Episode 612: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell - The Doomsday Murders Part IV - Pet Semetary

Summary

Last Podcast on the Left - Episode 612 Summary: "Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell - The Doomsday Murders Part IV - Pet Semetary"

Release Date: March 14, 2025
Hosts: Henry Zebrowski, Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks
Podcast Network: The Last Podcast Network

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Introduction

In Episode 612 of "The Last Podcast on the Left," titled "Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell - The Doomsday Murders Part IV - Pet Semetary," hosts Henry Zebrowski, Ben Kissel, and Marcus Parks delve deep into one of the most disturbing and convoluted criminal cases of recent years. This episode meticulously unpacks the sinister actions of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, uncovering their motivations, methods, and the eventual unraveling of their Doomsday cult.

Background: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell

Lori Vallow, often referred to as the "Doomsday Mom," and Chad Daybell formed a partnership that spiraled into criminal insanity. Initially, Chad, a former professional gravedigger and self-proclaimed prophet, drew Lori into his apocalyptic beliefs. Together, they convinced a small following that the world was on the brink of an end, necessitating drastic measures to prepare for "New Jerusalem."

Notable Quote:

Marcus Parks [04:30]: "We're gonna party like it's Florida, baby."
(Early in the episode, highlighting the hosts' signature humor before delving into the main topic.)

The Murders: A Cascade of Violence

1. The Murder of Charles Vallow

Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallow, was the first victim. Alex Cox, Lori's brother and the family's "personal assassin," murdered Charles under the guise of protecting the cult's mission. This act set the stage for the subsequent killings.

Notable Quote:

Ben Kissel [05:03]: "Cornell, they're never camera-ready."
(Discussing the monotony of coroner testimonies and introducing the gravity of the murders.)

2. The Disappearance and Murder of Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow

Seven weeks after Charles's murder, Lori and Chad moved to Rexburg, Idaho, intending to solidify their hold over their remaining family members—Lori's two children, Tylee (16) and JJ (7). The motive behind eliminating Tylee and JJ appears twofold: financial gain through Social Security benefits and complete dominion over Lori's life.

Notable Quote:

Ben Kissel [07:11]: "Can I give you a call?"
(Lori's manipulative communication tactics during police investigations.)

3. Attempted Murders: Brandon Boudreau and Tammy Daybell

Chad and Lori's attempts to murder Brandon Boudreau, Lori's niece's ex-husband, and Tammy Daybell, Chad's wife of over 30 years, further exemplify their ruthless commitment to their apocalyptic vision. While Brandon narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, Tammy's death initially went unnoticed as natural causes but was later deemed suspicious upon exhumation.

Notable Quote:

Marcus Parks [24:16]: "I'm the Michelin Tire man with a little tiny penis."
(A darkly humorous aside reflecting the hosts' irreverent style amidst the grim narrative.)

Motivations Behind the Killings

The primary motivations behind Lori and Chad's actions appear to be:

1. Financial Gain: By eliminating dependents like Tylee and JJ, they could continue to receive Social Security benefits without hindrance.
2. Total Control: Removing family members ensured complete control over Lori's life, aligning with Chad's desire to dominate as the cult's leader.
3. Apocalyptic Beliefs: Their deep-seated conviction that the world was ending justified, in their minds, the need to eliminate obstacles to their impending "New Jerusalem."

Notable Quote:

Ben Kissel [08:11]: "It's a bit of that too, where they're like, you know, actually, according to the style of the times, there's no children in our paradise."
(Exploring the distorted religious beliefs that rationalized their violent actions.)

The Investigation: Unraveling the Cult's Web

As the disappearances of Tylee and JJ gained attention, skepticism grew among cult members, particularly podcaster Melanie Gibb. Gibb's realization that Lori and Chad's narrative didn't add up led her to become an informant, providing crucial evidence to authorities.

The police investigation revealed a tangled web of deceit:

• Digital Evidence: Text messages, social media posts, and phone data linked Lori and Chad to the murders.
• Autopsies: Exhumations of Tammy Daybell confirmed unnatural causes of death, pushing authorities to connect the dots between the various murders.
• Cultural Delusion: Lori and Chad's manipulation of religious and apocalyptic beliefs made it challenging for law enforcement to gather concrete evidence initially.

Notable Quote:

Ben Kissel [44:43]: "They don't know."
(Highlighting Lori's evasive tactics during police interrogations, making the investigation more arduous.)

Chad Daybell's Downfall and Final Acts

After multiple failed assassination attempts and increasing police pressure, Chad's alliance with Lori began to crumble. An attempted assassination of Brandon Boudreau failed when Alex Cox missed his target, leading to increased scrutiny and eventual arrest.

Chad and Lori attempted to flee to Hawaii, seeking a fresh start. However, their past caught up with them as investigations intensified, leading to their simultaneous arrests. Chad was charged with first-degree murder for the deaths of Tylee, JJ, and Tammy, while Lori faced additional charges, including conspiracy and accessory.

Notable Quote:

Marcus Parks [74:20]: "It's time for me to go independent. Yeah. Free from all restraints, you FCC."
(Reflecting the duo's refusal to conform and their continued delusion even as their crimes came to light.)

Trial and Conviction

By June 2024, both Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow were found guilty on all charges. Lori received a life sentence without the possibility of parole, while Chad was sentenced to death row in Idaho.

Notable Quote:

Ben Kissel [118:31]: "But, I do believe that God has chose me to lead 144,000."
(Lori's continued delusions during sentencing, showcasing her unwavering belief in their constructed reality.)

Conclusion: The Legacy of the Doomsday Murders

The case of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell serves as a chilling reminder of how deeply held beliefs, when twisted by narcissism and manipulation, can lead to unimaginable atrocities. Their story underscores the dangers of cultic influences and the importance of vigilance in identifying and preventing such destructive movements.

Notable Quote:

Ben Kissel [127:11]: "It's a fair bet to say that Lori Valow's delusions will never end."
(Acknowledging the enduring psychological scars and the lasting impact of their belief systems.)

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Key Takeaways

• Isolation and Control: Lori and Chad's gradual isolation of family members facilitated their ability to carry out multiple murders without immediate detection.
• Manipulation of Beliefs: Leveraging apocalyptic and religious ideologies provided a veneer of purpose to their brutal actions.
• Investigative Perseverance: Persistent police work and the bravery of informants like Melanie Gibb were crucial in bringing the couple to justice.
• Psychological Complexities: The deep-seated delusions and narcissistic traits of the perpetrators played a central role in the perpetuation of their crimes.

This episode offers a comprehensive examination of one of the most harrowing criminal cases, blending meticulous research with the hosts' characteristic humor to engage and inform listeners about the darkest facets of human behavior.

Transcript

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hello, Florida. Your favorite son and biggest baby are coming home to bring you the laughs you deserve. Everyone likes to poke fun of the Florida man. Everyone likes to use Florida as a punching bag whenever an alligator on meth eats an old person. That can happen anywhere. As a famous Floridian baby, I feel your pain. So that's why I'm coming home, to let you know it's okay to be who you are. It's okay that the rest of America is scared of us. Okay that books are illegal in our schools. It's okay whenever it gets cold that rains. Iguanas. I'm here to support you, so come on out. March, I'll be in North Florida, and in May, I'll be in South Florida and Orlando. It's the Invasive Species Tour. Ed Larson, me is coming to Florida in March and May. I'm coming to Jacksonville, Panama City, Tallahassee, Marco Island, Dana Beach, Orlando, and Key West. So lock up your public subs and start singing the Miami Dolphins fight song, because we're gonna party like it's Florida, baby. [e-mail].

[Marcus Parks]

There'S no place to escape to.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This is the last on the left.

[Marcus Parks]

That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Oh, man. Yesterday.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What happened?

[Marcus Parks]

I know you guys are gonna be.

[Ben Kissel]

Listen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Tell me about it.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm so excited to finally tell you this. It finally happened to me. I was on my toto praying, and I. Do you ever have. I know people don't necessarily like it when I start with anything about my bodily functions.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just gonna start, like. I'm not gonna go into it deep.

[Ben Kissel]

It's not necessarily. It's. They just plain don't like it.

[Marcus Parks]

It's whatever. But I.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, a couple that, like, there's.

[Marcus Parks]

A couple of people that I get. You know when you're having a filthy, dirty little. You know when a duke's too hard? Lick your lips. But you know what I mean, When a duke's too hard.

[Ben Kissel]

When, like, when it's too difficult to get out or when it's too, like, physically hard.

[Marcus Parks]

Physically hard?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You let it cook too long in.

[Marcus Parks]

The middle of this, I black out. And all of a sudden I'm in this tunnel of light and I'm going through. I see. Come back and forth. Like the. The. The wash and all this kind of stuff. Like, all this energy's coming this way.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Your first anal come, isn't it, Dude?

[Marcus Parks]

I. I might have been. I might have come so hard that I. I went into death I'm death mode. And did you guys know Jesus is black?

[Ben Kissel]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Really crazy.

[Ben Kissel]

That's nuts.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I thought he wasn't real.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it was like he showed up and he y me, dude. And I was just like, what? And he said, guess what, dude? Be gay. Yeah, really. And he's just like. And then he bent over and started sucking his own penis. His own penis. It came up through his robes. You know what I thought was so beautiful?

[Ben Kissel]

How big was it?

[Marcus Parks]

Normal.

[Ben Kissel]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

And I felt like, like, like the carpenter's cut. It has to be a useful one.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It takes a carpenter to give a good circumcision.

[Ben Kissel]

It does.

[Marcus Parks]

It does. But then what I thought was truly beautiful. The penis itself. Asian.

[Ben Kissel]

Wow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, interesting. I thought it'd be great if his penis was shaped like a cross.

[Marcus Parks]

He did not. Jewels.

[Ben Kissel]

Welcome to last podcast. On the left. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Parks. I' with the sacrilicious Henry Zabowski.

[Marcus Parks]

I have been chosen as the vessel of the message of sucking your own penis is the only way to know thyself.

[Ben Kissel]

And we have Ed Larson.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's right. I'm still waiting for all the evidence. They could be innocent.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what? And that's the smartest take I've heard.

[Ben Kissel]

Smartest take.

[Marcus Parks]

Cuz he's right. They're still. They've only had two trials that they've both been convicted.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it was a. It was a. You know, Dude, Covid. Trials are very weird, you know, it's hard to get a good jury in there.

[Marcus Parks]

It is. Yeah. Especially over zoom. Especially over Skype. Before we had zoom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's hard to translate all that stuff.

[Ben Kissel]

It is hard. So today we're here. We're here at the conclusion. Chad Daybell and Lori Valow. Part four. We're gonna find out just how guilty these are.

[Marcus Parks]

Super guilty. I just went and listened to six hours of the coroner talking.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Guess what, man?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Boring.

[Marcus Parks]

He needs new material. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Corners, they're never camera ready.

[Marcus Parks]

No, dude, I'm just saying that Dr. G. Who's that?

[Ben Kissel]

There was a whole show, a reality show about a medical examiner named Dr. G, in which they use actual people as the corpses. Not, of course, the actual corpses, but, you know, they use actors to play the corpses. And it's a lot of old people. They're trying to figure out the cause of death. So it's just a bunch of naked old people getting manhandled by actors.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's kind of fun.

[Marcus Parks]

It is really, really fun. And the G stood for Godzilla shooting the fire Flames.

[Ben Kissel]

So when we last left Chad Daybell and Lori Valo, Lori's fourth husband, Charles, had just been murdered by Lori's psychopathic open mic comedian brother, Alex Cox. Since Laurie was now unfettered by marital demands, she was free to finally move to Rexburg, Idaho, AKA the New Jerusalem, where Chad Daybell had been gathering his faithful followers in Antic for the end times. There was still, however, three people standing in the way of Lori and Chad being together fully. Lori's two children, 16 year old Tyler and 7 year old JJ, as well as Chad's wife of over 30 years, Tammy Daybell.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So how long did she wait after Charles was killed before she moved to New Jerusalem?

[Ben Kissel]

Seven weeks.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, very. They had been kind of going back and forth and visiting because that's where all the pap conferences were.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, how close is that to 40 days? So biblical.

[Marcus Parks]

It's close, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, the theory is that Chad Daybell wanted complete control over Lori, and that wasn't going to happen until both of Lori's children from previous marriages were out of the picture. In my opinion, though, Lori wanted the kids gone just as, if not more than Chad. But that does bring up a few questions. See if you'll remember, seven year old J.J. wasn't even Lori's biological child. JJ was blood related to Charles Vallow. So Lori could have easily shuffled responsibility for jj over to JJ's biological grandmother, Kay Woodcoc specifically asked for him. In that same vein, Lori could have unloaded Tyler onto any number of people in her immediate family. Her eldest son, Colby certainly would have taken Tylee in rather than see or die. And even Lori's youngest sister, Summer, seemingly the only sane member of the Cox family, said she would have happily taken care of Tyler until Tyler was old enough for college. And so the question is, why did Lori and Chad have to kill the kids at all?

[Marcus Parks]

It's fun. That's why. Marcus.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, personally, I think it comes down to two possibilities. As I said last episode, JJ and Tyler might have known incriminating details about the murder of Charles Vallow. And Laurie may have ordered Alex to kill them to supposedly protect their holy mission.

[Marcus Parks]

Kill the kids. Giggity gig. Sounds like a fun afternoon. See you guys.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So it's possible she really did think there were zombies.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, that's the thing. It may be something far more shallow than the spiritual mission.

[Marcus Parks]

I. I would concur that it is absolutely far.

[Ben Kissel]

See, like her mother, Lori Vallow was obsessed with appearances. And one couldn't very well be seen as a great spiritual leader. Of the Mormon people and a mother who abandons her children simultaneously. It's also possible that Laurie wanted to prove to Chad and to herself that she could walk the walk. So it is possible that Laurie killed her kids because being the mother of two missing children is a better look than being a neglectful mother. And killing her kids proved her dedication to her and Chad's fantasy world.

[Marcus Parks]

It also completes the vision within visions of glory. And the constant thing that is brought up about Mormon prophets in the post US World, in the Mormon led, post apocalypse, is that wives and children are. They have no purpose. They all say that each one of these major prophets loses their family as some form of job, like sacrifice to the fatalist nature of the way God has chosen to run the post apocalypse. So there is a little bit of that too, where they're like, you know, actually, according to the style of the times, there's no children in our paradise.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You read Vision of Glory Holes?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, actually, I'm really glad you brought that up. To the last tabletop book on the left. We are doing our first ever. It's. It's just different glory holes from around the world. And it's amazing how the shapes change. Italy. They're square like ravioli.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, if we're talking about appearances, that does bring up another question. If Laurie killed the kids because it looked better than abandoning them, then why did she keep their deaths a secret? Well, I think that question tells you quite a bit about Lori Vallow. One, I think it speaks to her as a narcissist who engaged in the highest forms of magical thinking. She did whatever she wanted in this world and believed that she was so special that if she just kept denying that anything was wrong, things would work out all on their own. But I also think perhaps even more so, that Lori did believe Chad when he told her that the world was going to end in July of 2020. And if she just held on long enough, then the matter of the missing kids was going to be a moot point.

