Chad Daybell Preliminary Hearing Day 1 Part 1

Join The Law&Crime Network for live coverage of a preliminary hearing in the Chad Daybell case in Fremont County, Idaho. Coverage is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. ET / 9 a.m. MT, and is expected to run until 7 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. MT. You can watch the dedicated feed in the player above. Court will likely go Monday, August 3 to Tuesday, August 4.

Where do we begin explaining this convoluted case? Police in Rexburg, Idaho said that last November, they performed a welfare check on Joshua “JJ” Vallow, and his sister Tylee Ryan, at the urging of JJ’s paternal grandmother. Officers did not find the children. They claim the kids’ mother Lori Daybell and her new husband Chad Daybell (who she married in November 5) lied to investigators, and bolted out of town for Hawaii.


The long and short of it is that police say that JJ and Tylee were last seen in September. They were 7 and 17, respectively, when they disappeared. The case had caught national attention in part because of the mother’s public silence about their whereabouts, her and Chad Daybell’s purported religious beliefs, and the mother’s fraught history: Back in July 2019, her brother Alex Cox shot and killed her then-husband Charles Vallow back when the family lived in Arizona. The shooter claimed self-defense. No charges were immediately filed.

Lori–then known as Lori Vallow–moved to Idaho with her children shortly before the disappearances. Police said that Cox joined the family on a Sept. 8 trip to Yellowstone National Park, the last time investigators could account for Tylee’s whereabouts. Officers considered JJ to be missing since the 23rd.

Investigators said that the children’s bodies were found on Chad Daybell’s property on June 9. Now police say that both Daybells and Cox worked together to conceal the deaths. But only the couple will face charges. Cox died in December 2019. Medical examiners in Maricopa County, Arizona said it was from bloodclots in his lungs.

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