Chad Daybell

The day after being questioned, Vallow and Daybell left Rexburg, abandoning a storage locker full of children's items and photos, and were not seen until they were found in Kauai, Hawaii on Sunday, January 26, 2020. A search warrant was issued to search their rental car. They found items belonging to the missing children. Police also gave Vallow a court order demanding she produce the children by January 30. The children were not produced as ordered.

On February 20, 2020, Lori Vallow Daybell was arrested in Kauai and charged with desertion and nonsupport of her dependent children, Tylee Ryan and J.J. Vallow. Vallow was extradited to Idaho and traveled there on Thursday, March 5, 2020 She appeared in court on Friday, March 6 where the judge reduced the bail from $5 million to $1 million, but as of May 2, 2020, Vallow remains in jail on $1,000,000 bond. At least two local bond companies are reportedly unwilling to work with her.

On February 20, 2020, Lori Vallow was arrested by the Kauai Police Department in Princeville on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and charged with two felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of dependent children. She was also charged with resisting or obstructing officers, criminal solicitation to commit a crime and contempt of court. She was being held on $5 million bail. She later agreed to be extradited back to Idaho to fight the charges. The judge lowered her bail from $5 million to $1 million.

In a March 24, 2020 report, it was noted in official court documents that Vallow and Daybell had been convinced that Tylee and J. J. had been "possessed" and become "zombies."

On May 1, 2020, Vallow appeared for a court hearing in Rexburg, Idaho, to request a reduction of her $1 million bail. The judge denied her request.

Further complicating the children's disappearances and lack of cooperation from the mother are a string of suspicious deaths and a shooting: In July 2019, Vallow's estranged husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed in Phoenix, Arizona by Lori's brother, Alex Cox, allegedly in self-defense. Cox himself later died of unknown causes in December 2019. In early October Brandon Boudreaux, the then-estranged husband of Lori Vallow's niece, Melani Boudreaux, was shot at in the driveway of his Gilbert, Arizona home from a vehicle still registered to the deceased Charles Vallow, which prompted Boudreaux to hire a private detective to investigate the suspicious incidents. It was private investigators hired by Boudreaux that observed the children missing in Idaho. Also in October, Chad Daybell's wife, Tammy Daybell, was attacked in her driveway by what she believed was someone shooting a defective paintball gun. A few weeks later, on October 19, she died in her sleep from what was initially recorded as "natural causes". No post-mortem or autopsy was performed. But when Chad Daybell married Lori Vallow just two weeks after Tammy's death, law enforcement became suspicious and the cause of death is now under further investigation.

On October 9, 2019, Tammy Daybell was assaulted in her driveway by a masked man with an unloaded or defective paintball marker; the Fremont County sheriff's office did not find the perpetrator. Ten days later she was found dead, purportedly from natural causes; Chad Daybell claimed that she had retired the night before "with a terrible cough" and died in her sleep. No post-mortem or autopsy was performed at the time as Chad Daybell declined and the county coroner, Brenda Dye, did not overrule his decision. Two months later, Tammy Daybell's body was exhumed and autopsied but the results have not been made public.

In March 2020, an email written by police in Arizona, revealed that Lori Vallow could soon be indicted in relation to the death of her ex-husband, Charles Vallow. A wedding ring was purchased on Amazon for $35.99 on October 2, 2019, 17 days before Chad Daybell's first wife, Tammy, aged 49, passed away in her sleep. Vallow paid for the ring on her deceased husband's Amazon account. The ring was delivered to a Rexburg townhouse and was in the name of the now-deceased Charles Vallow. Lori Vallow continued to use Charles's account after his death.

As of September 23, 2019, a doorbell video of J.J Vallow playing with a friend is the last video of him taken. Rexburg's Kennedy Elementary School is the last confirmed place he was seen. On September 24, 2019, Lori Vallow contacted J.J's school and tell them that she has withdrawn him from the school because she would be homeschooling him. Tylee Ryan was last seen at Yellowstone National Park with J.J., Lori Vallow, and her brother Alex Cox on September 8, 2019. Chad Daybell became unexpectedly incommunicado, last speaking with filmmaker Devin K. Hansen via text messaging. In October, two Venmo payments were made from Tylee's account to her older half-brother, Colby Ryan. One payment was sent on October 10, 2019 with a message that read "we love you.", and the second payment was sent on October 16, 2019 with a heart emoji. Colby said he had not heard from Tylee since October. After text-messaging Tylee indicating he was worried, he received responses from Tylee's cell phone that indicated she was safe, but too busy to talk. After repeated unanswered calls to Tylee, he became more worried.