[Marcus Parks]

That's correct. I think that she thought that they had a looming deadline.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they thought that this would all wash away once it all proves to be true. Which it didn't. You're wrong, Chad. You see you in prison. Can't wait till you get the chair. But she also had a practical reason for killing the kids, which is to collect the Social Security checks. JJ received something like $4,000 a month, which is what she was getting as passive income. Chad also wanted this. Passive income. They said it in a text Exchange back and forth. When Charles Val's insurance payment didn't come to her, when she was like, don't worry, I'm still getting the 4,000 from JJ. She says it in the thing. And so that's how they can wipe them out. Lie about the deaths. Because who doesn't get. You can't get Social Security checks to a dead person. Yeah, technically. Right. And so that's the reason why you have to hide the deaths so that you can continue to get paid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So he was fourth grand for. Because he was severely autistic.

[Marcus Parks]

Severely autistic. And that's the other shallow version of this, which is I. My. And this is my own. This is my own opinion, obviously, but Lori Valo, without the regular Botox, she's starting to look like. You remember those Reagan puppets from the old Peter Gabriel videos? Oh, yeah, she's starting to look like that. Like, she's really starting to look rough. And she also said she couldn't age. You remember? So that's a big thing. But there's a part of me that thinks that Ty Le and JJ didn't fit the castable looks of the prophet's children.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And Chad did.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Chad is the Mormon elite. Chad is the Mormon vision of what a man's supposed to be. Feckless. He can't see his penis because out of sight, out of mind. And then if he's got. Because that's what really protects him. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He looks like the come that made him.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly, exactly. It shows that God did not waste a single seed, just made them all come.

[Ben Kissel]

He looks like what Slimer looked like when he was still alive.

[Marcus Parks]

You did that joke on me where I look like if the guy who plays Slimer in a gay porn version of Ghostbusters.

[Ben Kissel]

That's actually Eddie's joke.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah. Well, I said Richard Dreyfus, if you played slime.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And that is what this man is. He is the Michelin Tire man with a little tiny penis.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, what we do know is that the plan to kill Tyler and JJ began pretty soon after Laurie arrived in Rexburg in July of 2019. And this is about a year before the apocalypse was due to come knocking on everyone's door. See, since JJ was severely autistic, Charles had bought him a service dog. But soon after Charles's murder, Laurie put the dog up for sale, cleaning house, as it were, which was more or less the first step towards her getting rid of all her remaining encumbrances, which.

[Marcus Parks]

Is also a massive red flag, because you're not supposed to sell a service dog.

[Ben Kissel]

It's actually illegal.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. They did it on. She tried to do it on Facebook.

[Ben Kissel]

Really?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Just try to sell this service dog, which they're like, doesn't JJ need the service dog? She's like, oh, you know, JJ has been fucking being like, super cool recently. It's very independent.

[Ben Kissel]

What you actually said is like, well, the service. I was more like Charles's thing. It's like, not really my thing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, service dog. I got a service dog, Rambo. I made him a service dog. But he's more of a waiter.

[Marcus Parks]

He is. He very much is in. He's like a catering dog. It'd be kind of cool if you could give, like a little kid like a service dog, but it's like an attack dog.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, I'm sure that happens a lot.

[Marcus Parks]

Can you imagine getting, like a blind man, like, nine Chihuahuas if you could give him, like, more dogs? Right. More than like, that'd be kind of cute. It's not the same as one service dog. Yeah, it's like nine service dogs.

[Ben Kissel]

You just want, like an army of dogs to just make a lot of noise. Yeah, it seems like it would be a encumbrance.

[Marcus Parks]

I feel like that. As if you were blind and you wanted take it out on us. Yeah, like, you'll have to deal with my seeing eye now.

[Ben Kissel]

While the cops hadn't charged Alex Cox with the murder of Charles Vallow and instead believed the easier work free explanation of self defense, the people in Chad and Laurie's immediate circle were not so easily swayed. See, for some reason, the murder of Charles Valo was what finally snapped podcaster Melanie Gibb out of her delusions concerning Chad and Lori's claims of divinity. Because I don't think Melanie Gibb ever really believed that their text chains wishing for the death of Charles Vallow were actually going to work. Melanie Gibb later said that while she started out as a true believer, she did anything Chad and Lori asked her to do after the murder. Not because she was a follower, but because she had become afraid that if she said no, she would be labeled as a zombie and murdered as well.

[Marcus Parks]

It's quite possible. It's also quite possible that she started getting real upset when they started using her as an alibi. Yeah, I think that's what they started to do because everybody was just a removed, immovable piece. That wasn't Chad or Lori also an accessory.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Didn't she, like, help steal his car?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. She is a. Melanie Gibb is guilty of crimes. She should have been arrested as well. I'm actually really, really surprised that she wasn't. She's out there, out there still podcasting away. Her with other illuminaries in the podcasting world, such as Meghan Markle, Barack Obama, some of the finest podcasters out there. She's really doing it. And she, she very much so was a part of this conspiracy, extricated herself when it got hot. I think that she would have, if they would have killed her husband. And it brought her in on it, which is what she was angling to do. She was trying to get her husband labeled as dark. And if she had wanted to, she could have pressed it farther. But then she decided maybe I'll get blamed.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, well, I mean, it's very easy to see why she didn't go to jails because she turned states with witness.

[Marcus Parks]

You gotta do that. You gotta flip.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, you got to take that flip.

[Marcus Parks]

Now.

[Ben Kissel]

Once Lori moved to Rexburg, she was soon joined by her and Chad's so called divine hitman, Alex Cox. Unlike Melanie Gibb, Alex had only gotten closer to Chad since he'd shot and killed Charles Valo. And Chad was playing the same game with Alex that he'd played with Laurie. See, while Laurie had been told that she'd been the wife of important figures in Mormon history in her past lives, Alex was told that he had been a special protector to important figures. And it was Alex's job in this life to protect Laurie from zombies like Charles Valo.

[Marcus Parks]

Listen, you're very, very important. You remember Denzel Washington? That's you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay, but from, from what movie?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, any number of his films that I'm not allowed to see or, you know, like that's the thing. You're the helper. You know, you're moroni. Think about this. Your Moroni valet. You help him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay. All right, so Gladiator 2, Denzel Washington.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. From what I've. Shocking Brooklyn accent.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, I mean, this is another cult tactic. Is that all he's doing is he's telling these people that, you know, they have lived this role in a past life and it just so happens that the role that they lived in the past life that was very important and very cool is the exact same role that they have to live in this life. Like Lori Valo has to be the wife of the prophet. Alex Cox has to be the protector of the wife of the prophet and also the prophet.

[Marcus Parks]

You have to be.

[Ben Kissel]

You have to be. Cause that's, that's, this is your destiny. Like, that's the whole Destiny thing.

[Marcus Parks]

It is your destiny. Just imagine his little piglet hands, just like you, me, Moroni, hanging out in the post Mormon apocalypse. Sharon, Strangers, wives, just.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, I hate that he's got no Riz. He's got none.

[Marcus Parks]

No, he's got nothing. He's got absolutely nothing. That's how low the bar is in Mormonism. Something we would clean up.

[Ben Kissel]

I thought about it.

[Marcus Parks]

We just moved in. Like, that's. Let's abandon the episode.

[Ben Kissel]

I've thought about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's move to Salt Lake City and let's take over that town.

[Ben Kissel]

Man, if I were to become a Mormon, I'd be president of the church in 10 years.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's do it, God. Let's take it. And then we flip it from the inside. We take the money, I turn the entire. The. The opening. Like they have that big fountain in front of the. And just fill it with beer. And it come every day and I fill up my big stein, being like, God says we're drinking now.

[Ben Kissel]

Like, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So funnily enough, we will be in Salt Lake.

[Marcus Parks]

Very Good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

In July. July 12th.

[Marcus Parks]

Last.com. this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. Seems amazing, right? It's because it is. From consultations to events and experiences, showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Which is good because let's just say I need it. You know, as you may or may not know, I lost horse picks.com in a very, very public and embarrassing auction to a young man by the name of Charlie Bucket. It who has decided to take my Horse Picks and drive it towards the right. Some of the incendiary horse picks that I've seen, including Steve Bannon on a Clydesdale. One of the worst I saw was Ivanka Trump inside of a mayor. And I know that this is not the direction that I saw horse picks.com and. And that little boy, I didn't know that he'd become a full fledged Nazi and. And grow his hair into broccoli shapes and do all sorts of things I don't understand. Which is why I've started Emu Paintings.com. thank you, Squarespace. Because Emu Paintings.com are these really. It's an exceptional way for me to get you paintings of emus in various positions that emus would normally be. And in a way, I find it both amusing and inspiring to see what emus can do using the painter's brush and imagination. And if it wasn't for Squarespace I would be absolutely F'd to the gills. That's the term for being absolutely s out of luck. Squarespace, thank you for streamlining your workflow with built in tools because I would not have been able to get this website up fast enough due to the legal fees I've received and the personal heartache and my own health deteriorating. I just want to say thank you Squarespace for all your help and emu paintings.com is going to be just as good and just as funny and relevant. I promise. Had to squarespace.com left for a free trial when you're ready to launch, use Offer code left to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. It's always nice to keep your money where you can see it. I want my money to sit in a big pile of silver rocks that I sit upon and if you want get it from me, you have to kill me. But not everyone's like me. See traditional big wireless carriers also seem they like to keep your money too. And that drives me quaazy. If you're tired of high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks that actually cost more in the long run, you're going to want to switch to Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile offers premium plans starting at $15 per month with high speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. Plus you can keep your phone and number along with all your contacts. Lucky you, you'll never miss a text when you're on Mint Mobile because it is everywhere ubiquitous like the pain of being man. Go and save your money with Mint Mobile. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans@mint mobile.com LPOTL that's mintmobile.com LPOTL upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Are you holding back on foreign travel plans this year because you are afraid of the language gap? Well, no need to mine the gap if you have Babel this year. We speak like an old new you with Babel, the language learning app that gets you talking. Babel's 10 Minute Lessons, created by over 200 experts help you start speaking a new language in three weeks or at your own pace. With a focus on practical real world conversations. It makes learning to communicate easy and effective. I do wish that they could put a cockney like option in there. So you can go. I go. And they can go. And she can be like, that means, hello, mister. And being like, how are you, sir? Like, I feel like that would be really fun. That would help me. Or like they have like, they have like terms like the I like in Ireland and stuff where they go like, oh, she's like, she's like a cat caught inside of the washing machine or something. I say, oh, what's the cricket? That's what, that's what they, that's what they say, oh, what's the crack in Ireland? And I wish I had an app that says, oh, he's not talking about your butt. It's what they say over there. But Babel otherwise doing great. Let's get more of you talking in a new language. Babel is gifting our listeners 60% off [e-mail] left get up to 60% [e-mail] left spelled B A B B E L.com left left babel.com left rules and restrictions may apply.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, being a special protector was a hell of a lot more exciting than Alex Cox's reality. Alex Cox's reality was that he was a failed stand up comedian who'd never gotten out of the Phoenix open mic scene and instead opted for a career as a truck driver.

[Marcus Parks]

Listen, I don't know if anybody ever heard this before. Yeah, man. But have you heard sex with a black chick?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Please stay off the cd.

[Ben Kissel]

Didn't you use Alex? You used that joke last week. Oh, did you hear that from your brother in law, Adam?

[Marcus Parks]

Parallel thinking. And honestly, I really wish that Adam stopped stealing my material. All right? That's my material. I. I'm the king of. You ever Asian, you deaf woman? That's me. That's what I do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But there's no punchlines.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, there is. Have you ever had sex with the black chick? And it's funny.

[Ben Kissel]

We love our truck drivers.

[Marcus Parks]

We do.

[Ben Kissel]

Ed said last week country wouldn't run without them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, Hong Kong.

[Marcus Parks]

I always do the Hong Kong. And I don't care if you think I'm mentally disabled.

[Ben Kissel]

But driving a truck is not as exciting as being the personal assassin for a central figure in the upcoming apocalypse.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

So with Alex at their side, Chad and Lori had someone who would carry out their dirty work without question. Now, about eight weeks after Charles's murder. I guess it's eight weeks, not seven weeks. Okay, eight weeks after Charles's murder. Murder. Lori, Tyler and JJ Moved into a townhouse unit in Rexburg. Well, Alex Cox soon moved into the townhouse next door after quitting his truck driving job to, quote unquote, protect Lori full time. It does seem, however, that by the time the day Bell cult began building this little enclave in the Rexburg townhouses in early September, Alex had already been told about the plan to get rid of Tyler and jj. This of course, can be inferred from the idiotic text messages sent between Alex and Lawrence Glory on September 3rd.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, this makes me angry.

[Ben Kissel]

This is because. Because this is the thing that happens with cults so often, and it's. And it's especially prevalent in modern cults. I'm so sick of cults getting cute.

[Marcus Parks]

You're the irony. The irony that they. It doesn't make it like you're not hip just because you're doing it out loud. I hate you.

[Ben Kissel]

On September 3, after Alex set up the WI fi for his and Lori's townhouses, he texted Lori the network now name. Alex had called it anti layman, which is of course a stupid Mormon thing. Layman being short for laymanites, the bad guys in the Book of Mormon. But tellingly, the password for the WI fi was too many kids using the number two, which is weird by itself, but not incriminating. But in response to the WI fi name and password, Lori wrote unprompted that she and Chad were trying to quote.

[Marcus Parks]

Get to the point bottom of what we need to do to eliminate them.

[Ben Kissel]

Completely, which was in reference to the kids. Well, you too many kids.

[Marcus Parks]

You also forget right before that she had typed hahaha. So funny.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, that's right.

[Marcus Parks]

Which is true. She laughed at the too many kids, which is important because it shows that she knew exactly what he was referring to.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, buddy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I just.

[Marcus Parks]

She wrote it down.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm dumb. He wrote it down.

[Ben Kissel]

They both wrote it down.

[Marcus Parks]

She both laughed at it. The laughing at it even makes it more incriminating. Too many K also just. Just sounds like a Mormon YouTube family blogging channel.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Just shows that they're clearly planning the whole thing.

[Marcus Parks]

Very much so.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Mine is too little. Him.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, of course. You always come over. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

So now that Chad Dayball and Lori Valo lived in the same town, they go on walks together on the Brigham Young University Idaho campus where Chad would tell Lori to be patient because Tammy was going to die in a car accident any day now.

[Marcus Parks]

I was downtown last week. The drivers are getting worse and worse.

[Ben Kissel]

Chad, however, didn't go by Lori's townhouse just yet because Lori's daughter Tylee was understandably upset about uprooting her Whole life at the age of 16 because her mother believed herself to be one of God's chosen. And Chad Daybell was pretty much the symbol of everything that was going wrong in Tylee's life. But Lori would not wait long at all. After moving to Rexburg. Before she took care of Tyler, Lori.

[Marcus Parks]

Had had fashioned Tylee into a little miniature her. She was very much in love with her mom's attitude. Very similar to Lori's own childhood with her mother.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And Tyler wanted to be in her mother's good graces a large amount. If you watch the interrogation footage of Tyler Ryan after Charles Vallow's death, she repeats the same story as Laurie. They tell this whole convoluted story, the self defense thing, but you can tell, and maybe it's just because I'm watching this stuff for so long and you're watching from, with, with hindsight is that you can tell she's parroting bullet points.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

She's hitting. You can tell this is a rehearsed talk. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And mimicking her mannerisms even.

