I Solved the 'Doomsday Mum' Murders

Summary

Podcast Summary: "I Solved the 'Doomsday Mum' Murders"

Introduction

In the July 13, 2025 episode of What It Was Like, hosted by Julian Morgans from Superreal, listeners are taken through the harrowing true-crime case of Laurie Velo and Chad Daybell, a couple implicated in the brutal murders of their two children. This episode delves deep into the investigation led by Lieutenant Ray Homosillo of the Rexburg Police Department in Idaho, providing an intimate portrayal of the events, the emotional toll on those involved, and the ultimate pursuit of justice.

---

Background of the Case

Julian Morgans sets the stage by introducing Laurie Velo and Chad Daybell, a couple whose relationship spiraled into darkness amid extremist religious beliefs and financial motives. Chad, a former Mormon with apocalyptic ideologies, authored several books propagating his warped worldview. Laurie, appearing as a typical American woman on the surface, concealed a tumultuous personal history marked by multiple marriages and the tragic deaths of her ex-husbands.

Julian Morgans (02:02): "This is a case that's just finished up in the courts, but it's been unfolding for years. It really kicked off in 2019."

The Disappearances

The narrative focuses primarily on the mysterious disappearances of Laurie’s two children: 16-year-old Tyler Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Velo, both from previous relationships. These disappearances thrust Laurie and Chad into the national spotlight, raising suspicions and igniting a complex investigation involving cults, religious extremism, and potential mental illness.

Julian Morgans (02:21): "Why would anyone hurt their own kids? And really specifically, how could a mother hurt her own children?"

Investigation Begins

Lieutenant Ray Homosillo recounts the initial stages of the investigation in November 2019, starting with a welfare check for 7-year-old JJ. Early interactions with Laurie and Chad raised red flags due to their evasive and deceitful behavior.

Ray Homosillo (09:57): "We knew Chad was an author. We knew those things. But I didn't really know the in-depth belief system at that point."

Escalation and Media Attention

As investigations progressed, the disappearance of Tyler additional intensified the case. The couple's flight to Hawaii to evade authorities and subsequent lack of cooperation with law enforcement heightened concerns about the children's safety.

Ray Homosillo (17:14): "At that point, really, I mean, those questions are going through your head. But at that point, I really wasn't too concerned, like thinking the worst until they didn't produce them."

The media frenzy that ensued brought immense pressure to the investigation, with national attention making every lead and interaction scrutinized.

Ray Homosillo (35:30): "As soon as we released that press release, it did catch. It just made this story so much more interesting."

Breakthrough and Discovery

A pivotal moment occurred during a warrant service in Hawaii, where subtle changes in Chad's behavior signaled a breakthrough. Lieutenant Homosillo observed Chad’s nervousness and frantic actions near a pond, leading the team to uncover the remains of JJ buried under a tree in their backyard.

Ray Homosillo (42:38): "And then as we lifted the topsoil, you could smell the decomposition. So we knew something was there."

The discovery of JJ's body was a somber and emotional moment for the team, underscoring the brutal nature of the crime.

Tylee's Remains and Further Horrors

The investigation didn't end with JJ. The team later uncovered the dismembered and burned remains of Tyler, buried in a pet cemetery. The gruesome discovery highlighted the depths of Laurie and Chad's depravity.

Ray Homosillo (57:37): "Charred flesh and bone. We started digging... we could only dig for a few minutes at a time because the smell was so bad."

Motive and Trial

The primary motive behind the murders was financial gain. Laurie and Chad were receiving substantial Social Security benefits from the deceased fathers of their children. Eliminating the children ensured the continuation of these benefits, facilitating their escape to a more carefree life in Hawaii.

Ray Homosillo (55:32): "It was about money... Lori was getting in these benefits from Social Security. And the kids were just in the way."

The subsequent trials resulted in severe consequences for both Laurie and Chad. Laurie received five life sentences for multiple counts of murder and fraud, while Chad was sentenced to death, awaiting his appeals.

Ray Homosillo (59:53): "In June of 2024, Chad was convicted of five death sentences and an insurance fraud. And so he is currently in Boise on death row awaiting his appeals and death sentence."

Reflections on Humanity and Justice

Lieutenant Homosillo shares his profound reflections on humanity, emphasizing the positive aspects witnessed during the investigation despite the darkness of the crimes. He highlights the community's support, the collaborative efforts of various law enforcement agencies, and the enduring bonds formed through the pursuit of justice.

Ray Homosillo (62:32): "I think I've gained more of a positive perspective of humanity through this experience... there's more good in this world than bad."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with Homosillo expressing pride in the law enforcement team's dedication and resilience throughout the investigation. The case of Laurie Velo and Chad Daybell serves as a stark reminder of the extremes of human depravity and the relentless pursuit of justice by those sworn to uphold it.

Ray Homosillo (65:39): "It was a huge team effort."

---

Key Takeaways

• Complex Motivations: The murders were driven primarily by financial gain, with religious extremism used as a veneer to justify horrific actions.

• Law Enforcement Dedication: The multi-agency collaboration and unwavering commitment of the police force were pivotal in solving the case.

• Humanity Amidst Darkness: Despite encountering profound evil, the community's support and the law enforcement's unity offered a glimmer of hope and reaffirmed faith in humanity.

Notable Quotes

• Julian Morgans (02:02): "This is a case that's just finished up in the courts, but it's been unfolding for years."

• Ray Homosillo (35:30): "As soon as we released that press release, it did catch... it just made this story so much more interesting."

• Ray Homosillo (62:32): "I think I've gained more of a positive perspective of humanity through this experience."

---

Final Thoughts

"I Solved the 'Doomsday Mum' Murders" offers a gripping and emotionally charged exploration of one of America's most disturbing true-crime cases. Through the lens of Lieutenant Homosillo, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in unraveling such heinous crimes, the psychological toll on those involved, and the triumph of justice over unimaginable evil.

Transcript

[Ad Host]

BetterHelp online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.

[Work Platform Host]

Breaking up is never easy, but saying goodbye to your old clunky work tools, well, that's easy. Just repeat after me. It's not me, it's definitely you, you rigid, unfriendly software. It's time to freshen things up with Monday.com, the first work platform you'll love to use with stunning dashboards, customizable templates, and built in AI that actually works. Switching to a new work platform has never felt this good, so move on to Monday.com.

[Outdoor App Host]

Out here, it's not only the amazing views, but the way time stretches out a little longer, how laughter bellows louder among friends, and how the breeze hits just right at the summit. With alltrails, you can discover and experience the best of nature with over 450,000 trails worldwide and navigation right at your fingertips. Find your outside with Alltrails. Download the free app today and find your next outdoor adventure.

