'Cult mom' Lori Vallow refused to bring son JJ, 7, to his murdered dad's memorial and lied to the boy's school saying his dad died of a suicide, new documents claim

'Cult mom' Lori Daybell refused to bring her son, 7, to his murdered dad's memorial in Louisiana and lied to the boy's school about how his father died, raising suspicions among her relatives in the months after her estranged husband's death. 

Before Daybell pulled her son - Joshua 'JJ' Vallow - from his Arizona school, she lied to school officials, saying his father died from suicide when - in reality - he was fatally shot two weeks earlier by her brother on July 11, 2019.   

Instead of going to the memorial, she sent a hurried text to distraught family members asking for an address were to send his ashes. 

'We are moving to Hawaii asap before school starts there,' Daybell wrote in a text message to JJ's grandmother Kay Woodcock before Charles Vallow's memorial service. 'Please send me the address that you want me to send the ashes to for your memorial.' 

Before that, a friend told police that Daybell said her children had become 'zombies' because dark spirits had taken over their bodies and that she believed the only way to rid a person of a dark spirit was by killing them.  

All of this stirred fears for JJ's safety.   

The 2019 shooting death of Charles Vallow is one of four killings that Daybell is charged with conspiring to commit in a bizarre and complicated case spanning several states and tied to her and a new husband's doomsday beliefs.  

This March 6, 2020, file photo, shows Lori Vallow Daybell, left, during a hearing in Rexburg, Idaho

In this Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020, file photo Kay and Larry Woodcock speak to members of the media at the Rexburg Standard Journal Newspaper in Rexburg, Idaho. The Woodcocks are offering $20,000 for information that leads to the recovery of Joshua Vallow and Tylee Ryan, who were last seen in September 2019

The bodies of Lori's children were found on her current husband Chad Daybell's Idaho property

Lori's kids Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, seven, and Tylee Ryan, 16, were last seen alive in September 2019, and their remains were discovered on her Idaho property last June

Police provided The Associated Press with more than 2,500 pages of documents from the investigation into Vallow's death in response to a public records request, and they offer new details about the case.

Timeline of JJ and Tylee's disappearance 

 July 11, 2019: Lori Vallow's husband, Charles Vallow, is killed by her brother, Alex Cox, in Arizona. Police initially rule that Alex acted in self defense but reopen the case months later after the children are reported missing. 

August: Lori moves children JJ and Tylee to Rexburg, Idaho, where her future husband Chad Daybell lives with his wife Tammy.

September 8: The last time Tylee is seen during a trip to Yellowstone National Park with Lori, JJ and Alex. In the following weeks she tells people who ask where Tylee is that she's studying at Brigham Young University's Idaho campus.

September 23: The last time JJ is seen at his school in Rexburg. Lori emailed the school the following day and claims she is moving the family to California for a new job. 

October 2: Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Lori's niece Melanie Pawlowski, is targeted in a drive-by shooting in Arizona. Police identify the vehicle carrying the shooter as a Jeep registered to Charles Vallow, Lori's late husband. 

October 19: Chad's wife Tammy, 49, dies at their Idaho home. An obituary states that she passed away peacefully in her sleep. Chad declines an autopsy and her death is listed as natural causes.

October 25: A friend of Tylee receives a vague 'miss you' text from her phone but says that it didn't sound like the teen.   

November 5: Lori and Chad tie the knot on a beach in Kauai. Receipts indicate that Lori purchased her own wedding ring from Amazon nearly three weeks prior to Tammy's death. 

November 26: Out-of-state relatives ask Idaho police to perform a welfare check on JJ. Lori and Chad claim he is in Arizona with relatives and ask their friend, Melanie Gibb, to lie and say she took the boy there for Thanksgiving. Police soon learn that no one has seen JJ, or his older sister Tylee, since September. 

November 27: Police execute a search warrant related to the children at Lori's home and discover that she and Chad have fled Idaho.

December 11: Tammy's body is exhumed from a Utah cemetery and her death is reclassified as suspicious.

December 12: Lori's brother, Alex Cox, is found unresponsive in a bathroom in Arizona and dies. Months later an autopsy determines that he died of natural causes while he had the overdose drug Narcan in his system. 

December 21: Rexburg police issue the first press release about JJ and Tylee, revealing they believe their disappearance could be linked to Tammy's death and asking the public for information.

December 24: Lori and Chad issue a statement through an attorney saying they love their son and daughter and look forward to addressing 'allegations once they have moved beyond speculation and rumor'.

December 30: Police accuse Lori and Chad of lying to investigators and say they believe the couple know where the kids are or what happened to them.

January 3, 2020: Police search Chad's home in Salem and remove 43 items, including tech devices and journals. They also comb over sections of the snow-covered yard.

January 26: Lori and Chad are seen for the first time in months as police serve them with two search warrants in Kauai. Lori is also served with a court order to produce the children to authorities in Idaho in five days. The couple are approached by the media while cops serve the documents and refuse to say anything about the kids.

January 30: Lori misses the court deadline to produce the children to Idaho authorities.

February 20: Lori is arrested in Kauai and charged with two felony counts for desertion and nonsupport of dependent children, and one misdemeanor count each for resisting and obstructing an officer, solicitation of a crime, and contempt of court. 

March 5: Lori is extradited to Idaho, where she is held on $1million bond at Madison County Jail.

March 17: Lori professes her innocence in a statement through her attorney as two other members of her defense team quit and the judge removes himself from the case. 