[Marcus Parks]

She's talking just like her mother. You, when you see the mother say the word, that's the thing that keys me in. Lori's doing a her spiel of laughing stuff. Cut to Tyler saying the same exact turns of phrases, the same exact things. She's like, oh, she's been coached, but the cops were too busy. Another day and we better go check on that salt Lake again. Midsole, still plenty seasoned. Oh, have you ever been to Pepper Mountain? We better go.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This story is not a commercial for good policing.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not.

[Ben Kissel]

No, it's really not. But the problem when they moved to Rexburg is that, you know, Tyler had been this sort of mini me for so many years. But then Tyler's behavior changed.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ben Kissel]

Tyler was not doing 16 year old. Yeah, she's a 16 year old. She's not doing whatever Lori says anymore. She's being difficult. You know, she's pissed off that she had to move to Rexburg, Idaho. And I think it's the second, third, maybe fourth time she's had to move in her life. She's fucking sick of it. And Lori does not do well with people giving her any kind of guff.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, because Styley didn't know that she was cruising for a bruising because she didn't understand that her fighting her mother was her exhibiting zombie like behavior.

[Ben Kissel]

Exactly. Well, just a week and a day after Lori moved into the townhouse in Rexburg, she and Alex took Tyler and JJ on a day trip. To Yellowstone national park, just an hour and a half drive away. The whole family took a lot of photos on their smartphones where everyone appeared to be happy and having a good time. Time. But those photos were the last known pieces of evidence that showed Tyler Ryan still alive. As far as what happened to Tyler, we really don't have a clear picture of what went down. By the time Tylee's body was found, many months after her murder, it was so badly decomposed and had been so thoroughly destroyed that the medical examiner had no choice but to determine the cause of death as homicide by unspecificated means. Later investigations, however, use smartphone data and pings on nearby towers to track the movements of Alex Cox. And using that data, they were able to build a loose timeline of what may have transpired.

[Marcus Parks]

Yet Tyler was found in, sadly, in multiple bags. And that was what was.

[Ben Kissel]

She was found in a bucket.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And then. But that bucket contained multiple bags and those bags had to put. Which is why her autopsy took something like two weeks. It took a very, very long time. And. Yeah, but they were so destroyed, it's very hard to figure out exactly what happened.

[Ben Kissel]

So, according to the smartphone data, Alex Cox showed up at Lori's townhouse late at night after the trip to yellowstone, arriving at 2:42am it's believed that Alex and or Laurie murdered Tyler that night. And Alex spent the next hour completely dismembering and beheading Tyler's corpse in Lori's home. Home. He then took the remains to his own townhouse next door, where he presumably got a couple hours of sleep. Then at 9am, he left for Chad Daybell's property with Tyler's dismembered body in tow. See, Chad had a good amount of land surrounding his home in Idaho. Plenty of room to bury a body. And he'd already chosen a spot to bury Tylee east of his barn. Chad, the former professional gravedigger, likely dug the hole himself.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There's so much extra land in Idaho, why bury him on your own property?

[Marcus Parks]

Because that's what he had access to.

[Ben Kissel]

And keep an eye on him.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's because he's Mormon. He's stupid. Like, literally. That was the plan. It was just. Because it's there and I can do it. And again, they're working. What we talked about before, this idea of we have to remember, they still think this all's gonna be real. In a way, the Chad I don't know so much because obviously he lied and he changed his whole thing up. Yes, but on some level you have now, you're now in the point where you're killing children. You believe that this is going to turn out all right.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Right. So you kind of think as long as I kind of handle it all my own, no one's going to come peering into my world.

[Ben Kissel]

Alex believes it's real. Lori believes it's real. Chad most likely has convinced himself that it's real.

[Marcus Parks]

He's the most like he's the one who's the going to benefit the most.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, and I think there's also, also there's a bit of a ritualistic aspect to this which you know, I'm going to get into now. And if you want to get into a ritual, you usually have to do that on your own property.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what I learned. Because guess who hates it? The goddamn ymca. Because guess what the M doesn't stand for. Magic rituals. According to who? According to nobody. I give a. I don't care about those old men. Make me look at their penises. I'm going to show them a pentagram.

[Ben Kissel]

We know that Lori, Alex and Chad Dabel planned this murder together well in advance because the day after Tyler was killed, Chad had googled what direction the wind would be blowing on the day they were set to dispose of Tylee's corpse. The reason why he googled wind direction was because he and Alex had planned to burn the body before burying it. And this is you know, possibly two reasons. It could be to lessen the chances of someone noticing the smell of rotting flesh over time. Or it could be like I said, said somewhat of a ritual.

[Marcus Parks]

It could have been a ritual or it's just the. They don't understand how hard it is to burn a body. Yeah, I feel like it's a lot.

[Ben Kissel]

Comes down to just totally knows how hard it is to burn a body. Chad was in the dead body business for forever.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you cremate? But did in the cremation business, does that go over to the gravedigger business? Is that not too separate? Is that like a union job?

[Ben Kissel]

It's two separate. It's two separate things. But they talk.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And also but the talk is more like what's your favorite color of a recently deceased member of society? Ah yes. I like it when it's brown and green. That's how they talk.

[Ben Kissel]

I go for a classic gray.

[Marcus Parks]

I want the tits to be completely sorn of.

[Ben Kissel]

As long as it's mortals, that's all I care of.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Which way's the wind?

[Marcus Parks]

Just cause I thought it.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, Chad googled the wind direction to make sure that his neighbors didn't catch the scent of human flesh cooking out in the open. And so after Ty's body was burned, most likely by Alex, they tossed her decapitated head into the grave first, then poured the still burning remains into a green bucket. Then they were burning to the point where the bucket melted from the heat. The bucket was then placed on top of the head. And by 11:45am Alex was on his way to get lunch at Del Taco, having just buried his niece.

[Marcus Parks]

And we want to thank Del Taco for sponsoring this episode. One of the. Honestly, one of the finest post family annihilation meals I've ever had is the sleeper Del Taco hamburger. It really hits the spot, especially when you've made and emptied your own nest.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, certainly a place you go to not be seen.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, Del Taco is the better chain.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, it isn't.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Taco Bell's way better.

[Marcus Parks]

No, Del Taco is better than Taco Bell.

[Ben Kissel]

I put Del Taco over Taco Bell.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, well, both of you are idiots.

[Ben Kissel]

I mean, they're both really bad. And we have no business like eating Del Taco or Taco Bell in LA is like eating Pizza Hut in New York City. I don't know why we do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Because sometimes you got to. Because sometimes you're just craving that. Ick.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I want something nasty.

[Marcus Parks]

I know, but that's why I like Del Taco. Kind of gives it to you in a more soft.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I miss Taco Viva. That was the old one. Maybe it was just in Florida.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, maybe it was, I don't know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But I loved it.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, Taco Bueno.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Don't know it. That's Texas.

[Ben Kissel]

Texas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

[Marcus Parks]

I have. I went to in Queens. It was Taco Go yourself. Oh, I remember that. Yourself.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, whenever it's like you had to pay extra for them not spit on you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, it was my favorite. I loved it. Being. I love being called Uncle Big Butt every time I went in there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wait, so did they. They burn her head?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, they burned the whole thing.

[Marcus Parks]

They tried to burn.

[Ben Kissel]

Tried to burn her head. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's so bad at it. Well, if he's a former crematorium guy, you should know that a backyard fire isn't nearly as hot as a crematorium.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, he's a former grave digger, like I said. Well, that's the thing. The crematorium and the grave digger guys, they talk like.

[Marcus Parks]

But they don't always talk and shop.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, I don't think they're always talking shop. No, that's why it might be a ritual thing or it might just be like. It might just be. Let's. I don't think they were trying to like fully cremate the body. Like, I think what Chad Daybell knew is that I think Chad Daybell knew about how much decomposing flesh can smell like, and how easily it can permeate up through the ground. And so I think that what they were trying to do was burn the flesh away so it wouldn't smell.

[Marcus Parks]

Also, has anybody ever heard of, and this is, I feel like we could say this with a pure confidence, spontaneous ty combustion, which is honestly what I was really hoping and I wish that she would have been diagnosed ahead because we would have gotten the antidote, which is a bucket of water.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We had the bucket.

[Ben Kissel]

As Henry said last episode, these are Mormons trying to get away with murder. Sheltered folk. And from what we've seen over the years, nothing gets you into trouble faster than over explaining. That, of course, is exactly what Chad did after the disposal of Tyler's body. After Alex left that day, Chad decided that he needed to explain to his wife what that burning flesh smelled was, whether she noticed it or not. So he sent this highly incriminating, unprompted text to ostensibly cover his tracks and please, verbatim.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I've had an interesting morning. I felt I should burn all the limb debris by the fire pit before it got too soaked by the coming storms. While I did so, I spotted a big raccoon along the fence. I hurried and got my gun. And while he was still walking along, I got close enough that one shot did the trick. Yep, he's now in our pet cemetery. Fun times.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sometimes dead is better.

[Marcus Parks]

Why you keep coming by my pet cemetery? Why do you keep coming over here? Are you from the monsters?

[Ben Kissel]

I just wanted to come by and tell you not to go down that road.

[Marcus Parks]

I know it's closed off.

[Ben Kissel]

Just go down. Don't go down that road.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't want to. I can't. They're doing construction sow.

[Ben Kissel]

I know it is.

[Marcus Parks]

That's why I added sugar to the mix.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Also, if you're trying to kill your kid cuz they're a zombie, don't bury him in the pet cemetery.

[Marcus Parks]

Obviously for a second it I was like. But then she comes back. We can use her to fight against the devil. Which is not true because it's like a monkey spa arrangement, isn't it?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, it is. It is. Remember what happened in pet cemetery too. We all love Clancy Brown.

[Marcus Parks]

I do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah. No brain, no pain.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Oh, God, I love pet you so much.

[Marcus Parks]

So good.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, even though Tyler was only 16 years old, Lori told everybody that she was now attending BYU ida. Most people accepted the explanation as to why Tyler wasn't around anymore. So when there weren't a lot of follow up questions, seems like Lori felt safe enough to move on to the task of getting rid of jj. See, according to Melanie Gibbs boyfriend Chad was telling Lori that JJ was now a zombie who loved Satan.

[Marcus Parks]

Cool.

[Ben Kissel]

I knew you'd say that.

[Marcus Parks]

God would have been awesome.

[Ben Kissel]

Lori said she believed chad's claim because JJ's vocabulary was growing, growing, and he was finally sitting still to watch tv, where he'd never been able to do that previously.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So as soon as things are going well, she's like Satan.

[Ben Kissel]

As soon as he's like, kind of coming out of his shell and like, growing and like. Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it's. Honestly, I do think it's. It is partially that it's coming down to, oh, you're not supposed to get better. JJ's supposed to get worse. JJ's supposed to be super, super burdensome. Actually, him getting better is what's hastening his end.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, when things get good around here, we thank Satan.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, it seems like there was a moment when Lori thought that she might not have to kill jj. She told podcaster Melanie Gibb that she was going to hand over JJ to his grandmother, Kay Woodcock. She was going to lie to Kay and tell her that she couldn't take care of JJ anymore because she had cancer. But I think at this moment, Laurie got a little too wrapped up in her own story and decided that it was time to practice what she preached.

[Marcus Parks]

Or she was just lying to Melanie Gibb as she's lied to everybody.

[Ben Kissel]

And indeed, see, from how Melanie Gibb put it, Laurie was overanalyzing everything JJ did. And the only answer Laurie seemed to come up with was zombie, zombie, zombie. In Lori and Chad's world, leaving someone as a zombie was to doom that person's soul to an eternity in limbo. So just handing off JJ didn't work with the mythology. The Daybell cult had built. So just two weeks after his stepsister Tylie was murdered, JJ had to go as well. Well, so on September 22nd, Melanie Gibb and her boyfriend came over to record a podcast with Lori, and they ended up staying the night.

[Marcus Parks]

It just kind of reminds me of the time that Eddie and I, we guested on Dan Soder's Podcast. Do you remember when we killed that boy?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, just to warm up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we. Again, it's just so hard to start. It was in the morning. Yeah, the podcasting's so hard in the morning.

[Ben Kissel]

Dan's still doing that, huh?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

He's been doing that since, like, the old days back in 2010, when we were recording stuff together.

[Marcus Parks]

The only thing that changed is all those dead, dead, dead, dead boys.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, he's getting the checks.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, Gibbs and her boyfriend saw Alex take JJ up to bed before they went to sleep. But when they were packing up to leave the next morning, JJ was nowhere to be seen. Lori quite nonchalantly told them that JJ was being a zombie the night before after they'd gone to bed, and he climbed up on the fridge and smashed a picture. Jesus. Then he climbed onto the kitchen cabinets, where he got stuck between the cabinets and the ceiling like a fucking cat. So, Laura.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, like he's Tom Holland.

[Ben Kissel]

So, Lori said she'd asked Alex to take JJ over to his place to calm him down. But as we now know, that was the night that Alex killed J.J. valo. With this one, however, we absolutely know that Lori Valo was present during whatever it was that transpired.

[Marcus Parks]

One thing we know from Melanie Gibb was that he went next door to his townhouse with a crying, screaming jj. And when he came back, the last she was. They were the last few people to see jj. She watched JJ as, quote, unquote, asleep, sleep in Alex Cox's arms as he took him up the stairs.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Now, again, we don't know exactly how the murder went down, but it is possible that it may have been a highly neglectful accident. When it comes to Lori Valo, though, this really could go either way. What we do know is that Alex and Lori wrapped duct tape around JJ's head tightly to cover his mouth by accident.

[Marcus Parks]

Man, yesterday it was so hard. I had two rolls. I don't even know how I tripped.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, just covered in it. Yeah. Then they wrapped tape around his head several times from his chin to his forehead, basically only giving him the ability to breathe out of his nose. JJ's feet and ankles were also bound in duct tape as well as his wrists. In fact, Alex and Lori had wrapped duct tape all around his hands and arms, all the way up to his elbows. Finally, though, Alex put a white plastic garbage bag over JJ's head and pulled the drawstring, which is probably what ultimately killed him. But the reason why we know that Lori Valow was at least present for the Torturous death of her son is because investigators found one of Lori's bleach blonde hairs stuck in one of the pieces of duct tape used to restrain jj.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, if you listen to the coroner talk about this, one thing that is interesting is that in the toxicology report of jj, GHB was found in his liver. Now, there are some people that believe, like the corner said, which I love, which includes my freedom. Right. He says they can't speculate. Right. But I can. That's the best part. I can speculate all day.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, if GHB is in the liver, it's in the liver.

[Marcus Parks]

But they said it was a small.

[Ben Kissel]

That's the roofy drug. Right?

