Mary Ellen Resendez-Schwezo
Appearances
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
They used the school records to decide that. And then, of course, Melanie Gibb and her boyfriend's testimony were key into when JJ was last seen.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
They were calling police departments between Idaho and Arizona, starting in Arizona, and just kind of alerting them that they've not heard from JJ Vallow. And they were really concerned. They also hadn't heard anything from his sister, Tylee Ryan. So that kind of started investigators in the background looking for the two children.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Lori gives no defense. No witnesses are called. She doesn't testify.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
She was sentenced to three life sentences without parole. We do end up hearing from her, though. At her sentencing, she tells this tale that there were no murders at all. There was only accidental deaths, suicides, medication side effects. She tells people or tells the court that JJ and Tylee are happy and they're busy in heaven. Tylee has visited her. She has told her not to worry.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And Tammy Daybell is her eternal friend, that Tammy also visits her to bring her peace and comfort. So the way Lori tells it, they don't blame her.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
He is sentenced to death. The death penalty actually went off the table with Lori, but it stayed on the table with Chad Daybelt. So he is right now on death row in Idaho.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
That's really interesting because it's almost like you had to go back in time. Now, remember, Charles Vallow was shot and killed back in July of 2019 before Lori's kids went missing and before they were found dead. But Charles still deserved justice. And so even though Lori is serving these three life sentences, you know, Charles and his family did deserve justice.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
So the state of Arizona extradited Lori right after her 2023 trial. And she was brought here to Arizona to face the conspiracy murder charge for her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Charles was shot and killed by Alex Cox, her brother. He admitted to shooting Charles. He claimed it was in self-defense. He told police that Charles had come after him with a bat.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Now, the family questioned this from the beginning. Charles was a minor league baseball player. And according to the family, if he swung a bat, he was going to connect. And so that's what this trial dealt with. Was that self-defense or was it basically an ambush to where they had planned to murder Charles?
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yes. The question was whether Lori actually conspired with her brother to kill him. So that was basically what the prosecution had to prove, that Lori was involved and that it was a planned killing. It was not self-defense. You were in the courtroom for this? I was watching most of it on stream.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And by the time we hit December of 2019, that's when the nation starts hearing about Lori Vallow.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
I did go into the courtroom for one day to just sort of see the color of the courtroom and just kind of get a feel for what the courtroom was like.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
It was interesting because even though I'd covered this for years, I'd not actually been in the room with Lori. So when she first entered the courtroom, I was surprised on the charisma that she had. I had heard about it, but there was definitely some charisma. And in this trial, she actually decided to represent herself.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
In December of 2024, her attorney asked to be removed from the case, and Lori asked to represent herself. The judge gave her several warnings, you know, really wanted to make sure, are you sure about this? Are you sure? But she was determined she was going to take over her own case.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
It was interesting to hear everyone's opinion on Lori basically representing herself. I think people thought it was going to be more of a train wreck than it was. There were times where she didn't do too bad. And then there were times where, oh no, her feelings definitely came out. And one of the moments I think everybody will remember about the trial is when Nancy Jo Hancock comes up to testify.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And Nancy Jo was someone that Charles Vallow had just met online. He's separated from Lori at this time. And he's coming to Arizona to take JJ to school and visit with JJ. And so he meets up with her the night before he's murdered. And they have this date. They go to dinner. They get to know each other. Very kind of innocent date. But Lori turns it into something more.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Lori really goes after Nancy Jo. She keeps using the term, my husband. So you went on a date with my husband.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And she sort of attacked Nancy Jo saying like, you know, do you normally do this? Do you normally date married men? And it gets to the point where she says, so you were on this date with my husband where you guys just talked about me all night long. And Nancy Jo replies, don't flatter yourself.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
