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Before the murders. Before the backyard graves. Before the "zombie" labels and the doomsday beliefs — there was a conference room in Utah and a man who told Lori Vallow she was chosen.

This is Part 1 of "The Chosen Ones," a 5-part Hidden Killers series examining the psychology of spiritual abuse through the Vallow-Daybell case. We're not recapping the crime. We're dissecting the religious manipulation that made it possible.

If you've ever experienced religious trauma, you know how this starts. The warmth of being "seen." The intoxication of being chosen. The slow process of believing you're exempt from the rules that govern everyone else.

Chad Daybell told Lori they were married in a past life. He told her she was exalted. He told her that her husband Charles had been taken over by a demon.

Within months, Charles was dead. Within a year, so were Tylee and JJ.

This episode breaks down spiritual love bombing — the first stage of coercive control in high control religions. It's the same pattern used in toxic churches, manipulative faith communities, and cults worldwide. Understanding how it works is the first step in healing from religious trauma.

For anyone in a faith crisis. Anyone questioning a toxic church. Anyone who has watched a loved one transform under spiritual influence.

The devout aren't vulnerable because they're foolish. They're vulnerable because they've already decided to believe. All a predator has to do is redirect that belief.

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The Kouri Richins trial brings Matthew Throckmorton, handwriting expert, to the stand in this segment.

The Kouri Richins murder trial continues in Utah as the state prosecutes the children's book author for allegedly poisoning her husband Eric Richins with fentanyl. Prosecutors allege she killed him for insurance money after secretly increasing his policy to $1.9 million. The defense maintains Eric died from accidental drug use.

True Crime Today delivers real-time trial coverage as it happens—key testimony, critical cross-examinations, and the moments that matter. No waiting for nightly recaps. Watch the case unfold live.

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The boyfriend took the stand and cried. The housekeeper and the dealer told opposite stories about the same drug buy. The phone showed searches about what poison does to a death certificate. And none of it, individually, proves Kouri Richins killed her husband. That is the challenge of a purely circumstantial case — and potentially, it is also its strength.

Retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer joins us live to break it all down from an investigative standpoint.

She analyzes Josh Grossman's courtroom appearance — head in hands, wiping tears, listening to text messages read aloud in public, including a message asking if he would marry Kouri if she were divorced right now, sent weeks before Eric's death. What is the FBI trained to look for when a witness appears genuinely conflicted about the person they're testifying against — and how does a jury process that kind of emotional complexity on the stand?

She breaks down the digital evidence: Kouri Richins' phone searches for poison, death certificates, and how to delete iPhone messages. What does search history evidence actually mean inside an FBI homicide investigation, and how do prosecutors prevent the defense from successfully reframing it as morbid curiosity?

She also addresses the insurance beneficiary attempt — someone tried to shift the policy from Eric to Kouri, and an advisor caught it — and what that kind of pre-death financial move signals to investigators about where someone is in the planning process.

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The Kouri Richins trial brings Cody Wright, Eric's former business partner, to the stand in this segment.

The Kouri Richins murder trial continues in Utah as the state prosecutes the children's book author for allegedly poisoning her husband Eric Richins with fentanyl. Prosecutors allege she killed him for insurance money after secretly increasing his policy to $1.9 million. The defense maintains Eric died from accidental drug use.

True Crime Today delivers real-time trial coverage as it happens—key testimony, critical cross-examinations, and the moments that matter. No waiting for nightly recaps. Watch the case unfold live.

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SCSO releases official autopsy findings in the Charity Beallis case. Her manner of death ruled self-inflicted. Twins Eliana and Maverick — homicide. But the death certificate shows multiple gunshot wounds, and the forensic details explaining the ruling haven't been made public.

The evidence supporting Randall Beallis's alibi is substantial: Tesla location data, cell phone records, and home security logs all verify he wasn't at the Bonanza residence on the night of December 2nd. Multiple agencies investigated — FBI, Homeland Security, Secret Service, Arkansas State Police.

But Randy Powell, Charity's father, told us directly what he saw at the morgue: wounds to chest and head. Two separate body locations. Cases involving multiple self-inflicted wounds are rare according to forensic research — only 0-6% of cases. The trajectory analysis and wound sequencing that would explain the pathologist's conclusion have not been released.

This video examines the SCSO evidence, Charity's documented history in court records, what changed when joint custody was ordered on December 2nd, and why the Sheriff's Office says the investigation is "continuing" after releasing the ruling.

Eliana and Maverick Beallis were six years old.

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Eric Richins didn't just die. According to testimony in his wife's murder trial, he saw it coming — and said so. He told his family to look at Kouri if anything happened to him. He met secretly with a divorce attorney and instructed her not to communicate by email because he was afraid Kouri would read it. He went to an estate planning attorney with concerns about his sons.

He was found dead on March 4th, 2022, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system.

Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty. But two weeks of testimony in Summit County, Utah have produced a case built on her own words — texts to her boyfriend weeks before Eric died, a message to a friend saying "if I die, Eric did it," a text after his death saying "they will not take from me what is mine," and body cam footage of her telling a deputy the night Eric died that everything had been fine.

Prosecutors also allege she attempted to poison him on Valentine's Day, three weeks before his death. A friend testified Eric told the story himself — like it was funny.

The defense has genuine ammunition: a meth-positive immunized witness whose story changed, a drug supplier who walked back his account, and a cause of death the medical examiner listed as undetermined. This episode covers all of it.