March 24: Court documents filed in the divorce of Lori's niece Melani and her husband Brandon Boudreaux allege that Lori told people she believed her children were zombies before they disappeared. 

April 9: Authorities reveal they are investigating Lori and Chad for murder, attempted murder and conspiracy in connection with Tammy's death.

May 25: Idaho police issue a statement expressing hope that the kids will be found safe on what would have been JJ's eighth birthday. 

June 9: Police search Chad's home in Salem for the second time and discover human remains in the backyard. Chad is taken into police custody and charged with destruction or concealment of evidence.

May 25, 2021: Lori and Chad are charged with first degree murder in the deaths of the children. Chad is also charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife Tammy. 

May 27: Lori is ruled mentally unfit to stand trial and is ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. 

June 29: Lori is charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of her fourth husband Charles. 

The documents say Vallow was killed when he went to pick up his son at his estranged wife's home in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler on July 11, 2019. 

He wanted to carry out a mental health intervention on his wife, but she was tipped off to the plan, leading her and her brother to concoct their own plot, investigators said. 

Charles Vallow was shot 14 minutes after he arrived, police said.  

At 7.49am, immediately after the shooting, Lori took Charles' rental car and cell phone and then went to Burger King with JJ and Walgreens to buy flip flops.  

She returned to the home 59 minutes later as police were arriving after Cox placed a 911 call at 8.32am. 

'When reporting the incident, Alex indicated that it just happened,' police wrote in the probable cause statement. 

'He was provided with CPR instructions and he acted as if he was performing life-saving measures on Charles. 

'It was not until emergency personnel began life-saving measures that they saw blood coming from Charles' body. 

'This would indicate that Alex performed no emergency aid.

'Based on this timeline, Charles would have laid dead or dying for approximately 43 minutes before Alex called 911. 

'During this time, phone records indicated that Alex called Lori.' 

When interviewed by police, Lori, Tylee and Cox said a physical altercation was started by Charles.   

Cox said Charles struck him in the head with a baseball bat and he responded by retrieving a gun and shooting Charles twice in the chest.

Lori and Tylee said they heard a gunshot as they were leaving the house. 

An autopsy indicated that Cox shot Charles once while he was standing and a second time when he was lying on the floor.   

'Based on this investigation, it has been proven how valuable that Alex Cox was to Lori,' Chandler police wrote in the probable cause documents. 

'His mission on this earth was to protect his sister.' 

Alex later died of natural causes but it  intensified the mystery.

Mark Means, Lori Daybell's lawyer in the Idaho case, didn't return a call and email seeking comment.  

Among the documents were emails sent to investigators from JJ's grandmother, Kay Woodcock, who said relatives believed Lori Daybell was involved in her son's death and worried about the whereabouts of her grandson.

She also explored getting custody of JJ after Vallow's death and mentioned how odd it was that the wife of Chad Daybell - whom Vallow suspected was having an affair with Lori - had died.  

Lori Daybell's sister-in-law, whose name has been redacted from the records, told a detective in an email the day after Vallow's death that Daybell had told relatives that Vallow needed to die because his body had been overcome by a demon.

The sister-in-law told police that Vallow believed his wife and her brother, Alex Cox, were going to kill him. She also questioned Lori Daybell's decision to bring JJ to school just after the shooting that killed the boy's father.

'How are you rational enough to drive a kid to school and your husband is dead on the floor?' the sister-in-law wrote.

About two weeks after the slaying, Daybell told people at JJ's metro Phoenix school that his father had killed himself and that the boy didn't know he had died, the school's chief executive, Margaret Travillion, wrote in an email to police. 

Two school officials learned with an online search that Vallow was killed in a family dispute. JJ, who on some days seemed sad and distressed, told a person at the school that his father was traveling, Travillion wrote.

Daybell withdrew him from the school about two months after his father's death, saying she had to move immediately because she got a job in California, Travillion wrote.

The shooting death of Charles Vallow wasn't the first time Cox tangled with one of Lori Daybell's husbands. 

Twelve years earlier, police say Cox shot Joseph Ryan - who had been married to Lori and is Tylee's father - in the back with a stun gun in Texas. 

Ryan told police that Cox said he was going to kill him during the attack, according to police records. Cox later pleaded guilty to assault.

After Charles Vallow's death, Lori and the two children moved to Idaho, where Chad Daybell lived. He ran a small publishing company with his first wife and released several of his own books - doomsday-focused fiction loosely based on the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

They were missing for several months when police say the couple lied about the children's whereabouts and then slipped away to Hawaii. While in Hawaii, their bodies were found buried on Chad Daybell's property in rural Idaho.

Daybell and her new husband, Chad Daybell, have been charged in Idaho with conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of the children - JJ and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan. 

The couple faces the same charge in the death of Chad's previous wife, Tammy Daybell, after raising suspicions when he and Lori married two weeks after her death.

Prosecutors have declined to charge Chad Daybell in Vallow's death, saying there was no likelihood of winning a conviction.

The Idaho case against Lori Daybell is on hold while she's treated at a mental health facility. A judge had her committed after determining she wasn´t competent to assist in her defense. She hasn't yet entered a plea in the Arizona case.

Chad Daybell has pleaded not guilty in Idaho. His attorney, John Prior, declined to comment on the newly released records.

This Aug. 4, 2020, file photo, shows Chad Daybell during a court hearing in St. Anthony, Idaho. He's charged in Idaho with conspiring to commit murder in the deaths of the two children of his wife, Lori Vallow Daybell