One of the reasons Lori moves to Rexburg, Idaho, is she is having an affair with an author named Chad Daybell. He would later become her fifth husband. He lived nearby in Fremont County. And so that kind of spurred the move between her, her brother Alex Cox, her niece Melanie Boudreaux, and the two children that all moved there.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And that just like that was like the line that everybody will remember from this trial because she just put Lori in her place.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Well, that's interesting because in the courtroom, the jurors didn't know that.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
They were unable to bring that. So the jurors did not know. There was so much they didn't know. I mean, they were literally taken back into time in July of 2019. And so they didn't know that Lori had been convicted.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yes, yes. They eventually found out in court that Chad and Lori had married, but they were not aware that they were convicted. They were not aware that JJ was murdered. They were not aware that Tylee was murdered. It isn't until after the verdict... They come out of the courtroom, and one juror said, somebody yelled to them, you need to Google.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And it's at that point when they're being confronted by reporters that they're learning that Tylee is dead, and JJ is dead, and Chad's first wife is dead. And one juror told reporters she really wanted to hear from Tylee, but she had no idea why... They didn't bring Tylee to the stand to testify. And so they were really, really in the dark.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
They just were able to base their verdict on text messages. They based it on the police investigation, but they said what weighed heavy for them were the text messages. One particular text message. So in this trial, Trina Kaye says the motive is money. and Chad Daybell. That was Lori's motive. She wanted to be with Chad Daybell, but they also wanted money.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
They wanted Charles Fallows' life insurance.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
It is, yeah. It's all about the life insurance money. And so there are some text messages that they brought in before the killing where she's telling her brother Alex, you know, I need you tonight. We're going to be like Nephi, which is a biblical character in the Book of Mormon that does a murder that is justified by Christ.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
But many of the jurors say it was the message that was sent to Chad after Charles' death. And in that text message, she's telling Chad she's not going to get the life insurance that Ned—and remember, that was the dark spirit that she would call Charles. Charles was Ned Schneider—that Ned must have changed it before we got rid of him.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yep, we got rid of him. That's what the jurors said convicted her.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
No, the total deliberation was about three hours over two days. They got the case very late the day before, and there were a couple of holdouts. They described that there were a couple of jurors that weren't on board, and so they carefully went through the evidence, and soon they were on board.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
One juror, a male juror who only gave his first name to reporters, had said the day before he wouldn't have convicted her. It wasn't until he saw Trina Kaye's closing arguments where she brought together the whole case and she showed only the highlights of each testimony. She replayed these in court. Only the highlights of each testimony and suddenly he could see the case.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Although I do want to clarify, Melanie moves there a couple months later. She's not there initially. But so there's the children missing that gets everyone going, and they end up being found dead, right? They do, but not right away. There's a lot of... of mystery in between. And I think that mystery is what captivated the nation.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And it was that moment that he realized Lori was guilty. But had he been asked the day before, he would have said, nope, not guilty. So it was really interesting on how much Trina Kaye's closing arguments mattered to them. And Lori came in and gave her closing arguments, and she made it look like, The prosecution was holding out. She told them to watch her police interview.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Watch the whole thing, not just portions of it. And so the jurors did that. And they couldn't see what Lori wanted them to see because what they saw was pretty much what Trina Kaye had presented in court.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
So the next trial deals with her then-nephew by marriage, Brandon Boudreau. He was married to her niece, Melanie Boudreau, who's now been remarried. But in October of 2019, Brandon is coming home from the gym, and someone takes a shot at him, and they miss. The bullet goes into the headrest of his Tesla. And if it wasn't for that miss...
