She's Gonna Save The World From Zombies - The Lori Vallow story

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast 9 min 1 speaker 2 chapters transcribed

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is Lori Vallow's connection to the apocalypse narrative?

Narrator 0:00

So the apocalypse is coming and the world is going to end, right? And this woman believes she can save us all by unaliving all the zombies? Now, her name is Lori and Lori's a normal housewife living in Arizona. And one day she discovers a series of novels. And these novels are all about the coming apocalypse and how to survive the end of the world. And Lori is very religious and she's reading these books and she really connects with them. And as she becomes more and more obsessed with the books, she starts spending less and less time with her kids. And eventually she decides to travel from Arizona to Utah to a convention where the author of these novels is going to speak because she wants to meet him.

Narrator 0:42

So the author is this guy, Chad Daybell. And Laurie gets to meet Chad Daybell, and she's all excited, and she tells him how much his books have changed her life. And these two really hit it off. And they start flirting a little, and Chad Daybell tells her they've been married in previous lifetimes. Which, I gotta say, that is one hell of a pickup line. So eventually, the convention ends, and they go their separate ways. But Lori and Chad decide to stay in touch, and they chat often. And he has her as a guest on his podcast, Long Distance. And they, of course, often talk about how to prepare your soul for the upcoming apocalypse. Now, because of the popularity of his beliefs, Chad Daybell does have a bit of a religious following.

Narrator 1:23

His beliefs are sort of an extreme denomination of Mormonism, which some people describe as a doomsday cult. And the more Lori interacts with Chad Daybell and the more she buys into his doomsday teachings, the more her personality starts to change. And she starts saying crazy things to her friends and family. Like that she's a divine goddess. That she has supernatural powers. That she's been reincarnated many, many times. That she is one of only 144,000 people who will actually be saved when the world ends. But most importantly, she starts talking about zombies. And not your walking dead, eat your brains type zombies. She and Chad Daybell believe that zombies are a normal person whose soul has been possessed by an evil demon. That's what they refer to as a zombie.

Narrator 2:12

And they think there are zombies all around them, hidden in plain sight. Now, Lori actually has a husband, who we'll just call husband. And at this point in her life, husband is seeing all these changes in her, and he's he's starting to get worried because she's been referring to herself as a goddess and talking about zombies and all kinds of crazy . But then one day everything changes for husband because Lori comes to him and she tells him that she no longer cares about him. And then after that, she just disappears. She steals his truck and she withdraws $35,000 from their joint bank account and she just bounces. And then two months go by and she's still gone and no one knows where she is. But as you could have guessed, everyone suspects that she went to Idaho where Chad Daybell lives to be with him. So after two months of being gone, one day she suddenly returns. And of course, she and husband immediately start getting into arguments about all this. And she starts insisting that he is possessed by an evil demon. An evil demon named Ned Schneider.

Narrator 3:18

Which, I gotta say, that's not a very demonic sounding name for an evil demon, Ned Schneider, but okay. And then she tells Husband that her God has put her on some kind of holy mission. And that if Husband gets in the way of her holy mission, she will have to unalive him. And Husband is like, okay, what the ? And he goes and he files for divorce. And then Laurie's like, okay, fine. And she takes their two kids and she goes to live with her brother. Her brother is this guy, Alex. And Alex is a total religious nut job too. So Lori tells Alex that Husband is actually a zombie and that he's possessed by an evil demon named Ned Schneider. And Alex is like, say no more, I'll take care of him. About five months later, Husband comes over to the house that Lori's renting to pick up their son. And while he's there, he and Lori, they start fighting. And Lori's brother, Alex, is there. And so Alex gets involved in this fight. And at one point, Alex gets so mad, he goes into his bedroom and he gets his pew-pew. And he comes out and he starts threatening Husband with it.