- The Idaho jury in the Lori Vallow murder trial heard a jail call between her and her sister.
- In the call, Vallow said that he deserved to be happy after the death of the children.
- Her sister called her selfish and demanded to know what happened to the children.
BOISE, Idaho— Lori Vallow, the doomsday preparer Accused of conspiring to murder two of her children, her husband, and her lover’s wife, she could be heard telling her sister in a phone call from jail that she did not deserve to be a lonely widow.
Vallow’s younger sister, Summer Shiflet, took the stand at his murder trial on Tuesday. The sisters’ call played by prosecutors was recorded in the summer of 2020 while Vallow was in an Idaho jail after police found the remains of her adopted son, 7-year-old JJ Vallow, and teenage sister. from her, Tylee Ryan.
“I had to get on with my life,” Vallow told Shiflet on the call, which appeared before an Ada County, Idaho, jury on Tuesday. “Trying to find happiness.”
Vallow’s children were unearthed on the Idaho property of chad tinkerbella doomsday prepper and preacher whom Vallow had married in November 2019, about two months after investigators believed their children were murdered.
In the emotional call, Shiflet expressed her anger towards her sister, calling her selfish and urging her to tell her what happened before the children’s deaths.
Also on the call, Shiflet begged her older sister to reconsider her feelings for Daybell, a former undertaker and apocalyptic novelist.
“Please consider that Chad has lied and he has been deceived and you have been deceived,” Shiflet told Vallow on the call. “There is nothing good in killing children!”
Joshua Vallow and Tylee Ryan were reported missing by their grandparents.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Vallow told his sister about his problems with the children.
According to witness testimony, Vallow believed in Daybell’s teachings about chosen souls living “multiple lives” and being spiritually inseparable despite death.
On the jail call, Vallow became self-pitying, outraged, and possessive when Shiflet became accusatory about his upbringing.
“No one sees me on the floor crying,” Vallow told her sister about what it was like to raise children. “Nobody knows what I’ve been through with my children who I love more than anything. Mine.”
“I’ve taken care of them all their lives. Me. Me,” Vallow said.
Vallow snapped at his sister’s suggestion that someone else could have provided enough care for Tylee, who had pancreatitis, and JJ, who was diagnosed with autism.
“We would have taken care of them,” Shiflet said through tears.
“That is what you think!” Vallow snapped back.
“I would have taken them in a heartbeat,” said Shiflet.
“You have no idea,” Vallow replied.
Vallow, wearing a cream shawl in court on Tuesday, listened to the call with her head cocked to the side as she sat among her lawyers. Shiflet wept on the dais.
Throughout the brief call, Shiflet accused Vallow of doing “the most incredibly selfish thing I can think of.” She told her sister that she was sick to her stomach and that she was the only one “stupid enough” to be friends with her.
“If you told me the truth, I would defend you until the end of time,” Shiflet said.
Every time Shiflet asked Vallow to tell him what happened, Vallow said he couldn’t.
“I can’t talk about it,” Vallow said. “I’d love to.”
Shiflet expressed the pain he felt that Vallow did not tell him that his older brother, Alex Cox, had died. Before Cox’s December 2019 death, which she was ruled natural by the medical examiner, she conspired with Vallow in four murders, prosecutors say.
“I’m glad he’s gone if he was a part of this,” Shiflet told Vallow before adding that hiding the news “caused pain in our whole family.”
“That was never my intention,” Vallow said.
Earlier that day, an FBI agent testified that he traced Cox’s cellphone to the grave locations of JJ and Tylee on nights in September 2019 who authorities believe were murdered.
Under cross-examination, Vallow’s defense attorney, Jim Archibald, questioned Shiflet about the childhood he shared with Vallow, who grew up in sunny Southern California in a church-going family of five.
Shiflet told the jury that she and Vallow were very close, but after 2018 her sister’s new religious beliefs worried her.
“We had a good family,” Shiflet said. “We had problems, but we had a lot of fun.”
On the call from jail, Vallow protested to his sister that the press had misinterpreted her as a monster.
“Everyone sees what’s on TV, that’s all,” Vallow said.
Sounding angry, Shiflet reminded Vallow that she and Daybell were filmed in Hawaii “dancing on a beach” in November 2019 after their children were “thrown away like trash.”
“Nobody knows,” Vallow said. “I’m sorry honey.”
