A woman with bizarre doomsday beliefs that Idaho prosecutors claim she and her husband used to justify the killings of her son and daughter was indicted in metro Phoenix on a charge of conspiring to murder her ex-husband.
Lori Vallow Daybell was charged in the 2019 death of Charles Vallow, an indictment unveiled Tuesday states.
Mr Vallow was killed in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler months before his son, seven-year-old Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, and stepdaughter, 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, went missing.
Police records show Mr Vallow was fatally shot by Ms Daybell's brother, Alexander Lamar Cox, when he was picking up his son from his estranged wife.
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The indictment said Ms Daybell conspired with her brother in Mr Vallow's death.
Mr Cox told police he killed Mr Vallow in self-defence and wasn't arrested.
He died five months later from what medical examiners said was a pulmonary blood clot.
Ms Daybell is already at the centre of a complicated criminal case in Idaho, where prosecutors allege she conspired with her new husband, Chad Daybell, to kill the two children and his late wife, Tammy Daybell.
The couple holds apocalyptic religious beliefs that prosecutors claim they used to justify the killings.
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Ms Daybell's attorney in Idaho, Mark Means, didn't immediately respond to a phone message and email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
That case against Ms Daybell is on hold while she undergoes treatment at a mental health facility.
A judge had her committed this month after determining she wasn't competent to assist in her defence.
Mr Daybell has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In the investigation of Mr Vallow's death, Tylee told police that she confronted him with a baseball bat after she was awakened by yelling outside her bedroom door.
The teen girl said she was trying to defend her mother, but Mr Vallow took away the bat, according to police records.
Police said Mr Cox was at the home and intervened, leading to a confrontation where Mr Vallow hit the back of Mr Cox's head with the bat.
Mr Cox told police that he then went to his bedroom, got his gun, and demanded that Mr Vallow leave.
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Mr Cox told police that he fired in self-defence after Mr Vallow refused to drop the bat and came after him.
In a police video, Mr Cox told investigators that Ms Daybell and the two children had left the house shortly before the shooting occurred.
Four months before his death, Mr Vallow filed for divorce from his wife, alleging that she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets before her current life.
He also alleged his estranged wife threatened to financially ruin and kill him, according to court records, which noted that Mr Vallow sought an order of protection and a voluntary evaluation of his wife at a mental health facility.
After Mr Vallow's death, Ms Daybell and the children moved to Idaho, where Mr Daybell lived.
He ran a small publishing company with his wife, Tammy Daybell, 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.
Tammy Daybell died in October 2019, and her obituary said she died in her sleep of natural causes.
But authorities grew suspicious when Mr Daybell married Ms Daybell just two weeks later.
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Authorities later exhumed Tammy Daybell's body.
Police began searching for Tylee and JJ in November after relatives raised concerns.
Police said the Daybells lied to investigators about the children's whereabouts before quietly leaving Idaho.
Months later, they were found in Hawaii without the children, whose bodies were eventually found buried on Mr Daybell's Idaho property.
