Family friend, babysitter describe JJ's final days in Daybell murder trial

BOISE — Eighteen jurors listened to testimony Thursday centered around the last days of 7-year-old JJ Vallow's life, as they consider whether his mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, is guilty of murdering the boy and his older sister.

Daybell is charged with murder, conspiracy and grand theft in the deaths of her two children, JJ and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan. She is also charged in connection with the death of Tammy Daybell, the late wife of her husband Chad Daybell. Chad Daybell is charged in the same three deaths and will face a separate trial.

David Warwick, who was dating Lori Daybell's friend Melanie Gibb in 2019 and is now married to her, said he was staying at Daybell's home on the weekend JJ was last seen. His wife testified about her view of JJ's final days last week.

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. 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.

Warwick said he was visiting Idaho to attend a Book of Mormon conference, visit his son who had just moved to Idaho, and see his girlfriend record a podcast with Lori Daybell. He said it was the second time he met Daybell; he first met her at a social she held at her home in Arizona.

He said when he arrived at the Idaho home, JJ was playing with toys and Warwick attempted to talk with JJ, but the autistic boy did not acknowledge him. He tried to approach JJ again while he was making a home from a cardboard box, but said JJ "was very focused on that, didn't acknowledge me at all."

But Warwick testified that JJ did engage with Alex Cox, the boy's uncle, and looked "really happy" when he went outside to play with other children.

He said on Sept. 22, 2019 — estimated as the day before JJ's death — Cox had been watching JJ while the podcast was recorded and he saw Cox carry JJ up to his bed asleep. Warwick was sleeping in JJ's room that weekend, and JJ was in his mother's room.

Warwick said late that night, he woke up from an intense nightmare and Gibb came in to help him. He said she suggested getting Lori and Chad Daybell to come help him and she went to find them, but later came back and said she couldn't get anybody to come.

He said when he saw Lori Daybell again the next morning, she told him that JJ had experienced an episode, which included him climbing on top of high cabinets and knocking down a picture of Christ. Daybell said she asked Cox to come and get JJ after deciding that she couldn't handle him, Warwick testified.

Warwick told jurors about concerns he had at the time: He said he didn't see any signs of a child climbing up the cabinets and would have expected to, and he wanted to see JJ to make sure he was OK. But he said he did not see a reason to reach out to police, and described Daybell as "the sweetest" and "kindest."

"I saw goodness. … I didn't see any reason to suspect," Warwick said of Lori Daybell.

While Warwick was in Idaho, he said Chad Daybell talked to him about their unusual religious beliefs, including a future gathering of 144,000 and told him that Satan has power to push people out of their bodies. Warwick said he was open with the couple about not believing what they were saying because it was contrary to Latter-day Saint teachings.

The man said Chad Daybell wanted him to move to Rexburg and join their new religious group, but Warwick said he was clear with Chad Daybell that he would wait for a call from God.

Warwick also testified that even though Chad Daybell was still married to Tammy Daybell at the time, he said Chad Daybell and then-Lori Vallow were "very loving with each other and affectionate." He said Chad Daybell told him that three years earlier he had a dream that Tammy Daybell would die before he turned 50, and said "her time was coming up." He said Chad Daybell told him he and Lori were going to follow commitments they made with God together after Tammy Daybell's death.

Warwick said the beliefs seemed odd to him, and the opinions they espoused did not match their good character.

JJ's final weeks, testimony from babysitter

JJ's school principal and the boy's babysitter were also called to the stand Thursday. Both had interacted with the child for a short time in September 2019. They each testified that it seemed from interactions with Lori Daybell that JJ would be in the area long-term.

Sydney Woodbury Schenk said she connected with Lori Daybell on the website Care.com and met her in person at the family's home in Rexburg on Sept. 18, 2019. The babysitter said she was told that JJ's dad, Charles Vallow, had recently died of a heart attack and JJ was having a hard time with that. She was also told that Daybell had a daughter, Tylee, who attended BYU-Idaho.

Earlier Thursday, a dean of students at BYU-Idaho testified that Tylee had never been a student at the school. Charles Vallow died after being shot in his Arizona home by Cox.

Schenk said she never saw Tylee and only watched JJ once on Sept. 19 while Lori Daybell went to pick up a friend from the airport. She said JJ got pretty angry after fighting with a friend and threw a chair and an ottoman, then went upstairs and hid.

The babysitter said he didn't calm down until after his mother returned home. She said she had understood that Lori Daybell was asking for "nearly daily assistance and babysitting," but because of the focus on helping JJ that day, they did not discuss other specific times.

After a few days, Schenk said she reached out and was told JJ and gone to his grandparents' home for a month and Lori Daybell had gone to Hawaii. She was told to reach out again in a month, which she did, but said she never heard anything back.

John Wilson, the principal at Kennedy Elementary, said he was surprised when JJ was unenrolled from the elementary school on Sept. 24, 2019, less than a month after he had enrolled on Sept. 3. Lori Daybell notified him in an email, and he said he then called her and was told that JJ was going to stay with grandparents in Louisiana.

