Lori Vallow victim’s aunt reveals Las Vegas selfie with the cult mom as she tells of chilling Sin City coincidence
CHILD killer Lori Vallow is seen living it up in Sin City years before her Doomsday killing spree in a never-before-shared photo exclusively obtained by The U.S. Sun.
Vallow, 49, was found guilty earlier this month of murdering her two children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, and conspiring in the murder of Tammy Daybell, the late wife of her fifth husband Chad, following a tumultuous six-week trial.
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The so-called cult mom declined to testify during the trial and failed to mount any sort of defense to otherwise explain how her children ended up dead and buried in Chad Daybell’s backyard.
Present in the courtroom throughout much of the trial was Kresha Kay Easton – JJ’s aunt and the niece of Lori’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who died in suspicious circumstances in July 2019 – who said she barely recognized the woman sitting in the dock.
Kresha shared with The U.S. Sun how Lori, who she said used to be funny and so charismatic she’d “suck the oxygen” out of any room she walked into, resembled something closer to one of the “zombies” she so desperately feared.
“She hasn’t looked like the Lori that I once knew since she walked into that courtroom in Rexburg for the first time in March 2020,” said Kresha as the trial was still ongoing.
“When she walked into the room, in the courtroom [in 2020], with her shoulders back, confident, she had a pep in her step […] she was looking down on everyone.
“[Her demeanor] didn’t match the severity of the situation. She should not be that confident.
“She used to be warm and inviting back then and when you’d talk to her she’d be engaged,” Kresha added.
“She just lit up the room and just kind of almost sucked all the oxygen out.
“But she’s different now. She was warm and loving and funny – very funny – and she was pretty and her personality matched it. That’s rare, you know?
“But then you look back […] and all these things just come out of the closet, and you’re like, ‘Oh, god. There was a Satan in my family.'”
Kresha shared with The U.S. Sun two images from a trip she took to Las Vegas with her mom, Kay Woodcock, in 2011.
While enjoying the sights of Sin City, Kresha and Kay bumped into Lori and then-husband Charles Vallow by complete chance.
One image shows Kresha smiling as Lori, dressed in an off-the-shoulder blue and black striped top, smiles back at her with gambling machines visible in the background.
In the second, Kresha is seen with her arms around her beloved Uncle Charles who is beaming down the lens of the camera.
For Kresha, the images represent a happier and more innocent time.
Never could she or any other of her family members have predicted the succession of tragedies that would await them in the years following.
DARK SPIRITS
Lori and Chad Daybell were accused of conspiring with Lori’s since-deceased brother Alex Cox to murder JJ, Tylee, and Tammy as part of their bizarre and fanatical doomsday beliefs.
Believed to be members of a radical cult, Lori and Chad apparently believed in a “rating system of light and dark” to judge the purity of the spirits of the people around them, according to prosecutors.
Over time, the pair apparently became convinced that JJ, Tylee, and Tammy had all been possessed by dark spirits, and the only way to rid them of their “demons” was to kill them.
Chad is still awaiting trial and faces the same charges as Lori.
But during Lori’s trial, one of her former close friends, Melanie Gibb told jurors that the accused “cult mom” often described people as possessed or “zombies” or “dark”.
Gibb said people Vallow Daybell labeled as such included her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who was shot and killed by Cox in July 2019; her two youngest children, who were missing for roughly eight months before their bodies were found buried in Chad Daybell’s yard in 2020; and Brandon Boudreaux, who was shot at by an unknown assailant shortly after he divorced Vallow Daybell’s niece in 2019.
JJ had autism, and once Charles Vallow died, Lori had a hard time taking care of him and having enough time with Chad Daybell, Gibb said.
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Lori, JJ, and Tylee moved to Rexburg, Idaho, after Charles Vallow’s death — closer to the town where Chad Daybell lived with his family — and that’s when Vallow Daybell began claiming JJ was possessed, Gibb said.
“She said [JJ] would say things like, ‘I love Satan’ and climb up on the cabinets and refrigerator,” Gibb said.
Listening to the gut-wrenching testimony was Kresha, who assured that her fun-loving, creative, and curious nephew was anything but a “shining light in this world.”
It’s Lori and Chad who are possessed, she claimed.
“They’re the zombies,” said Kresha of the incarcerated couple.
“They’re just carcasses. They’re not there anymore. They’re gone.
“I didn’t know Chad before, but he didn’t really seem to have too much up there […] but that’s not for me to decide.
“But I can speak to Lori and she’s gone. She’s gone.
“They’re projecting onto everybody what they really see about themselves or what they feel inside.