[Ad Host]

Superu.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, just a heads up. This episode involves the murder of children. And if that's not something you need to hear right now, that's totally understandable. Maybe just give this one a skip.

[Ray Homasillo]

She just looked normal. I mean, when you think of monsters that can kill their kids, you picture like maybe Charles Manson. She didn't. She looked like a normal soccer mom. A normal mom you would see picking up kids at school. So I don't. Yeah, we didn't go to that thought right at first.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, I'm Julian Morgans, and you're listening to what It Was like, the show that asks people who have lived through big dramatic events what it was like. So we do a lot of dark, dark stories on this show, and particularly at the moment. I don't know why, but right now I'm going through a real true crime phase. Lots of our stories have been true crime, and as you've noticed, quite a few of them have been pretty dark. But I think the ones that I find hardest to swallow, the ones that I find really the grimmest, the darkest, are the ones where kids are involved and particularly when the parents are responsible for hurting kids. And the case we're talking about today, heads up. It's about parents who killed their own children. And this is a case that's just finished up in the courts, but it's been unfolding for years. It really kicked off in 2019. So it's been around for a couple of years. And you'll probably know the names Laurie Velo and Chad Daybell. So let's establish these characters. Who are these people? Chad was a former Mormon with some pretty fringe ideas about religion, about the apocalypse. He claimed that he could identify anyone who had a dark spirit that is in his worldview, someone who was already spiritually dead and therefore could be killed without any moral consequence. And he wrote these books with titles such as the Great Gathering, Days of Fury, and my personal favorite, Living on the Edge of Heaven. And just as an interesting side note, they're all still available on Amazon or Goodreads. Just looking up, Living on the Edge of Heaven is available on Goodreads now. You can get the kindle version for 9.99. Strange. Anyway, Chad, he attracted this tiny circle of devoted followers. And then one day he met one of his biggest fans at a religious conference. Her name was Lori Velo and she'd also grown up in a Mormon family and, and she had her own pretty complicated personal history. She'd been married a few times, she had kids to a couple of different husbands. Even though on the surface she seemed really upbeat, she seemed like this all American woman. She'd actually competed one time in a, in a Miss Texas beauty pageant. And she also once appeared as a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. But underneath all of this, she was pretty unstable. And it seems like hooking up with Chad brought out the worst in both of them. Now, they met in 2018 and pretty quickly people around them started dying. First of all, it was Laurie's husband, her ex husband. Before she met Chad, this guy's name was Charles Velo, from which Lori Velo got her name. And he ended up shot by Laurie's brother, Alex Cox. Now remember that name because he pops up in this story a few times. He's Alex, Laurie's brother, okay? And then the next person to die was, was Chad's wife, like Chad's ex wife before he met Laurie, and her name was Tammy Daybell. And she died suddenly in her sleep just weeks before Chad and Laurie got married in Hawaii. And while these adult deaths, they're all pretty sad, they're pretty suspicious. It was really the disappearance of Laurie's two kids, both from previous relationships, that really horrified people. This was the disappearance of 16 year old Tyler Ryan and 7 year old JJ Velo. And it was these disappearances that landed Lori and Chad in the headlines. Now, for a While back in 2020, this was one of the biggest cases in America. And the whole thing is just this crazy, sprawling soap opera. And it touches on such topics as cults, religious extremism. I think there's probably a bit of mental illness in there, and there's at least four murders. But to keep things focused, and because this is just where my own personal interest is at, we're going to concentrate this episode, this story, on just the disappearance of the kids. And I think that's really an effort to answer my bigger question. Why would anyone hurt their own kids? And really specifically, how could a mother hurt her own children? And to help us answer that is the man who solved this case. His name is Ray Homosilo, and he's a lieutenant with the Rexburg Police Department in Idaho. Keep in mind, this whole case, this all took place in a little town called Rexburg in Idaho. It looks very pretty, it's very picturesque. And it was there back in 2019 that Ray was just a local detective who got a welfare check request about a 7 year old boy named JJ who hadn't been seen in a few weeks. And then what started as a missing persons report quickly became one of the most publicized murder investigations in recent American history. Okay, let's get into it. I bring you Ray Homasillo. Hey, Ray. Welcome to the show.

[Ray Homasillo]

Hey, Julian. Thank you. It's nice to be on.

[Julian Morgans]

It's nice to have you here. All right, let's start with a bit of background. What was happening in your life when you first heard the names Laurie and Chad?

[Ray Homasillo]

So I was just not a. I guess I was a newer detective, just a normal fall day, November 1st of 2019. And then I took a call from Fremont county and they kind of told me about this whole Chad Lori thing.

[Julian Morgans]

And on this call, what were you told?

[Ray Homasillo]

So on this call, I was told that Gilbert Police department in Arizona was looking for a Jeep that was possibly involved in an attempted homicide. And I was told with Fremont county that the Jeep was possibly in our jurisdiction. And, yeah, it kicked off from there. We went looking for a Jeep and found a whole lot more.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, what was the backstory on this Jeep? You know, can you just sort of give it to me in the most. The most simple way? What? Why was this jeep involved in a homicide?

[Ray Homasillo]

It was involved in an attempted homicide. It was involved. See, how am I going to word this? Because it's kind of complicated. There was a niece and her Husband were going through a divorce. The uncle's niece was suspected of trying to kill her soon to be ex husband down in Gilbert, Arizona.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, and this was Chad.

[Ray Homasillo]

Nope, this was Alex. This was Alex, who was eventually Chad's brother in law.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. Yeah, it's this big sort of incestuous, sprawling family spiderweb thing which I find, you know, reading through this case, it's, it's easy to get lost. We'll just do our best. So when did you first hear, when did you first get wind that there was a bit of concern about the kids?

[Ray Homasillo]

So that wasn't really until November 25th of 2019. And one of the detectives from Gilbert called me and asked me if we had seen any children when we were doing surveillance looking for the jeep. And I explained to him we hadn't. And that was the very first time. He said, hey, we may need you to go do a welfare check because the grandma can't find her grandson.

[Julian Morgans]

I mean, how did that sound to you at that point? Was there any concern in your mind?

[Ray Homasillo]

You know, not at that point, Julian. I think it was just more of a welfare check. And we get those all the time in law enforcement. Somebody's concerned because they haven't talked to somebody for a while. Usually we go knock on the door, they answer the door and we're like, hey, okay, either, yeah, the kid's okay, or hey, you know, your grandma's trying to get a hold of you something, and it usually just ends up being just that, just a check. So I didn't have any concern at that point.

[Julian Morgans]

Got it. So when you knocked on the door, what happened?

