BOISE, Idaho — Jury deliberations began Wednesday in the case of an Idaho man charged with murdering his wife and his girlfriend’s two youngest children in what prosecutors said was a callous scheme for money, power and sex.

“Three dead bodies … and for what?” prosecutor Lindsey Blake told jurors in the trial of Chad Daybell. “Money, power and sex — that’s what the defendant cared about.”

Daybell, 55, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder, insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit murder and grand theft in connection with the 2019 deaths of Tammy Daybell, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if Daybell is convicted.

But Daybell’s defense attorney, John Prior, told jurors that there wasn’t enough evidence to tie Daybell to the deaths. Prior said police looked only for things they could use against Daybell rather than the actual facts of the case — and he claimed that the children’s late uncle, Alex Cox, committed the crimes.

Last year, the children’s mother and Daybell’s girlfriend, Lori Vallow Daybell, received a life sentence without parole for the killings.

Prosecutors have called dozens of witnesses to bolster their claims that Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow Daybell conspired to kill the two children and Tammy Daybell because they wanted to get rid of any obstacles to their relationship and to obtain money from survivor benefits and life insurance. Prosecutors say the couple justified the killings by creating an apocalyptic belief system that people could be possessed by evil spirits and turned into “zombies,” and that the only way to save a possessed person’s soul was for the possessed body to die.

Blake said Wednesday that Daybell styled himself a leader of what he called “The Church of the Firstborn” and told Vallow Daybell and others that he could determine if someone had become a “zombie.” Daybell also claimed to be able to determine how close a person was to death by reading what he called their “death percentage,” Blake said.

With these elements, Daybell followed a pattern for each of those who were killed, Blake said.

“They would be labeled as ‘dark’ by Chad Daybell. Their ‘death percentage’ would drop. Then they would have to die,” she said.

Prior rejected the prosecution’s descriptions of Daybell’s beliefs. He described Daybell as a traditional member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a deeply religious man who talked about his spiritual beliefs every chance he could get.

Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell married just two weeks after Tammy Daybell’s death in October 2019, raising suspicion among law enforcement officials. Tammy Daybell’s body was later exhumed, and officials say an autopsy showed she died of asphyxiation. Chad Daybell had told officials that Tammy Daybell had been sick, and that she died in her sleep.

Witnesses for both sides agreed that Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell were having an affair that began well before Tammy Daybell died, and that the two young children were missing for months before their remains were found buried in Chad Daybell’s backyard.

By Steve Almasy and Taylor Romine | CNN

Jury deliberations began Wednesday in the triple murder trial of Chad Daybell, a case Idaho prosecutors claim was fueled by power, sex, money and apocalyptic spiritual beliefs.

Daybell has pleaded not guilty to murder and conspiracy charges in the deaths of his first wife, Tammy Daybell, and the children of his second wife, Lori Vallow Daybell -– 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow.

Authorities have said they believe Tylee and JJ were killed in September 2019 – the month they were last reported to have been seen – and that Tammy Daybell was found dead in her Idaho home on October 19, 2019, a few weeks before Chad Daybell married Lori Vallow Daybell. Tammy Daybell was initially believed to have died in her sleep.

Law enforcement found the remains of Tylee and JJ on Chad Daybell’s Fremont County property in June 2020, authorities said.

The jury was read its instructions Wednesday morning before closing arguments.

During closing arguments, Chad Daybell’s lawyer, John Prior, said there wasn’t enough direct evidence against Daybell and others were responsible for the deaths.

If convicted, Daybell could face the death penalty.

Vallow Daybell was convicted by a jury in May 2023 of the murder of her children and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. She also was convicted of conspiring to kill Tammy Daybell.

Vallow Daybell has appealed her convictions to the state Supreme Court, with her legal team raising the issue of whether she was mentally competent to stand trial.

Jurors concluded the first day of deliberations Wednesday evening and will resume at 8 a.m. Thursday.

