The probe into the mysterious death of the “doomsday” cult mom’s third husband has determined that he died of natural causes, authorities said.
Lori Vallow Daybell, who is at the center of an Idaho case connected to the deaths of her two children, had been heard on recordings justifying why she “was going to murder” her ex-husband, Joseph Ryan, in October 2018, East Idaho News reported.
Recorded by Ryan’s sister Annie Cushing, Daybell could be heard talking about her bitter custody battle with her third husband over their daughter, Tylee Ryan.
“I was going to murder him,” the doomsday-obsessed mom allegedly said in the recording. “I was going to kill him like the scriptures say … just to stop the pain and to stop him coming after me and to stop him coming after my children.”
Daybell had appeared to be talking hypothetically, since Ryan had died six months earlier, on April 3, 2018.
“If he comes against you once, if he comes against you twice, if he comes against you three times, then you can kill him. It says it in the scriptures,” she allegedly said.
Police in Phoenix reopened the case last year after Cushing made the recordings public, but concluded that he died of an apparent heart attack.
The case was the latest twist in the strange saga involving Daybell, who is a member of the group Preparing a People.
Daybell was charged last year alongside her current husband, doomsday-related book author Chad Daybell, after her two children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 9, and Tylee Ryan, 17, were found last June in shallow graves in Rexburg, Idaho.
Meanwhile, she’s also being eyed in the suspicious death of another husband, Charles Vallow, Fox News reported.
Vallow was fatally shot by Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, during a confrontation in Phoenix in July 2019, police said.
Cox, who claimed he shot his brother-in-law in self-defense, died in December of natural causes.
Chandler police Sgt. Jason McClimans said they’ll likely recommend Lori be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, though they’re still combing through 100,000 pieces of digital data.
“Lori has always been a person of interest in this investigation,” McClimans told Fox. “With regards to this charge, Lori was not the person who shot Charles, as it was already determined Alex Cox did.”