[Ray Homasillo]

So I knocked on the door and there was no answer. We ran, went around to the backside of that apartment and that's where I first encountered Chad and his brother in law, Alex.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, these are leading roles in this story. So can you, can you run me through the first impressions? You know, what did Chad look like?

[Ray Homasillo]

Chad's a taller guy. He's kind of chubbier, kind of bigger, you know, kind of meek, quiet. Alex is pretty tall, six, two or three, bald head. He's. He's the one that really concerned me talking to him because when you're a cop for so long, you kind of develop kind of like a gut feeling and so you can kind of tell different people. And I knew what was Alex was capable of. But yeah, I kind of got a different feeling from Alex.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, yeah, tell me more about that. What was the feeling?

[Ray Homasillo]

So we knew that Alex had committed a homicide on his sister's husband. So his ex brother in law, he killed and what he claims was self defense. So I knew Alex was capable of homicide, but talking to him, getting that vibe from him was different. It was just, you know, he had that thousand yard stare. Kind of like he was looking through you, super evasive with his answers, the way, the way he would answer things, my questions to him. So with all that, yeah, I had a different feeling.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. And what was the connection between these two guys? Was, was Alex like following Chad's religion?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah. So Chad, Chad had his own belief system and Alex was one of the followers of that belief system. Yep.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, but I'm guessing at this point when you went and interviewed this guy in his backyard, did you know this?

[Ray Homasillo]

We didn't know this. Really. We, I mean, we knew he was an author. We knew that his wife had just passed away mysteriously a couple weeks prior to us contacting him. And so me going back to talk with Alex and Chad, I knew Alex's brother in law was deceased homicide. I knew Chad's wife was deceased under suspicious circumstances two weeks earlier. So we knew Chad was an author. We knew those things. But I didn't really know the in depth belief system at that point.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. Okay, so how'd the conversation go?

[Ray Homasillo]

So I basically, it was pretty, pretty simple. I just asked Alex and Chad where. Where JJ was, that was the grandson that was missing. And Alex, you know, they. Alex and Chad kind of looked at each other in a. Like neither one of them wanted to answer. They looked back and forth, which is a red flag. And then finally Alex gave the answer of he's in Louisiana with his grandma, you know, and I knew that was a lie right off the bat because grandma was the one that was looking for him.

[Julian Morgans]

Did you say that?

[Ray Homasillo]

I did. I said that's kind of impossible because his grandma Kay was the one that called in the welfare check. And then they really just kind of looked at each other. They were on. One was on one side, the driver's side of a pickup truck, the other one was on the passenger side. And they were just staring over the pickup bed at each other. And really nobody wanted to answer the question. And then I had to ask the question again.

[Julian Morgans]

So what information did you leave with, aside from suspicion?

[Ray Homasillo]

So I, I left the apartment and I. And I went over to a different apartment. But you know, in, in the drive to that apartment, I was feeling like I was being lied to. So immediately you go to, okay, why am I being lied to? Are they hiding something? And then they're being deceitful so right off the bat, I. I knew they were, they were lying to me. I just didn't know what about at that point.

[Julian Morgans]

So all you know at this point is, is that there's a little boy, seven year old autistic boy that was missing. So. So what did you do next?

[Ray Homasillo]

Once we got to the apartment, you know, I went and knocked on a different apartment trying to get an answer. And I was walking back to my car to call more people over to do some more knocking on different apartments. And that's when Chad Daybell drove by me down an alleyway and I stopped him.

[Julian Morgans]

Why'd you stop him?

[Ray Homasillo]

I stopped him because I wanted to see. I wanted to ask him more questions. I knew he wasn't with Alex, so I wanted to see if I can get him to tell me some more information.

[Julian Morgans]

And how did it go?

[Ray Homasillo]

You know, he lied to me initially. I asked him for Lori's phone number. He said he didn't have Lori's phone number.

[Julian Morgans]

Why did you know that was a liar?

[Ray Homasillo]

Well, I asked him how he knew Lori and he stated that he had only met her a few times through Alex. And I knew that was a lie because we knew through our investigation at that point that he was married to Lori two weeks prior. So I knew he was full of crap. And so I'm wondering why I'm getting lied to by both these gentlemen. Why are they, why are they lying to me about the whereabouts of this seven year old boy?

[Julian Morgans]

So did you say this? Were you kind of like Chad, you're full of crap. I know that you're married to Laurie.

[Ray Homasillo]

No, I didn't want to. I didn't want to play all my cards at one time. I wanted to see if what he'd tell me, what else was a lie. You know, if you kind of play all your cards right away, then they kind of shut down because they know they're caught. So I just played dumb at that point.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so what'd you do next?

[Ray Homasillo]

So we left there, I drove to the prosecutor's office, I told the prosecutor kind of what was going on. And, you know, we started to draft up a warrant to search the premises. And at that point I was told that Lori Daybell had made contact with a detective and they told her to answer her door. So she did that and spoke with a few other detectives.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, and what was their impression of her?

[Ray Homasillo]

She was a liar. She lied. Yeah, we knew everything was coming out of her mouth. We knew was a lie as well. She downplayed kind of Everything that was said and done and so we knew, we knew there was probably more to it.

[Julian Morgans]

So how are you feeling about this, this little boy? You know, were you worried or did you just think he was going to show up at.

[Ray Homasillo]

At first, Julian, I wasn't worried. Like I said, we've done this I don't know how many hundreds of times in my 22 year at that point career did we do welfare checks for kids. And, and every time they've turned up and then you're thinking to yourself, would a mom and a. And an uncle really do something to this little boy? Like, what's the reason? And you can't come up with a reason initially. So in the very beginning stages, we thought, yeah, we thought J.J. was going to turn up any day or any hour.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, yeah. So when, when did you start getting concerned?

[Ray Homasillo]

Oh, I didn't start getting concerned probably until they. They. We knew they had fled to Hawaii and they weren't answering any phone calls. They weren't cooperating. And at that point I started to get. We started to get concerned at that point.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. And they fled to Hawaii. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you basically requested that they present the kids, like both of them. Right.

[Ray Homasillo]

So we served them with a court order, and that court order stated they had five days to produce the kids because up up to that point it was just jj. Through our investigation, we learned that his older sister Tylee, who was 16 or 17 years old, had also become missing and nobody in the family had talked to her either.

[Julian Morgans]

So tell us, tell us about Tylee. You know, like just sort of set the scene a bit. Tell me about what you knew about her at that point.

[Ray Homasillo]

At that point, Julian, we didn't know much. We just knew that she hadn't been seen for a while. We knew that what she drove was that Jeep that I had already impounded. So she didn't have a vehicle. So In January of 2020, that was only about a month after we did the welfare check. We didn't know much about Tylee other than, yeah, she was a 16, 17 year old girl. She didn't have a car because we had impounded it and nobody had seen her.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so at a certain point, did you go over to Chad and Laurie's house and find that all of their stuff was missing?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah. So the next morning we served a warrant and she was gone.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. Talk to me about that feeling of like showing up to an empty house. Like, what did, did that spook you a bit?