2 children and a wife died weeks apart

During opening statements, prosecutor Rob Wood described Chad Daybell as a “seemingly ordinary man” who wrote books about the apocalypse, a person who “craves significance” and worked as a sexton in a graveyard.

“Two dead children buried in the defendant Chad Daybell’s backyard,” Wood said in his first words to the jury.

“The next month his wife is found dead in their marital bed. Seventeen days after the death of his wife, Tammy Daybell, this defendant is photographed laughing and dancing on a beach in Hawaii at his wedding to Lori Vallow, a woman who was his mistress and the mother of the children buried in the graves on his property. Three dead bodies.”

When Daybell “had a chance at what he considered his rightful destiny,” Wood said, he “made sure that no person and no law would stand in his way.”

“His desire for sex, money and power led him to pursue those ambitions,” the prosecutor added. “And this pursuit led to the deaths of his wife and Lori’s two innocent children.”

Tylee Ryan was a “normal, vibrant teenage girl” who loved her friends and her little brother JJ, who was on the autism spectrum and required special care, according to Wood.

In October 2018, Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell met at a religious conference in Utah and he began to craft an alternate reality where his “obsession for glory was rooted in her adoration for him,” Wood told jurors.

Soon, Wood said, they viewed their spouses and even their children as “obstacles” that stood in their way.

“Anyone who opposed them were labeled sometimes as dark spirits or even zombies,” the prosecutor said.

During opening statements, Prior, the defense attorney, described his client as a religious man who wrote books about his faith, premonitions, good and evil, and the “coming of the end of things when his savior, in his mind, is going to come back.”

Prior said Daybell’s life began to change after he met Vallow Daybell, a “beautifully stunning woman” who “starts giving him a lot of attention” and eventually lured him into an “inappropriate” and “unfortunate” extramarital relationship.

Prior told the jury about Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, who died in December 2019, and his history of violence – including the shooting and killing of Vallow Daybell’s former husband, Charles Vallow, in July 2019. The Maricopa County medical examiner in Arizona said Cox died of natural causes, CNN affiliate KPHO/KTVK reported.

“Alex Cox was Lori’s protector,” Prior said. “Alex Cox would do anything and everything to protect, aid and assist Lori Vallow … Whenever there was a problem or a threat to Lori Vallow, you will hear testimony that Alex Cox came to the rescue.”

DNA and forensics experts suggested Cox’s fingerprint was found on plastic wrapped around JJ’s body, Daybell’s defense attorney said. No DNA or hair belonging to Chad Daybell was found with the children’s bodies, and the exact cause of Tammy Daybell’s death could not be determined, Prior said.

Couple believed they were religious figures

Chad Daybell and Vallow Daybell called themselves “James and Elaina” and believed they were religious figures and had a system of rating people as “light” or “dark,” a prosecutor told jurors during Vallow Daybell’s trial.

The state accused the couple of using their “doomsday” religious beliefs to justify the killings. In particular, Daybell and Vallow Daybell exchanged texts about Tammy Daybell “being in limbo” and “being possessed by a spirit named Viola,” according to the indictment.

People close to the couple said they had been involved in strong religious ideologies.

In addition, Daybell was connected to a religious doomsday prepper website which described itself as a “series of lecture events focusing on self-reliance and personal preparation.”

The publishers of the site said they decided to pull content featuring either Daybell or Vallow Daybell after the children’s disappearance.

The disappearance of the children made national headlines

Vallow Daybell’s two children from a previous marriage were last seen on different days in September 2019.

In late November 2019, relatives asked police in Rexburg, Idaho, to do a welfare check on JJ because they hadn’t talked to him recently. Police didn’t find him at the family’s house but did see Vallow Daybell and Daybell, who said JJ was staying with a family friend in Arizona, according to authorities.

When police returned with a search warrant the next day, the couple was gone. They were ultimately found in Hawaii in January 2020.

In June 2020, law enforcement officials found the remains of Tylee and JJ on Daybell’s property in Fremont County, Idaho. Vallow Daybell and Daybell were indicted on murder charges in May 2021.

