Lori Vallow’s daughter’s killer tried to chop up her body before burying her burned bones and organs on Chad Daybell’s property, according to disturbing courtroom testimony.
FBI Agent Douglas Halepaska, a forensic examiner in the firearms and tool marks division, testified at the doomsday cult mom’s murder trial on Thursday morning about the injuries found on 16-year-old Tylee Ryan’s skeletal remains.
He described how Tylee’s hip bones and sacrum (the bone at the base of the spine) had injuries and fractures caused by a “chopping-type action”.
Mr Halepaska’s testimony was followed by that of Katie Dace, a forensic psychologist with the Idaho State Police, who revealed Tylee’s blood was found on a pickaxe seized from the Daybell home.
While Mr Halepaska could not say with complete certainty what tool had caused the damage to Tylee’s skeletal remains, he said it looked like a knife, hatchet, cleaver, machete or similar tool.
Some of the chopping and stabbing went all the way down to the hard part of the hip bone, causing it to fracture, he testified.
“You can actually see some of the bone here has begun to fracture and the force of the impact came down at a perpendicular angle,” he said, according to East Idaho News.
“This fracturing that’s occurring has been driven to the bone. The bone has a hard layer and a hallowed layer inside. This penetrated the hard layer into the hollow layer and there was damage that occurred on the other side of the bone.”
He added: “It didn’t drive all the way through the hard layer of the bone but you can see basically part of the bone of the damaged area.”
In her testimony, Ms Dace told how she analysed 18 tools from the Daybell property.
“[I] found several presumptive positive blood stains on the tools and on several of the tools I found what could be charred flesh,” she said.
Photographs of the tools were shown to the court with Ms Dace explaining what each is and whether she was able to get a viable DNA sample.
DNA found on a shovel matched Tylee.
When investigating material found at the end of a pickaxe was also tested and returned a partial DNA profile. The DNA was female and Tylee was a potential contributor.
Two parts of the handle of the pickaxe tested positive for blood. The DNA matched Tylee.
Next on the stand was Tara Martinez of the Idaho State Police, who also conducted DNA tests for the case.
Martinez testifies that in processing prints found on the black plastic bag and tape used to bind JJ, she found an usable print that matched the right little finger of Ms Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox.
Another print on the bag was of his right palm.
Despite the efforts to hack at the teenager’s body, jurors previously heard that the killer did not appear to manage to dismember her.
Dr Angi Christensen, a forensic anthropologist who examined around 100 bones belonging to Tylee, told jurors that there were “sharp impact” injuries on the hip bones.
However, the location of these injuries on the bones was inconsistent with dismemberment as usually this would involve removing the limbs at the joints, she said.
There was also evidence that one of the girl’s legs had been gnawed on by an animal.
Tylee and her younger brother JJ, seven, were last seen alive in September 2019.
For months their mother refused to say where they were or what had happened to them.
On 9 June 2020, the children’s remains were finally found buried on Mr Daybell’s property in Rexburg, Idaho.
JJ was still wearing his red pyjamas and a pull-up nighttime diaper when his remains were pulled from the earth.
He had been partly covered in a blue children’s blanket before wood panelling and three white stones were placed on top of him in a shallow grave close to a tree.
Tylee’s remains were found not far from her younger brother’s, burned, charred and dispersed in the ground close to a fire pit in a pet cemetery.
In court on Wednesday, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsies told jurors that the state of Tylee’s remains had made it impossible to determine the exact cause of death.
“The vast majority of the time when I perform an autopsy, I get an entire body and there’s a process we go through. Tylee’s case was different. Her remains were received in three separate sealed bags,” said Dr Garth Warren.
“I essentially received Tylee’s remains in multiple different bags.”
While Tylee’s death was ruled “homicide by unspecified means”, the autopsy found that JJ was smothered to death with plastic bags around his head and duct tape over his mouth.
JJ, who had autism, also had scratch marks on his neck suggesting he was awake and fought for his life to get the bag off his head. He also had bruises on his wrists and ankles from where he had been bound with duct tape, the pathologist said.
In more harrowing details of the little boy’s final moments, jurors heard how he could have been drugged before his murder.
Liver samples showed that JJ had ethanol alcohol, caffeine, theobromine and gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) in his system when he died.
GHB is a sedative that can be used to treat epilepsy but is commonly referred to as the “date rape drug”.
Despite its presence in the seven-year-old’s body, Mr Warren said he could not say for sure if the boy had been drugged prior to his death because GHB can also appear naturally in the body.
“There was no way for me to tell for sure whether this is naturally occurring product or if JJ had been given GHB,” said the pathologist.
Ms Vallow is standing trial for the children’s murders. She is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and grand theft in connection with the deaths of JJ and Tylee.
She is also charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the death of Mr Daybell’s first wife Tammy Daybell as well as related financial crimes.
One month after JJ and Tylee were last seen alive, Tammy died suddenly in her sleep on 19 October 2019.
At the time, the otherwise healthy 49-year-old’s death was ruled natural causes and – on 5 November 2019 – Mr Daybell and Ms Vallow flew to Hawaii and got married on a beach.
Investigators later exhumed Tammy’s body and carried out an autopsy, finding that she also died by asphyxiation.
Prosecutors allege that Ms Vallow and Mr Daybell conspired with Ms Vallow’s brother Alex Cox to murder Tammy, JJ and Tylee as part of their doomsday cult beliefs – but also for financial purposes so that they could collect Tammy’s life insurance money and the children’s social security and survivor benefits.
As part of their cult beliefs, the couple believed in a “rating system of light and dark” for how they ranked the spirits of the people around them.
Over time, this evolved into the belief that some people – including the children – were “zombies” and the only way to get rid of the zombies was for the human body to be destroyed.
Mr Daybell is also charged with the three murders but is due to stand trial separately at a later date.
Cox, meanwhile, died before he could face charges.
On 11 December 2019, Cox died suddenly at the age of 51. His death was also ruled natural causes, with indications of a blood clot wedged in the arteries of his lungs. However the overdose drug Narcan was also found in his system.
JJ, Tylee and Tammy aren’t the only alleged murders surrounding the doomsday cult couple.
In July 2019 – two months before the children’s disappearance – Ms Vallow’s fourth husband Charles Vallow was shot dead by Cox.
At the time, Cox claimed Vallow attacked him with a baseball bat and it was ruled self-defence.
Now, Ms Vallow is also facing charges in Arizona of conspiring with Cox to murder Vallow.
