An Arizona judge on Tuesday granted a request for a mental competency evaluation of Lori Vallow, the mother of a convicted murderer, ahead of her second criminal trial.
Vallow was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison last year in Idaho for the murders of her husband, Chad Daybell, and Daybell's two youngest children, as well as Daybell's ex-wife, but she was also charged with conspiring to kill her fourth husband. He is scheduled to go to trial in Arizona. , ex-husband of Charles Vallow and her niece.
Vallow pleaded not guilty to the charges in December.
Court documents obtained by Fox News Digital say two “qualified mental health professionals” will conduct an evaluation and Vallow's case has been canceled pending test results.
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Lori Vallow will undergo a mental competency test in Arizona ahead of her second criminal trial. (Maricopa County)
Vallow and Daybell killed Vallow's two children, 7-year-old JJ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, as well as Daybell's first wife, Tammy Daybell, in 2019.
While JJ and Tylee were missing, and shortly after Tammy passed away in October 2019, Vallow and Daybell married in Hawaii in November of the same year.
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Lori and Chad Daybell are accused of killing 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow in 2019. (Rexburg Police Department)
JJ and Tylee were found in a shallow grave in Daybell. Rural Properties in Rexburg June 2020, several months after she disappeared from her home in September 2019.
The 16-year-old's body was burned, and the 7-year-old boy was bound with duct tape.
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In this aerial photo, investigators search for a body at Chad Daybell's home in Salem, Idaho, on June 9, 2020. (John Rourke/Idaho Post Register)
Vallow spent about nine months in prison ahead of his murder trial in Idaho last year. idaho psychiatric hospital. Nine months later, Fremont District Judge Stephen Boyce ruled in her first trial that she was “re-competent and fit to proceed,” but that her mental health The trial was similarly halted as he was institutionalized.
At the trial of Ms. Vallows and Ms. Daybell, prosecutors in Idaho argued that the two held extreme religious beliefs, including the idea that some people have “dark” souls and others have “light” souls. He claimed he had it. They believed that the “dark” spirits were so dark that they might actually be zombies.
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Charles Vallow passed away in July 2019. Two months later, in September 2019, Tylee and JJ disappeared. Tammy Daybell died of suffocation in November 2019. Cox died later that year, in December 2019, from an apparent blood clot. (KASZ/Facebook/Post Register/John Rourke/AP POOL)
“You took children from their homes in Arizona, separated them from their friends and family…and brought them here to be murdered. There were so many other options…you were the most evil and destructive person imaginable. “We chose a path that would lead us to believe in the future,” Boyce said in his conclusion. “To this day, I don't think you have any remorse for the effort and heartache you caused.”
He added that Vallow “has mental health issues.”
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A booking photo of Lori Vallow taken on August 1, 2023 at the Pocatello Women's Correctional Center in Pocatello, Idaho. (Idaho Department of Corrections/Local News X/TMX)
According to Boyce, a psychiatric diagnosis in February 2023 found that Vallow had “delusional disorder,” a combination of “a persistent and unspecified personality disorder” with “excessive religiosity” and narcissistic traits. It was discovered that he was suffering from “.
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“Others were looking for the children when you knew where they were and you knew they were dead,” Boyce told Vallow in court last year. ”They were found dead, burned, mutilated, dismembered and buried like animals. After you found out they were dead, you collected public funds for them, but it was blood money that you kept for yourself. ”
Lori Vallow, who was convicted in Idaho, faces additional charges in Arizona. (Tony Blakeslee/East Idaho News)
During the sentencing, Vallow spoke publicly for the first time since her arrest in 2020, but appeared to deny it, saying at the time that she knew her children were “happy and busy in the spirit world.”
Watch Lori Vallow address the court:
“I have communicated many times with Jesus Christ, the Savior of this world, and with our heavenly parents. He even showed up to me,” Vallow said in an Idaho courtroom during his trial. Sentencing hearing. “I actually know that my children are very happy and very busy in the spirit world. Thanks to my communication with my friend Tammy Daybell, I know that she is also very happy and very busy.”
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In her statement to the court, Vallow added that her daughter Tylee “died in the hospital” while giving birth. Doctors revived her, at which point she began seeing spirits.
On Aug. 16, Lori Vallow Daybell smiled inside and outside an Idaho courthouse. (Tony Blakeslee/East Idaho News)
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“When Tylee came to me as a spirit after she passed away…she said to me, 'Mom, don't worry. We're going to be okay.' She told me how worried she was about me. I know how much I miss her,” Vallow said at the time.
The so-called “cult mom” was extradited to Arizona in November 2023, about four months after being sentenced to life in prison without parole in Idaho.