Tylee was believed to have been killed between September 8 and 9, 2019, and JJ between September 22 and 23, according to prosecutors.

After Vallow Daybell’s indictment and not guilty plea in 2021, a judge ruled she was incompetent to stand trial, but she was deemed fit to proceed with trial after spending nearly a year in a mental hospital. Vallow Daybell has maintained her innocence.

When Vallow Daybell was sentenced last year, she denied having killed her children and cited religious texts and beliefs.

She said she had spoken to Jesus, her children and her husband’s wife after their deaths and said they were “happy and extremely busy” in heaven.

“Jesus Christ knows that no one was murdered in this case,” Vallow Daybell said. “Accidental deaths happen, suicides happen, fatal side effects from medications happen.”

Judge Steven W. Boyce said at the sentencing hearing: “I don’t believe that any God in any religion would want to have this happen.”

The judge said she justified the killings “by going down a bizarre, religious rabbit hole. And clearly you are still down there.”

Vallow Daybell has appealed her convictions to the state Supreme Court, with her legal team raising the issue of whether Vallow Daybell was mentally competent to stand trial.

University of Idaho president C. Scott Green is still trying to keep alive the dream of his school acquiring the troubled for-profit University of Phoenix, even though the proposed deal has been met with sharp disapproval from state legislators, the state’s attorney general and treasurer, and many others in Idaho.

Idaho Education News reports this week on emails between members of the Idaho State Board of Education, which oversees Green’s school, that discuss Green’s continuing talks with Apollo Global Management, the current owners of the University of Phoenix.

At the same time, Green’s apparent effort to influence the Idaho legislature through a series of campaign contributions seem to have only raised more questions about whether he has any idea what he’s doing.

According to the newly-unearthed email messages, obtained by Idaho Education News through a public records request, Green told a Board of Education member and an aide to Idaho governor Brad Little (R) that one possibility being floated is that Apollo would extend for nine to twelve months the expiring deadline for the deal to be completed, but Idaho would agree to “drop exclusivity,” meaning Apollo would be free to talk with other prospective purchasers,  and perhaps pay a “break-up” fee to Idaho if one of these possible buyers reaches a deal.

Phoenix’s supposed interest in seeing other people, as floated by Green, may be aimed at making Idaho jealous, but based on developments in the year since the Idaho-Phoenix deal was announced, there may not actually be any genuine suitors in the wings.

A subsequent email recounts a May 1 meeting involving Green, representatives of the Board of Education, and Governor Little. According to the message, the meeting participants “agreed we need state policy leaders to signal whether they even want to move forward with the underlying transaction or not. The governor is going to have some informal conversations and follow up with us.”

The University of Phoenix told Idaho Education News, “We are optimistic that we can find a path forward with the University of Idaho and look forward to continuing discussions with leaders in the state.” The University of Idaho said, “We continue to have conversations with the governor and legislators about their interest in continuing to pursue this opportunity for our state.”

Green also confirmed to the Idaho Statesman this week that he still wants the Phoenix deal. “The sellers are still very interested, as are we,” Green told the paper. He also said that Phoenix’s revenues, around $800 million a year, “are probably more compelling than ever.”

But the ball seems to be in Governor Little’s court at this point, and he should be asking whether the deal ever made sense for Idaho.

The University of Phoenix has indeed received billions in taxpayer-funded student grants and loans over decades — a record that might suggest, as Green endlessly does, that it would be a cash cow for the University of Idaho. But Phoenix also has repeatedly faced actions from law enforcement agencies over deceptive and predatory practices. Betting that the school can keep engaging in such abuses without getting shut down, or, alternatively, that the school could keep making money without engaging in those predatory practices, seems awfully risky. There’s also the serious possibility that, having bought Phoenix, Green’s school could be on the hook to pay back federal taxpayers billions in student loan dollars that Phoenix banked by deceiving students.