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The suspect who allegedly took Nancy Guthrie has been unidentified for over a month. He survived the largest missing persons mobilization in recent Arizona history. He's watched his own image circulate nationally — eyebrows visible, mustache visible, pinky ring on. He has been living with whatever happened to an 84-year-old woman since the night he walked up to her front door.

And according to retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer, someone in his life knows exactly who he is.

That's where this investigation stands right now. Not in the lab. Not at the command center. In the behavioral and psychological pressure building around the people who are close to the answer — and have not yet made the call.

Coffindaffer breaks down what the FBI is actually doing at this stage: how agents monitor behavioral shifts in a suspect pool through financial activity, travel patterns, and communication changes without revealing their hand; what the pre-operational digital surveillance trail — address searches traced to a Tucson IP from as far back as June 2025 — means for identifying a specific device and a specific person; and what life events at the one-month and two-month mark historically push reluctant witnesses to finally break their silence.

She also addresses what happens to multi-perpetrator loyalty at month two — the mounting fear, the financial pressure, the fracturing relationships — and why investigators are counting on exactly that pressure to surface.

If this case cracks, this is the conversation that explains how it happened.

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Sheriff Nanos told national television his investigators are "definitely closer" to finding Nancy Guthrie. The FBI moved its command center from Tucson to Phoenix. The task force — once hundreds strong — has been reduced to a focused homicide unit. All of that sounds like progress. But what does it actually mean inside a real investigation?

Retired FBI Special Agent Jennifer Coffindaffer — who told Newsweek this case is "red hot" and the polar opposite of cold — joins us to explain exactly what those words mean when they come from someone trained to measure them, and exactly what they don't mean for a family still waiting.

Coffindaffer breaks down the FBI's command center relocation — not just as a logistical shift, but as a signal about where the Bureau believes the next breakthrough will come from. She walks through the task force scale-down: the triage decisions made by a small team with too many open threads, and what the risk of prioritizing wrong looks like in a case this complex.

She addresses the United Cajun Navy situation — 41 pages of operational planning, still unapproved, while the Sheriff's department insists outside resources aren't needed — and breaks down the law enforcement calculus behind that decision.

And she explains what the return of Annie Guthrie's vehicle from evidence custody signals. Because that kind of call isn't made casually.

This is the most informed, candid read on where the Nancy Guthrie investigation actually stands — from someone who has seen this from inside the Bureau.

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She allegedly poisoned her husband for the money. The forensic accountant just showed the jury exactly how desperate that financial situation was.

Brooke Karrington—a thirty-year expert who reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents—testified that by March 2022, Kouri Richins carried $7.5 million in debt. Monthly payments totaled $80,000. Four payday lenders collected $2,100 from her daily. Her business account was "perpetually in the hole." December 2021 recorded 77 overdraft transactions. She was writing checks to herself that bounced.

One day after Eric Richins died, Kouri purchased a $2.9 million mansion in Midway, Utah. Seven days later, she listed it for sale. It foreclosed. The $1.35 million she collected from Eric's life insurance policies was entirely spent within three months. By September 2022, records show she had roughly $800 left.

The defense argues the financial evidence is speculative and proves nothing about murder. But their cross-examination may have accomplished something more significant: exposing an investigation they say was outcome-driven from the start.

Dr. Erik Christensen admitted tests that could have determined whether Eric was a long-term fentanyl user—urine, eye fluid, liver tissue, hair follicles—were never performed. Carmen Lauber admitted testing positive for methamphetamine, changing her story after immunity deals, and being told by a detective that "the goal is to convict Kouri for aggravated murder."

The kitchen and basement were never searched the night Eric died. The copperware used for the Moscow Mules was never tested. An empty hydrocodone bottle in Eric's nightstand was never analyzed. Investigators only returned for certain items after a private investigator flagged them.

The defense has 35 witnesses waiting. Did they peak too early—or are they just getting started?

Kouri Richins is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

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Breaking verdict in the Colin Gray trial. Guilty on all 29 counts. Second-degree murder. The jury deliberated less than two hours before convicting the first parent in Georgia history for a school shooting committed by his child.

Colin Gray gave his fourteen-year-old son an AR-15 for Christmas—seven months after the FBI warned him about online threats Colt made to shoot up a school. No safe. No lock. The rifle stayed in Colt Gray's bedroom next to a shrine of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz. Colin Gray claimed under oath he thought the images were "the guy from Green Day."

The prosecution built its case on Colin Gray's own family. His daughter testified he asked her to lie to investigators. His estranged wife said she begged him repeatedly to lock up the guns. Weeks before the Apalachee High School shooting that killed two teachers and two students, Colt texted his father: "Whenever something happens just know the blood is on your hands."

The morning of the shooting, Colt sent goodbye messages. Colin Gray read them. He didn't call the school. Didn't race to stop anything. Stopped at QuikTrip for a drink on his way home while four people lay dead.

Colin Gray took the stand as his only defense witness. He cried. Said he never saw the evil coming. The jury rejected every word—guilty on all counts in under two hours.

Criminal defense attorney Bob Motta joins us to break down the failed defense strategy, the testimony that sealed this conviction, and what the Colin Gray verdict means for parental accountability nationwide. The Crumbleys were convicted of manslaughter in Michigan. Georgia just raised the stakes to murder.

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