Hunt for Missing Children of Mother with God Delusion
The characters might have been plucked
straight from a television drama. A self-styled messiah, two missing children
and a dystopian Mormon author are at the centre of a murderous intrigue that
has gripped America and led police across multiple states to Hawaii. Newlyweds
Lori Vallow, a former hairdresser, and Chad Daybell, a writer, were recently
tracked to a gated community in Hawaii after fleeing their home in Idaho last
November. Police officers had tried to do a welfare check on the children,
Joshua Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17. Concerned relatives had not heard from
them since September 2019.
What
began as a missing children inquiry, however, has taken on more sinister
overtones. Police are investigating a number of mysterious deaths surrounding
the couple, including those of their former
spouses, and also claims that they are members of a doomsday cult preparing
followers for Armageddon.
Larry and Kay Woodcock, the grandparents
of Joshua — nicknamed JJ — described a chilling sequence of events leading to
his disappearance, including the alleged murder of the boy’s adoptive father,
Charles Vallow. “All we want is to hug JJ again,” said Larry, 72. “We simply
refuse to accept death. But it’s hard when the police officers aren’t really
giving us a lot of hope. The FBI told us there’s no proof that the kids are
dead, but there’s no proof they’re alive either.” Video
footage was released last week showing Lori Vallow repeatedly visiting a rented
storage unit full of the children’s belongings. This was weeks after their
relatives had last heard from them in September. “I cried a lot about that
footage,” said Larry. “You can see JJ’s scooter and his bicycle, which he
loves.” Kay
Woodcock, 59, described how her brother, Charles Vallow, had
married Lori Ryan, the mother of Tylee, but then fallen out with her when she
became obsessed with an obscure organisation called Preparing a People.
When
Charles Vallow went to collect JJ from the home in the midst of their
separation last July, he was shot dead by Lori Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox, who
claimed he was acting in self-defence. Cox, 51, was never charged by police and
has since died in murky circumstances, leaving the children and Lori Vallow as
the only potential witnesses to the shooting of Charles Vallow. In divorce
papers, Charles Vallow had claimed that his wife had believed she was a god
preparing for Christ’s second coming in July 2020. She had threatened to murder
her husband if he got in her way and warned that she had “an angel” to help her
dispose of his body. “Lori told Charles that she had been reincarnated and
described herself as a ‘translated being’,” said Kay Woodcock. Lori Vallow had
started devouring apocalyptic books written by Daybell, a self-published author
with an interest in doomsday scenarios.
Kay
was devastated by the death of her older brother. He was the second of Lori
Vallow’s husbands to die within two years: a previous partner, Joseph Ryan, the
father of Tylee, had succumbed to an apparent heart attack in 2018. “We were
very close, and I trusted him explicitly,” said Kay of her brother. That was
why she and her husband had allowed Charles and Lori Vallow to take care of JJ,
their biological grandson.
*Joshua Vallow with grandfather Larry Woodcock
After
Charles’s death, Vallow, 46, moved with the two children to Rexburg, Idaho. She
had previously befriended Daybell, 51, whose wife, Tammy, was a school
librarian and mother of five. She died in October, reportedly of natural causes
and in her sleep. She was 49. A few weeks later Daybell and Vallow were
married.
In
late November, Kay and Larry, who live in Louisiana and had not been allowed to
speak to their grandson for months, begged Idaho police to check that JJ, who
has autism, and Tylee were safe. Vallow falsely claimed the children were with
relatives in Arizona. By the time police returned the following day to ask
further questions, however, the newlyweds had fled — and what has happened
since then has served only to heighten the mystery. “Since then it’s been
living a nightmare,” said Kay. Detectives have now reopened investigations into
the deaths of Tammy Daybell, Charles Vallow and Alex Cox. Kay described Cox,
whose body was found in December in his bathroom, as a “hitman”, adding: “I
believe he knew too much and either did something to betray Lori — or maybe
something that pissed her off.” The Woodcocks described JJ as an intelligent,
loving child. “I can picture him being found and running up to me calling,
‘Pawpaw, Pawpaw’,” said Larry, his eyes welling up with tears.
“It’s
hard to accept that she’s walking around freely,” he added, referring to Lori
Vallow. She had once been a devoted parent, he claimed. but had changed under
the influence of Daybell’s books “from this unbelievable mother to someone who
said she was going to kill her husband”. Last year Vallow and Daybell appeared
on podcasts released by Preparing a People, which states its mission as
“Helping to prepare the people of this Earth for the second coming of Jesus
Christ”. As it has come under fevered scrutiny, it has denied being a cult.
New
revelations continue to emerge, but none have helped to clarify the mystery.
Last week’s video footage of the rented storage unit and children’s toys also
captured Alex Cox, Vallow’s brother, carrying a large bag. “That terrified us,
but police studied the footage and were able to tell it was not a body inside,”
said Kay Woodcock. On January 25, police officers stopped Vallow and Daybell
while they were driving in Hawaii. But there was no sign of the children. The
couple were served with a court order telling them to present the children to
the authorities or face legal action — but no charges have been brought and the
court order thus far has been ignored.
The
Woodcocks pray that the couple will soon be forced home from Hawaii. As well as
offering a $20,000 reward for information about the children, the Woodcocks
have also hired a private investigator, Rich Robertson, to delve into the
affair. “If they had expected the kids to be coming home soon, why would that
stuff be in a storage?” he asked. “On the other hand, if they didn’t think the
kids were ever coming back, why keep it?” Julie Rendelman, a criminal defence
lawyer, said: “It’s hard enough to prove a murder case — let alone a murder
case without a body. “You have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the
victim is no longer on this Earth and that there was some intent on the part of
that person to do it. We’re far from that at this point.”
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