Chad Daybell was sentenced to death Saturday, two days after an Idaho jury found him guilty in the 2019 murders of his former wife Tammy Daybell and two children of his current wife, Lori Vallow Daybell. On Thursday, Daybell was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy charges — including insurance fraud and grand theft — in connection to the 2019 killings. The jury began weighing Daybell’s punishment on Friday, and after about eight hours of deliberation, recommended the death penalty.
Judge Steven Boyce formally imposed the sentence of death Saturday, saying it was appropriate under the law, CNN reports . Daybell, an author, had gained a Mormon audience interested in his self-published books filled with end-of-days visions. In 2018, he met Lori Vallow at a religious conference in St.
George, Utah; both were part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint. At the time, she was married to her fourth husband, Charles Vallow; Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed Charles in 2019, successfully claiming self-defense, and died himself later that year of natural causes. Months later, Daybell’s wife, Tammy, died in her bed, with a delayed autopsy ultimately finding that she had been asphyxiated.
Daybell and Lori married in Hawaii just 17 days after Tammy was discovered dead. While the couple lived alone in Hawaii, reportedly on the life insurance money Daybell received after his wife’s death, relatives became concerned after they were unable to determin.
