“You have a habit of adding things to witness answers, and when you do that, it’s a form of testifying,” Judge Beresky told Lori Vallow Daybell in the final moments of the day, as court wrapped after a marathon of cross-examinations, autopsy details, and crime scene photos.

By the time court adjourned at 4:34 p.m., Lori had spent hours at the podium cross-examining Chandler Police Detective Daniel Coons, trying to challenge the state’s version of how Charles Vallow was shot and killed. It was her chance to unravel details about bullet trajectories, the positioning of shell casings, and whether her brother Alex Cox could’ve plausibly been where he claimed when the shots were fired. Coons held firm: the bullet trajectories were consistent with Charles being shot while lying on the floor, one bullet embedding in a baseboard. The shells? Just inches from the wall. And the gun, a .45 caliber semiautomatic, ejected to the right—not left, like Lori suggested might have mattered.

At one point, Lori veered into the realm of firearms training, asking if center mass is what police are taught to aim for. Coons confirmed, yes—it’s about stopping the threat. Then she asked if novice shooters are taught the same. He said no. It was a brief window into the angle she seemed to be aiming for, though the judge regularly reminded her to keep her own commentary out of the questioning.

Photos of the home were admitted—over a hundred of them. Exterior shots. The front door. A Reebok hat on the floor. Blood pooling around Charles’ body. A bat nearby. Projectiles in baseboards. Bullet casings marked with yellow placards. And in one particularly dramatic moment, a chunk of flooring was presented in court. It had been cut out to preserve a mark that investigators said was made by a bullet passing through Charles’ body.

Lori objected to some of the photos being admitted but was mostly overruled. The judge said the images helped the jury visualize the scene. She used some of the same photos in her cross, trying to push back on Coons’ conclusions, asking if divots in walls or trajectories could have occurred differently, if maybe the shooter wasn’t where Coons said. He stood his ground.

Earlier in the day, Chandler Fire Captain Kent Keller testified about Charles’ condition when medics arrived. Lividity and skin modeling were already setting in. His pupils were fixed. No electrical activity in the heart. CPR was initiated but quickly deemed futile. According to Keller, there was no indication anyone had attempted life-saving efforts before the fire crew arrived. The positioning of Charles’ body, the small pool of blood, and the condition of his skin all suggested death had occurred some time before.

Lori pressed Keller hard on the science of lividity and modeling. Could it happen in just a few minutes? Would medication change how the body looked? She floated the idea that maybe CPR had been done, just not effectively. Keller, and another paramedic named Cowden, said they saw no signs of it. In fact, they testified that effective CPR would’ve caused more bleeding—blood would’ve been forced out by the compressions. There just wasn’t any, aside from the pooling underneath.

At one point, Cowden described performing CPR while another EMT prepared the heart monitor. He said Charles was found with a baseball bat and ball cap nearby, but no one else was in the room. The house was otherwise empty, aside from officers clearing it. His account was backed up by Keller, who described the scene as calm, with the main objective being to assess, perform CPR, and confirm the lack of vital signs.

Throughout the day, Lori tried to walk the line between playing defense attorney and defendant. She questioned procedure, timing, blood patterns, CPR protocols, and scene diagrams. But the judge frequently reminded her about courtroom boundaries. When she asked whether someone had spoken to the media, the judge called for a sidebar. When she objected to Coons’ expert testimony, the judge ruled against her but gave her space to cross-examine thoroughly.

As court neared the end, a small issue arose: subpoenas had been sent by the defense to detectives, but without contact info. The judge told Lori to have her investigator handle it. Also, she was reminded to flag any photo exhibits she needed by the following morning.

With that, court adjourned. 

#LoriVallow #CharlesVallow #CrimeScene #TrueCrimeCourtroom

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