Did a doomsday cult really drive Lori Vallow to murder her children?

Power. Cash. Intercourse.

These are the three issues that prosecutors say drove Lori Vallow to kill.

And so they’re additionally the three issues that specialists say make up the playbook of a harmful cult.

“All cult leaders are pushed by these three issues in that individual order,” Steve Hassan, a world-renowned cult skilled and former member of the Moonies cult, tells The Impartial.

“Energy is primary, then two it’s cash which can also be used for management, and three is intercourse. It’s the playbook of a cult chief.”

Vallow quickly earned the nickname the “cult mother” not lengthy after her two youngest youngsters Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, disappeared in September 2019.

As the kids’s different members of the family desperately looked for them – and begged Vallow to come clear about the place they have been – particulars about her doomsday cult beliefs started to emerge.

The 50-year-old mother-of-three had grown up within the Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) however, since assembly her new lover Chad Daybell, her beliefs had grown ever extra excessive.

She believed she and Mr Daybell had been chosen for a spiritual mission to lead “the 144,000” followers – that he was a prophet and he or she a goddess.

Her murder trial – which resulted in a conviction for killing the children and conspiring to kill Mr Daybell’s first spouse Tammy – uncovered how these beliefs grew more and more fantastical and harmful, invoking zombies, darkish spirits and demise.

‘Cult mother’

On the trial, prosecutors mentioned that Vallow, Mr Daybell and their interior circle believed in a “ranking system of sunshine and darkish” with sure demise percentages for the way they ranked the spirits of the folks round them.

Over time, this then advanced into the assumption that some folks had develop into “zombies”. And that the one means to eliminate the zombie was to destroy the human physique it was in.

Shockingly, this included her two youngsters.

Earlier than their disappearances, Vallow had instructed buddies that they’d been taken over by “darkish spirits”, and that Tylee was possessed by a demon named “Hillary”, in accordance to courtroom testimony.

Chilling textual content messages despatched to Mr Daybell revealed her complaining that: “We r each so bored with caring for demons. We’re weary. Please ask the Lord to take them.”

One month later, the kids vanished.

It will be 9 months later earlier than each of their stays have been found within the pet cemetery of Mr Daybell’s yard in Idaho.

Their remaining moments had clearly been brutal.

Little JJ, nonetheless in his pyjamas, had been suffocated with a plastic bag wrapped round his head with tape, the scratch marks on his neck revealing the younger boy desperately fought for his life.

Tylee’s reason behind demise could by no means be referred to as her physique was hacked into items with a pickaxe and badly burned.

At her trial, a jury discovered Vallow responsible of murder and conspiracy to murder Tylee and JJ, after listening to how she, Mr Daybell (who’s but to stand trial) and Vallow’s brother Alex Cox (who can also be now lifeless) conspired to kill them.

However the youngsters weren’t the one victims as Vallow’s descent into excessive cult beliefs led to a path of demise and destruction in her wake.

Mr Daybell’s first spouse Tammy and Vallow’s fourth husband Charles are additionally lifeless, whereas others – who testified to being shot at – seem to have had a fortunate escape.

It’s a tragic and stunning case that has horrified America for the final three years due to, not solely the brutality of the murders, however the unanswered questions that stay across the function cult beliefs performed in what occurred.

In spite of everything, this was a girl who, by all accounts, had lengthy been seen as a good and loving mom to her youngsters.

Can a mom really be pushed to kill her personal two youngsters – youngsters she has raised and cared for his or her complete lives – by the facility of a cult? Can cult beliefs really wield that a lot energy?

Energy of cults

Most of the most notorious cults have resulted in murder or mass demise.

The Manson Household murdered 9 victims beneath the path of their chief Charles Manson.

Greater than 918 folks died within the Jonestown bloodbath.

A complete of 39 Heaven’s Gate followers took their very own lives beneath the assumption that they’d be beamed up to an alien spacecraft.

Dr Hassan is aware of the facility a cult can have on a individual all too effectively.

Again in 1974, the then-19-year-old was recruited into the Unification Church – also called the Moonies cult. Beneath the cult’s chief Solar Myung Moon, he give up faculty and his job, handed over his checking account and believed his household have been Satanic.

“I turned a completely different individual within the picture of Moon and believed that the outdated Steve had fallen and was Satanic and that armageddon would occur,” he tells The Impartial.

For about two and a half years, there was no getting away.

Then, when he fell asleep on the wheel of a van due to sleep deprivation and practically died, it truly saved him.

Whereas spending two weeks in a hospital mattress recovering from his accidents – away from the cult’s direct affect – his household organized a deprogramming intervention.

“On the finish of it, I realised that Moon was a liar and if he was a liar then he wasn’t reliable and if he wasn’t reliable he couldn’t be god on earth and my complete perception system collapsed,” he says.

“On the level that I had that realisation, I cried and mentioned ‘how did they do that to me? How may I consider these loopy issues and switch my again on my family and friends?’”

