Idaho detective tells Lori Vallow trial jury of chilling scene after discovering children’s bodies

A detective who searched for the missing children of ‘doomsday cult mom’ Lori Vallow described in gruesome detail how investigators had to take turns searching the property because of the ‘unbearable smell’ of decomposing flesh. 

JJ Vallow, seven, and Tylee Ryan, 16, were discovered in the yard of Vallow’s husband, Chad Daybell, on June 9 2020 after a months’ long search. The find came after a search warrant was executed at Daybell’s home in Rexburg, Idaho.

Detective Ray Hermosillo apologized as he recounted the discoveries because he was forced to use such grim language in the description, which came as jurors were also shown harrowing photographs of the burial sites. 

Vallow sat motionless as shocked jurors heard JJ’s decomposed remains were discovered first wrapped in a black plastic bag bound with duct tape. Tylee’s badly burned remains were found shortly after in a pet cemetery in Daybell’s yard.  

The ‘doomsday cult’ mom allegedly murdered her children after believing the second coming of Christ was imminent and her children were ‘zombies’.

The 49-year-old is also accused of conspiracy to murder her husband Chad Daybell’s ex-wife Tammy, 49. Daybell – who will also face a separate trial over the killings – was a doomsday ‘prepper’ who forged a reputation through books and talks about the end of the world. They deny the murders. 

During the second day of Vallow’s trial Tuesday, Hermosillo revealed in grisly detail how JJ’s remains were found by the FBI’s Evidence Response Team as they searched near a tree in the yard. 

‘As they began to remove the top layer of soil, it began to expose three white rocks,’ said the detective. ‘At that point there was a strong odor. Through my experience, it was a decomposing body.’

He said more ‘wood paneling’ was ‘slowly and methodically’ removed from beneath the rocks, which revealed a ‘black, round object starting to protrude’.

The hole where JJ was buried was ‘just a few inches deep’.

‘They scraped away some more solid around the round object and it began to take the shape of – it looked like the crown of a head protruding from the dirt,’ the detective said.

The digging ‘exposed what appeared to be a small body wrapped in black plastic’.

A separate dig at the yard’s pet cemetery later exposed Tylee’s remains, he said.

He added: ‘As we began digging we were on our hands and knees. We started to uncover just burnt flesh, charred bone, the smell was again of a decomposing body. We had to take turns digging because the smell was so bad. We could only dig for a couple of minutes.’

The team used paintbrushes and small trowels to carefully remove solid and ‘eventually we uncovered bits and pieces of Tylee – who we assumed was Tylee’.

‘The best I can describe was just blobs of flesh that were falling apart,’ Hermosillo said.

‘Once we removed some of that, under them there was another round blobs – I’m sorry, it’s the best I can describe it – just burnt flesh, what appeared to be put in a green bucket. The bucket was melted so it was kind of deformed.’

‘The flesh and bone was all kind of stuffed in that melting bucket,’ he said.

He said Tylee’s remains were a ‘mass’. Under the bucket they found a ‘partial human skull’.

‘Three or four’ detectives climbed into the ditch to try and remove the remains but they were too damaged. ‘We had to go in and pick up the pieces out of the hole,’ said Hermosillo.

As the discoveries were made, Daybell attempted to flee the scene in his car ‘at a high rate of speed’ but was stopped and arrested.

When her trial began Monday, Vallow sat emotionless while tragic photos were shown to the jury of the gruesome scene detectives found at the Salem, Idaho property in June 2020. 

But on the second day of her case, the ‘cult mom’ was in good spirits, laughing and chatting with her defense attorneys, John Thomas and Jim Archibald, as proceedings got underway. 

When he first took the stand Tuesday, Hermosillo, the third witness in the case, recounted how authorities discovered guns, knives and children’s toys scattered around Vallow’s Idaho apartment hours after she allegedly fled for Hawaii with Daybell.

The detective, the third witness in the trial, described in detail the chilling scene after police raided Vallow’s apartment in November 2019 during the search for her son, JJ Vallow, seven.

Police had obtained a warrant to search the home after a welfare check for JJ days earlier failed to locate the boy. Prosecutors allege JJ and his sister, Tylee Ryan, had already been murdered by the time the search took place.

Investigators found food in the fridge and dishes in the sink, ‘everything that looked like someone had lived there’, Hermosillo said. But ‘there were no clothes on the hangers’.

