Lori Vallow's Appeal Claims THIS About Her Own Lawyer

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:11)
Anybody else feel like there's just, there's too many opportunities for people who do horrible, horrible things that are clearly guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to keep coming back the whack-a-mole process of, oh, they're gone, and then two seconds later, boop, there's Lori, boop, there's Chad, who's next? Oh, there's Lori again. You know, you feel like you're at Showbiz Pizza in 1987, listening to the sweet sounds of the Rock of Fire explosion, playing whack-a-mole to the head of LoriVallowDaybell, who just keeps coming back. Ah, deep breath.
LoriVallow believed her children were zombies. She and Chad Daybell built a belief system around the idea that the dark spirits had taken over certain people's bodies and that the original souls had left. You know, logical shit. The only way to free those spirits that were trapped, they believe, was to destroy the body. Her daughter, Tylee, was 16 and her son, JJ, was 7 Both were murdered. When investigators dug up Chad Daybell's backyard in Rexburg, Idaho in June of 2020, they found JJ wrapped in plastic duct tape. Tylee's remains had been burned and dismembered. Basically, they melted the children in the backyard. Lori had spent months telling people her children were safe, visiting friends at camp, living with relatives, going to see Frozen.
Chad married Lori 17 days after his first wife, Tammy, died. In October of 2019, Tammy's death was originally ruled natural.
It wasn't.
A jury convicted Lori unanimously in May of 2023 She's serving life, five life sentences in Idaho and two more in Arizona for conspiring to kill her ex-husband, Charles Vallow, and conspiring to kill her niece's ex-husband, Brennan Boudreau, seven life sentences across two states for Lori.
Again, whack-a-mole.
The Idaho Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments now in her appeal for November 2nd. Grab the popcorn, kids. Her appellate attorney, Craig Durham, filed five constitutional claims. And the most aggressive ask on the table is complete dismissal of every charge. And this is kind of interesting. She has an attorney now. I know.
It wasn't as exciting watching her try to argue for herself. I will admit that. I really thought that was gonna be a great shit show. It was kind of an average shit show. It was entertaining. It certainly had its moments. But after a little while, you're just like, this is so extreme. I can only watch it for a few. You know, it's like it's excessive violence in a movie. It's where it's like, yeah, you know, it's good to have those extreme scenes in an action movie. But the whole action movie can't be one long extreme scene. Otherwise, nothing is extreme anymore.
Lori acting as her own defense attorney was pretty much that. It was just crazy at full throttle for the entire trial. We need a little yin and yang. We need a little bit more of a balanced attorney than put Lori on the stand, let her say her part, ask her some questions.
Before anyone reacts to the headline and she's getting a hearing, Idaho Appellate Rule 37 says oral arguments happen in every appeal before the Supreme Court unless both sides agree to skip it. Nobody agreed, so the court put it on the calendar. It's how things work in Idaho. The state that doesn't have the insanity defense gives you a lot of, I guess, more options to kind of go, maybe something else, maybe they actually are possessed. That's not the justices saying they found a problem. That's just, it's procedural. It's how it works in Idaho. So nobody's like, maybe she really has a point. Maybe we really did miss something. And he was climbing the walls like a spider monkey.
Durham filed 64 pages of argument. Deputy Attorney General Jeff Nye filed 59 pages of facts.
Does anyone else wonder if maybe it's Bill's son, Nye?
Today on Bill Nye, the Science Guy, Lori Vallow.
That's Saturday morning cartoon madness right there. The justices have read both briefs. They want to ask questions and Lori won't even be in the room. The question is whether any of these five claims can survive contact with what this woman actually did and what the state actually documented. Durham's first claim is a speedy trial. The nearly two year gap between her indictment in May of 2021 and her trial in April of 23 Two years sounds long until you ask why it took two years. Well, that was unfair. Well, sorry, Lori. You were found incompetent to stand trial twice. Court appointed evaluators determined you couldn't understand the charges against you or help your own lawyers build a defense. The case stops until treatment restores competency. So there's that.