How Lori Vallow went from beauty pageant winner to being accused of murder

“Did you do something to your children? Are your children still alive?” a reporter asked Lori Vallow as the blonde strolled toward the beachfront townhouse she and her newlywed husband Chad Daybell had rented for $6000 a month on Kauai just weeks after the death of his wife, Tammy.

To Vallow’s “No comment,” the reporter, Nate Eaton of East Idaho News, pressed: “They’ve been missing for four months; you have nothing to say?”

It was January 2020 and a nationwide manhunt was underway for Vallow’s adopted son — Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and her 17-year-old daughter, Tylee Ryan. JJ’s biological grandmother, Kay Woodcock, called the police after she had been unable to reach the boy in the months that followed the suspicious death of his adoptive father, Lori’s husband Charles. Authorities had visited Lori’s Rexburg, Idaho, home the previous November to conduct a wellness check. When they couldn’t locate JJ, Lori said the boy was with her friend Melanie Gibb in Arizona. (Weeks later, Gibb confessed that Lori had asked her to lie about JJ’s whereabouts.)

In late January 2020, after JJ’s biological grandparents’ offer of a $20,000 reward for information triggered a national media blitz, Lori and Chad were at the beach. “There are people around the country praying for your children — praying for you guys — why don’t you give us answers?” asked Eaton. “That’s great,” was Vallow’s cryptic response.

In were eventually found in Daybell’s backyard.

The couple are each charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. While it has been asked for a delay). They have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Lori Vallow also not charging Daybell in the death of Charles Vallow.

Glatt’s interviews with Lori’s family and friends tell the story of a stunning woman who had it all: beauty, vibrant health, love, and family. But beneath the perfect surface lurked deep dysfunction, according to Glatt. Growing up in Rialto, California in the 1980s, Lori Cox was a pretty, charismatic girl, born into a prosperous family with deep roots in the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS). The Cox family was eccentric, according to Glatt, with Lori’s parents traveling to Hawaii for weeks at a time, leaving the five children alone with cash for food and Lori’s older brother, Alex, in charge.

Lori’s best friend from junior high recalls Lori confiding that Alex tried to have sex with her. “Lori was crying and emotional and she said, ‘Alex is trying to have sex with me. What can I do?’ ’’ recalled Rose Vaughan (not her real name). Lori and Alex would continue an unusual relationship into adulthood, with Alex retaining a creepy fixation on his sister. Alex allegedly did his sister’s bidding. “Everyone suspects Alex was the hit man,” Glatt told the Post.

After two early, ill-fated marriages, Lori, a hair stylist and single mother to one son, Colby, married business analyst Joe Ryan, with whom she had a daughter, Tylee. While married to Ryan, Lori won the Mrs. Hays County pageant in Texas. “In pictures taken afterward, she and Joe look like the perfect married couple,” writes Glatt. “Lori is proudly wearing the Mrs. Hays County sash with a smiling Joe Ryan wrapping his arms around her.”

Lori automatically qualified for the Mrs. Texas beauty pageant in 2004. “The winner . . . would go on to compete for the coveted title of Mrs. America,” writes Glatt. “The mission to become Mrs. America now dominated her life.”

Lori made it into the top 15 semifinalists in the swimsuit competition; however, when asked by the judges, “What makes you tick?” Lori replied, “Being a good mom is very important to me, and a good wife and a good worker. And being all of those things together isn’t easy. So basically, I’m a ticking time bomb.”

She didn’t win, but soon afterward she appeared on “Wheel of Fortune.”

There was trouble in paradise, however; after Lori accused Ryan of abusing her son Colby, they divorced, and during a bitter custody battle, Lori’s brother, Alex, ambushed Ryan and tasered him.

After her marriage to Ryan fell apart, Lori became more devoutly Mormon.

In 2006, she married financial consultant Charles Vallow, and by most accounts, their marriage was happy early on. They moved to Hawaii, attended church, and in 2013, agreed to adopt Vallow’s grandnephew JJ.

Lori was said to be a devoted Mom to both Tylee and JJ, who had special needs.

After marrying Vallow, Lori became an obsessive reader of an author named Chad Daybell, whose novels featured themes such as the apocalypse and the Second Coming, as well as time travel, angels, demons, and in at least one book, digging graves. (Book titles included “The Celestial City,” and “One Foot in the Grave.”)

In fall 2017, Lori’s new friend Melanie Gibb introduced Lori to Daybell at a Preparing a People (PaP) gathering in St. George, Utah. The group offered conferences and podcasts on “End Times” — trials and tribulations that would precede the Second Coming.

When he met her, Chad told Lori they had lived many lives together.

“Chad wasn’t really the devoted family man he claimed to be,” Glatt told The Post. “He was bored with [wife] Tammy, and when he met Lori he was mesmerized by what he saw as this gorgeous blond dream girl who had read all of his books and enjoyed them.”

A mild-mannered copy editor and part-time grave digger, Daybell had married young and yearned for fame and freedom, according to Glatt.

With Tammy’s help, he had founded Spring Creek Publishing. Chad promoted his books at small gatherings in people’s houses, while Tammy stayed home and managed the family business, worked as a librarian, and took care of their five children.

In summer 2017, Chad began giving speeches for PaP.

With gigs everywhere from megachurches to universities, Chad preached a Doomsday message that only 144,000 faithful would survive into End Times, when his town — Rexburg, Idaho – would become a “city of refuge.”

(Glatt is careful to note that much of what Daybell talked about is not espoused by the Mormon Church).

Fans traveled to hear him discuss Doomsday, past lives, and near-death experiences. He enjoyed his groupies — especially women. “Chad would target attractive women and hypnotize them with his Doomsday message of survival,” Chad’s friend Eric Smith told Glatt. “They would get that kind of googly-eyed look as they asked him questions and he would answer in a very personal way.”

“I think that business fed his ego, and made him feel powerful,” said cult expert Rick Ross, whom Glatt quotes.

Daybell, who claimed to be a “translated being” — or immortal, developed a system of ranking people as “light” or “dark” spirits.

Things gradually took a sinister turn.

“Chad Daybell was relegating people to a category of subhuman,” said Ross, adding that this dehumanizing tactic is reminiscent of Nazism and that he believes Chad used it to brainwash Lori.

Daybell’s long-suffering wife Tammy died on Oct. 19, 2019. Authorities claimed it was of natural causes, but Glatt is skeptical. “Tammy had been training for a marathon,” he writes.

Chad and Lori married in Hawaii about two weeks later.

According to Glatt, Chad began indoctrinating Lori into the idea that her children, Tylee and J.J., “were zombies and needed to die so their spirits could be free.”

“Chad, I believe, saw her kids as a threat, and he wanted them out of the way,” Glatt told the Post.

Gibb would later testify that when Vallow and Daybell met, it was “like fire and gasoline” -— and Glatt agrees. “Chad saw his ‘perfect’ woman, who thought he was a God. He built her up, she built him up.

“It was like a match and gasoline. If they hadn’t met, maybe things would’ve been OK and no one would’ve gotten hurt.”