PHOENIX (AP) — A woman whose doomsday religious beliefs led her to kill her two youngest children and engage in a plot to kill a romantic rival in Idaho was convicted Tuesday in Arizona for conspiring to murder her estranged husband.
Jurors found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty after deliberating for about three hours, and she faces another possible life sentence on top of the three she is already serving in Idaho. She will not be sentenced in Arizona until after she goes on trial in another alleged murder conspiracy.
Prosecutors said Vallow Daybell had help from her brother, Alex Cox, in the July 2019 shooting death of Charles Vallow at her home in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. They say she was motivated by an opportunity to cash in on Vallow’s life insurance policy and a marriage to then-boyfriend Chad Daybell who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
Chad Daybell was sentenced to death for the deaths of Vallow Daybell’s children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, and his wife, Tammy. Authorities in Idaho said the case included bizarre claims by Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell that the children were zombies and that Vallow Daybell was a goddess tasked with ushering in an apocalypse.
Vallow Daybell, who isn’t an attorney but chose to defend herself at trial in Arizona, sat mostly still as the verdict was read but glanced occasionally at jurors as they were asked to confirm they found her guilty on the single charge.
One of the jurors, Victoria Lewis, said outside the courthouse that Vallow Daybell didn’t do herself any favors by choosing to repres …