Less than two years after being sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her two youngest children, Lori Vallow Daybell is now the subject of the newest “Dateline” episode, which airs Friday night.
The episode marks her first TV interview since she was sentenced on July 31, 2023.
Lori Vallow Daybell ‘Dateline’ episode
Friday’s two-hour “Dateline” program will feature an interview between Vallow Daybell and correspondent Keith Morrison, per The Hollywood Reporter.
The interview has been described as “often combative,” according to USA Today.
“She’s a curious character, and I didn’t know what was driving her,” Morrison recently said on “Today.” “I had a whole bunch of stuff prepared that I wanted to ask her about. But how do you prepare for chaos? She came in and had her own agenda. She wanted to be the aggressor. It was a very interesting little tennis match.”
In the interview, Vallow Daybell tells Morrison she believes she and her husband Chad Daybell, who is on death row in Idaho, “will be exonerated,” per “Today.”
“We will both be exonerated in the future,” she says, according to “Today.”
For Friday’s episode of “Dateline,” Morrison also spoke with investigators who worked on the case and Vallow Daybell’s oldest son, Colby Ryan.
“I guess I was always a very positive, see-the-best-in-people kind of person,” Ryan says, per “Today.” “And then I watched someone that I knew my entire life do what she did. And it just changed the way I view people.”
“Lori Vallow Daybell: The Jailhouse Interview” airs Friday at 8 p.m. MST on NBC.
The interview comes as Vallow Daybell is at the Maricopa County Jail in Arizona, where she is awaiting trial for the death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, East Idaho News reported.
Vallow Daybell was charged in Arizona with “conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the attempted shooting of her niece’s former husband, Brandon Boudreaux, and conspiracy to commit murder in connection to the death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow,” as the Deseret News previously reported.
‘You chose the most evil and destructive path possible’
Vallow Daybell’s conviction came three years after the Rexburg police department in Idaho uncovered remains that were identified as two of her children, 7-year-old J.J. Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, in the backyard of her fifth husband, Chad Daybell.
The children had been missing for months, with Vallow Daybell failing to meet the deadline to return them to Rexburg, as the Deseret News reported.
Vallow Daybell was also given a life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder in connection to the death of Tammy Daybell, the former spouse of Chad Daybell, per the Deseret News. Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell married roughly two weeks after Tammy Daybell’s death.
Judge Steven Boyce, who oversaw weeks of emotional testimony and graphic depictions of the murders during the trial, chastised Vallow Daybell for a “shocking” lack of remorse, as the Deseret News reported.
“The most unimaginable type of murder is to have a mother murder her own children, and that’s exactly what you did,” Boyce told Vallow Daybell, as the Deseret News reported. “It is the most shocking thing I can imagine.
“You had so many other options,” he continued. “You chose the most evil and destructive path possible.”