Lori Vallow , who is charged in the deaths of her two children, was found incompetent to stand trial.- Vallow was declared unfit for trial after a psychological evaluation.
- Chandler, Arizona, police said they recommended she also be charged in the murder of her ex-husband.
Lori Vallow, the Idaho woman accused with her husband of killing her two children, has been found unfit to stand trial in the case, a court order said.
Court documents obtained by Fox 10 Phoenix reporter Justin Lum showed that a court-ordered psychological evaluation determined that Vallow was "not competent to proceed" with a trial, and that it recommended "restorative treatment" instead.
Vallow and her husband,
Tylee Ryan, 17, and Joshua "J.J." Vallow, 7, were last seen in September 2019. Their disappearances and Vallow and Daybell's "doomsday" religious beliefs sparked national attention.
The couple left town after their children went missing and were found months later in Hawaii. Law-enforcement officers stretching across states were left to piece together their alleged involvement in multiple missing-persons and suspicious-death cases, including the ex-spouses of both Vallow and Daybell.
Daybell remains charged with the children's killings. He is also charged with first-degree murder in the death of Tammy Daybell, his wife prior to her death. Tammy was found dead in her home in October 2019, not long after the children went missing.
Police in Chandler, Arizona, told Insider on Thursday that they were also requesting that the Maricopa County district attorney charge Vallow in the death of her ex-husband Charles Vallow.
On July 11, 2019, police in Chandler responded to the shooting of Vallow's estranged husband, Charles, at her home, said a police report provided to Insider by Sgt. Jason McClimans.
McClimans said that officers had received a call from Vallow's brother, Alexander Cox, reporting that he had shot and killed his sister's husband in self-defense.
Officers later learned that Charles had visited Vallow's home to pick up his adopted son, J.J., and that Vallow and Charles had been involved in a verbal argument around visitation, McClimans said.
Five months after the shooting, on December 12, Cox was found dead at his home in Gilbert, Arizona, Brenda Carosko, a spokesperson for the Gilbert Police Department, told Insider at the time. An autopsy revealed that he died from blood clots and heart failure.
"The Chandler Police Department submitted its investigation involving Lori Vallow and the death of Charles Vallow to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office on April 1, 2021," McClimans said in an emailed statement. "The submitted charge is Conspiracy to Commit First Degree Murder; ARS 13-1003A. It is currently under review by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office."
Steven Ellsworth, an attorney who represented Charles Vallow in his divorce, released a statement on Thursday saying he was grateful that the Chandler Police Department is requesting that Vallow be charged.
"Charles feared for his life and predicted his demise from the moment he walked into our office and said, 'If anything happens to me, it was Lori and her brother Alex who did it to me,'" Ellsworth wrote in the statement.