[Marcus Parks]

Drug. They said it was a small amount. So this is my take. What they found couple things that were very interesting and sad on JJ's body. There were scratch marks on his neck that obviously were came from human nails. So what they think happened happened was. And this is my entire speculation, Alex takes him next door. They knew they were going to kill JJ at some point. They decided to do it this way. He had caffeine, chocolate in his system, GHB and his own, like his. He had his medication and some other decomposition materials. I think that he was given a drink that had not the right amount of GHB in it to kill him entirely. I think that he expected JJ to just not wake up. And then when he went him upstairs, JJ got groggy. And I think that what then happened first was the first layer of trying to suffocate him, which was putting duct tape on his mouth, which is where the first duct tape is seen. Then we see him struggling. So I think you see bruises all over JJ's arms and when she was very obviously pinned to the bed. Then you see struggle marks over his hands and in his neck in which you seeing that he is fighting what seems to be duct tape getting wrapped around his head. So I think that is what they're where the defensive wounds are coming from. Was that him trying to. He died alive. He was alive while he was alive while they did it. And then they put the bag over his head to complete it. And then they in the process of getting the bag over said they had to tape his hands and his feet.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And we know that Alex had GHB because he was an open mic comedian.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And that's how they. You get paid and those mic ps.

[Ben Kissel]

As far as why this happened, it very well could have been that JJ and this could still work in with your theory that JJ was having an episode of sorts. Alex took things too far. Far and trying to calm him down. And JJ died.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, they already had a plan to kill him, so I just feel like it's too coincidental.

[Ben Kissel]

That's the thing. Once he'd wrapped him up, it's possible that JJ died or Lori just told him to finish the job, even with the podcaster couple staying in her home that night. But it is more likely that Lori and Alex had fully planned to murder JJ on September 22, even with the podcasters there, if only so Lori could prove how powerful and untouchable she was by this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This point, or as a witness or an alibi. So they didn't do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, it's very possible. Also, they weren't true crime podcasters. If they were true crime podcasters, maybe this whole thing be a little bit different. Maybe it would be brought to you by Squarespace.

[Ben Kissel]

This murder is brought to you by Squarespace. See, the evidence for premeditation here is that Alex headed out to Chad Daybell's property the morning after the murder, just like he done with Ty, except this time he carried JJ's 7 year old corpse in a black plastic garbage bag. Now, smartphone data says that on the morning Alex disposed of JJ's body, he only spent 17 minutes on the northern edge of Chad Daybell's property, near Chad and Tammy's pet cemetery. But since Alex spent such little time on the property, it's likely that Chad had already dug the grave either the night before or that morning. And the directive had to be given in person. Person. Because no text exists that could reasonably be linked to the body's disposal. So all Alex had to do was throw the body in the hole, put three wooden panels and three heavy stones on top, then fill the small grave with dirt before once again leaving Chad's property.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, because I think that the process of cutting up Ty and burning him was too much for them. Yeah, I think that they realized that when they in the middle of it, which is a part of the reason why I think she was only half burned, was because in the middle of the process, they're like, what? What are we doing?

[Ben Kissel]

This is awful.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

How.

[Henry Zebrowski]

When did they move to Rexburg again? How long was Chad Daybell there?

[Ben Kissel]

Chad Day Bell had been there five.

[Marcus Parks]

Years, something like that. Since 2018.

[Ben Kissel]

Okay, maybe, I guess maybe like a.

[Marcus Parks]

Year and two years. Almost two years.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, I guess he moved there in 2018, so, yeah, maybe like two years.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's not long enough to have a pet cemetery.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly. Exactly. I will try to think. Yeah. Wow.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, that's. I, I. The pet cemetery thing always, like, irked me and I didn't know why.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's it. That's it.

[Marcus Parks]

That's why.

[Henry Zebrowski]

How many dogs did these people kill?

[Marcus Parks]

Like, seriously, your first thought is, brand new house, new neighborhood, meeting the neighbors. First thing you say to your wife. So where do we put the pet cemetery? So we're already planning. Yeah, that is really funny.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Did, like, they have a bunch of dogs and cats? Cats, like, die in a fire or an explosion or.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, there was the one terrier group suicide. We felt that had to do with online bullying. That's right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And the donkey was a zombie.

[Ben Kissel]

As far as what Lori told people about jj, she, for some reason had multiple stories that were all slightly different. And I never understand this with these people, why they have to tell different people different stories when it's so much easier to have one simple story to stick to.

[Marcus Parks]

That's really good advice if you're trying to kill.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, we're going to be giving a lot of it today.

[Ben Kissel]

That's what I always say is that, like, look, if you want to learn how to do something, well, don't just look at the masters. Look at the failures.

[Marcus Parks]

Look at the failures.

[Ben Kissel]

Lori told his school that JJ had gone to Louisiana to stay with his grandparents, but she told JJ's nanny that JJ had gone to visit his grandmother and hold Hawaii. No reason.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. JJ's living an amazing fig life.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. The explanation Lori had given people about Tyler, however, the one that she'd gone to BYU, Idaho, that was starting to wear thin. On September 24th, Tyler's older brother and Lori's first son, Colby Ryan, texted Tyler's phone to wish her a happy birthday. Obviously, Lori Ballow had been anticipating something like this because she'd kept Tyler's phone charged and ready to use since Tyler's murder. So when Colby texted Tyler's phone, Lori texted back, pretending to be the dead daughter that she had killed.

[Marcus Parks]

And this brings me to one of my most, one of my largest pet peeves in all of Millennial Made content. Our feeble, sad attempt to write like teenagers and to speak like teenagers. Every single time I see a show that has been obviously written by 40 to 50 year olds with teenagers speaking, they sound really stupid. And I know. I don't think that you need to have one pedophile on every staff that knows how to talk to kids.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, they did. It was called the Disney Channel.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah, that's right. Nickelodeon made huge hits but again, see how if you harness him with just listen with just enough guidance, if you harness him, sky's the limit. Hannah Montana.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She's a gas. That's bad lingo. I was just making a. Oh, she's a gas.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's my new. That's boss.

[Ben Kissel]

She's the bee's knees.

[Marcus Parks]

Y. She's the wasp. Sass.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, when Lori started texting as Ty to Colby, Colby figured, this is kind of weird. Can I give you a call? But Lori, texting as Ty, wrote back that she was too tired to talk. And Lori didn't even bother to try and mimic Ty's emoji heavy texting stick style. Colby, of course, knew that something was up immediately and did not, however, enter his mind that his mother had killed his sister, who was now pretending to be her on the phone. And it would be a long time before Colby accepted that fact.

[Marcus Parks]

And that's why it shows that actually many ways, the powers, the superpowers of being bipolar or having ocd, that that's actually the first thought you would have. And that's actually why I'm stronger in many ways. My powerful, powerful paranoia. Are you my mom pretending to be Sister Jackie loves it.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, depending on your point of view, the fall of 2019 was either very good for Chad Daybell or very bad. After years of declaring himself a prophet in public appearances and on podcasts, the LDS establishment, that's the Church of Jesus Christ Latterday Saints, they finally took notice and duly excommunicated Daybell from the Mormon Church.

[Marcus Parks]

Flush.

[Henry Zebrowski]

First good thing they've done the whole time.

[Marcus Parks]

They don't. They did it for their own. To save themselves from somebody they knew was a liability.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, they do it all the time. Yeah, they just, it's. But that's the thing. They, they stripped Chad of his LDS membership. They banned him from entering Mormon temples or partaking in the sacrament. And that should have been a life shaking moment for him. But really all this meant was that Chad had nothing else to do but to retreat completely into his own little fantasy world. And that's the big problem with this, with the Mormon Church, is that they have these people that are on the fringes. They start saying all this crazy, the Mormon Church says, like, hey, you can't be a part of our club anymore. And so that only those people double down on the crazy that they've been talking about.

[Marcus Parks]

It's time for me to go independent. Yeah. Free from all restraints, you fcc.

[Ben Kissel]

And additionally, for a fringe figure like Chad Daybell, I would imagine that Being excommunicated was a bit of a badge of honor because Chad continued on his merry way with Lori and his other followers, even though it was obvious that everything was starting to fall apart there.

[Marcus Parks]

There's some information pointing to the fact that Chad was actually super bummed and that one of the things that he was trying to do, like, truly, when I keep talking about this, this foiled a big plot that was coming from inside.

[Ben Kissel]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

This foiled the thing where they knew that they were positioning all of these guys to be the brand new prophet from. From the streets.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. The neo fundamentalist revolution.

[Marcus Parks]

So I think in that way, that's also why they excommunicated him so quickly, was because they. You basically show Tom Harrison you need to stop talking about this, but we won't punish you because we've decided you're important, but we gotta knock out all your little buddies. Same thing with what's his putts with Tim Ballard.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Especially the ones with bodies piling up.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, but they Mormons, they love blood.

[Ben Kissel]

It's basically, we're gonna start your. We see your coup. We see it coming, and we're gonna take out your guys before it even gets close.

[Marcus Parks]

Close, yes.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, for two people who were trying to get an entire town prepped for the end times, which was due in about nine months at this point.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my God. Where do we get the floats? Where do we get floats? How do I get peanut butter?

[Henry Zebrowski]

What do we do?

[Marcus Parks]

How do we make. How do you make peanut butter?

[Ben Kissel]

Well, for people who were trying to get all this done, Chad and Lori spent an awful lot of time on their own personal romance. But more than anything, they spent a lot of time making sure they got paid.

[Marcus Parks]

She.

[Ben Kissel]

Since Lori hadn't gotten any payout from Charles Valo's insurance policy because he'd switched the beneficiary to his sister Kay, Chad made sure they had a nest egg by significantly increasing the life insurance policies he'd taken out on his wife Tammy. At the same time, Chad and Lori also made sure that Lori's niece, Melanie Boudreau, who had reconnected with Lori and gone all in on the cult. They made sure that she was still the beneficiary on her ex husband's policy. Ex husband. Because Chad and Lori had forced her to divorce him because he was a dark spirit. But once it was confirmed that Melanie Boudreau was indeed beneficiary, the ex husband, Brandon Boudreau, was clocked as a full zombie and was therefore put on Alex Cox's hit list. Got all that?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I got all of it. You know, I'm just bad about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Alex Cox. But he has to go full. What's his name? From Gross, point blank.

[Ben Kissel]

John Cusack.

[Marcus Parks]

John Cusack. He's got to go back in there, right? Because now he's got to get all in his blacks and get ready for assassin mode.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Now we know that Lori was involved in the plot to kill her niece's ex husband, Brandon Boudreau, because she visited a gun shop the day after JJ was killed and took photos of assault rifle ammunition boxes. It's believed that Laurie took these pictures to show Alex what he needed to use to kill not only Brandon Boudreau, but Tammy Daybell as well. Because both Tammy and Brandon had now been officially clocked as zombies, and. And both were heavily insured as such. Chad was also laying the groundwork for Tammy's impending death by telling friends she wasn't doing well and that he wouldn't be surprised if she died in her sleep. Any day now.

[Marcus Parks]

Any day. We're all just on pins and needles about it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We're all holding her mouth and nose shut about it.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so important to have her relax. And I go, relax, Tammy, relax. Sleep, Tammy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She keeps accidentally covering herself in duct tape.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, I don't know how that happens.

[Marcus Parks]

She just does that alligator death roll with the duct.

[Ben Kissel]

But before Tammy got got, Chad and Laurie decided to take down Brandon Boudreau first. So on October 2nd, Alex stupidly drove Tyler's Jeep to Brandon Boudreau's home early in the morning. A Jeep that Brandon knew. A vehicle that Brandon knew.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Not just that. If you're coming from Idaho to Arizona, bad gas mileage.

[Marcus Parks]

Super bad gas mileage. The worst.

[Ben Kissel]

The worst.

[Marcus Parks]

First.

[Ben Kissel]

And yes, he made the trek all the way from Idaho all the way down to Gilbert, Arizona. And that, of course, that's the same town that Alex had murdered Charles Valo. Gilbert, Arizona, was kind of like the first Rexburg. A lot of these people had moved to Gilbert to be around Lori and Charles and so on and so forth.

[Marcus Parks]

But I tell you what, if I rent a car to go kill somebody else's family, I'm getting the Toyota Corolla. Is that thing great gas mileage?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Lasts forever. You could drive it through a bank. You could drive it through the White House.

[Ben Kissel]

Comfy?

[Marcus Parks]

It is just an incredible, incredible tool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And one of the most popular cars in America.

[Marcus Parks]

It is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So they're all over the world?

[Marcus Parks]

All over the road?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Well, Once Alex arrived in Brandon's neighborhood, he parked across the street from Brandon's house. He then got into the back seat and steadied his silenced rifle for the moment Brandon returned from the gym.

[Marcus Parks]

He keeps reminding me. We brought this up the other day. Caddyshack 2. Okay. Mr. Esther House. Yeah, yeah, he's got the blacks on you like you could see it with the gilly suit inside of the.

[Ben Kissel]

All right.

[Marcus Parks]

Going cousin hunting.

[Ben Kissel]

He does den. That movie does seem to be on the edge of an orgasm the entire time.

[Marcus Parks]

Very strange film.

[Ben Kissel]

It's a very strange film.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I think it's better than we remember it.

[Marcus Parks]

It is.

[Ben Kissel]

I need to go back and see and watch it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Cuz it's about miniature golf, right?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh yeah, it's Jackie Mason.

[Ben Kissel]

Jackie Mason.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And Randy Quaid is great.

[Marcus Parks]

He's wonderful in it. You ever try to golf with that jammed up your crack? That's another line from Caddyshack too. We watched it endlessly.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, once Brandon pulled up, Alex fired a shot. And with a whoop, Brandon felt a bullet whiz by his head. Immediately recognizing that someone was shooting him, Brandon hit the accelerator and drove off while Alex fled in the opposite direction, exiting stage left. Terrified, Brandon reported the attempted assassination and hid out at his parents place with his kids. Having narrowly escaped the fantasy world created by Chad Daybell and Lori Valow. Tammy Daybell, however, would not escape Chad and Lori. And from the timeline and Lori's digital trail, we know that Tammy's death was planned far in advance. See, on the same day that Alex Cox tried to shoot Brandon Boudreau, Lori ordered two extremely tacky wedding rings off Amazon prime using her ex husband's account.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Romantic. I did buy Julie's engagement ring at Costco, so I can't really talk.

[Marcus Parks]

You can. You get good jewelry.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, you went to the store.

[Marcus Parks]

You went to the store. Good jewelry. I like Costco jewelry.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, and when I had to pick it up, the guy in front of me had a giant jar of peanut butter. He was returning. I'm like, what am I doing here?

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, at least you didn't bring her a big giant jar of peanut butter. Keep digging in there. You might find something you like.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, Laurie would later say that she'd bought these rings for the upcoming wedding between Alice Alex Cox and cult member Zulema Pastenis. But that doesn't explain the collared shirt and linen slacks that she also bought on her dead husband's Amazon account in her dumpy groom to be's sizes.

[Marcus Parks]

Do they get Extra FUPA length. Is that like a thing that you can get?

[Ben Kissel]

Can you get big FUPA pants on Amazon Prime? You can?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, wow. Amazon Prime's great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, if I buy my linen, I go to quints, right?

[Marcus Parks]

So much ad place. Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Dress like a zombie killer prince when you're in your quits.

[Marcus Parks]

They're gonna love this. They're gonna love this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a free one.

[Ben Kissel]

But these clothes, of course, would be the same that Chad would wear during his and Lori's impending nuptials. So the whole excuse of I bought the rings for Alex and Zulema does not hold. Three days after Lori ordered the rings, Chad sent her a text saying that he had big news about Tammy. After getting no reply, Chad sent another text explaining the big news because he obviously, obviously couldn't wait to tell Lori. Here's that text.

