Estimated read time: 7-8 minutes
BOISE — A family chat discussed during Chad Daybell's murder trial Thursday showed that he talked about assigning "light" and "dark" ratings on multiple people among members of his family.
In a message sent by either Chad Daybell or his wife Tammy Daybell in a Google chat with their children, Vincent Kaaiakamanu, with the Madison County Sheriff's Office, said the couple was teaching a class at church and rated one of their 12-year-old students as "4.2 dark."
"I will enjoy watching his growth to world terror and domination," the chat transcript said.
The officer said Chad Daybell would label people light and dark, based on how much he believed a person had been taken over by evil. He testified that messages from Chad Daybell were sometimes sent from Tammy Daybell's account.
Kaaiakamanu said several of the chats show Tammy Daybell and their children knew about the light and dark concept.
Chad Daybell is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of his former wife, Tammy Daybell, in late 2019, and the deaths of Lori Vallow Daybell's children — 7-year-old Joshua "JJ" Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan. He is also charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder of each of the victims, grand theft and two counts of insurance fraud.
Light and dark ratings have come up multiple times during the trial.
Lori Daybell, who police say Chad was romantically involved with when his wife was still alive, would often ask him for such ratings of people in her life. Her then-husband Charles Vallow, Tammy Daybell and Tylee and JJ were each labeled as "dark" before they were killed, according to testimony from earlier in the trial.
In the family chat, Chad Daybell's daughter Emma Murray expressed she liked a boy they had labeled as "dark," and either Chad Daybell or Tammy Daybell had said perhaps that boy was influencing her.
Kaaiakamanu testified about other emails sent by Tammy Daybell to her son Mark Daybell, who was serving a church mission at the time, as well as in other family accounts he found notable in his investigation. Some of the other emails showed Tammy Daybell's plans to run a 5K with her husband and son, a mention of her having a cold and stories about catching raccoons found in their yard.
In one chat, Mark Daybell's camera wasn't working and Kaaiakamanu said Tammy Daybell told him the camera was "cursed" and his dad would fix it. They talked about clearing curses and negative emotions.
Hearsay statements about zombies, insurance excluded
Judge Steven Boyce on Thursday declined a motion to allow prosecutors to ask former co-workers of Tammy Daybell about statements regarding life insurance and Chad Daybell allegedly telling his wife she was a zombie.
After jurors were released Wednesday, attorneys argued about three statements from witnesses that prosecutors wanted to be brought into the trial. Boyce ruled Thursday that prosecutors could not introduce two of the three statements.
Prosecutors said a co-worker told them Tammy Daybell made a passing comment that her husband, Chad Daybell, wanted her to increase her life insurance, which prosecutor Rocky Wixom said shows her health and mental state and should be admitted.
But Boyce agreed with defense attorney John Prior that the statement is more about finances than health and said prosecutors cannot ask the witness about it.
Wixom also asked the judge to allow another witness who worked at the elementary school with Tammy Daybell to testify about a conversation overheard between Tammy Daybell and another co-worker. He said Tammy Daybell said her husband had told her that she was zombie, and she laughed it off.
The judge said there were "multiple layers in this statement," and Tammy Daybell saying it to her co-worker makes it hearsay.
Prior said bringing these statements in would require Chad Daybell to respond to them, and infringe on his right to remain silent and cause prejudice against him. He also said he was not given enough time to find other witnesses who might refute those claims.
The attorney also said the comments have issues with hearsay, and it "seems to be convenient" that each of these statements brought up so close to the trial are favorable to prosecutors and not favorable to the defense.
Boyce did rule one statement requested by the prosecutors can be admitted — a co-worker who said Tammy Daybell said two days before her death that "this is the best I have ever felt in my life."
He said this statement does fall within the exception to the hearsay rules for a statement about a physical condition.
A paintball gun or a rifle?
Over the last few days, jurors have heard testimony from officers who responded to Tammy Daybell's death, and from her friends who testified she was healthy until she died.
Kaaiakamanu testified about a report of someone pointing a gun or a paintball gun at Tammy Daybell 10 days before her death. He was not part of the initial investigation but reviewed emails and a Facebook post from Tammy Daybell about the incident.
In an email to her son, she said: "I think I was a bit in shock, because I just said, 'What do you think you are doing?' ... At that point I was actually more annoyed than scared because he was standing between me and the door. ... The scared came after when my brain thought of things that could have happened."
Kaaiakamanu said both in the early evening on the day of the shooting and the night before Tammy Daybell's death less than two weeks later, Alex Cox's phone was determined to have been in the vicinity of the Daybell home. Cox is Lori Daybell's brother, who investigators believe was involved in all three deaths, but he died of what investigators determined were natural causes before any charges could be filed against him.
The night of Tammy Daybell's death, Cox's phone was near their home between 10:07 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., and then there were no reports of the phone until 11:53 p.m. within 10 miles of the Daybell home. Kaaiakamanu said the Daybells' son worked that night until about 1 a.m. and there were no reports of Chad Daybell's phone being at his home that night.
Kaaiakamanu also described searches made by Cox about scoping a 6.5 Grendel gun, and said they found that model in a search of Cox's apartment. He said, in the dark, such a gun could be mistaken for a paintball gun, and it had a scope that could be mistaken for a hopper on a paintball gun.
He also said someone checked into a nearby shooting range five times between Oct. 7 and Oct. 15 in 2019 — just days before Tammy Daybell died — under the name "C Quint," and said Cox's license plate was "CPQUINT."
There were also searches on Cox's phone about shooting through a Dodge Dakota, a car owned by Tammy and Chad Daybell.
Prior pointed out during his cross-examination that Tammy Daybell said multiple times she had seen a paintball gun, and searched images of a paintball gun with officers that night. He showed a photo of a paintball gun that looked very different to the one found in Cox's house and prosecutors showed one that looked similar.
Chad Daybell's attorney asked Kaaiakamanu about the length of Tammy and Chad Daybell's driveway and suggested it does not match the scoping distances Cox searched. He asked the officer if Cox could have been planning to go hunting, and Kaaiakamanu said it was possible.
'A crazy year with wildlife'
The evidence that led FBI officers to ultimately search in Chad Daybell's backyard for the children's bodies was a text from Chad Daybell to his wife, Tammy Daybell, about finding a raccoon in their yard, burning it and burying it in their pet cemetery. In Lori Daybell's trial, officers said this text was longer than most other messages sent between the couple.
The message was sent right after Tylee was last seen alive.
Two of the emails sent from Tammy Daybell to her son mentioned raccoons found in their yard. One she mentioned on June 30, 2019, was huge, "no way it was going to fit in the trap," she said.
Tammy Daybell told her son that Chad Daybell shot it and its body was put in their compost heap. The second raccoon, mentioned in an email on July 7, was smaller and was caught in a trap. She called it "a crazy year with wildlife."
The raccoon Chad Daybell told his wife about in September was not mentioned in any emails between Tammy Daybell and Mark Daybell.
Tammy Daybell died Oct. 19, 2019. Kaaiakamanu said her funeral was three days after her death, and Chad and Lori Daybell were married just days after that, on Nov. 5, 2019.
KSL.com is streaming the trial each day. Testimony is scheduled to continue Friday at 8:30 a.m. MDT.
Wednesday's testimony:
