Lori Daybell’s niece testifies about zombies, castings at Chad Daybell’s murder trial

BOISE — Chad Daybell had a pendant that he would use to get answers from God, and then he’d share those answers with Lori Vallow Daybell and her friends, according to testimony presented in his murder trial Monday.

Melani Pawlowski, Lori Daybell’s niece, testified that Chad Daybell did not need to use the pendant to get answers but would sometimes use it as a tool by swinging it like a pendulum. It was one of the examples she gave explaining the influence he held over their fringe religious group.

“Chad was said to have a gift to spiritually discern,” Powlowski said. “He could see light and dark — or if a person had good intentions.”

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She said she believes that it was Chad Daybell who eventually labeled both 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow as “dark” before their deaths.

Pawlowski said she met Chad Daybell in November 2018, about a year before he married her aunt. She said she would get advice from him through Lori Daybell and eventually became so close to the couple that she began referring to them as “Mom and Dad.”

At one point, she said Chad Daybell told her that her ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux, was tracking her car. When she later found out that was true, “It validated a lot of the things he was saying, for me at least,” she testified.

Pawlowski spoke about “castings,” which she said was an idea that was “constantly changing” as Chad and Lori Daybell added their own changes to information that initially came from a podcast by Julie Rowe, an author whose books were published through Chad Daybell’s publishing company.

Later, Pawlowski said she learned from Lori Daybell that some people were considered “zombies,” but she assumed the idea came from Chad Daybell.

“There was some type of darkness that you couldn’t cast out. … That person would pass away because the darkness was too much … it overtook them,” Pawlowski said, describing what she recalls being told about zombies.

 

Where were the kids?

 

Pawlowski said she traveled to Rexburg to visit Lori Daybell for one of the last weeks of September 2019 and did not see JJ or Tylee there. She testified that Lori Daybell told her Tylee was with a friend from BYU-Idaho, where she claimed her daughter was attending school, and JJ was with a nanny.

“I got a few different answers,” Pawlowski said.

She said she received similar answers about where JJ and Tylee were when she traveled with Lori Daybell in October 2019 to both Missouri and Hawaii. She said Lori Daybell made phone calls during the trip, but she did not hear JJ or Tylee’s voices in the background of those phone calls as Lori Daybell would speak on the phone with headphones.

Pawlowski said while they were in Hawaii, they learned that Chad Daybell’s wife, Tammy Daybell, had died.

“(Lori Daybell) from what I could tell, seemed in a state of shock — just surprised,” she testified.

She said Lori Daybell traveled back to Idaho pretty quickly while she stayed behind in Hawaii. Later, she said she learned from Lori Daybell that Alex Cox, Pawlowski’s uncle, was supposed to go on the trip to Hawaii but stayed in Idaho because “Chad had something that he needed help with.”

Authorities originally thought Tammy Daybell died from natural causes, but after her body was exhumed, an autopsy determined her death was the result of a homicide. Chad Daybell is charged with her murder.

Time to leave Rexburg

 

Ian Pawlowski, Melani Pawlowski’s husband, testified that he met Chad and Lori Daybell in November 2019, ahead of his wedding at the end of the month. He said he became concerned after hearing more about his wife’s unusual religious beliefs on the night of the wedding.

Ian Pawlowski said a “remote” blessing he received from Chad and Lori Daybell seemed “unorthodox,” and he talked to his wife about that, but the weight and implications of it all didn’t hit until later when Melanie Pawlowski shared her concerns about Tylee and JJ.

He said because of concerns for his two children and his ex-wife, he spoke with officers and began recording conversations for them that were played for jurors on Monday. One of the calls from December 2019 included Chad and Lori Daybell urging Melani and Ian Pawlowski to leave their home in Rexburg and go somewhere else.

Ian Pawlowski said Chad and Lori Daybell would call them and then “disappear for a few days or a week at a time.” He and his wife did not know where they were. He said they would speak about their dislike of police, and that Chad Daybell told Melani Pawlowski the police were tapping her phone.

