Southwest
'Doomsday mom' Lori Vallow granted mental health exam ahead of second murder trial
An Arizona judge on Tuesday granted convicted killer mom Lori Vallow’s request for a mental competency evaluation ahead of her second criminal trial.
Vallow, who, along with her husband Chad Daybell, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Idaho last year for killing her two youngest children and Daybell’s former wife, is now set to stand trial in Arizona for allegedly conspiring to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and her niece’s ex-husband.
Vallow pleaded not guilty to the alleged crimes last December.
Two “qualified mental health experts” will perform the evaluation, and Vallow’s trial has been vacated pending results of the examination, according to court documents obtained by Fox News Digital.
LORI VALLOW TRIAL: IDAHO CORONER REVEALS JJ VALLOW’S AND TYLEE RYAN’S CAUSES OF DEATH
Vallow and Daybell killed two of Vallow’s children, 7-year-old J.J. Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, as well as Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell, in 2019.
While J.J. and Tylee were missing, and directly after Tammy’s death in October 2019, Vallow and Daybell married in Hawaii in November of that same year.
LORI VALLOW CASE: JJ VALLOW’S GRANDMOTHER DOESN’T ‘RECOGNIZE’ SO-CALLED ‘CULT MOM’ SMILING OUTSIDE COURT
J.J. and Tylee were found in shallow graves on Daybell’s rural Rexburg property in June 2020, months after they disappeared from their home in September 2019.
The 16-year-old’s remains were burned while the 7-year-old was bound in duct tape.
LORI VALLOW TRIAL: ‘CULT MOM’ SENTENCED IN MURDERS OF 2 OF HER CHILDREN, HUSBAND’S FIRST WIFE
Ahead of her murder trial in Idaho last year, Vallow spent about nine months in an Idaho mental hospital. Following those nine months, Fremont District Judge Steven Boyce ruled that she was “returned to competency and is fit to proceed” in her first trial, which was similarly halted when she was committed to the mental health facility.
Idaho prosecutors alleged during Vallow’s and Daybell’s trials that the pair had extreme religious beliefs, including the idea that some people had “dark” souls while others had “light” souls. They believed the “dark” spirits could be so dark, in fact, that they could be zombies.
‘CULT MOM’ LORI VALLOW APPEALS CONVICTION AFTER BEING FOUND GUILTY OF MURDERING HER 2 CHILDREN
“You removed your children from their home in Arizona, alienated them from friends and family… and you brought them here to murder them. You had so many other options… You chose the most evil and destructive path possible,” Boyce said at the conclusion of her trial in July 2023. “I don’t think to this day you have any remorse for the effort and heartache you caused.”
He added that Vallow does “have mental health issues.”
LORI VALLOW VERDICT: IDAHO JUROR SAYS ‘CULT MOM’ HAD ‘NO HINT’ SHE WAS DESTROYING ‘SO MUCH AROUND HER’
A February 2023 psychiatric diagnosis revealed that Vallow suffers from a “delusional disorder” mixed with “hyper-religiosity” and a “continuous and unspecified personality disorder” with narcissistic features, according to Boyce.
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“Others looked for your children when you knew where they were and knew they were dead,” Boyce told Vallow in court last year. “They were found dead, burned, mutilated and dismembered and buried like animals. After you knew they were dead, you collected public-funded assistance payments meant for them, and that was blood money you kept for yourself.”
During her sentencing, Vallow spoke publicly for the first time since her arrest in 2020, and appeared to be in denial, saying at the time that she knew her children were “happy and busy in the spirit world.”
WATCH LORI VALLOW ADDRESS THE COURT:
“I have had many communications with Jesus Christ, savior of this world, and our heavenly parents. I have had many angelic visitors come and communicated with me and even manifested themselves to me because of these communications,” Vallow told an Idaho courtroom during her sentencing hearing. “I know for a fact that my children are happy and busy in the spirit world. Because of my communications with my friend, Tammy Daybell, I know that she is also very happy and extremely busy.”
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In her statement to the court, Vallow added she “died in the hospital” while she was in labor with her daughter, Tylee. Doctors revived her, at which point she began seeing spirits.
“One of the times that Tylee came to me as a spirit after she died… she said to me, ‘Stop worrying, Mom. We are fine.’ She knows how I worry and how I miss her,” Vallow said at the time.
The so-called “cult mom” was extradited to Arizona in November 2023, about four months after she was sentenced to life without parole in Idaho.
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Southwest
Democrats struggle to understand Trump’s appeal among Latino men in Arizona: Politico
While the Harris campaign leads the Trump campaign among Latino voters in Arizona, Latino men are proving a more difficult constituency to reach for Democrats.
“I think the bottom line is, Democratic consultants, Democratic politicians, they just have such a hard time accepting that Latinos can just be conservative,” a historian at Northwestern University, Geraldo Cadava, told Politico.