[Ray Homasillo]

No. I mean, you know it wasn't really an empty house. It. There was food in the refrigerator. There was food in the pantry. There was, you know, furniture and toiletry items. The only thing that was missing was clothes. And that's earlier when I talked about. That's when I started to get a little concerned is, yeah, we knew she had fled, and we eventually ended up finding her in Hawaii.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. Okay. And you've got to go all the way to Hawaii to serve this court order, is that right?

[Ray Homasillo]

That's right. Yep.

[Julian Morgans]

So you literally got on a plane to Hawaii.

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, yeah, me and. Me and another detective and the prosecutor jumped a plane, and we were in Hawaii eight hours later and met with the Kauai Police Department, kind of briefed them on what we had, and. And, yeah, they assisted us in serving that court order.

[Julian Morgans]

And how did Chad and Larry respond to you showing up out of the blue in Hawaii?

[Ray Homasillo]

So they didn't know we were there because it's not our jurisdiction. The Hawaii Police Department has to serve them. So we kind of stayed back. We didn't want them to know we were there, so we kind of stayed back and did surveillance while they were served with the papers. And, you know, they just kind of looked over the papers, and the officer kind of asked him, do you have any questions about these papers? And Lori said, no, I don't. We don't have any questions. And they said, okay, well, there you go. And so that started the clock for the five days to get them back to Rexburg.

[Julian Morgans]

As in Chad and Laurie had five days to present the kids. Otherwise they're in deep trouble.

[Ray Homasillo]

That's right.

[Julian Morgans]

Yep. Okay. You're a. You're a dad yourself, right?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah. Yep.

[Julian Morgans]

So. So how would. How is this starting to impact you personally? Like, it doesn't sound like it's looking good for the kids.

[Ray Homasillo]

You know, at that point, Julian, as a dad, you know, I could never understand not producing my children to authorities if there was a question that their welfare or they were in any type of danger. Right. But as a police officer, I know that these guys are in the super religious, weird beliefs. I know that there's always a possibility that they're stored in a bunker somewhere or they're just being defiant because they don't like authority. You know, in the back of your head, you're thinking, is this just a game to them? Are they hiding him away somewhere? And so at that point, really, I mean, those questions are going through your head. But at that point, I really wasn't too concerned, like, thinking the worst until they didn't produce them.

[Julian Morgans]

Can you tell me about, you know, the clock ticked over. The five days was up. How did you feel at that point?

[Ray Homasillo]

So I kept thinking during those five days, we were there for one or two of those days in the very beginning, before we flew back. But I kept thinking, you know, today's going to be the day. Today's going to be the day that they show up. And, you know, the day would go by and I'm thinking, okay, well, tomorrow's going to be the day. And slowly each day passes. And then pretty soon you're at the five days and you're thinking, why is she not producing her kids to the police department? Like, is she that stubborn? Is she that dumb? You know, what is going on? And you just had. There was a million questions running through your head at that point. When she didn't produce them.

[Work Platform Host]

I mean.

[Julian Morgans]

What was her claim? Why couldn't she just produce the kids?

[Ray Homasillo]

She wouldn't talk to us, really. She would not say a word to us.

[Julian Morgans]

You guys would go and visit the two of them and then she'd just sit there mute.

[Ray Homasillo]

No, we, like I said, we didn't visit them because we didn't want them to know we were on the island.

[Julian Morgans]

Right.

[Ray Homasillo]

Okay. We left the island, came back to Rexburg. Those five days had passed. And then she didn't produce her kids. So at that point, we got an arrest warrant for her and we flew back to Hawaii.

[Julian Morgans]

All right, tell me about arresting her.

[Ray Homasillo]

So we flew back. We met with the Kauai Police Department again, the same group of guys we met a month before. Now that, now this is February of 2020. We brief them that we have a warrant. She's quickly apprehended and placed into custody. We asked Chad. Hey, Chad, we're here. We want to talk about where the kids are at. Tell us where the kids are. We understand you guys have attorneys. Let's get with your attorney and let's set up a meeting. Let's talk. Chad didn't want to speak to us. He was completely defiant. And you know, Lori, same thing. We went up to Lori and said, lori, where are your children? Like, just tell us where the kids are at. Show us some type of proof of life. They could hold a newspaper up with the date on it. Just so we know they're alive. Where are they at? And she just, she wouldn't talk. All she would do is stare.

[Julian Morgans]

Was it a kind of like an angry stare or did you read it more as like a, like a self protective, like fearful? These Are the cops, like, don't say a word to them, they'll screw us over kind of thing? Like, what was your. What was your read on that body language?

[Ray Homasillo]

My read on that body language was completely defiant. She wasn't afraid. She was defiant. She didn't like us. She didn't like us asking questions. If she could stare a hole right through you, she would have. I mean, it was just. It was glaring at you. She didn't want anything to do with us.

[Julian Morgans]

I mean, just based on these sort of early interactions with her, did she seem like the kind of person, the kind of woman who could kill her own kids?

[Ray Homasillo]

No. I mean, not. You know, you don't really think of that. She looked like a soccer mom. She looked like somebody that you could live right next door to and think that they were going to be a PTA mom. Or she just looked normal. I mean, when you think of monsters that can kill their kids, you don't picture Lori Valo. You don't picture Chad Dabel. When you picture monsters, you picture monsters like maybe Charles Manson or somebody that fits that mold, that looks that way. She didn't. She looked like a normal soccer mom. A normal mom you would see picking up kids at school. So I don't. Yeah, we didn't go to that thought right at first.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Okay, so when, when did that thought start to emerge?

[Ray Homasillo]

So when we arrested her, she was transported back to Rexburg, Idaho, and she was put in jail. The more days that went on that she was in jail and she didn't produce those kids, I think everybody kind of knew if those kids were alive, she would have produced them. She's not going to sit in jail. And at that point, I think everybody knew this is more of a recovery mission than a rescue mission. And so we kind of switched gears at that point and kind of looked at it like, okay, we're going to be looking for two bodies at this point.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, we're going to take a quick ad break here, but please stick around. We'll be right back with more what it was like.

[Ad Host]

Better help Online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com random podcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.

[Outdoor App Host]

I'm not switching my team to some fancy work platform that somehow knows exactly how we work and its AI features are literally saving us hours every day. We're big fans. And just like that, teams all around the world are falling for Monday.com with intuitive design, seamless AI capabilities and custom workflows, it's the work platform your team will instantly click with. Head to Monday.com, the first work platform you'll love to use. We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With alltrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app today.

