Dateline: Who was Lori Vallow Daybell and what was she convicted of? Details from the latest true crime episode, revealed

Dateline's Lori Vallow Daybell: The Jailhouse Interview is set to air on Friday, March 7, 2025 at 9 PM ET on NBC. The upcoming two-hour episode will feature Keith Morrison's first ever television interview with a convicted murderer, Lori Vallow Daybell.

Lori Vallow Daybell, also known as Mommy Doomsday, who was convicted of murdering her children in Idaho. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole for killing her 16-year-old daughter Tylee Ryan and her nine-year-old son Joshua.

In a clip released by NBC, Lori Vallow explains to Keith Morrison how she and her fifth husband Chad Daybell will be soon exonerated. A very confident Lori Daybell tells Morrison,

"We will both be exonerated in the future. I have seen things in the future that Jesus showed me when I was in heaven. And we were not in jail and we were not in prison and they were still in the future, from now."

Keith Morrison also spoke to Lori's oldest son, Colby Ryan, who spilled details about his relationship with his mother, her torturous parenting techniques and how he and his siblings suffered.

Who is Lori Vallow Daybell? What went wrong that a former Mrs. Texas beauty pageant turned to a serial murderer? This is not the first time that NBC's Dateline has picked up this gruesome case, previously in Dateline: Doomsday Files (aired on November 12, 2021), The Trial of Lori Vallow Daybell (May 12, 2023) and What Happened to the Children? (aired on March 1, 2020) were based on the case of the Vallow-Doomsday murder.

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Who is Lori Vallow Daybell as shown in Dateline?

Born on June 26, 1973, Lori Vallow Daybell grew up in a strict Mormon family in California. She married her high school boyfriend at 19 but separated after a few months. Soon Lori married for the second time in 1995, giving birth to her son Colby in 1996. However, her second and third marriages didn't last for long.

In 2006, Lori married a businessman, Charles Anthony Vallow, and together they were raising Tylee Ryan, Lori's daughter from her previous relationship. In 2014, Lori and Charles adopted JJ, Charles's nephew who had autism. Everything seemed fine for the couple until one day in 2015, Lori became obsessed with Chad Daybell's books.

Chad Daybell was a self-published author who wrote books on doomsday prophecies and near death experiences. In 2017, Lori's relationship with her children suffered a major setback as her obsession with Chad's books and thoughts grew. In 2018, Lori met Chad Daybell and they started doing podcasts based on religion, doomsday, and afterlife. Chad, a former grave digger, was married to Tammy Daybell and had five children.

In 2019, Charles Vallow grew quite suspicious of Lori and contacted the investigators. Charles stated that Lori was behaving quite weirdly and called herself a god who was preparing for the doomsday. Lori even threatened to kill Charles. Soon in the next few months, Charles filed for divorce and his children's custody. In July 2019, Charles Vallow was shot dead by Lori's brother Alex Cox, who stated that he shot him in self-defense.

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What did Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell do?

Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow Daybell, the infamous couple, murdered Lori's children, Joshua JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan in 2019. The couple believed Lori's children were zombies and they killed them to 'release their spirits'.

Chad Daybell married Lori on November 5, 2019 in Hawaii two weeks after Chad's wife Tammy died due to 'natural causes'. In 2019, Lori's children vanished under mysterious circumstances. After a nationwide search, JJ's body was found buried in Chad's backyard whereas Tylee's remains were found nearby in a pet's grave. Later it was found out that Chad had been involved in the death of his ex-wife Tammy Daybell as well.

Investigators grew suspicious of the Daybell couple as they refused to cooperate in the investigation and made odd revelations about spirits. The couple were eventually arrested and charged with multiple counts of murder, insurance fraud and conspiracy.

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Chad and Lori Vallow Daybell's Conviction: Dateline

On June 1, 2024, Chad Daybell was sentenced to death after being convicted of the first degree murder of Tammy Daybell, his ex-wife, and Lori's two children, Joshua JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan.

Lori Vallow Daybell was sentenced to life in prison for killing her children with no options of parole in July 2023 for two counts of first degree murder and three counts of conspiracy to murder including conspiring Tammy's death. She was found guilty of the first degree murder of Joshua JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan, whose decayed bodies were recovered from Chad's backyard and near a pet's grave after a month of her children going missing.

The infamous doomsday couple was previously at the Idaho Correctional Facility. Just a few months later, Lori was sent to Arizona as she faced two more counts of Conspiracy to Commit First Degree Murder. One case was based on her husband Charles Vallow's death and another attempt at Lori Vallow's niece's ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux. On January 22, 2025, she requested to get her Arizona case dismissed, which was denied by the court.

Lori Vallow Daybell, convicted of murdering her children, gives her first TV media interview to Keith Morrison on Dateline's "Lori Vallow Daybell: The Jailhouse Interview", airing March 7, 2025, at 9 PM ET on NBC.

The trailer released has a sneak peek of the interview where Lori states,

"You’ve got a lot of stuff, Keith... but what I tell you will be the truth."

Read More: Dateline: The Haunted House Confession - Release date news, streaming details and more about the latest true crime episode

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