‘Cult mom’ killer Lori Vallow makes bizarre claims about her children’s murders in phone call from jail to son’s podcast
Lori Vallow, the so-called “cult mom” who was found guilty last year of murdering her two children has claimed in a prison call to her surviving son’s podcast that her teenage daughter is to blame for the death of her son and that the teenager then took her own life out of guilt.
Vallow, 51, made the bizarre claim in an interview that aired on Sunday in which she spoke out for the first time since she was sentenced in 2023 for the 2019 murders of her daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, and her son Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7.
The children’s remains were found buried in the Rexburg, Idaho backyard of Vallow’s husband, alleged “doomsday” cult leader Chad Daybell in June 2020, nine months after the children went missing.
Vallow was sentenced to life in prison for the murders, but in the call to her adult son Colby Ryan, which aired on his podcast, The Scar Wars, she told a different story, suggesting that Tylee was mad about their move to Idaho and accidentally killed JJ in a fit of frustration.
“What if Tylee was holding JJ down and trying to get him not to scream and be loud in an apartment? What if she held him down too long and realized afterward what she had done?” Vallow offered on the call.
“When I came in on that scene and they were gone, I thought Tylee did it to get back at me. I thought it was all my fault. I thought she was mad at me, and that’s what happened.”
Colby pressed Vallow to continue her story and the reason for not mentioning it at any time in the past four years.
“I didn’t want anyone to know what Tylee had done to JJ,” she tearfully told Colby on the call, “I wanted to continue to protect Tylee as her mother who has been trying to protect her for her whole life.”
She went on to explain that after she found the dead children, she “ran out,” and someone else did something with their bodies.
“I wasn’t aware what happened to them after I left that scene,” she said. “Their spirits were gone from their bodies. They were already in heaven.”
Vallow’s claims on the podcast do not match up with the details and timeline given at her trial that revealed Tylee died first – on September 9, 2019, two weeks before JJ was killed on September 23.
When their bodies were found in 2020, JJ was found wrapped in plastic and duct tape. He was still wearing the red pajamas he was last seen in. Tylee’s remains had been burned before she was buried in the pet cemetery on Daybell’s property. Parts of her body are still missing.
Colby struggled as he took his mother through the gruesome details of his siblings’ murders.
“She was brutally mistreated after her death,” he said. “It wasn’t even human. It’s the most brutal thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