Vallow and Daybell were married in Hawaii on November 5, 2019. Also in November, they were both telling people that Tylee Ryan had died in 2017, or that Lori had no minor children. At the request of JJ's grandmother, the police visited the Lori Daybell's Rexburg, Idaho townhouse on November 26 to conduct a welfare check on JJ, but Vallow told police that the JJ was in Arizona with family. That night, a neighbor saw Lori Vallow and her brother packing a truck outside her home. When the police and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrived the next day to search the home, it was abandoned. Chad Daybell's home was also searched by investigators.

From December 2019 – January 2020, the Rexburg police, Fremont County sheriff's office, and FBI increased the investigation into Ryan and Vallow's disappearance, Tamara Daybell's "suspicious death", and the Daybells' flee from Idaho: evidence was collected, and Tamara Daybell's body was exhumed for autopsy. Colby Ryan and J. J. Vallow's grandparents pleaded with the Daybells to return the children, with the latter offering a reward of $20,000 . Investigators contended that " 'Joshua and Tylee's lives are in danger.', [...] the children are not with Chad and Lori. [... Lori] knows where they are or what has happened to them, but has 'completely refused to assist this investigation, [choosing instead to leave the state with her new husband.' " Through their lawyer, the Daybells said, "Chad Daybell was a loving husband and has the support of his children in this matter. Lori Daybell is a devoted mother and resents assertions to the contrary. We look forward to addressing the allegations once they have moved beyond speculation and rumor."

A storage locker rented by Lori Vallow in October 2019 which contained items belonging to, or related to, J.J. Vallow and Tylee Ryan, such as clothing, bikes, and photographs, was abandoned by her when she suddenly left Rexburg, Idaho, at the end of November 2019. Video footage shows her and others moving items in and out of the locker.

In 2007, Joseph Ryan was attacked by Lori's brother, Alexander "Alex" Cox, who tasered him and threatened to murder him, then pled guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Ryan died on April 3, 2018 of a myocardial infarction. Lori was known to the Ryan family as "Lolo".

Around 2015, Lori Vallow read Daybell's Standing in Holy Places series of books, becoming "obsessed" with them (according to a friend). After about two and a half years in Hawaii, the Vallow family moved to Arizona. On December 5, 2018, she first joined Daybell on the podcast Preparing a People (episode "Time to Warrior Up"), and would do so more in the future. In February 2019, Lori Vallow told her husband that "she no longer cared about him or J.J.", and that she was the reincarnated wife of Joseph Smith, before vanishing for 58 days. That same month, Charles Vallow filed for divorce, saying that his wife had "threaten[ed] to murder him" and stolen US$35,000 ; Vallow withdrew the petition in March saying he "wanted to try to make the marriage work".

In 2015, Chad Daybell allegedly twice heard a voice telling him to relocate to Rexburg, Idaho; he and Tammy moved there from Springville, Utah that June.

On February 24, 2006 — 282 days after her previous divorce — Lori Ryan married Leland Anthony Vallow, known as Charles Vallow, in Las Vegas, who had converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2013, the couple adopted Vallow's grandnephew, Joshua Jaxon "J.J." Vallow (born 2012/2013), before moving to Kauai in late 2014.

In 2001, Lori married Joseph Anthony Ryan Jr. Ryan legally adopted Colby before the couple had a daughter, Tylee, born in before he filed for divorce, on August 13, 2004; the divorce was finalized on May 18, 2005.

Tylee Ryan (born September 24, 2002) and Joshua "J. J." Vallow (born May 25, 2012) are two children from Rexburg, Idaho, who have not been seen since September 23, 2019. Prompted by relatives concerned not only about the kids they hadn't heard from in weeks, but also about other suspicious incidents, in November 2019 police questioned their mother, Lori Vallow, about the children's whereabouts and welfare.

Lori Norene Vallow Daybell (née Cox) was born June 26, 1973, in San Bernardino, California. In 1992, she married an unnamed high-school boyfriend. At age 22, she married 23-year-old William Lagioia in Travis County, Texas, on October 22, 1995. She and Lagioia had a son, Colby, in 1996, before divorcing on February 25, 1998.

Chad Guy Daybell was born August 11, 1968, in Provo, Utah. He married Tamara "Tammy" Douglas (born 1969 or 1970) in Manti, Utah on March 9, 1990. After graduating from Brigham Young University in 1992 with a B.A. in journalism, Daybell worked as a cemetery sexton, before establishing end of days publisher Spring Creek Book Company, in 2004, with Douglas, a graphic artist and manager. Chad and Tammy had 5 children: Garth, Emma, Seth, Leah, and Mark.