The mother of two children who were found dead in their stepfather’s backyard this month will appear in court in Idaho today on new charges related to their presumed murders.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, Lori Vallow was charged on Monday with with two counts of conspiracy to commit destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence.
Vallow had already been in custody in Madison County on felony child desertion charges since February. The new charges came just hours after police served another search warrant at her husband Chad Daybell’s home on Monday. Daybell has been in custody in Fremont County on June 9, the day the remains of Vallow’s children Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow were found in his backyard.
On Tuesday, ahead of Vallow’s scheduled court appearance, prosecutors released the probable cause affidavit outlining the new charges against her. Much of the affidavit repeats items of evidence that were disclosed in Chad Daybell’s arrest affidavit earlier this month, but the documents include some new revelations in the bizarre and disturbing case.
According to the affidavit, the ex-husband of Vallow’s niece Melanie Pawlowski positively identified JJ Vallow’s body, which was reportedly buried intact; his face and haircut were recognizable. But Tylee Ryan’s remains could not be identified on sight because her body had been dismembered and burned.
The documents state that a “Deputy Coroner in the Ada County Coroner’s Office was able to identify these remains as belonging to Tylee Ryan by matching an irregular jawline with an X-ray of Tylee when she was alive.” Still, final identification is pending the testing of soft tissue samples.
Much of the affidavit references police interviews with Lori Vallow’s friend Melanie Gibb, who was among the last people to see JJ Vallow alive, as CrimeOnline previously reported. According to the new documents, Gibb told police that Vallow had claimed she sent JJ Vallow to live with his grandparents in Louisiana, which was an obvious lie on Vallow’s part, as JJ’s grandmother Kay Woodock was the person who requested a welfare check in November 2019, having lost contact with her grandson months before. Gibb also said that Vallow claimed she had told Kay Woodcock that she [Vallow] had cancer, in order to convince JJ’s grandparents to take the 7-year-old boy.
The affidavit also notes that authorities had misreported Tylee Ryan’s age at the time of her disappearance and death. Investigators now believe that Tylee was 16 years old when she died.
Further, the affidavit shows that investigators believe Vallow, Daybell, and Vallow’s now-deceased brother Alex Cox conspired to conceal and/or destroy evidence they believed would be used against them in court.
Vallow is due in court via videoconference at 4:30 MDT (6:30 ET) Tuesday.
Read the arrest affidavit here:
Affidavit of Probable Cause by EKilloran on Scribd
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Click here to read all of CrimeOnline’s coverage of the Vallow case.
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