SALT LAKE CITY — Police on Saturday confirmed the remains unearthed in Chad Daybell’s rural Idaho yard are those of his wife’s missing children.
Investigators serving a search warrant at Daybell’s home in Salem, just north of Rexburg, made the grim discovery Tuesday.
While police had not yet released any identification on the two sets of children’s remains, relatives said Wednesday they belong to Tylee Ryan, 17, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, who was 7 at the time of his disappearance.
“We would like to thank all of the law enforcement officers involved, the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, family, friends and everyone throughout this community and across the country for their diligent and tireless efforts to find JJ and Tylee. It is not the outcome we had hoped; to be able to find the children safe. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of JJ and Tylee,” Rexburg Police Assistant Chief Gary Hagen said in a statement.
Their mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, 46, and Chad Daybell, 51, are jailed in separate facilities in Idaho. Chad Daybell faces two charges of concealing evidence, while his wife is charged with child abandonment. She is accused of failing to produce the kids under a judge’s order in a child welfare proceeding.
The Idaho Attorney General’s Office also is investigating them in the death of Chad Daybell’s former wife, who died just weeks before Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell married.