He said Daybell told him JJ would be home-schooled there with a cousin who had similar needs as JJ. Wilson said he would keep the records for JJ and any new school could request them.

'Bad vibe'

Rexburg Police Sgt. David Stubbs said his first encounter with the Lori and Chad Daybell family was when police in Arizona asked his department to help locate a Jeep they believed was involved in an attempted shooting. He said they found the Jeep on Nov. 4, 2019, and took custody of it, but no one ever reached out to them to inquire about the car being gone. The car had been driven by Tylee who had been making payments on it before September 2019.

Later, Stubbs said he responded to the welfare check for JJ on Nov. 26 requested by his grandparents. His body camera from two interactions with Lori Daybell and a search of her home was played for jurors as part of his testimony.

He said when officers first visited the home, they knew that Lori Daybell had recently been married to Chad Daybell. Other officers had interacted with Chad Daybell and Cox earlier that day at her home, but Lori Daybell introduced Chad Daybell as Cox's friend, even after officers questioned her about whether he was the person whose wife had recently died.

On the video, another officer told Lori Daybell the officers who spoke with Daybell and Cox before had gotten a "bad vibe" because they hadn't seen a child. Daybell was defensive and gave quick explanations for JJ's absence, claiming that a lot had been happening that past year, calling it "a horrible year for us." She said she didn't talk about the situation much with neighbors, and acknowledged that she looked "like a suspect."

Stubbs said during the interaction at the home he had concerns for "officer safety"; Daybell had said her brother was at the home, and he saw movement from lights upstairs and worried about someone trying to surprise them. He said officers also had a "heightened awareness" of safety because individuals were "being evasive and lying."

He testified there were multiple other things she told the police that they discovered were not true — including an allegation that another brother, not Cox, was trying to murder her for life insurance money; that JJ was with her friend Melanie Gibbs in Arizona so that he could go back to a special needs school there; that Gibbs and JJ were watching "Frozen 2" that night, which was likely why Gibbs wasn't answering her phone when police called; and that Tylee was attending BYU-Idaho.

Stubbs went back a third time that day after finally reaching Gibbs, who had told him that JJ was not with her, nor had they gone to see a movie that night. Officers found an empty home after serving a no-knock search warrant. He took a video of the home, showing empty or near empty closets, a full pantry, guns in the garage, missing electronics and a duffle bag full of toiletries left on a bed.

Benjamin Dean, an intelligence analyst with the FBI, testified Thursday that he reviewed data from cellphones seized in a search of Chad Daybell's home on Jan. 3, 2020. He testified about a cellphone owned by Tammy Daybell and said one specific text between Chad and Tammy Daybell stood out to him because it was the only text on the phone where Chad sent a longer, detailed "step-by-step" timeline of his actions from that day. Most of the time the couple's texts were short and to the point, he said.

He also said he recognized that Chad Daybell sent those texts to Tammy Daybell on Sept. 9, 2019 — the day after Tylee was last seen by anyone.

Chad Daybell wrote: "Well, I've had an interesting morning! I felt I should burn all of the limb debris by the fire pit before it got too soaked by the coming storms. While I did so, I spotted a big raccoon along the fence. I hurried and got my gun, and he was still walking along. I got close enough that one shot did the trick. He is now in our pet cemetery. Fun times!"

Dean said he passed this information along to case agents, letting them know Chad Daybell claimed to have shot an animal, burned and buried it on his property on a notable date in the investigation. Later, officers searched the pet cemetery because of this text — and that is where the bodies of JJ and Tylee were discovered.

Inconsistencies in Arizona shooting

Multiple first responders testified Wednesday about responding to the shooting death of Lori Daybell's then-husband, Charles Vallow, on July 11, 2019, in their Arizona home. Cox, Lori Daybell's brother, called 911 and reported that he had shot his brother-in-law in self-defense. On Thursday, the lead investigator came and added to that testimony.

Chandler Police Sgt. Nathan Moffat testified that Vallow had been shot twice, and said one of those shots had been fired while Vallow was lying on the ground. He said the bullet went into the victim's abdomen and through his shoulder and into the floor right underneath him. The other bullet, Moffat said, was in his chest.

The sergeant told jurors that that information did not match Cox's statement, who claimed he acted in self-defense after Vallow hit him with a bat on the back of his head.

On Wednesday, Chandler police detective Cassandra Yncaln said Lori Daybell told her she had heard one shot while she was at the home. But Cox told police his sister had not been at the home when he fired the shots.

Moffat also said although Cox claimed Vallow hit him in the head with a bat, the injury on his head was not consistent with a forceful hit from a bat.

Moffat also testified that the ride back to the crime scene with Daybell, Cox and Tylee after they had been interviewed at the police station was "very different and bizarre," and said the conversations were very lighthearted.

Thursday is the eighth day of testimony in the trial, and prosecutors told the judge that their case is moving faster than expected. They asked to take Friday off in order to not need to take midweek breaks next week. Lori Daybell's attorneys and the judge agreed. The trial is scheduled to resume on Monday.

Correction: In an earlier version, a caption of a courtroom drawing incorrectly identified Warwick as a police sergeant.

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