Lori Daybell: The Cult Mom Returns to Court- Prosecution Opening Statements In Full

Lori Vallow Daybell is back on trial—this time in Arizona, where she’s accused of conspiring to murder her estranged husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019. You probably know her as the Idaho mom who claimed her kids were zombies, married a doomsday author, and was convicted of killing her two youngest children, JJ and Tylee. But this part of the saga brings us to Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, where the story first started turning deadly.

Prosecutors say Vallow Daybell teamed up with her brother, Alex Cox, to kill Charles so she could collect on a $1 million life insurance policy and marry her apocalyptic boyfriend, Chad Daybell. At the time, she was still married to Charles—though they were separated—and he had just moved to Arizona with Lori’s other brother, Adam Cox, to stage an intervention. Charles had told friends that Lori had become obsessed with near-death experiences and past lives on other planets. He said she threatened to ruin him financially and have him killed. Four months before his death, he asked a court to order a mental health evaluation. It never happened.

On the day of the shooting, Charles showed up at Lori’s house to pick up their son, JJ. What followed was a strange and fatal series of events that, according to the prosecution, had nothing to do with self-defense and everything to do with premeditation. Alex Cox claimed Charles hit him with a baseball bat and that he shot Charles in self-defense. But prosecutors say the scene tells a different story. There was hardly any blood in the house—except pooling around Charles’s body. No signs of a struggle. No blood on the gun. Alex’s sunglasses, which he claimed were knocked off in the fight, never even moved. Charles was shot twice, once in the chest and again while he was on the ground—a trajectory that suggests it was a deliberate follow-up shot.

And then there's the timeline. Lori left the house right after the shooting with JJ and Tylee—driving Charles’s rental car to Burger King and Walgreens before dropping JJ off at school. She spoke with Alex twice after the shooting but waited 47 minutes to call 911. That’s nearly an hour Charles lay dead on the floor while, prosecutors say, Alex “staged the scene” to make it look like self-defense.

The trial is expected to last six weeks. And here’s where it gets even weirder: Lori is representing herself. No lawyer. Just her, facing off against the state while still claiming her innocence. She’s already been convicted in Idaho and sentenced to life in prison for killing her kids and conspiring to kill her then-boyfriend’s wife, Tammy Daybell. Chad, now her husband, has been sentenced to death.

In court, Lori’s been objecting to witnesses, challenging the evidence, and arguing that people testifying against her are just going off what they’ve seen on TV. One of those witnesses, though, will reportedly testify that Lori said Charles was “possessed” by an evil spirit named Ned. Others will talk about Lori and Alex seeing themselves as religious warriors—believing they were doing God’s work by eliminating evil spirits in human bodies.

The case is getting national attention again, not just for the alleged crime, but for the bizarre belief system behind it—one that Lori and Chad used to justify the unthinkable. And while Alex Cox died five months after the shooting of a blood clot, his story and Lori’s version of events are now both under a microscope.

#LoriVallow #TrueCrimeTrial #DoomsdayMom #CharlesVallow

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