Officials announced on Wednesday that childrens’ remains were found on Chad Daybell’s property.
Chad Daybell has been charged with two felony counts of destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence. While the autopsy results have not been finalized, at Daybell’s arraignment prosecutor Rob Wood said he was “aware that those remains are the remains of children.”
Daybell is the husband of Lori Vallow, who is currently facing numerous charges, including two felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of dependent children, and one misdemeanor count each of resisting and obstructing an officer, solicitation of a crime, and contempt.
Vallow was originally arrested in Hawaii, in pursuit of her two missing children. According to the earlier report, Tylee Ryan, 17, and Joshua Vallow, 7, were last seen in September in Rexburg, Idaho, prompting a nationwide manhunt for the children lead by the FBI. Roughly two months after their disappearance, Vallow and her new husband, Chad Daybell, deserted their Rexburg residence. Madison County, Idaho, issued an arrest warrant for Vallow after failing to comply with a court order to produce her children by January 30.
Complicating matters further, Vallow and Daybell are connected to a string of other deaths:
Investigators found that Vallow’s third husband, Joseph Ryan — Tylee’s father — had died in 2018, apparently of a heart attack. And she was reportedly in the process of divorcing her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, when he was killed by a gunshot last July 11. Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox, said he had fired the shot in self-defense after being attacked by a baseball-bat-wielding Vallow; Cox died of unknown causes in December.
Daybell’s former wife Tammy also died, aged 49, ostensibly of natural causes. Just two weeks later, he married Lori. Authorities have ordered Tammy’s body exhumed as part of the investigation. Daybell is a Mormon, and author of multiple religious books. In a divorce filing, Charles Vallow said that Lori had come to believe she was “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020.”
Today, family members released a statement confirming that the remains are, in fact, those of Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan. “Both children are no longer with us,” grandfather Larry Woodcock told the Idaho Falls Post Register.