[Stem Cell Scientist]

Have you ever wondered how your body naturally repairs and rejuvenates itself? It all comes down to your stem cells. Your body's built in repair system that renews tissue, restores balance and helps you feel your best. But by age 30, you have up to 90% fewer stem cells in circulation. That's where Stemregen comes in. Founded by stem cell scientist and health pioneer Christian Dropo, stemregen products are designed to support your body's natural repair system by using science backed plant based extracts. Just two capsules of stem regen releases an average of 10 million of your own stem cells into your body. No injections, just two capsules empower your body to rejuvenate from within. Whether you're focused on recovery, longevity or just overall wellness, STE can help release more of your health, more life, and more of the best version of you. Try it now at Stem Regen Co and use code POD15 for 15% off your first order. That's STEM REGEN CODEPOD15.

[Julian Morgans]

So you're waiting for these kids to get presented. The days are ticking over. You described it as like a body retrieval process. So I understand you eventually served Chad with a warrant to go and dig up his backyard. Can you tell me about that?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah. So in the, in the months between when Lori's arrested and that was March, February, we were listening to jail phone calls every day. They would talk on the phone for hours and they would, you know, we're just listening for any little piece of information that will lead us to where JJ and Tyler are, what would they talk about? You know, they would talk about religion, they would talk about music, they would talk about kids, family. I mean they would really talk about anything. And it was hours and hours every day. From the time she was arrested and for three, three months.

[Julian Morgans]

So like first of all, it sounds like they weren't worried about these missing kids. Like let's, let's assume, let's assume that the kids are dead and they know that and they're trying to hide this. Like they don't seem like they're worried about it. Is that right?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah. And that was really, Julian, kind of what threw us off was their nonchalant attitude, their lack of any type of, like you said, any type of worry or remorse or. There was no fear in their eyes. There was. They were just going on every day like, like nothing had happened. Like she wasn't in jail, like they weren't being looked at by the nation. For these two missing kids, it was just normal day to day conversation for months and months. And that was kind of, that was kind of weird in of itself because I mean, who would do that, who can just carry on day to day knowing that these two kids are missing, knowing the entire nation is watching and if you've done anything illegal or anything to harm these kids, knowing that you're going to be caught eventually, that would get anybody nervous. But they weren't. There was no worry.

[Julian Morgans]

That's so weird. I mean, the other thing that I'm hearing is that you, you said that they would talk for hours every day. I mean that sounds to me like two teenagers in the early start of like a high school relationship. Like they're really like intensely in love. Like this is a steamy relationship and they're really going for it. I don't know. Does that sound about right to you?

[Ray Homasillo]

No, that. I mean that's a great way to describe it. It was like junior high infatuation. I mean, they would sing to each other, they would giggle, you know, they would profess their love for each other, they would pray, they would. It was just. They would try and talk a little dirty or flirtatious and you know, they would kind of both laugh. And it was just. It reminded me of two 12 year olds talking on the phone for until all hours of the evening. But that was. When I say hours, Julian, it was probably six hours worth a day for months on end.

[Julian Morgans]

Who's got time for that? I do not have a spare six hours every day.

[Ray Homasillo]

Exactly. And you know, he wasn't doing anything. He was just kind of staying at home. We were watching him. So we knew when he would come or go. He was just kind of living in his old house and talking to her. But unfortunately we had to listen to every minute of every phone call, just hoping for a little nugget on where these kids can be.

[Julian Morgans]

Did you ever find yourself intrigued by this theology, this sort of invented universe that Chad had come up with? You know, like cults are interesting. I find cults interesting. But, but were you intrigued?

[Ray Homasillo]

I wasn't intrigued, no. I, I was disgusted by it. And like I said, our, our job. At that point, I, my.

[Julian Morgans]

Why were you, why were you disgusted?

[Ray Homasillo]

Just because it, it, what they were teaching was kind of, it was like something out of a movie or Dungeons and Dragons. And, and we knew as we listened to phone calls, things would change and he would kind of adapt on the fly. And so there really wasn't a teaching. He was just kind of making it up as he went. And there was a small group of people. I mean, I don't even know if you can call it a cult because there was only three or four people that actually believed in this crap. But yeah, our focus at that point, Julian, I didn't care what he was teaching. We just wanted to find the kids.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah, yeah. I think the other thing that's really interesting at this point is that, is that this story had hit the headlines in a big way. This story had really blown up, particularly in the U.S. can you tell me a little bit about that?

[Ray Homasillo]

I mean, we released our first press release, I believe November or December 20th of 2019. So as soon as we released that press release, it, it did catch. I mean, you have two missing kids, two beautiful kids, a 16 year old, a 7 year old with autism. Mom is nowhere to be seen. She's gone through two or three ex husbands, all of which are dead. Her new boyfriend's wife is currently deceased under suspicious circumstances. That, that is a story in and of itself. But then you get them fleeing and then you throw in the religious aspect, it just made this story so much more interesting. And that's what just. It caught like wildfire in the media. And that was an added pressure too because, you know, the entire nation is watching. So it was just a whirlwind after the media caught wind.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Was this your first taste of the media spotlight?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, I mean, this is the biggest case I've ever worked. But we would have camera crews in front of the police department from, you know, we had Fox, we'd have cnn, we'd have camera crews from different states and trying to get any piece of information. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was my first taste in the media of that magnitude.

[Julian Morgans]

And I think the other thing that comes with media attention Is that suddenly every man, woman and dog out there has an opinion, has. Has a theory. You know, the psychics start calling you up with their sort of crackpot ideas about where the kids are buried. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah. So we would first, when the kids were missing, we would set up hotlines and people can call in and you can say, hey, I. I think I saw J.J. or I think I saw Tyler. Kind of give their names, where they saw them, things like that. But we would also get psychics that would call in and they would say, I saw J.J. in a vision. He's in the bottom of a pond. Or I saw Tylee. She's stuck in a bunker. She's not being fed, they're torturing her. So you would get all sorts of things being called in. And of course, psychics, you know, they really don't stand up in a judicial system. So there's really no evidence or fact based that we can go off of. We just kind of listen to these people talk. But they were all over the place. So psychics really didn't play any role in this investigation other than a lot of them would call in and say they saw different things.

[Julian Morgans]

So there was. There was no consensus amongst the psychics?

[Ray Homasillo]

No, not at all. They were all over the place, all over the map.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, all right, so. So take me back to the dig. Right? You. You serve a warrant under, on Chad. Tell me about that day. How did it start?

