Jury begins deliberating in Lori Vallow Daybell's trial on charge she conspired to kill her husband

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Jury begins deliberating in Lori Vallow Daybell's trial on charge she conspired to kill her husband

2025-04-22 07:59 Last Updated At：08:10

PHOENIX (AP) — Jurors have begun deliberating in the Arizona trial of Lori Vallow Daybell, the Idaho woman with doomsday religious beliefs charged with conspiring to murder her estranged husband in suburban Phoenix.

The jury convened for a short time Monday afternoon and will resume deliberations Tuesday.

Throughout the trial that began two weeks ago, jurors heard vastly different versions of Charles Vallow's death at Vallow Daybell's home in 2019.

Prosecutors argued that Vallow Daybell and her brother, Alex Cox, had planned to kill Vallow so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend, Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.

“What we see is a very planned out, premeditated murder,” prosecutor Treena Kay told the jury Monday in her closing argument.

Vallow Daybell isn’t a lawyer but chose to defend herself. She didn’t call any witnesses or put on any evidence in her defense, but said in her opening statement and again Monday in her closing argument that her estranged husband's death wasn't a crime.

“This was a tragedy," she said Monday. "Don't let them turn my family tragedy into a crime.”

Vallow Daybell is already serving three consecutive life sentences without parole for killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival in Idaho.

In the Arizona case, she has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she could face another life sentence.

Cox had said he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Vallow. Cox died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs, and his account was later called into question.

Vallow Daybell said at the start of the trial that Vallow had chased her with a bat during the encounter and her brother shot him in self-defense after she left the house.

Cox waited 47 minutes before calling 911 “to stage the scene" and leave a bat near Vallow's head, Kay said.

Before the jury began deliberating, prosecutors played a recorded conversation between Vallow Daybell and the life insurance company. Vallow Daybell believed she was the beneficiary of her husband's $1 million policy, Kay said.

In the recording, she is heard saying that Vallow had been shot and that “it was an accident.”

Vallow Daybell kept glancing at the jury during the prosecution's closing argument.

Last week, Adam Cox, another brother of Vallow Daybell, testified on behalf of the prosecution, telling jurors that he had no doubt his siblings were behind Vallow's death.

Adam Cox said Vallow’s killing occurred just before he and Vallow were planning an intervention to bring Vallow Daybell back into the mainstream of their shared faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He testified that before Vallow’s death, his sister had told people her husband was no longer living and that a zombie was living inside his body.

Four months before he died, Charles Vallow filed for divorce from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets. He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.

The trial over Vallow’s death marks the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell. She’s scheduled to go on trial again in early June on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.

In the wake of devastating Los Angeles fires, residents begin to rebuild

2025-05-03 00:28 Last Updated At：00:32

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nearly four months after wildfires reduced thousands of Los Angeles-area homes to rubble and ash, some residents are starting to rebuild.

In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, construction workers recently began placing wooden beams to frame a house on a lot where only a charred fireplace remains standing. In the seaside city of Malibu and foothills neighborhood of Altadena, many land parcels where homes once stood are being cleared of debris.

Hundreds of homeowners have sought city or county approval for new home designs and other permits to eventually rebuild or repair damaged homes, though few have gotten the green light to break ground.

Some 17,000 homes, businesses and other structures burned to the ground in the Jan. 7 fires. It's uncertain how much will be rebuilt.

Many homeowners will not be able to afford it, even those with insurance. Some are still trying to figure out whether it’s safe to return to their properties, given limited data on the degree to which toxins from the fires, including lead and asbestos, may have permeated their land. Roughly 400 land parcels are already for sale in the fire-ravaged areas.

Facing overwhelming loss and the chaos that comes with sudden displacement, those looking to rebuild must navigate an often confusing and time-consuming process. In most cases, it will take years for them to rebuild.

LA issued its first building permit nearly two months after the fires started. It took more than seven months before the first building permit was issued following the Woolsey Fire in 2018.

“Putting this in context of other disasters, the speed is actually probably faster than expected,” said Sara McTarnaghan, a researcher at the Urban Institute who studied the aftermath of urban wildfires in recent years in Colorado, Hawaii and California.

Kathryn Frazier, a music publicist and life coach, had lived in her four-bedroom, three-bath house in Altadena for 10 years and raised her two children there. After her home burned to the ground, she was in shock and questioned whether it made sense to come back.

But after conversations with neighbors, she became determined to rebuild.

"I’m not leaving," Frazier said. "That’s what kept coming up for everybody, and the more we all talked to each other the more we were all like ‘hell yes.’”

She is making progress. Frazier hired a crew to clear the property of debris and she is nearly through the first phase of permitting, which involves getting county review and approval for her new home's design. The next phase before receiving approval to begin construction includes reviews of electrical, plumbing and other aspects of the design.

Frazier, 55, is rebuilding her home without major changes to its size or location in order to qualify for an expedited building permit approval process.

“We are hoping to be building by June or July, latest,” she said. “I’ve been told that maybe by February or March of 2026 we could be back in our home."

For now, Frazier is getting quotes on windows, skylights and other home fixtures in hopes of locking in prices before they go up as more construction projects ramp up, or in response to the Trump administration's ongoing trade war.

“I’m doing things like scouring Home Depot, finding slate tiles that look modern and beautiful, but they’re actually really cheap," she said.

DeAnn Heline, a TV showrunner, knows what it’s like to build her dream house from the ground up.

She waited more than two years for construction to be completed on the five-bedroom, eight-bath home with ocean views. Once the project was done, her husband vowed to never build another house. The family lived there for six years before it was destroyed in the Palisades Fire.

“It was ash. There was nothing,” Heline said.

The couple, who have two daughters, have lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years. They couldn’t imagine giving up and not rebuilding.

“Not only are we building another house, we’re building the exact same house again,” Heline said, noting the new home will have some upgrades including fire-resistant materials and sprinklers for the exterior of the house.

Recently, they cleared debris from the land where the house once stood, a particularly onerous task because the home featured a large basement into which much of the structure collapsed as it burned.

Heline isn't sure when construction will begin, but figures it could be two or three years. She wonders, however, what the neighborhood will look like by then.

“What are you going back to? You’re going back to a moonscape? Are you there and no one else is on your block, or are you going back to a construction zone for many more years?" she said.

The Eaton wildfire destroyed many of the more than 270 historic Janes Cottages in Altadena, including the three-bedroom home Tim Vordtriede shared with his wife and two young children.

The family had only lived in the roughly 100-year-old house for three years.

“We just loved the storybook cottage and the vibe, and of course the grander vibe of Altadena,” he said. “It was perfect.”

Vordtriede, 44, has decided to rebuild, but not just yet. For now, he is using his experience as a construction project manager to help others who also lost their homes.

He co-founded Altadena Collective, a group providing assistance with home designs and guidance on how to navigate the complex and lengthy approval process for rebuilding permits. Of the roughly two dozen clients that the group is serving, at reduced cost, three are in the early stages of the permitting process.

Even after projects reach shovel-ready status, homeowners will have to wait perhaps more than a year before they can move in, he said.

“My first statement when anyone walks in the door is: We’re not here to help you design your dream home,” Vordtriede said. “This isn’t a dream time. This is a nightmare, and our job is to get you out of the nightmare as soon as possible.”