[Marcus Parks]

The short version is that she has been switched. Tammy's in limbo and level three demonic entity named Viola is in her body. It happened about 10pm and was done by Tammy's sister that I always knew was Three Dark, but it turns out she is multiple creation. Can you believe it? Not fully sure of the timing for removal, but once her actions verify the differences, I don't want to wait.

[Ben Kissel]

Basically telling him, time to kill Tammy.

[Marcus Parks]

It's gonna kill Tammy. Gonna kill that Tammy.

[Ben Kissel]

Do you know what multiple creation means?

[Marcus Parks]

Multiple. She is a.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, I know you don't know, you.

[Marcus Parks]

Multiple creation, I believe has to do with demonic entities and that she's not. Cuz there's some that are human and some that aren't. There's a whole extended lore. Tammy's dead.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, I. I did actually. I struggled quite a bit on this episode with like how much of the lore to put in and how much more. You don't need to know anymore. You really, really don't. You've not. You know, everything you need to know. There is a whole. There is a lower layer to this. Oh yeah. That is like. It's. It's so deep and it's so stupid and it's so confusing.

[Marcus Parks]

And I've read all of it, I've gone through all of it and I. And it's not. It hasn't helped me. Hasn't helped me as a person, hasn't helped me as a comedian, hasn't helped me as a podcaster.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's nonsense.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just. It is. But I also, you know, I like nonsense, but it's not even good nonsense. But Tammy, really. I wonder where she was at during this because all of this was happening while she was alive. The kids get killed, you know, all the stuff's going on and she is just kind of in a, in her own little world.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, she's going about her day.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

She has no idea that this is coming for her. She's looking at her big dumpy husband. He's just going, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. I like, I'm glad that Xtina turned around on that one. And she's just like texting, going, like, oh, nothing, just. I'm going, I'm on the Internet.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, if you look at it from her perspective, you know, at this point, you know, her husband has been excommunicated from the church. They've been in their entire lives. Like they're. But they're both like, I would imagine life for Tammy right now is highly stressful.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, she's also, she is, she is mostly a true believer.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And then we also wonder whether or not in my, one of my big I concepts is that he tried to get her to be a plural wife maybe and she wasn't super into it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Do you think, does she know that Lori exists?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, they went to see. They. She went to at least one conference with Chad. She knows Lori exists cuz she knows that he guests on her podcast.

[Ben Kissel]

The podcast. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they know her in terms of that way because she became this sort of very. You can't be more minor of a presenter than she was. And that's how she got known.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. But he doesn't. She definitely doesn't know that they're texting. That they've been texting every day for, at this point a year.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. That they made forehead sex.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

She has no idea that they made forehead sex.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, four days after Chad sent the text about Tammy being switched, he gave Alex Cox the go ahead to carry out Tammy's assassination. As Tammy was unloading groceries from her car in front of her and Chad's dad's home, Alex Cox suddenly appeared with a ski mask and a rifle.

[Marcus Parks]

Coming for you, Mrs. Esther House again, fully kill, full killy suit in the middle of the Sal. Salt Lake City gated community.

[Ben Kissel]

Salt Lake City. This is Rexburg, Idaho.

[Marcus Parks]

Still. It's just like a gated community and him just feeling like, gotta be very quiet.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Can we get this done soon? I got a mic I gotta hit.

[Marcus Parks]

I never will be on kill. Tony hit the first one. I won't be able to get to the second one now.

[Ben Kissel]

At first Tammy thought that Alex was holding a paintball gun, but when he fired Several shots. It became obvious that it was an actual rifle, albeit silenced. But as it turned out, Alex Cox was a very bad shot, and he missed Tammy just like he missed Brandon. Tammy screamed, Alex ran away, and Tammy called the police soon after. The police, however, decided to seize on Tammy's initial impression that the assailant was using a paintball gun, and therefore dismissed, dismissed the whole thing as a prank.

[Marcus Parks]

Literally just glazed over it because, and I do think it's just because Tammy, I know that they have seen guns, right? Like, this is a, you, this is a Mormon, like, family. They've seen some guns and they're in.

[Ben Kissel]

A rural community, a fundamentalist Mormon community. They've definitely seen guns.

[Marcus Parks]

I think the only thing that would have fooled her about is the fact that it was an automatic rifle or was something that looked, that didn't look like something that she was used to seeing.

[Ben Kissel]

And it had a big silencer on it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wouldn't there be bullet holes or at least paint?

[Ben Kissel]

Well, it was, well, that's the, that is the thing. Yeah, there would be paint. I did ask, I did think about that. Like, where's the paint? But it is, you know, it wasn't a gated community. Like, it was a rural community. Like, like, I, I, I know these places well where you get, like just outside of town and, you know, these properties are, are large. They're very, they're, they're like a few acres. And each house is pretty far away from each other. So, you know, you can fire a, a bullet and it's not really going to hit anything or it's not going to hit anything close. And these cops aren't going to go off into the fucking, you know, they're not going to go out into the, the woods to see if there's any, like, bullet holes.

[Marcus Parks]

These motherfuckers have nothing else going on.

[Ben Kissel]

It's Rexburg, Idaho, if there's, but that's the thing. That's. If there's woods, there might be nothing. Like, there might be nothing beyond it and there might be nothing to see.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they're also don't believe it's bullets or an actual gun because they've never seen anyone shoot a gun at someone, probably.

[Marcus Parks]

And, and violent crime.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, that's the thing. It's the most likely explanation. Occam's Razor. Every cop is supposed to go off of, like, what is the most likely explanation here?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ben Kissel]

And in Rexburg, Idaho, the most likely explanation is some shithead kid with a paintball gun, not a fucking assassin for a Cult.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's where they were wrong.

[Ben Kissel]

But we know for a fact that Lori and Chad ordered this hit because later that night, Zelima Pastenis was hanging out with Laurie when Alex called. Zelima heard Lori tell Alex over the the phone that he was an idiot who can't do anything right by himself.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, she sounded like a cartoon villain. Yeah, you can't do anything right by yourself. What is the Nighting henchman if you keep bungling it up? Oh, Batman.

[Ben Kissel]

Surrounded by incompetence and fools. Delame, of course, took that to be an admonishment for botching the assassination. But also only later cuz the Zulema.

[Marcus Parks]

Poor, poor, stupid, stupid Zulema.

[Ben Kissel]

The way that I would describe Zulema is the Z doesn't like. I don't think ZMA really knows that there's anything going on at this point. She doesn't think about the murders or anything like that. It's only after everything kind of comes back that she goes, oh, that makes sense now.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. I remember Lori very angry. She yelled, she said mean words like you're stupid and you're bad at it. And it was just what a terrible call. Like two way. She's talking about it because she called a man stupid on the phone. She was just like, oh no.

[Ben Kissel]

But in the end, Chad Daybell decided to go a different route in murdering his wife. Instead of an assassination, he and Alex decided to go with a good old fashioned suffering suffocation. In the middle of the night. About 10 days after Alex's attempt on Tammy Daybell's Life, Chad called 911 and said that his wife had gone to sleep with a bad cough. Chad had thereafter found her dead with so called pink foam coming out of her mouth. The county coroner, however, felt that there was no reason to look into her death at all. So he ruled the causes as natural and immediately sent the body to a funeral. Funeral home. Because Chad specifically said he did not want an autopsy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh yeah, cremation, you idiot. Sorry.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly. No, it's he. We know that she was murdered. They originally said that it was accidental and it's just another example of they just take the husband's word for it. Yeah, they mostly take the information that's there and you have Chad describing some long thing and you've got, I guess it's, I, I don't know how many bodies build up in the morgue in Rexburg, but it's like, I guess you got to move it along.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like if someone reports an attempted murder then 10 days later they're dead. Maybe look into it.

[Marcus Parks]

One was a prank and one was a cough. You don't understand Eddie. That it. Pranks and coughs can't run the world.

[Ben Kissel]

That is true. They really can't. If I let pranks and coughs run my life, his whole life would be shattered and fall apart. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

From your grand from the boogie down streets of Queens to a pile of beans, A new cup of piping hot polish Italian java. Last podcast on the left and Spring Hill Jack Coffee are rising from the rubble with the new brew on Butterfly Dudes Blue Eye Blend. Nothing to do with any moth based entity. Don't even think about it. This is a butterfly dude. Don't mind the blue eyes, he's just Caucasian. Our new proprietary roast might seem eerily similar, but don't let your tongue deceive you. It's a butterfly dude. Rose. This is the butterfly Dude's Blue Eye bl Entirely delicious and not just the same beauty. Butterfly Dudes Blue Eye Blend from the cocoon to your room, this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Think about your favorite leaders, mentors and idols. They don't have all the answers, but they do know when to ask questions or seek support from their community. In a society that glorifies hyper independence, it's easy to forget that we're all better when we have a support system behind us. Much like how I felt so sad the other day. I had went to the store was an ice cream store to get a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream and it was the only thing that really could have settled me that day. I was so upset. The news, pulse politics, the fires, my shoe hurt. I went to get that scoop of ice cream and they were out of mint chocolate chip. So I went to my friend and I asked him for help and he said here. And he handed me a bazooka and I went back to that ice cream shop and I felt better ever since. And it's the kind of stuff that when you need to reach out, that's the kind of thing that better Help can provide. Better Help is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient. Serving over 5 million people worldwide. Access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. Or you can just talk to my friend with the bazooka. Build your support system with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com lastpod to get 10% off your first month. That's Better Help. Hp.com lastpod.

[Ben Kissel]

Now as far as what Chad told Tammy's family. He said that she'd been sick and had been having coughing fits as of late, which her family found hard to believe because she'd been in perfect health when they saw her just two weeks earlier. Chad, however, stonewalled everyone again and again and even made a tacky and oddly detached Facebook post announcing her death.

[Marcus Parks]

It reported read, quote, I am saddened to share that my beautiful, talented wife Tammy passed away early this morning in her sleep. It is a shock to all of us. She was so beautiful in every way. We are still working out the details, but we plan to hold a viewing Monday evening in Springville, Utah, then hold the funeral and burial there on Tuesday. We are overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and support. Thank you so much.

[Ben Kissel]

It's the. Thank you so much.

[Marcus Parks]

Thank you so much.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He really is a bad writer.

[Marcus Parks]

He can't even write a moving post about his dead wife.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. No.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ben Kissel]

He's. Exactly.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

He's supposed to be. He's written, like, novel and, like, beautiful and talented. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, she's Vanna White. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

You know what I mean?

[Marcus Parks]

Like, who describes their White House? He's beautiful and talented.

[Ben Kissel]

He called it. Yeah. He used the word beautiful twice in three sentences. Couldn't come up. Couldn't. Couldn't even be bothered to look up the thesaurus.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what it was? Is that he wanted to make sure to everyone kn. No being like, no matter what woman I roll in here with three days from now, just know for a fact that I thought Tammy was beautiful. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, and by the way, she was buried in the same cemetery where they. Where they. They used. No, not the pets. No, no.

[Marcus Parks]

Where the pets are. Tammy wanted to be amongst her thousand pets that we murdered in the last few years. She had to be with the five parakeets she crushed with the car accidentally. No.

[Ben Kissel]

It was a cemetery in Utah where they hadn't met, but she had gotten him a job after they started dating. They worked there together for a long time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Same joint.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, same joint.

[Marcus Parks]

She was the grave diggers receptionist. Yeah. Which is going to be my new Mormon pornography novel.

[Ben Kissel]

Not the astronaut's wife, but the gravedigger's receptionist.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And you get so many calls.

[Marcus Parks]

Crazy.

[Ben Kissel]

But, you know, Lori and Chad, you. You joke about it being like, whoever I show up with four days from now. Two weeks after Tammy died, Chad and Lori flew to Hawaii and paid $600 for a beach wedding, complete with a photo shoot. When they got back, Chad even had the nerve to call one of Tammy's Sisters to tell her that he'd gotten remarried. And Hawaii. This is two weeks after he buried Tammy. Strangely, though, Chad described Lori as an empty nester whose daughter had died a year previous. Again, Chad's given details he doesn't have to give and he's lying for no reason. And he raised suspicion as a result.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Also, if they don't give a about the law, why are they getting married on paper?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I don't know. I think it's because it's just, it's, it's. Again, weirdly, this is the Mormon thing. You're stuck in this sense of appearances and this need for appearances to be away. So they still, in this, in this delusional state, they want it to be as real as they can make it.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So that when it does happen, it's all been legally, like, you know, like we're legally married or what, you know, like they can do. They can have a sense of kind of, I don't know, normalcy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't think they made one correct choice to get away with it.

[Ben Kissel]

No, no, they really didn't. You know, it's, it's. It is insane.

[Marcus Parks]

Too good sometimes.

[Ben Kissel]

It really is. Well, Chad and Laurie's insistence that they go full steam ahead, it wasn't really working in the real world because the disappearances of Tylee and JJ were finally starting to catch up to Lori valo. In late November 2019, JJ's grandmother Kay Woodcock finally called police down in Gilbert, Arizona, to tell them that JJ had been missing for three months and that his adopted mother, Lori Valo, wasn't respond responding to texts or calls. Kay had called Arizona police because she didn't know Lori had moved to Idaho. But unbeknownst to K, those same cops were already investigating Lori for the attempted murder of Brandon Boudreau. Because Brandon had absolutely recognized the green Jeep that his attempted assassin drove as the same one that belonged to Lori's daughter. Additionally, those same cops in Arizona were also revisiting the death of Lori's fourth husband, Charles Charles Vallow. So one of the Arizona detectives agreed to drive to Idaho to do a welfare check on jj. And the only way that visit could have gone worse for Lori and chad is if JJ's dead body had fallen from the ceiling in the middle of the interview.

[Marcus Parks]

It is just the wild how badly they will continue to this up.

[Ben Kissel]

So when detectives knocked on the door of Lori's townhouse, it was actually Alex Cox and Chad Daybell who. Who answered. And the last person you wanted talking to the Cops were these two knuckleheads. Where Lori was always calm and collected with the police, Alex and especially Chad melted under the slightest pressure. For example, when detectives asked if JJ was home, Alex and Chad just looked at each other and said, nothing.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't know.

[Ben Kissel]

They even say, don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

They were just like, you know when you could see, hear the eyeballs. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

You know, when the detective asked again, Alex blurted out that JJ was in Louisiana visiting his grandmother.

[Marcus Parks]

He love mar. He was down there. He. He loved it. He go down. He's one of my favorite. He loves absence. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

The grandmother, K. Woodcock. And the detective told Alex that he knew this wasn't true, because guess what? K. Woodcock was the one who asked. Called who called and asked for the welfare check. So she's not there.

[Marcus Parks]

This can't be real. Then.

[Ben Kissel]

So the detective asked for Lauren. His phone number. Alex stupidly said he didn't have his sister's phone number while he was standing in his sister's house.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I gotta remember. Yeah, absolutely. It's. It's 557-28-008.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Forgot the niner.

[Marcus Parks]

Because I remember. Remember because the numbers spells boobs.

[Ben Kissel]

But if you wanted to talk to Lori, she was in the townhouse. So he just immediately is like, I don't know her number, but she's next door. You can talk to her there.

