An Arizona judge on Tuesday granted convicted killer mom Lori Vallow’s request for a mental competency evaluation ahead of her second criminal trial.
Vallow, who, along with her husband Chad Daybell, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Idaho last year for killing her two youngest children and Daybell’s former wife, is now set to stand trial in Arizona for allegedly conspiring to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and her niece’s ex-husband.
Vallow pleaded not guilty to the alleged crimes last December.
Two “qualified mental health experts” will perform the evaluation, and Vallow’s trial has been vacated pending results of the examination, according to court documents obtained by Fox News Digital.
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Lori Vallow will undergo a mental competency examination in Arizona ahead of her second criminal trial. (Maricopa County)
Vallow and Daybell killed two of Vallow’s children, 7-year-old J.J. Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, as well as Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell, in 2019.
While J.J. and Tylee were missing, and directly after Tammy’s death in October 2019, Vallow and Daybell married in Hawaii in November of that same year.
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Lori and Chad Daybell are accused of killing 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old J.J. Vallow in 2019. (Rexberg Police Department)
J.J. and Tylee were found in shallow graves on Daybell’s rural Rexburg property in June 2020, months after they disappeared from their home in September 2019.
The 16-year-old’s remains were burned while the 7-year-old was bound in duct tape.
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In this aerial photo, investigators search for human remains at Chad Daybell’s residence in Salem, Idaho, on June 9, 2020. (John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register )
Ahead of her murder trial in Idaho last year, Vallow spent about nine months in an Idaho mental hospital. Following those nine months, Fremont District Judge Steven Boyce ruled that she was “returned to competency and is fit to proceed” in her first trial, which was similarly halted when she was committed to the mental health facility.
Idaho prosecutors alleged during Vallow’s and Daybell’s trials that the pair had extreme religious beliefs, including the idea that some people had “dark” souls while others had “light” souls. They believed the “dark” spirits could be so dark, in fact, that they could be zombies.
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Charles Vallow died in July 2019. Two months later, in September 2019, Tylee and J.J. disappeared. Tammy Daybell died of asphyxiation in November 2019. Cox died later that year of an apparent blood clot in December 2019. (KASZ/Facebook/Post Register/John Roark/AP POOL)
“You removed your children from their home in Arizona, alienated them from friends and family… and you brought them here to murder them. You had so many other options… You chose the most evil and destructive path possible,” Boyce said at the conclusion of her trial in July 2023. “I don’t think to this day you have any remorse for the effort and heartache you caused.”
He added that Vallow does “have mental health issues.”
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Lori Vallow’s booking photo taken on Aug. 1, 2023, at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Pocatello, Idaho. (Idaho Dept. of Corrections/LOCAL NEWS X/TMX)
A February 2023 psychiatric diagnosis revealed that Vallow suffers from a “delusional disorder” mixed with “hyper-religiosity” and a “continuous and unspecified personality disorder” with narcissistic features, according to Boyce.
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“Others looked for your children when you knew where they were and knew they were dead,” Boyce told Vallow in court last year. “They were found dead, burned, mutilated and dismembered and buried like animals. After you knew they were dead, you collected public-funded assistance payments meant for them, and that was blood money you kept for yourself.”
Lori Vallow, convicted in Idaho, faces more charges in Arizona. (Tony Blakeslee/East Idaho News)
During her sentencing, Vallow spoke publicly for the first time since her arrest in 2020, and appeared to be in denial, saying at the time that she knew her children were “happy and busy in the spirit world.”
WATCH LORI VALLOW ADDRESS THE COURT:
“I have had many communications with Jesus Christ, savior of this world, and our heavenly parents. I have had many angelic visitors come and communicated with me and even manifested themselves to me because of these communications,” Vallow told an Idaho courtroom during her sentencing hearing. “I know for a fact that my children are happy and busy in the spirit world. Because of my communications with my friend, Tammy Daybell, I know that she is also very happy and extremely busy.”
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In her statement to the court, Vallow added she “died in the hospital” while she was in labor with her daughter, Tylee. Doctors revived her, at which point she began seeing spirits.
Lori Vallow Daybell smiled in and outside of an Idaho courthouse on Aug, 16. (Tony Blakeslee/East Idaho News)
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“One of the times that Tylee came to me as a spirit after she died… she said to me, ‘Stop worrying, Mom. We are fine.’ She knows how I worry and how I miss her,” Vallow said at the time.
The so-called “cult mom” was extradited to Arizona in November 2023, about four months after she was sentenced to life without parole in Idaho.
