Lori Vallow's shocking jailhouse comments to her son
By Alyssa Guzman
In a shocking jailhouse phone call, convicted child murderer Lori Vallow said that her teenage daughter was responsible for killing the girl's younger brother.
Vallow, 51, was sentenced to multiple life sentences with no chance of parole in July 2023 for murdering two of her children, Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, 7, and conspiring to kill her husband's former wife, Tammy Daybell.
Her husband, Chad Daybell, was sentenced to death for the triple murder in June 2024.
In a jailhouse call with her estranged son, Colby J. Ryan, who she has not spoken to in four years, Vallow speculated that Tylee could have JJ down 'too long' to 'try to get him to not scream and be loud in the apartment,' killing him. She said Tylee then took her own life.
'When I came in on that scene and they were gone, I thought Tylee did it to get back at me,' she said in the 64-minute call, which Ryan posted to his YouTube channel. 'I thought it was all my fault. I thought she was mad at me, and that's what happened.'
'My sister did not kill my brother,' Ryan emotionally told his audience after getting off the phone with his mother. 'She didn't. And to put it on her is so unfair. It's so unfair to Tylee. She would never do that.'
Vallow's story doesn't align with the timeline prosecutors laid out, in which they stated that Tylee died in September 2019, two weeks before her brother Joshua died.
Lori Vallow, 51, was sentenced to multiple life sentences with no chance of parole in July 2023 for murdering two of her children , Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua 'JJ' Vallow, 7, and conspiring to kill her husband's former wife, Tammy Daybell
In a jailhouse call with her estranged son, Colby J. Ryan, Vallow said that her daughter Tylee (right) held her son JJ (left) down 'too long' to 'try to get him to not scream and be loud in the apartment' and killed him
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Their bodies were found on Chad Daybell's property in June 2020, according to East Idaho News.
'At the time, I didn't want anyone to know what Tylee had done to JJ,' Vallow told her son through tears. 'I wanted to continue to protect Tylee.'
Vallow said Tylee hated when JJ was loud in the apartment and speculated that she had accidentally killed JJ by trying to shut him up.
'It was an accident,' she insisted to her son, who silently shook his head throughout the conversation. 'Do you not think that I would have told police that I did it to save Tylee, because you know that I would have. I would have done anything to protect Tylee.
'You can't imagine what it's like to find your children in that way.'
She told her son that Tylee was on several medications to help with anxiety and depression, and was taking birth control to help with ovarian cysts.
'You're telling me that this is to protect my sister's name?' Ryan asked.
'In my mind, yes,' his mother replied, saying she'd willingly be in prison for a million lifetimes to protect her daughter.
Ryan then calmly told his mother that he didn't believe her side of the story, has come to know the prosecutors well and has viewed some of the evidence.
'There was nothing left of my sister to even look at because someone was so brutal with her, someone was so sick with her after she was taken,' he told his mother. 'Tylee was so brutally mistreated after her death that it wasn't even human.
Before the jailhouse call, Colby J. Ryan (pictured), hadn't spoken to his mother in four years
Ryan does not allow her mother to have a relationship with his children (pictured)
'It's the most brutal thing that I've ever heard in my life.'
Prosecutors also found that JJ had suffocated, and Ryan told his mother that the boy had been 'fighting' the bag that been placed over his head.
'Okay, that's not the case,' Vallow denied. 'When I found my little precious babies, there was no bag, there was no duct tape, there's nothing of that.'
Ryan continued to deny his mother's story, but she told him that 'when we all get to heaven, you'll know.'
Vallow told her son she is 'following Jesus' and that she learned everything she knows 'personally from Jesus.'
'There is higher knowledge for people who need to know it. People who don't need to know it, don't need to know it. It comes directly from Jesus to me. It doesn't come from any other source. It comes from Jesus Christ directly to me,' she said.
She also claimed her case has been blown out of proportion by the 'media flood.'
'It is a personal attack on my family because Jesus asked me to do a job for him,' she insisted.
She also told Ryan that she loves him 'more than anything.'
'I miss being a part of your life and my grandchildren's life,' Vallow told her son. 'I'm sorry it's been hard for you.'
Ryan declined to allow his mother to have a relationship with his grandchildren.
Vallow told her son she is 'following Jesus' and that she learned everything she knows 'personally from Jesus'
'I have no malice toward you,' he said. 'I do 100-percent forgive you. I forgive you. I'm not going to hold you in a jail cell of my heart, but you can not be a part of my children's lives. You and I can't even be a part of each other's lives. I don't feel like I know you anymore.'
Before her crimes, Vallow was described by friends and family members as a doting mother.
She was a former contestant on Wheel of Fortune, where she won an impressive $17,500 in 2004. That same year, she competed in the Mrs. Texas beauty pageant, where she talked about being a good wife and mother - though ominously described herself as a 'ticking timebomb'.
She has been married five times, and has two biological children, Colby and Tylee, and an adopted son, JJ, all of whom she raised within the LDS Church - also known as Mormonism.
Vallow's descent into religious zealotry was fueled by her third marriage to Tylee's father, Joseph Ryan. She claims that after discovering he had been sexually abusing her children, she told a bishop she was either going to 'murder' her husband or devote herself to 'the temple.'
In 2017, she reportedly began reading a series of books by doomsday author Chad Daybell, leading her to seek out the father-of-five at a religious conference in 2018.
Vallow's story doesn't align with the timeline prosecutors laid out, where they state Tylee died in September 2019, two weeks before her brother Joshua died. Their bodies were found in Chad Daybell's backyard
Her harrowing decline was detailed in the Netflix docuseries 'Sins of our Mother,' which included audio snippets from her bizarre podcast, 'Feel the Fire.'
She became obsessed with theories about the impending apocalypse and the second coming of Christ, and a friend said in the docuseries she even threatened to drive her family off a cliff to spare them from the looming disaster.
Soon after meeting Vallow, Daybell joined an episode of her podcast, which would routinely espouse beliefs about the impending apocalypse.
Both Vallow and Daybell were convinced the second coming of Christ was imminent and only 144,000 people could be saved.
They also believed that people could be rated based on their 'light or dark' energy, leading them to vow to 'rid' evil spirits from these 'zombies'.
Vallow allegedly saw her own children as 'dark,' and those who knew her reportedly saw her reference the youngsters as 'zombies.'
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