- Chad Daybell's sister-in-law testified Friday in the trial of Lori Vallow.
- Vallow and Daybell are accused of killing two of her children and Daybell's wife.
BOISE, IDAHO — Chad Daybell told his late wife's sister that Lori Vallow had no kids and a lot of money, the woman testified Friday.
Samantha Gwilliam told an Ada County jury that Daybell had told her that he and Vallow — whom he recently married— bonded over their dead spouses. Daybell was married to Gwilliam's sister Tammy Daybell.
Now Daybell, a former gravedigger, and Vallow are accused of conspiring to kill her and Vallow's two minor children.
"He told me, no, there were no children. They were going to be empty nesters," Gwilliam testified at Vallow's trial. "He told us she had lots of money."
Prosecutors say Vallow and Daybell killed Tammy Daybell in October 2019. Vallow's two youngest children, teenage Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow, were last seen that September.
Police found the childrens' remains buried on Chad Daybell's property in June 2020.
Vallow is charged separately in Arizona for the July 2019 killing of her fourth-husband, Charles Vallow, who was fatally shot by Vallow's late brother, Alex Cox. Cox, who later died, is considered a conspirator in the killings.
Her voice rising in anger, Gwilliam described to the jury how she felt to learn in late 2019 that Chad Daybell had remarried two weeks after he told her by phone that healthy-seeming Tammy Daybell had died inexplicably in her sleep.
"After you bury your wife of almost 30 years, you just don't do that," said Gwilliam, a schoolteacher in Spring Valley, Utah. "It was devastating."
Gwilliam felt Daybell replaced her sister Tammy Daybell with Vallow
Vallow and Daybell are also accused of conspiring to collect fraudulent life insurance and social security payments.
Chad Daybell took a $430,000 life insurance payout after Tammy Daybell died, while Lori Vallow seized additional thousands from social security after her children died, prosecutors said.
Gwilliam said Daybell conceded that on November 4, 2019 he remarried a woman named "Lori Ryan."
He described her as someone who had a "hard life" and who felt stigmatized after she claimed her previous husband, Charles Vallow, died of a heart attack.
"I asked him in a phone call, please tell us about this woman you married to replace my sister with," Gwilliam said.
Daybell explained his and Vallow's attraction.
"That's how they connected, they were both grieving the loss of their spouses," Gwilliam said.
On Friday, prosecutors played a 911 call from October 20, 2019 in which Chad Daybell reported Tammy Daybell's death, which was by asphyxiation.
"I'm Chad, the husband. She's clearly dead," he told the dispatcher between sobs.
Prosecutors also played a 911 call from Tammy Daybell on October 9, 2020 reporting a man in a ski mask at her home pointing a weapon at her. Prosecutors allege this was Vallow's brother, Cox, attempting to kill her.
"Holding the gun like he had a rifle and was shooting at me," she said. "My name is Tammy Daybell."
It was the first time jurors heard Tammy Daybell's voice. Jurors were also shown photos of her corpse. It was found in the bed she shared with Daybell.
Chad Daybell grew distant from his sister-in-law
Gwilliam explained that her sister had worked jobs in schools to subsidize Daybell's writing of memoirs about his near-death visions and also soft-selling "dystopian" novels about "what life could be like for the second coming."
Gwilliam testified that she never heard about a vision Daybell had told others; that her sister would soon die.
Gwilliam said Tammy Daybell did not accompany her husband to fan-filled prepper conferences because, "she was working and trying to raise the kids."
With Tammy Daybell gone, Gwilliam asked her brother-in-law how he and Vallow — who married on a Hawaiian beach — would support themselves.
"I know that they had the life insurance money from my sister," she said. "And they were going to take some time."
As Gwilliam testified, Vallow, dressed in black, stared at her. Wearing pistachio-rimmed glasses and toting a Star Wars R2-D2 backpack, Gwilliam did not look back.
Gwilliam said she had always been close with her only sister and, after Tammy married Chad Daybell, she became close with him too.
That changed in the summer of 2019, months after Daybell met Vallow.
Daybell, who had moved Tammy Daybell and their five children to Rexburg, Idaho, against her will grew standoffish, she said.
"He seemed more distant and less willing to talk to us," Gwilliam said. "We didn't know what was going on. It was really different."
Gwilliam said that Daybell severed ties with her family after he married Vallow.
Gwilliam told the jury what she said to Daybell the last time they spoke in December 2019.
"I asked him to stop lying," she said.