to 10 years in prison and $20,000 in fines if convicted. 

This month marked the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of Lori’s children, Joshua ‘JJ’ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, whose bodies were found buried on her husband Chad Daybell’s property in June.  

Investigators believe the children, who were never reported missing by their mother, were murdered within hours of when they vanished within two weeks of each other in September 2019.   

In addition to the conspiracy charges, Lori is facing three misdemeanor counts of resisting or obstructing officers, solicitation to commit a crime and contempt of court from her arrest back in February.  

Chad has already pleaded not guilty to two felony conspiracy charges and two other counts for destruction or concealment of evidence. 

His trial is set to begin in January 2021. 

Madison County Special Prosecutor Rob Wood and the state of Idaho asked a judge to join the cases against Lori and Chad last week – just after Chad’s attorney asked to have the case against him thrown out altogether. 

Neither Chad nor Lori have been accused of harming Tylee and JJ. Authorities have yet to say how the children died, or whether homicide charges will be filed in the future. 

Tylee vanished on September 8, 2019, just days before her 17th birthday. Investigators said her body was burned and dismembered before being buried sometime the following day. 

JJ was last seen two weeks later on September 23. His body was wrapped in duct tape and plastic and buried the same day, investigators said. 

Authorities believe Lori’s now-deceased brother Alex Cox brought the children’s bodies to Chad’s home to bury them. 

The search for JJ and Tylee began back in November 2019 when police officers performed a welfare check at Lori’s home in Rexburg and found that neither of the children had been heard from since two months earlier.  

The case captured nationwide attention with the revelations that police were also investigating at least three suspicious deaths linked to Lori and Chad, as well as relatives’ claims that the couple are members of a dangerous doomsday cult.

Lori and Chad went on the run the day after police began searching for the children and reopened an investigation into the death of Chad’s first wife Tammy Daybell, who died on October 19, 2019.  

Police tracked the couple down in Hawaii in January and Lori was later arrested on charges of child abandonment and desertion. 

The search came to a devastating end in June as JJ and Tylee’s remains were discovered in Chad’s backyard in Salem, Idaho. 

Earlier this week a woman who spent four days alone with Lori at Madison County Jail lifted the lid on the ‘cult’ mom’s life behind bars. 

The woman spoke to the East Idaho News on condition of anonymity to protect her safety. The outlet referred to her as ‘Missy Cook’ in its account.  

Missy and Lori were housed in the same ‘pod’ at the jail for four days in March, after Lori was extradited to Idaho from Hawaii. 

Missy – who was jailed for a parole violation – recounted how Lori was upbeat, never cried and spent most of her time reading scriptures, on the phone with Chad or meeting with her lawyers. 

She said Lori was thrilled by the amount of media attention her case was getting. 

‘She was totally aware of all of it,’ Missy recalled. ‘She said: “We have the death of Kobe Bryant and COVID but no – there’s me. I’m the lead story. I’m more important than all that stuff.” 

‘She knew she was the main story and she liked it.’

Lori was obsessed with her appearance, Missy said, and insisted that she look good for the many news cameras that filled the courtroom during her first hearing on March 6 – where she wore bright pink lipstick but covered up the painted-blue toenails she was very proud of.  

Once the hearing was over, Lori invited Missy to watch the news coverage together.  

‘As the news came on, she said: “Here it comes! Here’s my story. Turn it up. Let’s see what they say about me now,”‘ Missy said. 

Over the following days Lori met with her attorneys for hours to work out a way that she could post bond, which had been set at $1million.   

‘I remember before one of those meetings, she ran her fingers from her head down her body and said: “We’ll see if all of this is worth $1million,”‘ Missy recalled. 

When she wasn’t with her lawyers, Lori spent much of her time speaking on the phone with Chad or with her eldest son Colby Ryan, Missy said. 

Because she was in an adjacent cell, Missy was able to take notes on phone calls she overheard. 

She described Lori and Chad’s conversations as ‘nauseating’, saying that Lori was adamant about looking good for video calls and repeatedly sought reassurance that her husband loved her.  

The women never talked about JJ and Tylee, but Missy said she was sure that the children would be found safe and was shocked when she learned the truth. 

‘I made it a point not to ask about her kids. I wanted to gain her trust and see if she would tell me anything,’ Missy said. ‘I’d been judged [unfairly] for one of my crimes and turned inside out for something it wasn’t. I couldn’t imagine feeling what she was feeling when she got there.’ 

‘I thought the kids were alive. I really did,’ she added. 

‘I thought they had them in a polygamy compound and they were there working while she and Chad went to Hawaii to live their lives.’  

Asked what she thinks will happen as the case moves forward, Missy said she expects Lori to turn on Chad. 

‘If she’s as vindictive as she is, those kids were buried on his land and at his house. I would turn on him to save my own ass,’ Missy said.