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Brandon would have been dead and his life insurance would have gone to his then wife. The divorce was just days from being finalized. And so the motive with Brandon is also life insurance. So prosecutors are going to allege that this was Lori and her brother, Alex Cox, again conspiring in order to get Brandon Boudreaux's life insurance.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
It has everything that people are interested in, the sex, the money, the power, the conspiracy secrets. It really is a case that has it all, that will draw in the attention of court viewers.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
That's exactly something that everyone has to kind of remember, that while this might be a story to other people, these were lives and family members that people loved and they were taken away. And this is truly a tragedy for several families involved in this. And it's their real life, unfortunately.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And some of that mystery was when they had gone to do a welfare report on JJ and Tylee, they did catch up with Lori and Chad and Alex initially. Lori tells them, or I think it was Alex that told them that JJ had gone to be with his grandmother. And they said, well, that's kind of funny because it's his grandmother who's looking for him.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And so they go back the next morning, and this is in November, close to Thanksgiving, just before Thanksgiving of 2019. And when they go back the next morning, Lori is gone. She's cleared out. Chad is gone. Alex is gone. They had disappeared. So at the time the nation finds out that JG and Tylee are missing, we also don't know where Lori Vallow is, or we don't know where Chad Daybell is.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
It's not for about another month that they turn up in Hawaii. Investigators track them to Hawaii. And suddenly we see them on their way to the beach like nothing's happened. And there's some footage with Lori sitting by the pool. And the investigators are handing her this court order that she has to produce her children, you know, by the end of January.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yeah. Well, I mean, they're simply asking her, where are the kids? And that kind of became the question, where are the kids? And she wouldn't tell them anything. So then a judge got involved and the judge is saying, we need to know these kids are okay. Because at that time, nobody knows.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
But there's so much concern over where these kids are and whether they're okay, because at that time, we're not really thinking that the kids were murdered. So she gets a court date and the judge says she's got to produce these kids. Lori doesn't show up. And so a short time later, they arrest her in Hawaii. So by February of 2020, she's being extradited to Idaho.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
She's facing charges of child desertion and not providing for the children. Basically charges to hold her until they can figure out what happened to JJ and Tylee. Months later in June, JG and Tylee are found in Lori's fifth husband's backyard, and they're dead.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
So eventually, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow are charged with the murder of JJ and Tylee.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
So Lori grew up in a Mormon family, and her parents were part of the Sovereign Citizen Movement. It's kind of an extreme ideology that doesn't believe they're beholden to the U.S. government. Vallow, we know, was married about five times before. the first marriage happening when she was very young. Her longest marriage is to Charles Vallow.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
It lasted 13 years, and when we interviewed her family, they felt it was the perfect match. Charles and her really hit it off. That is until she meets Chad Daybell. Chad was a doomsday author. He was living up in Rexburg, Idaho. The family originated in Springville, Utah. So Chad says in his books that he has had these two near-death experiences, and they basically allow him—
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
to see or get messages from the other side of the veil. Laurie's niece, Melanie Boudreau-Polowski, talks about Chad having this pendulum, and he would get messages from however this pendulum would swing, but that he could see light and dark spirits. He would eventually, if you listen to Melanie Gibb, Gloria's best friend at the time, she talks about these dark spirits were called zombies.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And in order for the spirit to be released, the body form had to die. They would just, either they would become too dark that they would die or, you know, they would have to die.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yeah, I think when you start looking at the body count, it kind of takes you back to 2019. In January of 2019, there's footage of Charles Vallow. He has just come back from a business trip, and his truck is missing from the airport. He calls Gilbert police, and he is locked out of his house. His house is dark. He's asking police to help him get into his home.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And when he does get into the home, it's empty. His belongings are gone. The kids are gone. The cars are gone. His work computers are gone. And he's telling Gilbert police that something's wrong with his wife. He loves his wife. He doesn't want anything to happen to her. But she's not well. She's telling him that she's a translated beating.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yes. And he's telling Gilbert police, she's telling him she doesn't need to eat and that she could kill him if she wants. And of course, now he's really concerned because he's got this empty house. And on that night, he doesn't know where his kids are. And so Lori shows up the next morning to the Gilbert police station. And she kind of tells a different tale.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
