A mother's two children were found buried in her new husband's yard, her 7-year-old son wrapped in plastic and duct tape. He got the death penalty. She got life, and on Monday she asked the Idaho Supreme Court to throw it out. Asked in jail about the autopsy photos, she said:
"I don't see them as bones." That's Lori Vallow Daybell on her 52nd birthday in June 2025, in an orange jumpsuit at an Arizona jail. She says her dead children come to visit her, and that they told her she did nothing wrong.
Her daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, and her son JJ Vallow, 7, disappeared in September 2019. For months she told police the kids were fine and refused to say where they were. In June 2020 their remains were found on her husband Chad Daybell's property in Idaho. Tylee had been dismembered and burned.
Prosecutors said she and Chad believed the children had become "zombies." She says her late brother put them "in a safe place" and she never knew where. In 2023 a judge took the death penalty off the table for her because prosecutors turned over evidence late. Chad got no such break.
In the video below, she agrees her children were found in Chad's backyard, says "I didn't kill anybody," and insists she never knew where they were.
She is serving life without parole in Idaho and was convicted again in Arizona of conspiring to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Chad is on death row. On Monday her lawyers argued in Boise that a judge wrongly took away her chosen attorney. The court has not ruled.
Should Idaho have been allowed to seek the death penalty for her too, or is life in prison enough?