[Marcus Parks]

She heard it through the wall. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

While one officer went to talk to Lori, Chad panicked and tried fleeing the interview in his Chevy Equinox to the Mormon mobile. The detectives, of course, stopped him and asked him again about jj. Chad said the last time he saw JJ was in October. And he didn't have Lori's number either, in case the cop was wondering because he didn't know her that well.

[Marcus Parks]

I've never had forehead sex with this woman. I've never tried to lead the 144,000 and this very world that you stand upon with this woman. I have no idea who JJ is. Old friend of mine, I guess.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Stay away from my pet cemetery.

[Marcus Parks]

Anything. There's a lesson to be learned. Well, because the thing is that he's acting like JJ's like a guy he used to know.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, yeah. Not in like a seven year old disabled boy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. You be like jj. Well, last time I heard it from jj, he was. I think he was on his way to St. Paul for conference.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Or is he backpacking across Europe?

[Marcus Parks]

He's in a backpack in Europe.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, Chad's claim that he didn't know Lori that well was another easily disproved. Lie because the cops knew that Chad and Laurie had just gotten married in Hawaii.

[Marcus Parks]

It's been. Honestly, it was a very short kind of elopement. Really, it's only been a year.

[Ben Kissel]

Cause how long does it take to really know someone? Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Sometimes you don't know anybody. You can live with them forever.

[Ben Kissel]

Finally, though, the cops located Lori herself in one of the townhouses. And she tried using the same charm that had worked on cops her entire life. But the veil was starting to slip. Lori tried the brick wall of rambling tactic. This is one of Lori's go tos. She went on and on about JJ's autism, how she was such a good person for raising him, how horrible K. Woodcock was, and how Lori should have been the person to receive the insurance benefits for her husband's death. In fact, she's going to sue Woodcock. It's just moving from subject to subject to subject. So cops. So the cops can't ever focus on what they're actually there for.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And when they're. They're investigating a missing person, don't bring up another random death.

[Marcus Parks]

You're involved.

[Ben Kissel]

Don't bring up how you're upset about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Don't ask. Don't give the cops things to ask you questions about. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And finally, Lori started talking about how her brother Adam, AKA Bo Nasty. Yeah, he was trying to kill her for a insurance money. She's basically deflecting all the blame away from herself while simultaneously trying to play on the sympathies of the police. But when the cops didn't buy it and just kept pressing her to just tell him where JJ was, she improvised and said that JJ and Ty were both at the movies with her friend podcaster Melanie Gibb. They're all seeing Frozen too, ironically, which.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It is about trying to find lost family members.

[Ben Kissel]

Really?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, really.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

I didn't know that.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And were they found buried in the pet cemetery?

[Henry Zebrowski]

They were in the annihilation cloud. Never.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, sure. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, Lori said, I blame Olaf. You just want to blame Josh Gad for anything.

[Marcus Parks]

Josh Gad, I'm coming for your sins. Josh Gad. I won't rest until I see you crucified.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If I get you, you're gonna accidentally fall down in some duct tape.

[Ben Kissel]

Really?

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, Josh get it? Mean, you know, arm.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Well, Lori, I'm glad you kind of turned the corner on that one. You used to have a lot of animosity.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm fine with Josh Gad. He's allowed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I like him.

[Marcus Parks]

He's Fine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, it's. Cuz you have a nice life now. I do. I think that's what it comes down to. You don't have to hate all the fat comedians anymore.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Cuz you used to have like a. A kind of a blanket hatred.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I did.

[Marcus Parks]

But now it's different.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. That guy from Lost, though, he's going down. Hurley.

[Marcus Parks]

That. That.

[Ben Kissel]

Wait, wait, no, no, no, no. Hugo.

[Marcus Parks]

He beat me out to build. To play the mute hermit miner in the Adam Sandler ridiculous six vehicle. That was supposed to be me. I was the second choice in that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I was supposed to be mine. I was supposed to be hanging out in New Mexico with fucking all the Sandman's crew.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. And he beat me out for a. In a lesbian vampire movie that never even came out.

[Ben Kissel]

I'm gonna go ahead and defend Jorge Garcia right now. I think he's delightful. I'm a massive. I'm a massive Lost fan. I met him once at an event in Brooklyn. He was extraordinarily kind.

[Marcus Parks]

Jorge Garcia. I mean you no harm.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, Lori told the cops that she was going to have Melanie call them as soon as they got back from watching Frozen 2. But just after the cops left, Chad returned to come up with a plan, albeit a very bad one. He called Melanie Gibb and told her that the police would be calling about jj, but she must not, under any circumstances. Circumstances pick up and that's it. Lori, we're covered.

[Marcus Parks]

There's one thing an amateur podcast doesn't like to do, and that's talk. There's no way that she would want to get involved in something spicy like this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If you get a call from a number, 9, 1, 1, don't pick it up.

[Marcus Parks]

Send it to voicemail.

[Ben Kissel]

Lori then called Melanie Gilbert herself and asked Melanie for a recent photo of, quote, children running around. Gibb later testified that Lori had implied that she wanted Melanie to make it look like the photo was of jj, But Melanie declined to participate. Now, the cascade of lies that came from the mouths of Lori, Chad, and Alex was enough justification for search warrants on all the townhouses rented by cult members. But when the cops returned for the search the next day, they found that Lori and Alex were both gone. And all of Lori's clothes. Clothes were missing. As it turned out, though, Chad, Lori, naked sister.

[Marcus Parks]

Dad, naked sister. Time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He does like it. We know he likes it.

[Ben Kissel]

He loves it. He loves it. We know he loves it. As it turned out, Chad, Lori, and Alex were not necessarily on the run. Instead, they moved on to the next Phase of solidifying their cult. See, after spending Thanksgiving at Knott's Berry Farm.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Classless fried chicken for Thanksgiving.

[Marcus Parks]

Serve a Thanksgiving buffet.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You in?

[Marcus Parks]

You saw it advertised.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, after that little vacation, Chad and Lori joined their most ardent members in Las Vegas for a flurry of cult weddings. Remember last episode I said they made all the people divorce and then they made all the people marry. They hadn't made them married just yet. They just paired them together and said, you're going to marry this person. You're going. This is. This is your soulmate. This is the point where they actually went through with it.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, giggity gig, more like. Oh, mate, I'll save it. Let me write that down. Can anybody have a notepad? Anybody have a notepad? I got to write that down. I got to write it down. I can't lose it. Homade. Homemade. Homemade. Homemade. I can't lose it. I can't lose it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, Alex, you want to go to Del Taco?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, absolutely. Of course you lose a job.

[Ben Kissel]

So two days after the cops executed a search warrant on the cults townhouse enclave, Chad and Lori met out Alex Cox, Zulema Pestenis, and Lori's niece, Melanie Boudreaux in Las Vegas. Now, the first wedding that night was between Alex Cox and Zulema. Alex was following orders from Chad and Laurie to marry Zulema because they told him that that's just what was supposed to happen. And Zulema got to marry the cult's protector, which upped her status just the slightest bit.

[Marcus Parks]

I love how your breath smells like beer. And I love that even though you do not drink, you smell like beer. I love your grubby beaver like hands. And I love your small pumpkin like smile.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I love when you call me Lori.

[Marcus Parks]

Me too, Zulayma. It's time for my anointing.

[Ben Kissel]

Just fucking hate that. I just hate him so much.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm dead. So it's okay.

[Ben Kissel]

But then there was the matter of who was going to marry Laurie's niece, Melanie Boudreau. See, after her divorce from Brandon, Melanie Boudreau had been trolling the Mormon dating sites and she'd found a poor SAP named Ian Palowski. Now, as far as I know, Ian and Melanie had never met in person prior to their Vegas wedding. But Melanie was reasonably cute and Ian was very much into her Mormon doomsday prepper vibe.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm looking at. I did not know there was LDS singles dot com.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, of course there is.

[Ben Kissel]

There's a dating site for everybody. Wow. There's a dating site for people who work in the funeral business.

[Marcus Parks]

See, that's cool.

[Ben Kissel]

That's fun. But I'm just saying, there's sites for everyone.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Ben Kissel]

There's sites for balloon fetishes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, really?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Meet up somebody else who likes. I'm looking horny with balloons.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Pop it off.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, lunars.com. oh, yeah, yeah. It's a dating app for people that like to have sex with balloons. That's right there, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is it just pictures of balloons that they can have sex with?

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I think that is. That is interesting because it should just be the Party City website.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, after the ceremony between Melanie and this new guy, Ian Palowski, who just keep in mind, this guy just showed up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he's like this. He's fresh. He's brand new.

[Ben Kissel]

Brand new. He did nobody. He don't know nobody. He doesn't know anything about any of this. He just thinks he found like this cute woman on a mormon single site and he got lucky.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they have multiple cult members back in Rexburg that could probably pick for this, right?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Well, no, no, no, no, no. Because I think they needed new blood. I think they started getting a little too incestuous. A lot of people were yapping.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Well, after the ceremony, Melanie revealed everything to Ian about the cult that he was now unwillingly a part of. From the end times 144,000 prophecy to the light dark scale, as well as the ever present threat presented by zombies possessed by demon slaves, slugs. But instead of bolting, Ian basically said, yeah, sounds cool.

[Marcus Parks]

Of course, because right before their conversation, he was some dumbass, boring Mormon. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

He described Melanie's lowdown of the entire daybell mythology as fun and exciting, saying that it felt as if they'd ripped their entire worldview from a Dungeons and Dragons manual.

[Marcus Parks]

It's weird that you'd say that. It's almost like that's exactly what they did.

[Ben Kissel]

It's a direct quote from Ian.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's amazing. It's like a live rpg, but instead of rolling dice, you wrap a child's head in duct tape.

[Ben Kissel]

But after Melanie Boudreau was done with the world building, things turned very dark very quickly. When she got into the actual plot, she told Ian that her ex husband, Brandon was possessed by a demon.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Ben Kissel]

And that Alex Cox, the man Ian had just met, was actively trying to murder Brandon. As a consequence, our witness to the wedding, Melanie Boudreau. Them. Oh, that guy.

[Marcus Parks]

That guy with the pumpkin smile.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Grumpy beaver hats. All right. Fine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't like him anyway.

[Marcus Parks]

He's a funny guy. He was super funny. He. The first thing he asked me, right as soon as I walked into him, I knew I was gonna like him because he was just like, hey, tell me something. He's like, hey, do you like, do you ever fuck a black chick? And I was just like, that's. I was like, no, actually, I've never touched a breast. But if I. But I could see how the angle. It's funny to ask people, you ever been on lunars.com?

[Ben Kissel]

Well, Melanie Boudreau then went even further, telling Ian that Lori Valo's kids, Tyler and jj, they'd also become zombies, and Melanie believed that Alex had taken care of them as well. In other words, what started off as a fun LARP for Ian Pawlowski very quickly turned into a terrifying nightmare.

[Marcus Parks]

That fun LARP lasted for literally 25 minutes. And then he was just like, oh, deary me. Oh, just, well, better get to.

[Ben Kissel]

That's what I was.

[Marcus Parks]

I was the first thing. I'd be like, well, let me before I get shot in the head.

[Ben Kissel]

So after hearing the plot, Ian Palowski texted his ex wife, whom I assume he still had a good relationship with, and he asked her to Google Melanie Boudreau because Ian couldn't do it himself in Melanie's presence.

[Marcus Parks]

That was an excuse to reach out.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. And Ian's ex wife did so and soon called Melanie's ex husband, Brandon Boudreau, after easily finding his phone number. Eager to talk, Brandon told Ian's ex wife all about the Daybell cult's attempt to kill him because they said he was a zombie, although it was really for the insurance money. Then he told her about their already successful murder of Charles Valo for the same reasons.

[Marcus Parks]

What? Oh, what?

[Ben Kissel]

Ian's ex wife then called the police, marking yet another person who'd contacted the authorities, asking for someone to look into the activities of Chad Daybell and Lori Valow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like, but, you know, I. I would see Chad Daybell and be like, this guy ain't killing nobody.

[Marcus Parks]

That's exactly what happened again and again. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Ian Palowski, however, was terrified as to what would happen to him if he pulled out of the marriage. So he.

[Marcus Parks]

I, like, just started this.

[Ben Kissel]

So he stayed with it and soon moved to Rexburg along with everyone else. He did continue communicating with his ex wife, but he hid the texts because he believed if the cult ever found out, he'd be labeled a zombie and killed as well. But Ian was able to stand just six days of marriage to Melanie Boudreau, and she's spending those six days, like, making him sit down and listen to Pat podcasts and aow. Podcast.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, got to get him cat caught up. You got to get ready for the Lord.

[Ben Kissel]

And he's just sitting there sweating.

[Marcus Parks]

This is just all I do. God, I never should have agreed to go to that open mic.

[Ben Kissel]

He and his ex wife. After six days, they contacted the detectives from Arizona who were already investigating Lori for both the attempted murder of Brandon Boudreau and the disappearance of her children. They put Ian in contact with the FBI, and after Ian spilled everything he knew, he became an informant, pumping Melanie for any information she might have.

[Marcus Parks]

You got to do the flip. Got to do that number one flip.

[Ben Kissel]

Chad and Lori, meanwhile, seem to have completely given up on the idea of a new Jerusalem. Now that their spouses were dead and Lori's kids were out of the way, they used the near half million dollars Chad had received from Tammy's life insurance policy to rent a house in Hawaii. In December of 2019, they all but abandoned Rexburg.

[Marcus Parks]

Right out the door.

[Ben Kissel]

Out the door.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And that's great advice for anyone who lives in Rexburg. Get out of there.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, get the out of there now.

[Ben Kissel]

This blase behavior about the impending apocalypse was strange to the faithful followers Chad had left behind. And all the people who'd followed Chad without question were at long last starting to examine everything with a closer lens. What with the many deaths and disappearances surrounding Chad and Laurie, it began to finally dawn on podcaster Melanie Gibb and her pat boyfriend that they very well might become accessories to murder if they weren't careful.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, there's a lot of things as a woman I'll accept. I'll accept friends that kill their children for the sake of the Lord. I'll accept people who kill their husbands, people kill their boyfriends, but I will not accept responsibility.

[Ben Kissel]

So to cover their asses, Melanie Gibb and her boyfriend began recording every phone call they had with Chad and Lori, hoping that at some point, their former spiritual gurus would incriminate themselves.

[Marcus Parks]

This is a point of I want to give to the police. There are police officers that listen to this show. It's actually kind of funny in that way. But for those of you just know that if you're going to have someone wear a wire, I think every police station should also have an acting coach.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

That can teach people how to not act like they're on a wire. Because if you listen to the phone call, Melanie get made to Chad and Lori. They're like, you're on a wire, Melanie. You're recording this call right now, aren't you, Melanie? And she's like, no, no, no, I'm not. I'm simply curious about what happened to jj. And they're all like, tell the police that we don't know where he is.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, well, they. She wasn't doing it for the police at this moment. She's just doing it for herself.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, because guess what she was really trying to do, Marcus? Get material for her podcast.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ah, see, I was going to give her the benefit of doubt and say, not go to prison.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, I feel like that was the second.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, during a call on December 8, 2019, Laurie insisted over and over again that JJ was fine and safe, but she refused to elaborate. That's what that was her line over and over again. He's fine and he's safe. I don't need to tell you where he is. Chad also denied ever saying that Tammy's death was foretold, even though he'd related this prophecy to podcaster Melanie Gibb perhaps half a dozen times, if not more.