Some polls, including a Suffolk University/USA Today poll, have found that Latino men under the age of 50 strongly support former President Trump.
TRUMP, HARRIS NECK AND NECK IN BATTLEGROUND STATES ARIZONA, GEORGIA, NORTH CAROLINA
“Looking at the data, it was all about inflation/economy and immigration,” pollster David Paleologos said when asked to summarize the survey findings for Politico.
“She’s 7 percent shy of where she needs to be,” Paleologos said of Vice President Kamala Harris’ popularity with Latinos in Arizona.
Some voters have also signaled support for Harris’ policies, however. Gerald de la O, who has voted for Trump previously, told Politico that he was impressed by Harris’ economic policies.
“Her economic plan to give the middle class their money back sounded pretty good,” he said to Politico.
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“Hispanic men want to be able to work,” Catholic author, radio host, and Catholics for Trump leader Jesse Romero said to Politico. “They don’t want government overreach. They want to be left alone.”
The debate over mass deportations, which Trump has spoken in favor of on the campaign trail, is also a point of division for Hispanic voters.
“The first group that is going to be benefited by a mass deportation resolution to the immigration problem are the Hispanics that have been in this country legally for the last 40, 50 years,” Hispanic communications director for the Trump campaign, Jaime Florez, told Politico. “We all know that I’m an immigrant, right? I understand when the president [Trump] is talking about immigrants, he’s not talking about me.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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Los Angeles, Ca
Pedestrian and motorcyclist killed in Ventura County highway crash
A pedestrian and a motorcyclist were killed in a highway crash in Ventura County early morning Sunday, according to the California Highway Patrol.
CHP said officers responded to reports of a crash around 6:05 a.m. on Highway 118 west of Rocky Peak Road in Moorpark.
Officers found an unoccupied car in the center median, and east of the car they found a 33-year-old Canoga Park woman and a 54-year-old Simi Valley man lying in the highway lanes, both deceased.
The victims’ identities are being withheld by CHP pending notification to their families.
According to the preliminary investigation, it’s believed that the woman first crashed her Nissan Altima into the right side guardrail, spinning out of control across all westbound Highway 118 lanes until she crashed into the center median wall.
She then got out of the car and was standing in the first lane when the motorcyclist struck her.
CHP said the force of this crash was so great that it ejected the man from his motorcycle.
Both victims and the motorcycle, a 2020 Triumph Truxton, ended up sprawled across the roadway, west of the crash scene.
No arrests were made and CHP said the involvement of alcohol/drugs is unknown at this time.
The fatal crash closed down the left three lanes of westbound Highway 118 near Rocky Peak Road for about 4 hours, and traffic was redirected through the right lane.
For additional information regarding the deceased, CHP asked people to please contact the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office at 805-641-4400.
The CHP Moorpark Area Office is investigating this crash and encourages any potential witnesses who have not already given their statements to an investigating officer to contact the CHP Moorpark Area Office at 805-553-0800.
Southwest
Battleground state officials say foreign enemies using misinformation to ‘undermine’ democratic process
Two state officials in battleground states Arizona and Pennsylvania on Sunday warned American voters that foreign adversaries are trying to sow distrust in U.S. democracy with misinformation about non-citizens voting in the 2024 presidential election.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Al Schmidt were both asked during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” about U.S. intelligence that shows Russia using a fake video and online posts to spread allegations about the possibility of non-citizens voting in the federal election.
“It’s clear that bad faith foreign actors are seeking to undermine confidence in our election results,” Schmidt said. “The video that you’re referring to from Bucks County to anyone who has years of experience in election administration was conspicuously fake. But if you don’t, it’s so easy for people to be sort of deceived by others trying to undermine confidence in our system of government.”
Fontes said that foreign enemies “want to sow distrust in our democracy” and divide Americans further, adding that the source of a lot of this “misinformation” comes from outside the U.S. and is then amplified by people in America who are helping these adversaries.
MILLIONS OF VOTERS HAVE ALREADY CAST BALLOTS FOR NOV. 5 ELECTION
“The allegation that this is something that might turn an election or is something much bigger than it is, that’s the nonsense that we are dealing with,” Fontes said. “And unfortunately, we still have candidates, elected officials and folks with large megaphones lying. They are directly lying to the American public and they are basically playing the role of useful idiots.”
Fontes further encouraged Americans to “stop being a Russian puppet” and to “look to the folks who are actually doing the work.”
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“Ask them what’s actually happening and go with the truth instead of amplifying lies from foreign adversaries,” he said.
Schmidt said that voter fraud is “incredibly rare” and noted “how easy it is to catch.”
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“There are safeguards in the system from tooth to tail to make sure that voter fraud, in the few instances it does occur, is identified, investigated and responsibly prosecuted,” he said.
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