Lori Vallow’s disturbing texts revealed: ‘A reason to scream’

Trove of text messages shows growing intimacy of couple in weeks after her husband’s death and their bizarre beliefs

Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell exchanged texts in which they discussed inflicting pain on children and giving them “a reason to scream”, the jury at her trial for murder heard on Monday.

As another week began of the prosecution building its case against Ms Vallow, the court continued to hear testimony from retired FBI Agent Doug Hart whose role in the investigation was to comb through Ms Vallow’s iCloud accounts.

With more than 4,500 text messages saved to the accounts, he was able to piece together a timeline of the developing relationship between Mr Daybell and Ms Vallow over 2019.

This included the period in which her husband was shot to death by her brother and she was able to pursue a romance with doomsday author Mr Daybell.

In addition to raunchy text messages — some threaded together to form a lengthy story — the couple’s bizarre beliefs about possession and zombies and rating individuals on a light-to-dark scale were laid out.

Shortly after the death of Charles Vallow on 11 July 2019, Ms Vallow and her son JJ, seven took a trip with her niece Melani Boudreaux and her two children. It is not known if Ms Vallow’s daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, was on the trip.

In texts, Mr Daybell referred to the Boudreaux children as “3s” based on where he placed them on his strange rating system.

He sent her a text asking if she wanted him to “cause pain” to the two 3s she was travelling with. The two believed in an ability to use their minds to cast out demons from people and “work on them”.

She replied to him telling him to hold off, but added that if they started to act up again “we can zap them”.

Mr Daybell agreed and responded: “If they are going to act up, we’ll at least give them a reason to scream.”

The 49-year-old is charged with the murders of her children, JJ and Tylee, and conspiracy to murder Mr Daybell’s first wife Tammy Daybell.

JJ and Tylee vanished without a trace back in September 2019, with their mother refusing to reveal their whereabouts to authorities for many months.

One month after they were last seen alive, Tammy – an otherwise healthy 49-year-old – died suddenly and Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell soon jetted off to Hawaii to get married on the beach.

In June 2020, the remains of JJ and Tylee were found buried on the grounds of Mr Daybell’s property in Rexburg, Idaho, and the doomsday cult couple were eventually charged with murder.

Prosecutors allege that Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell conspired with Ms Vallow’s brother Alex Cox to murder Tammy, JJ and Tylee as part of their bizarre cult beliefs – but also for financial purposes so that they could collect Tammy’s life insurance money and the children’s social security and survivor benefits.

Mr Daybell will stand trial separately with a potential date of June 2024 spoken about in court.