#’Doomsday’ mom Lori Vallow accused of killing children, may have also killed ex-husband

“Doomsday” mom Lori Vallow’s brother told detectives he believes that she murdered her third husband, who reportedly died of natural causes, in addition to her fourth husband and two children, new court documents revealed.

Vallow’s brother Alex Cox told detectives he believes that Vallow and Alex murdered Vallow’s third husband Joseph Ryan, who had purportedly died of a heart attack in 2018.

Alex had killed Vallow’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, in July 2019 shooting in what he said was self-defense. She faces a charge of conspiracy to commit murder in Arizona in connection with his death.

“There’s got to be somewhere where they talked this through because Lori and Alex planned Joe’s death,” Adam Cox told detectives, according to Deseret News

Ryan died of an apparent heart attack in Arizona in April 2018, just days after Vallow had told a friend she had found him dead in his home.

“I’m telling you there is something wrong about Lori and Alex and this belief they have. Lori thinks death is nothing,” Cox said. “There are just a lot of red flags for me.”

“I said Alex and Lori murdered Charles,” Adam Cox said, “The family — cousins and uncles — they understand the history with Lori, Alex, and Lori’s ex-husbands. There is a whole pattern of things there.”

Vallow and Ryan had been engaged in a bitter custody battle over their daughter Tylee, during which Vallow accused Ryan of sexually assaulting her as well as Vallow’s older son Colby Ryan, according to Deseret. He was later cleared of all those charges.

“Lori and Alex planned to kill Joe.” Adam Cox told detectives. “They planned out how they were going to kill Joe, and Al was going to Taser him, throw him in the trunk and take him out to a field and shoot him and then bury him. Well, Al went to Taser him and it didn’t work and Joe called the cops and Al went to jail.”

In 2007, Alex Cox physically assaulted Joseph Ryan with a Taser in Texas, according to police reports.

Vallow’s close friends corroborated Adam Cox’s story, according to court documents, saying that Vallow used to joke about attempting to kill her third husband.

“Lori had said before that she hired her brother to kill Joe because of stuff he did to them,” said Angeline Law, a close friend of Vallow’s.

“She said eventually Joe is going to die for what he did. She’s like ‘People don’t get away with stuff like that.’ She claimed she had gone off the wall and gone crazy because of what he did to them,” Law said in a Jan. 7, 2020 phone call with detectives.

Another friend, April Raymond of Hawaii, told investigators that Vallow visited her days later and told her that she and Tylee had found him dead in his home after not hearing from him, according to court documents.

However, Vallow never reported the death or told Ryan’s family. His body was found by a neighbor who detected a foul smell days later.

“It’s odd that Joe, her ex-husband, supposedly died of a heart attack when they were desperate for money and he left her $50,000 and Tylee gets $2,000. Then Charles has $2 million … there’s a lot of red flags for me,” Adam Cox said.

Tylee received $2,000 a month after her father’s death, a friend of the teen told detectives, that was to continue until her 18th birthday.

Vallow and her current dooms writer husband, Chad Daybell, are accused of murdering Vallow’s two children — 7-year old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan — and burying their mutilated remains in a pet cemetery in Daybell’s backyard in September 2019. 

New documents unsealed in July revealed that Vallow had avoided communicating over text message and made a number of suspiciously timed travel arrangements around the time of her children’s murders. 

Vallow, a member of the doomsday cult Preparing a People, allegedly told a friend that the children had become zombies and the only way to expel the evil spirits from their bodies was to kill them.

Cox, speaking on USG Audio’s “The Followers: Madness of Two” podcast recently, said that Vallow and Daybell believe that they believe they are on a divine mission from God to be the leaders of the “Second Coming,” inspired by scripture.

“The scriptures got all twisted up the way that Chad explained things the way she interpreted things. I think she’s using those kinds of examples to lead her life right now.”Cox, joined with his son Zach on the podcast, said that his parents have written to Vallow in prison and said her beliefs have not wavered. 

Vallow was a great sister growing up, where she was happy and popular at school in their Mormon community in southern California before her mental health declined, he said.

Her personality changed, and her beliefs became increasingly obscure, Cox said.

When he first heard reports that the children are missing, Cox said he knew she had murdered them.

“I knew in my heart the kids [were] dead,” he said, struggling with the frustration of friends and family members who believed the children were missing or hiding.

Vallow was declared mentally unfit for her murder trial in May and criminal proceedings have been temporarily halted while she undergoes treatment. Meanwhile, proceedings against Daybell are continuing with a trial date set for November.