Lori Vallow seemingly spread a series of lies in the months leading up to and after the disappearance of her two children, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Vallow, who was arrested Thursday in the disappearance of 7-year-old JJ and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, asked a friend to lie about the young boy staying with her in Arizona, according to the affidavit obtained by KTVB.
Rexburg Police Detective Ron Ball said he and another detective spoke to Vallow on Nov. 26 , at which point she told them that JJ was staying in Gilbert with a friend, Melanie Gibb.
Ball and his partner were unable to reach Gibb, and Vallow said it was because she had taken the 7-year-old autistic boy to see “Frozen 2? and was unlikely to answer the phone, according to the affidavit.
That night, when police still hadn’t heard from Gibb, they reached out to the Gilbert Police Department, who went to Gibb’s home. She wasn’t there, but told Detective Ryan Pillar that JJ was not staying with her and “had not been there for several months,” Ball wrote in the affidavit.
On Dec. 6, Gibb contacted the Rexburg Police Department and told detectives that Vallow and her husband, Chad Daybell, had each called her and asked her to lie about JJ staying with her.
“This further establishes that the statement made to law enforcement by Lori Vallow on November 26, 2019 was false and that Lori Vallow knew it was false,” Ball wrote.
JJ and Tylee were last seen in September, two month before worried relatives called police.
The Rexburg Police Department executed a search warrant at Vallow and Chad Daybell’s house in Idaho, but the couple had “abruptly” left their home and fled the area. They were found in late January in Hawaii, but JJ and Tylee were not there.
Officials said in January that the couple had been lying about Vallow’s children, including telling witnesses that Tylee had died a year before her father and, separately, that Vallow had no minor children.
Vallow also allegedly lied to JJ’s school, telling them that his father, Charles, had committed suicide. Instead, Charles Vallow was killed in July in Chandler, Ariz. by Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox, who claimed self-defense. Cox died in December.
Months before his death, Charles Vallow had filed for divorce, accusing his wife of becoming “infatuated at times obsessive about near death experiences and spiritual visions,” according to a filing obtained by Fox 13.
“Mother has told Father (Charles Vallow) that she is sealed [eternally married] to the ancient Book of Mormon prophet Moroni and that she has lived numerous lives on numerous planets prior to this current life,” the February court documents read. “On January 29, 2019, during a phone conversation between the parties and after their physical separation, Mother informed Father that she was a God assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020 and that if Father got in her way of her mission she would murder him.”
He also claimed she had threatened to kill him “if he got in her way” during her mission as a God “to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020,” according to the court documents, and claimed she had “an angel there to help her dispose of the body.”
Charles Vallow told JJ’s school in February, four days before filing for divorce, that Lori had “gone crazy” and was hearing religious voices, according to KTVB. At the time, he pulled JJ out of school, saying he was trying to keep his son safe.
After moving back to Idaho, Vallow married Daybell, whose own wife, Tammy, had been found dead in mid-October. Police initially ruled the 49-year-old woman’s death natural, but the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office later exhumed her body and are now investigating it as suspicious.
In November, Vallow and Daybell told his parents that she was an “empty-nester,” according to the probable cause affidavit.
During a search of Vallow’s apartment, police discovered that she had not filled JJ’s prescription for Risperidone, “a tranquilizer prescribed to treat irritability caused by autism,” since they had moved back to Idaho in late August.
Police also determined that Vallow had given away JJ’s dog, Bailey, who had been trained as a service dog for his autism, just before the move.
Surveillance footage from neighbors showed JJ playing outside their Idaho home on Sept. 17, the last time he appears to have been seen. Tylee was last pictured on Sept. 8, in a photo at Yellowstone National Park during a day trip with Vallow, Cox and JJ.
Vallow was arrested late Thursday by the Kaua’i Police Department in Hawaii, where she and Daybell were staying, and charged with two felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of dependent children, resisting or obstructing officers, criminal solicitation to commit a crime and contempt of court – willful disobedience of court process or order.
“First of all, we wish to thank the public for the massive outpouring of concern regarding this case,” Kaua’i Chief of Police Todd G. Raybuck said in a statement. “We also want to thank everyone for their patience while investigators worked diligently to comprehensively gather everything they needed in order to obtain this arrest warrant.”
Vallow is being held on $5 million bail and is due back in court in early March. She is expected to be extradited back to Idaho.
JJ is described as a white male with brown hair and brown eyes, standing at 4’0? and weighing 50 pounds. He also goes by JJ and may be in need of medical attention. Tylee is described as a white female with blonde hair and blue eyes, standing at 5’0? and weighing 160 pounds.
Anyone with information about the children is asked to call Rexburg police at 208-359-3000 or report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.