Chad Daybell told the Pawlowskis he was worried that police “are still watching you.” In the call, Melani Pawlowski countered, saying police probably were watching, but she and her family were just doing their thing. Chad Daybell told her she needed to get out of the conflict.

“They’re going to see you as the target since you’re the only one that they really can find at this moment,” Chad Daybell told her, urging her to move “for your own sake, for your own sanity.”

One of the people on the phone identified certain police officers in Rexburg who were “the bad ones.”

During the phone call, they also talked about Melanie Gibb’s decision to talk to police and confess that she lied to them about having JJ in her care; Lori Daybell said they could not trust her anymore.

Some people in the conversation said Gibb was throwing all of them “out of the bus,” but Lori Daybell said she was not concerned because the police would not believe Gibb after she admitted to lying to them.

“It’s bad for her in every way,” Lori Daybell said. “I don’t see it going anywhere bad for any of us.”

Choices will ‘make perfect sense’ in heaven

 

Multiple blessings given remotely by Chad Daybell were played for the jurors. Ian Pawlowski said those blessings were typical.

Chad Daybell said in the blessings Ian and Melani Pawlowski will be used by the Lord, the Lord is pleased with them and they will be an example to “thousands, even millions.”

Chad Daybell told them in a blessing that their choices “might not make sense to the telestial world,” referring to Earth, according to Pawlowski, but will “make perfect sense” in heaven, and angels are singing praises for their efforts.

Ian Pawlowski said he understood that Chad and Lori Daybell intended to “cleanse the earth” of those who are possessed, or those who are dark.

In a call right after Alex Cox died, which was also played during the trial, Lori Daybell said she probably would not be coming to Arizona for a potential funeral for Cox, and she did not want anything from his house. She and Melani Pawlowski were laughing in the call, although Ian Pawlowski said his wife was upset.

Melani Pawlowski says during the call that she doesn’t want her former husband to know about Cox’s death because she wants him to remain afraid of Alex Cox. Lori Daybell jokes that Cox will be “handling the police from now on.”

Lori Daybell then tells her niece Cox’s mission was to protect them and he set it up so they both had a husband to protect them before he left.

During this call, a blessing came from Lori Daybell as well. She tells Melani and Ian Pawlowski she is grateful they are “powerful warriors on our team.” She continues, “That team has been dwindling. Of all the people that we trusted that we can count on you to be valiant faithful warriors.”

Later she says, “You will both have the opportunity to love so many children and help so many children in this lifetime.”

 

Uncovering JJ’s body

 

Prior to the Pawlowskis’ testimonies, FBI agent Steve Daniels, who testified Friday, continued his testimony about finding the bodies of JJ and Tylee behind Chad Daybell’s home in Salem, Idaho.

Attorneys brought physical evidence found at the scene to the courtroom on Friday, including a chain and a charm believed to have been Tylee’s, as well as a shovel and a pick. On Monday, Daniels spoke specifically about the FBI’s process for finding JJ’s body. He said the ground nearby has taller grasses, but the existence of “empty spots” helped them choose where to dig.

He said they went layer by layer, and the jury was shown pictures of the stones or cement blocks they found that he said were “precise.” Daniels also said someone had taken time to cut tree roots in order to bury JJ in that location, near a tree.

Daniels testified they found black plastic, and he took his hands to scrape dirt from around it. “It just felt like this was a human head or skull that was inside that black plastic,” he said.

He said they took a razor blade and cut through the layer of black plastic and then a layer of white plastic underneath, saw hair, and determined it was JJ’s burial site. After locating JJ’s body, he said investigators used a backhoe to search the area further because they had not yet located Tylee’s body.

Chad Daybell is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of JJ and Tylee and his former wife, Tammy Daybell, in late 2019. He is also charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder of each of the victims, grand theft and two counts of insurance fraud.