‘There were some toys on the front step, [they] appeared to be a little boy’s, scooters, toys, there was a little blue suitcase under the stairwell, there was also an old prescription [for] JJ Vallow. Aside from that, there was nothing else,’ said the detective.

‘There were several guns in the garage of [the apartment], several different army-type knives, several different empty magazines for various weapons. There were thing of that nature in the garage that caught our eye.’

Vallow appeared for the trial’s second day in a pink blouse and navy trousers, with shackles around her ankles. She once again wore her curled haired below her shoulders.

Jurors were shown photographs of the discoveries at her apartment, including a ghillie suit used by hunters and snipers to conceal themselves, ‘a lot of ammunition’, rifles, handguns and suppressors for the weapons. Police also found a frightening Halloween mask, rope and duct tape among the haul. 

Hermosillo recounted that after the discoveries at Vallow’s apartment, police obtained a warrant for a storage unit used by Vallow.

There, they found ‘a personalized blanket with photographs of JJ and Tylee, Colby Ryan [Vallow’s other son], the defendant Vallow. Family photographs they had sewn onto a blanket.’

Police alerted the FBI that JJ and Tylee were believed to be missing and the nationwide search was launched. Throughout the hunt, Vallow maintained the children were safe and never sounded the alarm about their disappearance.

Hermosillo also described the welfare check the triggered the warrants to search Vallow’s apartment, after ‘red flags’ were raised during his conversations with Daybell and Alex Cox, Vallow’s brother, on November 26. 

The pair refused to answer questions about JJ and instead both ‘looked at each other’ blankly, Hermosillo said. Cops were also unable to find Vallow.

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‘I raised some red flags just based on the way they acted with that question,’ he added. ‘I then again asked Alex if he knew where JJ was at, and he stated that JJ was with Kay Woodcock in Louisiana.’

Detectives say the claim set off alarm bells, as they knew it to be false because it was Kay Woodcock’s concerns that triggered the welfare check.

Daybell also denied that he was close to Vallow – even though the couple married weeks earlier.

‘(Daybell) said he felt like I was accusing him of something,’ Hermosillo said, adding that he was suspicious of Daybell and Cox ‘based on the deception and the way they looked at each other – their evasive answers and their lies.’

At the start of the cult mom’s murder trial in Boise, Idaho on Monday, the court was shown harrowing pictures of the scene where the remains of Vallow’s two children – Tylee Ryan, 16, and JJ Vallow, seven – were found in Salem, Idaho. 

All that was left of Tylee was ‘a mass of bone and tissue’, the court was told. ‘That’s what was left of this beautiful young woman, the defendant’s daughter,’ Fremont country prosecutor Lindsey Blake told the jury.

JJ’s body was found in garbage bags with duct tape around him, including around his head. Jurors heard the bodies were found after Vallow referred to her children as ‘dark’ and ‘possessed’.

Blake argued that the gruesome crime was carried out by Vallow after she became motivated by ‘money, power and sex’ to kill JJ, Tylee, and Daybell’s husband’s ex-wife, Tammy Daybell.

‘Lori Vallow Daybell used money, power and sex – or the promise of those things – to get what she wanted. What she wanted was money, power and sex,’ Blake said. ‘It didn’t matter what obstacles she had to remove to get what she wanted.’

Blake said Tylee was a ‘vibrant young woman’ with her ‘whole life ahead of her’. ‘She was just about to enter into adulthood and make her own way in the world,’ Blake said.

She said Tylee would receive social security payments following the death of her father. ‘Tylee had money. Lori wanted it and because of that, Tylee is gone.’

She said JJ was a ‘vibrant, happy-go-lucky’. But caring for JJ, who had autism, required ‘time, effort and energy’.

Caring for JJ ‘took away from the defendant doing what she wanted to do – devoting her time to Chad Daybell,’ said Blake.

After they vanished, Vallow continued to collect benefits to ‘fund her lifestyle’.

Meanwhile, there were ‘no known actions’ by Vallow to find her children. Instead she posed as a ‘likable, energetic’ mom to convince people nothing was wrong.

Daybell and Vallow believed they could rate people ‘light or dark’ and getting ‘rid’ of evil spirits from dark people, jurors heard. They were convinced the second coming of Christ was imminent and only 144,000 people could be saved.

Prosecutors allege that Vallow and Daybell were religious fanatics who used their faith to ‘justify’ their actions, with Blake adding: ‘What she did on earth no longer counted for her.’