“It’s just crazy.”
MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Charles Vallow had been among the first people to sound the alarm to the police about Lori, warning them in January 2019 that he thought something terrible was about to happen.
In bodycam footage and 911 calls made to the Gilbert Police Department, Charles was heard telling officers he wants his wife “to get help.”
“I want her to get help. She’s my wife. I love her to death. Something’s gone wrong,” Charles told police in one clip.
“And if she wants me gone, fine, I can do all that stuff. I just don’t want her to hurt [JJ]. I just don’t want her to hurt anybody else.”
He added to another officer: “I’ve got a six-year-old with special needs.”
In another interaction with police, he stressed his concerns for Lori’s ailing mental health, telling a dispatcher she’s “lost her marbles.”
The following month, Charles met with his sister, Kay Woodcock, and told her he wanted her to be the sole recipient of the sum in the event anything should happen to him.
Kay previously revealed to The U.S. Sun that Charles was concerned by Lori’s increasingly strange behavior of late, which included transferring $35,000 from his business account into her own and referring to him as “Nick Schneider” – the name of an evil spirit she believed had possessed him.
“Lori doesn’t want me anymore,” Kay recalled Charles saying. “She doesn’t want JJ and you’ll end up raising JJ so I want you to have the money.”
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Kay accepted her brother’s proposal, though insisted she would give the money to Charles’ two sons from a previous marriage and JJ.
At the time of the siblings’ tet-a-tet, Lori had completely vanished without a word of where she was going and didn’t return home for 58 days.
While she was AWOL, Charles filed for divorce, seeking sole custody of JJ and making a series of disturbing allegations about Lori’s mental stability.
Charles said during a phone call in late January that Lori told him she is a “translated being who cannot taste death sent by god to lead the 144,000 into the Millennium”, court documents show.
“[Lori] believes that she is receiving spiritual revelations and visions to help her gather and prepare those chosen to live in the New Jerusalem after the Great War as prophesied in the Book of Revelations,” an excerpt from the document reads.
Charles further claimed that Lori threatened his life, telling him she was a God preparing for Christ’s second coming in July 2020 and warned that if he got in her way, she would murder him.
‘HIS LOVE KILLED HIM’
Charles later withdrew the divorce petition, apparently determined to make their marriage work, but texts shared during Lori’s trial last month suggest he was aware of her affair with Chad and remained in fear for his life.
In a message to his wife on June 30, 2019, two weeks before his death, Charles wrote: “You accuse me of Infidelity [sic] but it’s you who has been having an affair. It just keeps killing me. Maybe that’s your goal.”
In other messages, he threatened to tell Tammy Daybell about her and Chad’s affair, warning her he had “definitive proof” of their adulterous tryst.
Then, on the morning of his death, Charles received a message from Adam Cox – another of Vallow’s siblings, who is not involved in the case – warning him that Vallow and Daybell are “planning something.”
Charles responded “Absolutely” and within minutes was shot dead.
Kresha says she wishes her Uncle Charles’ various warnings had been better heeded by law enforcement.
Had they been, she believes that he, JJ, Tylee, and Tammy would all still be alive today.
“We wouldn’t be sat here having this conversation – I’m angry,” she said.
“Just as angry as I am with the Chandler Police Department, I feel so bad for my uncle, because he was just dismissed time and time and time again.”
LONG ROAD AHEAD
Lori is still facing conspiracy charges in connection to the death of Charles and the attempted murder of her nephew-in-law Brandon Boudreaux.
She had not yet entered a plea in either case.
On Wednesday, it was announced that Lori will be sentenced on July 31 at 9am. She faces a maximum term of life in prison.
Speaking outside the courtroom after her guilty verdict was read earlier this month, Kay Woodcock said: “Our JJ, now, maybe we can get him and put him to rest, as well as Tylee, and do right by them.”
JJ’s relatives are now turning their attention toward the trial of Chad, which is due to take place in the coming months.
With one trial down, Kresha said a long road still remains ahead.
However, she says she’s looking forward to the day she can finally find some form of closure.
“When this is done, I’m not letting Lori and Chad steal any more from my life,” she said.
“I don’t have any control over how Lori feels or whether she will come to terms with what she’s done, and if she regrets it.
“And [even with a guilty verdict] there are no winners in this. It doesn’t breathe life back into the victims. I wish it did but you can’t go back.
“They have stolen enough and time continues to be a thief. It continues to take and take.
“I can’t wait to close – even if there is such a thing – this chapter.
“But I’m so proud of how my family is handling it all.”
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