[Marcus Parks]

I meant a spiritual death, like a transformation, like she was to become Islamic.

[Ben Kissel]

Once Chad and Lori began to realize that their podcast buddies were no longer on their side, Lori began claiming that Melanie Gibb had been influenced by dark spirits.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah, she did the hellish rebuke. Like, as soon as she. She was like, she said, sounds like. Cuz Melanie said to Lori, it sounds like you've been lied to by the devil and you have your eyes clouded by the devil. And Lori goes, sounds like somebody else has been charmed by the devil. Like she just says the same thing back. Yeah, and Melanie Gibbs, Like, I can't do anything to counter that.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, actually, she did have something to counter that. She went nuclear and she called Chad and Lori the Mormon equivalent of the Antichrist known as Corey.

[Henry Zebrowski]

More like Lori.

[Marcus Parks]

You can get your discounts on quints using the code 90.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, once the Antichrist came into the conversation, Lori hung up and never spoke to Melanie Gibb again. Gibb could have therefore easily ended up on the cult's hit list as another zombie.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, she definitely was.

[Ben Kissel]

But the noose was tightening around Chad and Lori's collective neck more and more with each passing day. See, Gibb got proactive, and she took the recording of her last phone call with Chad and Lori to the police. And based off Chad's suspicious comments concerning the subject of his wife and her four told death police were able to get a court order to exhume Tammy Daybell's body for a full autopsy, done entirely clandestinely and without Chad's knowledge. Very quickly, investigators noticed that there were several blunt injuries consistent with being restrained and or suffocated to death. But to this day, we have no idea if it was Chad, Alex Cox, or both of them who directly participated in Tammy's murder. Tammy's body was in, out, and back in the ground in just eight hours. But by the end of it, investigators had determined that Tammy's death was indeed suspicious, although they did not yet have enough evidence to arrest Chad for her death.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cremation. Cremate your loved ones when you kill them. He tried. He tried.

[Marcus Parks]

And he.

[Ben Kissel]

He tried with one, not with Tammy.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, the other Tammy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He could have just. They said, okay, no autopsy. Then say, great cremator.

[Marcus Parks]

There's a little. It's so easy. There's just the smallest part of me that thought she might want to see me. Be the boss and wake up.

[Ben Kissel]

Now, when it comes to the murders, both successful and attempted, we have evidence that Chad, Lori and Lori's brother Alex, they were involved in every one of them. But we're totally in the dark as far as the hows go. The reason why we don't know much is because Alex Cox, the assassin who tied it all together and probably carried out each murder with his own hands, he did not survive past December 2019. And it's possible, however unlikely, the Chad and Lori might have had something to do with it.

[Marcus Parks]

They. I don't know how they didn't.

[Ben Kissel]

If it was just natural causes, there.

[Marcus Parks]

Is how I'll get into it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Such a coincidence.

[Ben Kissel]

It is a coincidence.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Biggest everything. There's been no coincidences in this entire story.

[Marcus Parks]

It is the. It is a horrific sticking point. It really is this thing where same. Because I refuse to believe it was natural causes. But we just don't have the proof.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, we don't. Well, that's the thing. It might be natural causes, it might not be natural causes, but we don't have any proof that Chad and Laurie specifically were involved in it. Let's get into it now, please. See, after the marriage to Zelema in Las Vegas, Alex moved back to Gilbert, Arizona, where Zelema still lived, because Chad and Lori were already on their way to living their true fantasy life in Hawaii.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. They took the check in peace.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So, like, they're like, I thought we were all going. I thought that Rexburg was about to pop off, but you guys just jump ship and are literally like the photos and video of Chad and Lori having the vacation of their lives in Hawaii. Love and life. They stayed there in a resort for a month. They blew a bunch of money. She's reading Visions of Glory by the pool. How disgusting.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So they left. And so now he's like. You could see this moment being like, oh, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And they're like, go to. What about me? Yeah, go with your wife. Go where? Gilbert.

[Marcus Parks]

Gilbert. Go Zulema. Your beloved Gilbert.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, and then he can goes. And Zuleima can be like, thank you, Alex. I'm so happy when you take the gum out when we kiss. I'm so happy that you decided to change your underwear.

[Ben Kissel]

But according to Zelemma, Alex spent a lot of time after the wedding talking about how Chad and Laurie were setting him up to be the fall guy for some mysterious thing Chad and Lori had been doing.

[Marcus Parks]

Have you heard of Moroni Coin? Trying to set me up with a rug pull.

[Ben Kissel]

Before Zelayma could find out what this mysterious thing was, Alex was found dead on the floor of his and Zelima's bathroom, covered in feces with pink foam coming from his mouth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Pink foam.

[Ben Kissel]

With this pink foam quite similar to the pink foam Chad described coming out of his wife Tammy's mouth the night she died.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Do we know, like, how if you die, what would produce pink foam coming out of your mouth?

[Marcus Parks]

Poison.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, Possibly. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did they give him an autopsy?

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, they did.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No poison.

[Ben Kissel]

No poison? No. Whatsoever.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. We don't know. We. It's. It's very, very strange.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, just a few days before his death, Alex had driven to Mexico to score some illegal prescription drugs. And investigators believe that Alex used these drugs to die by suicide to protect Lori and Chad. Others, however, believe that Alex may have come to the realization that he'd murdered his brother in law, his niece and his nephew. Also, his sister could be free to marry some doughy asshole and he couldn't live with what he'd done.

[Marcus Parks]

It shouldn't have been me. Oh, how I wish I was on that beach getting sand on my balls, making sex to my sister.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And now I'm just stuck in old.

[Marcus Parks]

New Jerusalem sucking on the face of dumb stupid Zulim.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And my sister sitting there in Hawaii.

[Marcus Parks]

Getting finger banged by the Lord, loving New Jerusalem too.

[Ben Kissel]

So now that we're that he's dead, we're done with this, right?

[Marcus Parks]

No. Alex. Alex.

[Ben Kissel]

But after a thorough autopsy, it was ruled that Alex died from blood clots and high blood pressure. Hereditary conditions that had killed other members of the Cox family. So it's hard to say exactly what the circumstances behind Alex's death really were.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, it is stressful. Everything that he did could have just given him a heart attack.

[Ben Kissel]

It could have. That's what I mean. Now, by this point, authorities have been asking Lori to produce her kiss kids for months. But in December 2019, they decided that if Lori was going to keep stonewalling them, the only option they had was to go public. So the authorities pulled out all the stops with a full media blitz.

[Marcus Parks]

Including us.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Attacking Lori and Chad. Simultaneously with Lori, they hammered the fact that she was totally uncooperative with telling police where her kids were. But Chad's involvement here was the secret sauce that made this whole story even more true. Treacherous and indecent. Police finally revealed that they had exhumed Tammy Daybell's body and had ruled her death suspicious. And they believe that the cases of Lori's missing kids and Chad's dead wife may be linked. Chad and Lori, of course, discovered all this through newspaper headlines. They read all about it from their romantic villa in Hawaii. And they were, I'd imagine, simultaneously terrified and excited that their little cult had just become one of the biggest news stories in the world.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You don't think that they'll check the pet cemetery, do you?

[Marcus Parks]

No. There. There's no pets. Are they looking for pets?

[Ben Kissel]

Did you leave that? Is that old man who tells people to not go down that road still there? Because if he's still there, then I don't think they're going to go down that road. He's very convincing, honestly.

[Marcus Parks]

I gave him $10 to stay there and tell the police to not go down that road. I told him it actually really helped. Happy?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Then I sliced his mouth open with a scalpel.

[Marcus Parks]

He hates kids. They. You could see in the footage, the only way to describe it, I really wish that you could see it so you could see the little smiles on their faces. Like, they have this. Like, we're such. We're so popular.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Everybody wants to talk about us. And they are so thrilled because I do think in some way they think. Think this will now kind of, you know, first. And this is utterly convoluted. And I don't know why they think this, but I think that they think that this is proof that it's working.

[Ben Kissel]

That it's going to happen, or that, you know, it's the possibility also that the. The word is going to get out about their religion, about their, you know, unique view of Mormonism. People are going to see the light.

[Marcus Parks]

And everyone's going be like, oh, my God, that's amazing. Of course. Chad Daybell's God.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Now that's not at all what happened. Almost immediately, the Mormons, who'd spent years supporting and believing Chad and Lori, they began to cut ties. The founders of Preparing a People, the Preparing a People podcast network, they issued a statement denying they were a cult. And it's always bad when you have to issue a statement denying your a cult.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a hard day for the PR squad. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And they quickly distanced themselves from Chad and Lori by removing all of their podcast appearances.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now that's a pap smear.

[Ben Kissel]

Truly. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, very good, Eddy Tunes dot com.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

The only person who came to Chad and Lori's side was the founder of the neo fundamentalist Mormon message board, avow, who publicly declared that Chad and Lori were innocent. This guy even allowed Chad and Lori to publish a statement on his website in which they claimed to be victims of bad press who were only trying to protect JJ and Ty from so called evil forces.

[Marcus Parks]

Protect them from bad press. Is this the opening of Spider man, the musical? Like, no, this is not. Yeah, you're being accused of murder.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, no, no. Bad preps.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, I get it. No, it's a good. It's a good. It's a good role.

[Ben Kissel]

A bad notice can kill a whole show.

[Marcus Parks]

Tell me about it. Tell me about it. It wasn't. It was an hero. Stillborn. I know.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, it was stillborn. It was more the CGI in that, though.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, it really was. The overspending on things that we didn't need to spend money on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And not one sandwich in the whole show. You call your show Heroes? Put some sandwiches in it. You want me to keep sticking around and come back for episode two?

[Marcus Parks]

Eddie, put a sandwich. Eddie. Do you have any idea how hard I fought for the fat asshole demo? You have any idea how hard I. I went in the paint for them? Just throw a sub in there. Throw a fucking eggplant parlor.

[Ben Kissel]

By January 16, 2020, the state of Idaho filed a court order demanding that Lori produce JJ and Tylee within five days. The deadline obviously came and went. And the media attention only increased when Dateline aired a two hour special called where are the Children? Appropriately, they aired it on Valentine's Day. But finally, time ran out for Lori Valo on February 20, 2020. 02020. This is a month after she blew past the court date where she was supposed to produce the kids Lori was arrested in Hawaii, where she was charged with a whole host of crimes, from desert of a child to contempt of court. Chad, however, stuck to the script. While Lori was in jail in Hawaii awaiting extradition to Idaho, Chad talked to her for an hour every day, assuring her this was all a part of the celestial plan and that the world was still definitely coming to an end on July 22, 2020, not a day later.

[Marcus Parks]

Make sure you get the keys to.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Your cell, because when the world ends and you're in the cell, you can't get out.

[Marcus Parks]

No one's gonna feed you. Y to break out now.

[Ben Kissel]

Things were really starting to cook for Lori valow. But she was extradited to Idaho in March of 2020, which was the same month the COVID 19 brought the entire world to a halt. And now we're going to Pause for a four hour series on COVID 19.

[Marcus Parks]

Pause. Wow. What an amazing journey that was. Thank you. I miss it. Me too. Yeah, me too. I got what's up?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I miss my puzzles.

[Ben Kissel]

Lori's march towards justice was therefore put on hold. But it did give investigators more time to turn their attention towards Chad de bell and the death of Lori's fourth husband, Charles valow. See, after combing through all of Chad and Lori's texts, both the ones they sent to each other and the ones they sent to other people, investigators found the absolutely idiotic text that Chad had sent to his wife the day after Tyler's murder. The one about cremating the raccoon and burying it in the pet cemetery. Now, investigators knew that this text was sent the day after Tyler was seen alive for the last time during the trip to Yellowstone with her uncle Alex and her mother Lori. From there, investigators looked at Alex cox's locations using his phone data. And when they put the locations and the stupid over explaining text together, they decided they'd better take a look at Chad daybell backyard.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, kind of just sounds like they're all looking at his butt.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, they did when he went to prison.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, see, it's wide and gaping much like the tunnel to heaven. Pure, whitest.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, go ahead, take a look in there. See if you can't find heaven, little boy.

[Marcus Parks]

Go on. See if you there see Jesus inside the little nodule inside of my butthole that makes me shoot, shoot wine. Shooting wine, folks. I wish Alex was here because then I could give him that material. Yeah, poor Alex.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Say w h I n e. He's the comedian.

[Ben Kissel]

And so on June 9, 2020, the FBI and Rexburg Police brought Cadaver dogs to Chad's home. Chad let them onto his property, then plopped down in his Chevy equipment, Equinox. He nervously watched investigators and kept getting in and out of his car while running his fingers through his hair, acting about as guilty as he possibly could.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't touch me. You can't. No, you can't. That's totally good. Just don't know. You don't want to. You want to leave that cord alone if you want.

[Henry Zebrowski]

My dogs are buried there. My $25.

[Marcus Parks]

You wouldn't have to believe. Do not disturb. That is where Hamlet the gerbil is buried.

[Ben Kissel]

Before long, the dogs had located the first burial site, that of J.J. valo. And just by coincidence, Lori had chosen that moment to call Chad from prison. This is about. That's the big coincidence in this story.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, this is truly is the big coincidence in the story. This is. Thank you so much for including this.

[Ben Kissel]

Of course.

[Marcus Parks]

My favorite. This is my literal, like my main hit. This is my don't stop believing of this whole.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, no, I. I love, love this call so much because this is the call between the two of them. Because I love calls when I. When people realize how they are. Yeah. So much fun. We're just gonna listen to 15 seconds of it because there's a lot of mumbling and you can't understand what Chad's saying most of the time without subtitles. But here is Chad and Lori realizing that their lives are over forever.

[Marcus Parks]

Ever. Hi, babe. Hello.

[Ben Kissel]

Are you okay? Oh, they're searching the property. The house right now?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay, that's. It's just. Yeah, it's. They're searching what property right now. And so cuz she keeps saying, because it's funny, she's like, so they're staying inside. Like if you keep like. So they staying inside the house? He's like, no, they're checking the pet cemetery. Like he says this thing and she's just like, it'll be okay. Is there anything I can do from here? You're gonna get a call from my lawyer later. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Like, okay, babe. Like, it's that whole like, just, oh, hey, are you okay? But that's the weird thing about it is that it is that same, like, girlfriend talk. It's girlfriend voice. Yeah, it's that. It's that same voice that your girlfriend or your wife gives you, like when you're in great distress. Like, it's. That's the funny thing is you can actually tell Truly loves him because like, she's like, she's genuinely concerned for him and generally wants to make him feel better.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But is she not just concerned with herself?

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, I think partly, but I think she is very. I think she's concerned with herself, but she's also concerned about him.

[Marcus Parks]

Where you hear concern, I hear pure delusion.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I think that she is talking, acting as if it's normal because it makes her like it makes Chad feel better because Chad's got to be. Chad doesn't want anything, but it's not out of concern. It's about keeping Chad together. Ah. So that he doesn't act like a big fat in front of the police.