[Ray Homasillo]

So I'll tell you about. Let me back up if I can, please. The night before we served the warrant on Chad's place, we had this huge meeting, this huge debrief, and all the agencies were there. Probably, probably Julian, probably 50 people. And I remember sitting outside that night after the meeting. I'm sitting with my lieutenant at the time, Ron Ball. And I remember telling Ron, we're going to know real quick tomorrow morning if we're in the right spot. Because when we serve Chad with this warrant and he looks and he starts to read it, we're going to see some type of change in behavior. Whether his carotid artery starts being faster, whether he starts to sweat, breathe deeply, reposition himself, whatever it is, we're going to see some type of change behavior. And so that next morning, that night, after I talked to him, of course I couldn't sleep. We were anxious, we were nervous. We had run out of. Out of evidence, out of leads. This was kind of our last ditch effort to find these kids. We had nothing else to go on. And so I just Remember laying in bed just thinking of every possible scenario of what's going to happen and what we could find. And pretty soon 7:00 clock in the morning rolls up and we start heading out to Chad's place. It was just a quiet ride out there. It's probably two or three miles, actually probably four or five miles from the police department out to his place. And everybody was in a line caravanning. And I just remember driving out there thinking, okay, this is it, this is it. We're gonna hopefully find something. If we don't find something, I don't know where the heck we're gonna turn. So it was nerve wracking. I was anxious. Yeah. So that was kind of the drive out there.

[Julian Morgans]

And can you describe the house? Is it like a property or a farmhouse?

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, it was a brick house. It was on the corner on a few country roads on a corner lot. It had two or three acres behind it, mostly field, really, nothing cultivated. And then around that was farmland, you know, pasture. Yeah, it was kind of a secluded little place. There were a few houses to the west of it, but no houses or anything to the east and behind it.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay, so what happened when you served Chad the warrant? What did you notice?

[Ray Homasillo]

You know, we walked in, we knocked on the door, we were let in by his son. We had to wake Chad up, went upstairs, woke him up, had him come downstairs, get dressed, let him know that we had a warrant to search the property outside and inside. We served him with a warrant. He's sitting on the recliner reading through the warrant, and I'm watching him intensely. There was no change, behavior, nothing. And I thought, son of a bitch, we're at the wrong spot. Like, I was instantly discouraged and, and I just remember feeling just deflated and angry and I'm like, come on. Like, we had so many dead ends throughout that whole entire investigation. It was just, we just needed one break. One break in that case.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah.

[Ray Homasillo]

And so at that point, you know, Chad asked to go outside and, and we let him go outside and he has to make a phone call. And so I was kind of standing with him outside. He got in his car, just sat in the driver's seat making a phone call. And I just remember looking at him thinking, where are these kids at? Like, they've got to be somewhere and just depressed, I guess is the best way to put it. But then it started to change because then I started noticing a change in behavior. And what Chad was doing was he was talking on the phone. He had the phone in his right hand and he kept looking over his right shoulder pretty intently, and I kept thinking, I'm looking at him like, what is he looking at? Like, what is going on? And so I repositioned myself to see what he was looking at. And he was looking toward the pond area and toward the pond area. There's this big, huge tree. And there was some FBI agents and things over in that pond area. But he would not let that go. He got out of the car, took off his hat, kind of ran his fingers through his hair. Super nervous. And I thought, okay, wait a minute, we're on to something here. And so I called over a few more detectives, and I'm like, watch him for a minute and tell me if you're seeing anything. Because I thought maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there. And, you know, they kind of watched and they're like, holy crap. Yeah, he's pretty nervous about what those guys are doing. So that was the first time, Julian, that we finally saw what we wanted. The change of behavior, the nervousness, and yeah, that's ultimately where we found JJ.

[Julian Morgans]

That is wild that you went from 0 to 11, you know, like giving up, feeling really disparaged, to, hey, we're onto something, you know, and it was all because of a tell all via his body language. I think that's so interesting.

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, for sure. And it was every emotion that morning that you could possibly feel as a human being, you felt that morning. But yeah, for sure. When he started looking that way, I thought, okay, good, maybe we are on the right spot.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. So what did you do then? I mean, do you just get out shovels or like, do you bring in. Bring in dogs or what's the process?

[Ray Homasillo]

I mean, so we had both. We had dogs, could. Dogs that didn't really indicate on anything. And I remember getting called over there to the tree. Shortly after, we were in the backyard starting the process, and you could see the difference in vegetation around like a 4 by 2 section under the tree that. That looked, you know, a rectangular 4 by 2 section. You can see the vegetation was way different around it. And so they started digging there. And then, you know, immediately as you lifted the top soil, you can smell. You can smell the decomposition. So you knew. We knew something was there.

[Julian Morgans]

So just. Just keep telling the story. You know, you started digging.

[Ray Homasillo]

So the FBI had their. What's called an ERT team, which is an evidence recovery team, and they're super methodical. And so it was kind of a process. But you started to uncover under a few inches of soil, you could really start to smell decomposition. And. And if you've been in law enforcement, if you smell dead bodies, you know, that is a. That is a smell that does not leave you. You're starting to see a different type of soil. You're starting to see wet, what looked to be wet soil in that. In that section, moist soil. And you start to, you know, start using brushes and trowels and. And then we started to see this brown. This black circle start to protrude through the dirt. Look like, you know, just. So we start to uncover that a little bit, and it starts to appear to take the shape of, like, the crown of a human head. And, you know, at that point, I think everybody standing around kind of knew what we were going to find, but it was. It was quiet. People were just doing their jobs. And, you know, they would scan, FBI would scan. And we started to uncover more dirt. We were probably 3 or 4 inches down around this black object. And you tell there's a black plastic that's kind of covering it. So one of the FBI ERT members gets a small sharp instrument and cuts down the black plastic, just a little slit, and then tear it away just a little bit. And. And then you see a piece of white plastic, and we're like, what is that? Like, what is that? And of course, at this time, you know, the smell is atrocious. You know, so they get that same small instrument cut through the white plastic, and then you can start to see brown human hair. And based on all the photos, like, JJ had a head that you couldn't mistake. It was kind of oblong. We knew he had long brown hair. And so once we saw that brown hair and we saw the shape of the head that was kind of protruding through the dirt, we knew it was jj. I mean, I think everybody in their heart knew it was jj. Nobody said anything. They just. It was silent. There was 30 plus people standing around, and you could hear a pin drop probably outside. It was. Yeah, it was a. It was a. It was a crazy feeling.

[Julian Morgans]

It sounds really somber. You know, you guys are like hardened police officers. But it sounds like this was an affecting moment.

