SALT LAKE CITY — Cellphone data places the now-deceased uncle of two missing children at their Idaho home in the hours after the kids were last seen alive, and then at the sites where their remains were found months later, newly unsealed court documents say.
The search for Joshua “JJ” Vallow, who was 7 years old at the time of his disappearance, and his sister, Tylee Ryan, 17, ended last week after authorities uncovered their remains buried at the rural Salem property of their mother’s new husband, Chad Daybell.
Lori Vallow Daybell was arrested earlier this year and charged with counts including felony child abandonment. Chad Daybell faces two charges of destroying or concealing evidence. Probable cause affidavits supporting the cases against both were unsealed Friday as both are jailed awaiting trial in southern Idaho.
The puzzling case has captured national attention and spanned several states, delving into rumors of the couple’s apocalyptic religious beliefs. The unsealed court documents say the Daybells believe their mission includes leading the “144,000” and ridding “the world of ‘zombies.’’’
Their defense attorneys have said they are committed to defending themselves against the allegations.
Around the same time her two children disappeared, Lori Daybell told friends the kids had become “zombies,” their bodies overtaken by dark spirits that could be vanquished only by death, reflecting a teaching of Chad Daybell’s, the documents say.
As evidence of the takeover, Lori Daybell allegedly pointed to JJ sitting still and watching TV, using a bigger vocabulary and saying “he loved satan,” and Tylee saying she did not want to babysit him, the affidavit says.
Authorities traced the phone of Lori Daybell’s now-deceased brother Alex Cox to her apartment just after midnight on Sept. 9, the day after Tylee was last seen during a family trip to Yellowstone National Park, according to the new documents.
Later that morning, Cox’s phone was in the same spot where investigators last week unearthed bricks and then uncovered human bones and partially charred tissue buried near cat and dog remains.
Authorities tracked his cellphone to find that Cox spent about 21⁄2 hours at Chad Daybell’s property before leaving just before noon.
Four minutes after he left, investigators with the FBI later found, a text from Chad Daybell’s phone to his wife Tammy Daybell that said “I felt I should burn all of the limb debris by the fire pit before it got too soaked by the coming storms, While I did so, spotted big raccoon along the fence. I hurried and got my gun, and he was still walking along. I got close enough that one shot did the trick. He is now in our pet cemetery. Fun times!”
Investigators noted raccoons are typically nocturnal and said neighbors who asked Chad Daybell’s son told them his father shot a raccoon out of a tree, also during the day, when asked about a gunshot heard in mid-July.
Neighbors told investigators the fire pit was hardly ever used until the fall, when they noticed a fire shortly after the death of Tammy Daybell, who died in her sleep in October. Her remains were exhumed in December; an autopsy has not yet been released. Chad and Lori Daybell were married two weeks after Tammy Daybell’s death.
Lori Daybell’s former spouse, Charles Vallow, was killed in July in Arizona in a confrontation with her brother, Cox, who said he shot Vallow in self-defense. Cox later died of natural causes in December, a medical examiner found.
Friends visiting Lori Daybell in late September said they last saw JJ on Sept. 22, when the child was “acting up,” the court documents say. Cox took him to his own apartment in the same complex and later returned with the child appearing to be asleep, with the boy’s head on his shoulder.
The next morning, Lori Vallow Daybell said the child “had been acting like a zombie” and crawling above the cabinets, at one point knocking a picture of Jesus off the refrigerator, and Cox had taken the boy again, court documents say.
Cox’s cellphone data places his phone on Chad Daybell’s property again that morning near a pond, the same location where investigators last week noticed a 4-by-21⁄2-foot patch of ground with fewer weeds and sod etching. They removed rocks to uncover a set of human remains wrapped in black plastic and duct tape belonging to someone with light brown hair.
The documents say Lori Daybell and her children had just recently moved to Rexburg from Arizona. She told JJ’s school he would be homeschooled and had told authorities Tylee was studying at BYU-Idaho, but the university had no records of her enrollment, the affidavit says.
Daybell was watching where investigators were searching from his car across the street and pulled out of the driveway June 9 before officers stopped him and arrested him, the court records say.
The Daybells return to court in July.