[Ben Kissel]

And that's exactly what he did next. Yes. Once Chad hung up the phone, he could see that something was happening. That's about the time they discovered JJ's body. So just like he'd done before, Chad tried running away in his equinox, the cops quickly chased him down. And since Chad didn't have the stones for a chase, he surrendered. And finally, after all this time, both Chad Daybell and Lori Valo were in jail.

[Marcus Parks]

Yay. We got him. See, my main thing is, is that I, I do believe that God has chose me to lead. 144 000. Yeah, there are a lot of rules to break, but one thing I will not do is speed. Because Mormons don't speed no matter what's going on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And when you find a boy shaped dog in my pet cemetery, you will.

[Marcus Parks]

First of all call the newspapers because what a fine for you. Because also if you don't look at him for too long, he starts singing and dancing.

[Ben Kissel]

Hello my baby hello my ragdom girl.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you gotta believe.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, once Chad was arrested and the discovery of both bodies became public, the Chad Daybell and Lori Valo story grew to even greater proportions. Before long, all the details about Chad and Lori's beliefs about zombies and the end of the world became part public as well. And Lori Valo was finally given the infamous designation of the Doomsday Mom. Now, the case for murder here was difficult to prove because investigators believed that Alex had been the one who'd actually murdered the kids. But after the now former cult members Ulema Pastanis obtained immunity and gotta do that flip. And podcaster Melanie Gibb really started talking. Police were able to charge Chad, Chad and Lori with the first degree murder of Lori's kids in May of 2021. Soon after, Lori Valo was also charged with conspiracy to commit first degree murder in regards to the death of her fourth husband Charles Vallow. And both Lori and Chad were charged with the Murder of Tammy Daybell. And so, By June of 2024, Chad Daybell and Lori Valow had been found guilty on every single charge. And while Lori received life without parole, Chad Daybell is currently sitting on death row in Idaho.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you think that if he gets electrocuted in the chair, does he turn into French fries?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, he does look like a potato.

[Marcus Parks]

He would feel like. Yeah, I feel like if you zap him, he might smell delicious.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, he might. I really wonder what his last words are going to be.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, dear. I'm poo pooping.

[Ben Kissel]

Oh, he gets strapped into the. You know, the lethal inject. Because I'd imagine lethal injection is how they're gonna kill him. Yeah, I wonder what his last words are gonna be.

[Marcus Parks]

Probably just something like, okay, Jesus. Now, Now, Jesus.

[Ben Kissel]

Go. Anytime, Anytime.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Jesus.

[Marcus Parks]

No.

[Ben Kissel]

Jesus.

[Marcus Parks]

All right, come on. Time to go. I know you love drama, but let's just kind of get it done. We only got a minute left. Yep.

[Ben Kissel]

Completely by coincidence, Dateline revealed while we were recording these episodes that Lori Valo had agreed to give them an interview. Her first since her podcast appearances, and certainly the only one since she was arrested, charged, and convicted. This interview was released just a week ago, and after watching it, I can say with conviction that prison has not changed Lori Valo. Why? Iota. And she still believes that absolutely everything we've said about their mythology is true.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I was convinced, finally. You know, what I needed was her rambling for an hour to Keith Morrison and not saying any details. Yeah, and I was a believer.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.

[Marcus Parks]

She also had some filler migration.

[Ben Kissel]

Filler migration. That's what they call it when she. Oh, when she gets filler and her face looks all fucked up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's your face. To fill a migration. It's because she hasn't been able to upkeep it, so it's been sliding. Oh, also, she puts hair on the top of her head. Like, fucking bam. Bam. She does this stupid cute thing where she does, like, a scrunchie and stuff and she makes, like, prison makeup. She looks like a fucking evil clown.

[Ben Kissel]

She does.

[Marcus Parks]

No.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, she used the same tactic on Keith Morrison that she used on the cops when they showed up at the townhouse. It's this wall of. It's this brick wall of rambling where she spent the majority of the hour and a half that they had together. That's all the police would. Would give Keith Morrison. She spent the majority just rambling on about. About Tyler and not really saying anything in particular. So when you actually watch the episode, it's maybe four and a half minutes of Lori Valo talking over. They stretch it over a hour and a half.

[Marcus Parks]

Sucks.

[Ben Kissel]

It's maybe, maybe four minutes of her talking.

[Marcus Parks]

I actually thought that Dateline kind of dropped the ball on it, to be honest.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What are they supposed to do?

[Marcus Parks]

She's released the entire uncut interview.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't. I want the chicken.

[Ben Kissel]

That is true. He does want the chicken.

[Marcus Parks]

I want the chicken shit. I want to hear every word out of her mouth. I want to hear it. I want to hear what she has to say for herself. Because her. What she said in her sentencing reaction because he gave her statement at the end of sentencing. Her theory is that Tyler killed JJ accidentally and then committed suicide a month earlier. Yes, exactly. Exactly. But that's her hold. That's the only thing she has to say.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, well, but she did say that she still believes that both she and Chad are going to be be exonerated any day now.

[Marcus Parks]

Again, Jesus loves an ark.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, he does. Well, what she said is that Jesus. She's been to heaven multiple times is what she said, that in the interview Jesus showed her when she was in heaven, a vision of the future in which Chad and Lori were together and they were together outside of the prison walls. So therefore that means that Chad and Lori will be exonerated one day.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, you're also not going to get exonerated if no one's trying to. To exonerate you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, no, but Jesus is going to come down. He's going to kill all of us with his machine guns and then he's going to lift them up and then.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Chad's finally going to turn into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

[Ben Kissel]

Nobody stepped on a church in my town, he says.

[Marcus Parks]

Apparently, though, Jesus has the magic ability to take the what can only be described as oatmeal on the sides of his thighs and his whole body and push him up in the muscles. Yeah, Jesus is going to body by Jesus.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. And Lori also says that her and Tammy are friends and they're sister wives, basically, and that Tammy visits Lori in prison and they have conversations and she also says that Jesus visits her in prison and she just. Yeah, she does just ramble on. Like, she talks about how, like, you know, if I ever had a, you know, a bumper sticker, like if I ever had a bumper sticker, I always had a joke. I had this joke that if I had this bumper sticker, then I would say Jesus loves you, but he loves me more. And I just thought that was really cute. And she, she has this demeanor about her that's infuriating and insane because she's talking the whole time about how she has been falsely accused, falsely convicted, falsely.

[Marcus Parks]

Tried, smiling and laughing and giggling and.

[Ben Kissel]

So bubbly, so flirty. Like the whole time flirting with Keith Morrison.

[Marcus Parks]

You think you know about that, Keith? What do you know about that, Keith? Were you there, Keith, like doing that thing where. And then her cousin. I was listening to the Mormon stories, reaction to it and they were. I thought it was interesting as her cousin was like, that's actually the Lori I know very well. She's like, that's. She used to do this thing where it's like a. It is a hot girl from a small town thing where they both. I've noticed it. I love everyone I've met all the years, but sometimes you're a meetup as a professional entertainer. When you go out into the smaller areas of the country, you meet other people that are the large fish and their small world.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they sometimes like to relate to you by making fun of you, saying mean things to you, but also kind of sucking up to you at the same time.

[Ben Kissel]

Stop doing that.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Lori Valow does exactly that. She both makes. She both flirts and negs.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. It's very strange. But it's. It's her go to move.

[Marcus Parks]

She's the star.

[Ben Kissel]

Yes, she's very much the star.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the thing that Keith Morrison. She's in a room with Keith Morrison. Keith Morrison's a. He's taking away her attention.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. And she is also very delusional.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yes.

[Ben Kissel]

So delusional, in fact, that she half joked in the interview about the possibility of being a guest on Dancing with the Stars after her release. As if the world is going to be sorry that they ever doubted her that she'll become a beloved public figure who makes television appearances.

[Marcus Parks]

Didn't they do that with like three different Republican shitheads?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, you know, they.

[Marcus Parks]

They do. They've done that.

[Ben Kissel]

I mean. Yeah. They have brought Carol Baskin. Yeah. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She knew how to get away with murder.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I guess she believes that. I guess that. It's really not that far off any.

[Marcus Parks]

It's really not.

[Ben Kissel]

It's really not that far fetched.

[Marcus Parks]

If she does get released by mitt Romney in 2028. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then she'll be on Dancing with the Stars and then get extra days at Disneyland.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. She just can't show most of her legs, she'd have to wear a very long skirt.

[Ben Kissel]

Sarah Palin, that was the controversial one on Dancing with the St. And Sean Spicer.

[Marcus Parks]

Sean Spicer, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Now this interview.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, right. Is that fun?

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, yeah. Now, this interview coincided with the beginning of Lori's latest trial, the one concerning the murder of Charles Valow. It's going on right now.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

And Lori, like her father before her, is representing herself with a face full of, as you said, clownish prison makeup. In other words, it's a fair bet to say that Lori Valow's delusions will never end. But I'm going to go out a limb here and say that it's not entirely her fault. Now, yes, Lori is a narcissist of the highest order, and that probably would have been true no matter what religion she was. But when narcissism meets Mormonism, it's like fire meeting gasoline. Because of Mormonism's built in improvisational nature, any LDS member with a touch of evil and a big heaping of arrogance, they have a ready man made cult kit that they can pick up and use at any moment. And we've seen this happen dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Spun is on episode 18 of Mormon based crimes like it is. It's huge. And also, again, I'm, I mean, I, I don't know what to say. It's their natural arrogance. The, the Mormon aloofness. This idea that they are better than us also feeds this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, also they don't have to deal with outside society. They've been given like free states, you know, to like exist, play in.

[Marcus Parks]

You can go play in this little area.

[Ben Kissel]

And what's worse is that it doesn't take a lot of these people to do a lot of damage. The number of ardent followers that Chad Daybell had, it didn't even approach double digits. Yet he and Lori together were able to use Mormon ideology to justify the murder of four people, including two children. Furthermore, fringe Mormon voices like Pap and Avow, along with all those NDE and End Times authors, they're constantly adding their own bits of lore to the Mormon storyline. And the more Stu there is to build from, the easier it is for people to spin off into their own dark corners where all manner of evil lurks.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's how we're gonna end up with like a spider dog television show when they make. Oh God, the new James Bond series are going to be horrible.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, there's already spider ham.

[Marcus Parks]

I know. That's fine. I like.

[Ben Kissel]

Well, Spider Ham's Fantastic. Spider Ham's been around since the 80s. I used to love Spider Ham Con comics. Okay, you don't sound convinced.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not for him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, I. It should be, though.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Yes, that is true. But that's all to say that religion in this country is becoming more dangerous by the day, more sinister, more violent. And it's not just Mormonism. There's an edge to Christianity at large that's only gotten sharper over the last few decades. And I'm not exactly sure what the rest of us are supposed to do about it. What I can say though, is that while it is your choice to follow whatever religion you want, it's your responsibility as a human being to think for yourself. Especially if the people in charge start asking or telling you to do things or believe in things that you know aren't right. For some of you, that day might come very soon. So in the end, all I ask is for you to think about what the people in charge are saying. Because if a religion or a movement tells you that you and yours are special, that you and yours are good while everyone else is evil, then they really aren't that far off from the narcissism that created Chad Dell and Lori Valow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very nice.

[Marcus Parks]

And I'll say that's why I'm so glad we did this series, because we fixed it. I just think it's one final nail in the coffin to organize religion. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

No, it's.

[Marcus Parks]

It. Party it up, boys.

[Ben Kissel]

Yep, we're taking down this 500 billion dollar mass massive capitalist system, free of.

[Marcus Parks]

The nipple doing, boys. Wow. We finally did this story and now it can be out of our systems. Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Okay. Now it can be done. Now it's. Now it's gone and we can move on to other things.

[Marcus Parks]

I just want to say thank you guys so much for listening to our show. Thank you guys. Being cool. We got. Obviously there's the new. What's it called? SiriusXM Podcast Plus. Sirius XM Podcast Plus. You could do everything you want with it. There's also you could do a. Is that great? Is that a good promo?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, people love it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And then. Then what? The main thing is to know is that we have some really good series coming up and we also have a new extended sort of running series that we're going to be introducing vaguely soon as well. But next week we've got some you're gonna like. A fan favorite of ours. You're gonna like it because guess what month that is? March.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And it's down, so you're gonna like it. We're very, very excited. This one we're going for. These are Earthbound.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Mostly.

[Ben Kissel]

Mostly.

[Marcus Parks]

Mostly Earthbound, which I'm very excited for.

[Ben Kissel]

One of the main contenders is specifically not Earthbound.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's even in the name.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, it's very much in the name.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's going to be good. And then we're going to. We got a bunch of great series. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Not just that. We got a bunch of new shows on the tour, man. So excited. I got it up right here. We got in July 12th, Salt Lake City. We're going to go check on our people, make sure they're okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I would. Honestly, what I. I want to say Salt Lake City, it's like, I need to see as much fishnet. We need to get this going, y'all. We need to make that a full on goth night.

[Ben Kissel]

Hey, we know we played many shows in Salt Lake City before. I love playing Salt Lake City.

[Marcus Parks]

It's got some of the best crowds we've ever had.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah. Cuz they go hard.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

Like if.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ben Kissel]

People like Xmos. Yeah. People who aren't Mormon at all in Salt Lake City. Yeah. They push back pretty hard.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Excited. I've never been to Salt Lake City. It looks beautiful. Also, August 8th, we're going to be in Charlotte, North Carolina. August 9th. The very next night, we're going to be in Durham, North, North Carolina. September 20th, St. Paul, Minnesota. October 11th, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October 25th, Oakland, California. November 29th, just after Thanksgiving, we're going to be in Cleveland, Ohio.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, love Cleveland.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then in December 12th and 13th, Portland, Oregon.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah, love Portland as well.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Back to back.

[Marcus Parks]

No, we're gonna have a lot of fun. We're really. I, you know, we. We're having more fun than ever, and we like it. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And then tonight, if you're listening in this early enough, come out to the Ryman, baby. There's still a couple tickets available. We're going to have some great show for you. And then on Sunday, of course, you can catch Henry and I at the Nazi Scientist Center, Alabama.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, we made him not a Nazi anymore, technically.

[Ben Kissel]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Von Braun, as we've learned, he wasn't like that, enthused about the Nazis.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Also.

[Ben Kissel]

He was brilliant. He was pretty. He. He definitely may not have been enthused about the ideology, but he was definitely enthused about the workforce they provided.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just about where you get.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The Rockets also want to throw this out into the world. If they ever make the Chad Daybell movie. Tim Heidecker.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Ben Kissel]

Inspired casting, my friend. Absolutely inspired casting.

[Marcus Parks]

Who's Lori?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, I haven't. I couldn't figure that one out.

[Marcus Parks]

I gotta think about that, because I think that it would be Marjorie Taylor green. Oh, yeah. 275 pounds of blonde pumping action. That's what I like. I like a woman who looks like a rectangle. All right, we'll see you next week. Patreon.com all over the 7twitch table LPLTV last podcast left. I'll get you it. All right. Hail Sweden.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hail invasive species. My tour of Florida. Go get tickets. I'll be in Jacksonville, Panama City and Tallahassee next weekend.

[Marcus Parks]

Perfect.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thank you.

[Ben Kissel]

Goodbye, y'all.