[Ray Homasillo]

Of course, I mean, you know, most people were parents out there, dads or moms. You know, anytime a child. You're digging up a deceased child out of the backyard of somebody's house, I mean, it's going to be somber. It's nobody's. I mean, as a police officer, you're trained to see things. Nobody is really designed to see stuff like that. I mean, you can. You can train all day long and deal with it. But yeah, I mean, they're your natural instincts kick in. You're. You're a dad first and a cop second. Right. So, you know, you kind of got to bury that feeling of anger and frustration and sadness and kind of pick up and continue doing what you're doing.

[Julian Morgans]

Well, how was Chad responding to all of this?

[Ray Homasillo]

Chad was at his daughter's house, which was kind of kitty corner from where his house was. So as we started uncovering jj, we heard that Chad was fleeing at a high rate of speed.

[Julian Morgans]

He was fleeing? What do you mean? Like on, on foot?

[Ray Homasillo]

No, he had gotten his car and left his, his daughter's house and was driving down the road. So he was eventually pulled over, arrested, and put in the back of the police car. But just knowing that we had finally found J.J. at that point, just knowing that all those hours and months of putting in this work and, you know, you felt every emotion you possibly could feel at that point. You have Chad in custody. Now you're uncovering jj. You felt frustration and anger and sadness and confusion. How could somebody do this to this little autistic boy? Relief that we're finally going to get him out of the ground and put in his final resting spot. Relief that we found him just there was a flood of emotion. Every emotion you can feel, probably guys felt on scene.

[Julian Morgans]

God, what a day. It's like this is a span of a couple of hours and you've just gone through the sort of full spectrum of emotions. After the autopsy had been completed, what did you learn about how JJ had died?

[Ray Homasillo]

So I was there for the autopsy. I watched them perform the autopsy. When they cut down that black plastic, we expected to see a dead little seven year old boy, but not to the extent of what we saw. What we saw was just a little boy in, you know, red pajamas. He was, he was duct taped from elbow to elbow. His arms were kind of folded over his body. He had several, several layers of duct tape on his arms. Duct tape. His feet were duct taped together. You know, he had two plastic bags over his head. Once we took the plastic bags off, he had duct tape over his mouth. So it was terrible to see a little boy suffer like that.

[Julian Morgans]

Oh, right. That's awful. So the conclusion was that he'd been duct taped when he was still alive. This wasn't an after he's dead thing?

[Ray Homasillo]

No, no. Because there's no reason to duct tame up at that point. You know, if he's dead, he's not going to fight. And and that's why he was duct taped is because he was putting up a fight towards those final moments probably. And they were trying to control him. So they used the duct tape to control his hands and feet. But yeah, it was, it was terrible. It was terrible to see. I'll never, ever, ever forget that image. That, that image is burned in everybody's memories for their lifetime.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Seriously, these guys are monsters. You know, Laurie and Chad, I'm just thinking back to the way that they were flirting and talking dirty and talking about their favorite music and stuff when they're in prison, knowing full well that this 7 year old kid has died in such a traumatic way. Like that's a gross juxtaposition.

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, it really is. I mean the best way to describe them is just they're. They're evil. Two evil people.

[Julian Morgans]

Hey, we're going to take a quick ad break here, but please stick around. We'll be right back with more what it was like.

[Ad Host]

Better help. Online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.

[Work Platform Host]

Breaking up is never easy, but saying goodbye to your old clunky work tools, well, that's easy. Just repeat after me. It's not me, it's definitely you, you rigid, unfriendly software. It's time to freshen things up with Monday.com, the first work platform you'll love to use. With stunning dashboards, customizable templates, and built in AI that actually works. Switching to a new work platform has never felt this good. So move on to Monday.com.

[Julian Morgans]

So as the investigation continued, what did you learn about the last weeks of the kids lives?

[Ray Homasillo]

So we knew JJ was probably killed September 22, the evening of, you know, his last few weeks. Up until then, I'm not sure if JJ really knew what was going to happen. You know I, I do know that when we went and talked to JJ's school about three weeks before that, he was kind of coloring a portrait of his family and drawing. JJ had his mom, dad, sister and him kind of drawn out and his mom's face was. It looked like he grabbed a black crayon and just colored her face in black. I mean all over the page. And so when the teacher said, well, you know, jj, why'd you do that? He said, because my mom doesn't love me anymore.

[Julian Morgans]

Oh, God, that's heartbreaking.

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, to hear that. And then, you know. So JJ probably knew something was up a couple weeks before he passed or was killed, I guess. Not passed. He was killed. So that. To hear that is kind of heartbreaking. It really is. To. To know that he didn't feel loved in those last days. Tyler was September 9th, September 8th, early morning of September 9th, and we really don't know much about her.

[Julian Morgans]

What do we know about the motivation here? I mean, like, why kill the kids? What was that about?

[Ray Homasillo]

You know, Julian, it's about money. You know, she was receiving Social Security benefits from jj, from his dad dying, which is the guy Alex killed. And then Tylee was receiving Social Security benefits from her dad, who had passed away when she was younger. And so, you know, Roughly, it was $7,000, $8,000 a month. Lori was getting in these benefits from Social Security. And, you know, the kids were just in the way. Her and Chad wanted to live in Hawaii and have this carefree life, but she still wanted that income. And so, you know, they. They killed the kids so they wouldn't be in the way, and she still collected that money. It was about money and control, basically.

[Julian Morgans]

So. So you don't think it was about religion? Like, there was no sort of like part of. Of Chad's warped ideology that said they had to kill the kids or anything?

[Ray Homasillo]

I mean, Chad used that religious BS as the vessel, the segue into it. But do I think that that's the reason? No, I don't. I think the reason was they didn't want the kids. Chad kind of gave Lori an out, saying, you know, this religion or whatever he was teaching, it's okay because they're going to be in heaven. Whatever he was teaching her that she bought into, but they kind of used that religious stuff as a vessel to carry out what they needed to do.

[Julian Morgans]

So tell me about finding Tylee's body.

[Ray Homasillo]

So Tylee, we ended up digging where we had those geolocations, and we started to uncover some. Some ground, some dirt, and we start to see again, a change in soil. But this was. Tyler was chopped up, and she was chopped up on a fire pit. She was burned, she was dismembered, and they buried her. So when we started digging Tyler up, it was pieces of her, pieces of her hip.

[Julian Morgans]

Oh, God.

[Ray Homasillo]

Charred flesh and bone. You know, we started digging. We were on our hands and knees, and you. We could only dig for a few minutes at a Time because the smell was so bad, we had to stop and, and take turns. And we did this for hours on our hands and knees digging Tylee up. And we would just get pieces of Tylee burnt flesh and bone. And we put her on this tarp and we started to cover, uncover a green bucket and it was melted and so it was a lot of Tylee melted in the screen bucket and buried. And then we ended up uncovering her skull, partial skull underneath the green bucket along with her, her jawbone and some teeth and. Yeah, I mean they just mutilated the 16 year old girl and burned her on a campfire and then threw her in a, in a pet cemetery.

