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BOISE — Lori Vallow Daybell continued to appear calm and nonchalant on the seventh day of testimony Wednesday in a murder trial for the deaths of her two children.
A police officer testified Wednesday she had a similar demeanor just after her previous husband was shot and killed by her brother.
Jurors also heard more details throughout the day about what investigators learned from the family's financial records, the response and investigation into her former husband's death, and the significant change in Daybell's religious beliefs in the year before her children were killed.
Daybell is on trial for murder, conspiracy and grand theft in the deaths of 7-year-old JJ and 16-year-old Tylee. She is also charged in connection with the death of Tammy Daybell, the late wife of her husband Chad Daybell. Chad Daybell is also charged in the three deaths and will face a separate trial.
Rexburg police detective Chuck Kunsaitis testified Wednesday about multiple documents that indicated Tylee and JJ were not around in late 2019. Investigators searched for financial transactions, prescription fulfillments and plane tickets.
He said there was a $100 payment sent from Lori Daybell to her son Colby Ryan from an IP address matching a hotel in Missouri, and a reservation at the hotel showed only two people had checked in — Daybell and her niece — although the payment was made from Tylee's phone.
Kunsaitis also said plane records show Lori Daybell flew without her children from Hawaii to Idaho Falls on Oct. 23, 2019 — the day of Tammy Daybell's funeral.
Kunsaitis reviewed an email to a Hawaii realtor from Chad Daybell, who said he was looking for a home for "a clean couple, with no pets or children" days after his wedding to Lori Daybell and before the search for Tylee and JJ began.
The estimated death date for Tylee is Sept. 9, 2019, when purchases on her account became sparse, and the estimated date for JJ's death is Sept. 23, 2019 — around the time his mother withdrew him from school, according to trial testimony. The search for the two children, however, did not begin until Nov. 26, 2019, when JJ's grandparents were able to find an address for Lori Daybell and asked local Rexburg police to conduct a welfare check.
Their bodies were found in shallow graves in Chad Daybell's yard months later on June 9, 2020.
Prosecutors are using financial records to piece together what the different players in the case were doing around the time of their deaths.
Michael Douglass, a forensic accountant with the FBI, testified that Lori Daybell received about $22,545 from Social Security payments after her children's deaths and before payments stopped in January of 2020. This included money for both children because they had lost their fathers, and payments to Lori Daybell as the children's caregiver. He said the money Tylee was receiving from Social Security was deposited into her mother's account.
After Tammy Daybell died, Chad Daybell made most of the large purchases between him and Lori Daybell, including seven tickets for Knotts Berry Farm — tickets were for himself, his five children and Lori Daybell, Douglass said.
Douglass also said bank records show that Chad Daybell transferred $8,000 to three of his children at the same time police were searching his property on June 9, 2020 — the same day the children's bodies were found.
'Her belief system had changed'
April Raymond seemed to be avoiding looking toward Lori Daybell when she took the witness stand Wednesday. Raymond met Daybell when she and her then-husband Charles Vallow moved to Hawaii in 2016. They were friends, spent holidays together, worked together in the same Latter-day Saint branch and their children played together.
When Daybell came back to visit Hawaii in February of 2019, Raymond said her friend's religious beliefs had changed significantly. She said Lori Daybell also told her she was having problems in her marriage.
Raymond said Daybell told her that "Charles wasn't Charles" but was a demon named Ned Schneider. When she asked Daybell how she knew that, she said she told her, "Because he's shorter."
Raymond said her friend also told her she was "done with JJ" and Raymond took that to mean that after a divorce, Charles would care for JJ exclusively.
Daybell later invited Raymond to join a group involving her new beliefs.
"It was my understanding that her belief system had changed because of this group that she had recently become a part of," Raymond testified.
She said Daybell had been appointed as a leader of this group "and that she was there to gather me." But Raymond said she was told that she "would need to be separated" from her children in order to join and was told that Raymond had fulfilled her role in her children's lives and had a greater role with her — and that she should leave her children with their father.
Raymond said she was not interested in the suggestion, and did not believe the religious beliefs Daybell was sharing.
Focus turns to Arizona and Hawaii
Prosecutors on Wednesday also called first responders to the stand from Chandler, Arizona — people who responded to and investigated the death of Charles Vallow. Vallow was shot by Lori Daybell's brother, Alex Cox, on July 11, 2019. The shooting death was treated as a case of self-defense; Cox was not charged before he later died in December of the same year.
Following repeated objections from defense attorneys, Judge Steven Boyce instructed jurors that information about what happened in the Arizona death could only be used to show motive but not character. He reiterated that Daybell is not on trial for anything that occurred in Arizona.
Scott Cowden, who works with the Chandler Fire Department, said when he performed CPR on Charles Vallow, it did not appear that Alex Cox had performed any CPR before he arrived, even though Cox had talked through the process during his 911 call.
Chandler police detective Cassandra Yncaln testified about her interactions with Lori Daybell that day while transporting her and Tylee to and from the police station and interviewing them.
Yncaln said when she first saw Daybell outside the home, she seemed calm and didn't have much of a reaction after she was told that her husband had died.
"She appeared calm, very nonemotional, was kind of hanging out and seemed to be just having … general conversation, not really upset," the detective said, adding that at "one point she was laughing."
She said Daybell told her she had been in the home when her husband was shot, but then left.
The detective said she transported Daybell and Tylee to the police station to be questioned. "During the entirety of the car ride, she was very calm and put together. Very nonchalant about what had happened, not upset," Yncaln said.
Chandler police detective Ariel Werther told jurors about tracking where Lori Daybell had gone after her husband was shot. He tracked her through Charles Vallow's phone, which she had taken with her. She left the house and went to Burger King, a Walgreens to purchase flip flops for her children who left the home quickly, and then to drop JJ off at school before heading back to the house where she was met by police investigating the shooting.