In her story, it is Charles who's having the affair and that she caught him. So he's a little angry and he's come up with this, you know, story. But she does go in for a mental evaluation here in Arizona and she is released. She passes. By the time you get into February 1st, Charles is filing for divorce, and he puts a lot in that divorce filing.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
He talks about the religious belief that she's an exalted goddess, that the zombies, that she believes that he's Ned Schneider. He's no longer Charles Vallow. He's now this spirit called Ned Schneider. He's saying that.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
recently, that she's now saying this about me. And he's concerned. He's concerned for his life and he's concerned for the safety of his children.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yes. Several months later, on July 11th in 2019, Charles Vallow goes to a home in Chandler, Arizona that he has rented for Lori. He's there to pick up JJ and take JJ to school. But somehow or another, some type of tussle happens, and Charles ends up dead, shot by Alex Cox, her brother, in self-defense. But before police can investigate... Alex and Lori are moving again.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And that's how they end up in Idaho in September of 2019. And of course, that sort of takes us full circle to when the kids first turn up missing.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yes, we were first introduced to Lori Vallow back in 2019. Lori moved from Arizona with her two children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and her adopted son, 7-year-old J.J. Vallow, and her brother Alex Cox from Arizona to Rexburg, Idaho. Within a week of her moving there, Tylee goes missing. And a couple weeks later, JJ goes missing. JJ Vallow's grandparents filed a missing persons report.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
There were actually two trials. The cases were split in 2023, even though the evidence was very much the same. Chad had waived his right to the Speedy trial while Lori had not. So they had to sever those trials.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Yes. And in October of 2019, Tammy suddenly ends up dead. She's training for a marathon. So she seems very healthy, but she suddenly ends up dead. And Chad says, no autopsy. And so they sort of listed it as natural causes. It isn't until December of 2019 that they exhume Tammy's body. The kids are missing and all of a sudden they're questioning, what happened to Tammy?
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
What really happened to Tammy? So they do exhume her and they have an autopsy. The autopsy reveals that she died of asphyxiation. So she also comes into these trials as one of the victims.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
Well, this is kind of where we get into the very gruesome and just heartbreaking part of the trials. JJ died of asphyxiation. Basically, JJ was found buried. He was bound by duct tape. He had a garbage bag over his head, and then he was placed into another garbage bag. And investigators really detailed just the...
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
The tragic way of finding him, of opening up those garbage bags and seeing his hair first sticking out of the garbage bags. So it was really, really heartbreaking and disturbing to jurors in how JJ was found. Tylee wasn't entirely found. There were parts of Tylee found in Chad Daybell's, what they would call their pet cemetery. Tylee had been burned. She had been parted.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And so they were never able to determine exactly how Tylee died or whether she was burned before or after. So it really gets into some really gruesome details. And it's really disturbing to investigators. It becomes very disturbing to jurors when they have to see the autopsy pictures and what was left of Tylee and how JJ was found.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And did they say Chad is the one who actually does the deed then or someone else? Well, according to phone records, you know, they're using GPS. They do believe that Alex was involved and that Chad was involved. They can see that Chad's and Alex's, you know, phones are on the property at the same time on the days that they believe the two kids were buried.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And these were two different days because Tylee ends up missing first. And then a couple of weeks later, JJ ends up missing. There's not a lot of testimony as far as how or when or who last saw Tylee. We know that just before she goes missing, there's a trip to Yellowstone Park and we see a photo of Tylee taken out of Lori's iCloud.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
And you can see Tylee, JJ, Alex, and Lori all at Yellowstone Park. With JJ, it is Lori's friend, Melanie Gibb, and her boyfriend who go to Lori's home. And they describe, you know, that was the last time that they saw JJ. They remember JJ that night. They remember Alex coming to get JJ. They remember Alex returning JJ, and JJ looked like he was asleep.
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The Crime Scene: 'Doomsday Mom' Found Guilty, Again
But the next morning when they wake up, JJ is gone, and they ask about him. And Lori says he had been possessed by the spirit. He was climbing the refrigerator. So she kind of describes this disturbing behavior that happens. was allegedly displayed by JJ. And that was the last time anyone saw JJ. It took a while for police to actually figure out when JJ went missing.