[Julian Morgans]

Oh my God. What, what foul people.

[Ray Homasillo]

Y I there. There's really no way you could describe that type of evil. And you know, to, to watch a mom do that to her own children or allow somebody to do that to her children, to participate, to hide the evidence, to go lay on a beach and enjoy Hawaii and go get married knowing full well this is what happened to your kids.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah.

[Ray Homasillo]

You know, it's hard, it's hard to put your finger on that type of evil. You don't see that very often. But she, she and Chad and Alex are, are. They're just super evil people.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Yeah. Do you, do you know if. Was Laurie like the brains behind the operation and then Chad just did the, the dirty work? I mean, do you know anything about the sort of the logistics?

[Ray Homasillo]

I mean, I, I don't. I think Alex was the one who ended up doing the actual physical killing along with Lori.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay.

[Ray Homasillo]

I think Chad and Alex both kind of manipulated each other. I don't think there was one person really leading the other. I think it was more of a mutual thing. He would lead in some areas and she would lead in some areas.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. Okay. Can you just sort of put a nice bow on it for me? You know, like Chad and Laurie, what was their sentence? How's this all sort of ended?

[Ray Homasillo]

So we went to trial. We charged Chad and Lori both with six counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, Social Security fraud, insurance fraud. They both were charged with those with six counts. In April of 2023, we went to court in Boise, Idaho for Lori's case. The cases were separated, so we did hers first. After about two months worth of trial, she was convicted on all counts murder, conspiracy to commit murder, the security fraud, Social Security fraud. And she is serving currently in Idaho. She has five life sentences.

[Julian Morgans]

Chase.

[Ray Homasillo]

And then she was also convicted in Arizona in April of 2024. We went to trial on Chad Daybell, and it was about. Probably about two and a half months. And in June of 2024, Chad was convicted of five death sentences and an insurance fraud. And so he is currently in Boise on death row awaiting his appeals and death sentence. And Lori is just got done going to court in Arizona for the murder of her first husband and the attempted murder of her nephew and was found guilty on both. And she has her sentencing date, July 25th of this year down there. Once that's completed, she'll come back to Idaho and serve out the remainder of her life sentences.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. Okay. Wow. So death sentence for Chad and multiple life sentences for Laurie at a minimum.

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah. Correct.

[Julian Morgans]

Okay. I mean, like, in some ways, this story, it's not completely unusual. I've heard of things like this before. The one part that makes it so unusual, so weird, is this is a moment killing kids, you know, you don't. You just don't see that very often. That is particularly dark. It's uniquely grim. I guess I want to know, like, what have you learned about humanity through this process? How are you feeling?

[Ray Homasillo]

That's a good question. You know, I think I've gained more of a positive, actually perspective of humanity through this experience, and that's because I watched a community come together for these kids that never knew these kids. They would hold birthday vigils for these kids and put up flyers, and, you know, the community came together. You had six different agencies of law enforcement, FBI, Attorney General's office, different local and state authorities come together and try to find justice for these kids. There was no backbiting. There was no jurisdictional issues. And you really don't see that in law enforcement. That's hard to come by because there's always egos involved in law enforcement and the family and the bonds that we made with these other officers that were in the backyard that day, the. The bond that we made with victims and. And their families. I'm super close with Lori's son, Colby. We're good friends to this day because of kind of the things that we've had to deal with. And he knows what I had to deal with. And. And so I would say my. My view on humanity changed for the better because I. I've seen the good in people, and I know that there's more good in this world than bad. And I've seen it with this case. I just. You're always going to have bad, but I think it's super important to look for the positive outcome of these. Of these horrible situations.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Yeah. I Think that makes a lot of sense. I think it's a. It's a wise perspective. I think. I think the thing that I just keep coming back to as you've been telling this story is that like, yeah, I know people are bad. I know people are bad. But when you get into the details, the intricacies, something about those red pajamas covered in duct tape, you know, it sort of just, it almost like deepens the, the blackness of like, how bad can things get? Oh, things can get really bad. You know, at their worst. And real outlier cases, things can get really bad. And that's. I don't know, that's the. I guess that's the sort of a feeling I've got about this case.

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, there's. It's a super dark case. It's a. It's a very dark case. And, and I think it's. It's important to let yourself. You know, I wanted to touch on this a little bit, the trauma that's involved and not only with the victims families, but with these first responders and these guys that are in the backyard doing this, this on their hands and knees digging up a chopped up child that was burned. I mean, there could have been guys that said, you know what? This isn't for me. I'm done. I'm not doing this. But there was none of that. These guys put in and went above and beyond this entire team. And yeah, that's. That's something that I will always be proud of.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Yeah. And you too, Ray. I mean, it sounds like this ate up years of your life and you really, you gave it everything. So. So thanks.

[Ray Homasillo]

Yeah, thank you, Julian. I. I appreciate it. It was a. Yeah, it's huge, huge team effort.

[Julian Morgans]

Yeah. Yeah. Ray, I'm gonna let you go, but thanks so much for sharing this story. Thanks for sharing your insights. It's been a wild ride.

[Ray Homasillo]

All right, thanks, Julian.

[Julian Morgans]

Today's episode was produced by Rachel Tuffrey. It was mixed by Jimmy Saunders, who also did our theme music. Our cover art is by Rich Akers. Ellie Dickey is our intern. And this whole thing has been a super real product.

[Frances]

Hi, this is Frances from Fixable, a podcast from ted. These days, every finance leader is under pressure to save money. But you can't beat the competition just by cutting costs. To win, you need to spend smarter and move faster. You need Brex. Brex is the modern finance platform that breaks the trade off between control and speed with intelligent corporate cards, high Yield Banking, and AI powered Expense Management. Join the 30,000 companies that spend smarter and move faster with Brex. Learn more at Brex.com grow Hey Tinsley.

[Stem Cell Scientist]

Why don't we use EasyCater to order.

[Julian Morgans]

Food for staff lunches? Because my 46 page acronym system is so easy. I just have to salad, stay alert to late arriving deliveries, pie put in.

[Work Platform Host]

Expenses and guga pie.

[Ray Homasillo]

Go out and get everyone's preferences and allergy information.

[Julian Morgans]

That's supposed to be simple. No, simple is Steven, Irma and Margie.

[Ray Homasillo]

Prefer lasagna and empanadas.

[Julian Morgans]

Omg.

[Outdoor App Host]

No need to make work life more complicated. Just use EasyCater, the easy way to get food for work.