Nevertheless it’s this considering that solely sure kinds of folks will be drawn into a cult or cult beliefs which will be harmful, he says.

“The general public has unconscious bias that claims when folks attempt to perceive different folks’s behaviour they have an inclination to overestimate the individual’s character and underestimate the facility of the state of affairs,” explains Dr Hassan.

“So folks suppose ‘oh Steve will need to have acquired into the Moonies as a result of his household weren’t good, or he was on the lookout for one thing in his life or one thing’.”

He provides: “The largest vulnerability is considering that it may by no means occur to you.”

‘Breaking down sense of identification’

Dr Hassan explains that cults work by breaking down a person’s sense of identification.

“Undue affect has been exerted in a systematic means to break down a individual’s sense of identification and construct them again up within the picture of their cult chief,” he says.

“We’d like to consider that we’re rational beings however we’re not. We’re emotional, social beings and we adapt to our surroundings to the knowledge we obtain from our surroundings.”

Dr Hassan says that there are 4 parts to what he describes as a harmful thoughts management cult: behaviour, data, thought, and emotional management.

Collectively, this creates dependency or obedience to the cult chief or trigger, he explains.

In Vallow’s case, her development in direction of extra excessive beliefs “didn’t occur in a vacuum,” he says.

Vallow and Mr Daybell had already grown up within the Church of the LDS.

Mr Daybell was a self-published writer who wrote doomsday books loosely based mostly on the teachings of the church and in addition ran a podcast based mostly on his teachings. He claimed that he was a prophet.

Vallow all the time “really took the church severely,” says her brother Adam Cox in his new podcast “Tylee and JJs Silver Linings Podcast” together with his uncle Rex.

Mr Cox says his sister was “enjoyable” rising up and that her marriage to Charles Vallow appeared “nice”.

However, he says that within the lead-up to all of the demise and destruction, she had began to see herself as extra “religious”.

“It simply looks like she began to draw back spiritually from the place Charles was – her concept of spirituality,” he says.

“With Lori taking place that street it was like a snowball… she simply stored on selecting up completely different stuff and completely different stuff and completely different stuff… she needed to persuade folks the top of the world was coming… she was doing meals storage… each second it was getting larger and greater.”

One query he says he’s nonetheless making an attempt to work out the reply to is who was the ringleader in Vallow and Mr Daybell’s relationship.

Chief or follower?

“Individuals ask was Lori brainwashed by Chad or Chad by Lori?” he says.

Based mostly on what Dr Hassan has seen concerning the case, he’s additionally torn about who is probably going the cult chief on this state of affairs.

Mr Daybell seems the plain alternative as somebody who referred to himself as a “prophet” and on condition that, earlier than the murders, Vallow was mentioned to be a good mom who cherished her youngsters – and that “issues began getting loopy and bizarre” after she met Mr Daybell.

However, based mostly on different data that got here out at trial, a completely different image of Vallow has additionally emerged – certainly one of a girl “missing empathy and being targeted on transactional issues and the way they can assist her,” says Dr Hassan.

“That profile of her as a malignant narcissist is attribute of a cult chief,” he says.

“They’re narcissists who suppose they’re above the legislation, pathological liars, sadistic, paranoid.

“So if Lori is a narcissist and lacks empathy after which she meets Chad they usually’re satisfied they’ve a sacred mission collectively how a lot was she influenced by him and the way a lot was he influenced by her?

“My guess – and it’s simply hypothesis – is that if the Lori earlier than Chad cherished her youngsters and was a fairly good mother and needed to do good selections for them then what would lead her to agree to kill them or suppose they’re possessed? We have now to have a look at what are the sources of affect? Chad is an apparent alternative.”

It’s an argument Vallow’s attorneys tried to push of their closing assertion at her trial, arguing that she was a “good mother” whose life fell aside after assembly “spiritual chief” Mr Daybell.

“One yr after assembly Chad, 4 individuals are lifeless,” her lawyer instructed jurors.

“Why can’t folks escape spiritual leaders? Why can’t Lori escape and get again to her good mother life?… However is Lori a chief or a follower of Chad? She so desires to be a chief however she’s not main anybody.”

Chief or follower, brainwashed or brainwasher, it doesn’t change her accountability for the truth that youngsters JJ and Tylee and mother-of-five Tammy are actually lifeless.

“If Lori really believed she was on a mission from god and that they have been all zombies and the children weren’t her youngsters anymore however have been simply demons of their our bodies, then she could have thought she was not killing her youngsters,” says Dr Hassan.

“[But] if she was concerned in killing her youngsters then she is responsible… are there aggravating circumstances? Possibly – however she’s nonetheless responsible.”

But, there are different questions across the energy that cult beliefs could have performed in Vallow’s killer prowess.

Whereas her weird cult beliefs have been laid out at trial, so too was the extent of planning and conspiring that went into the murders.

On the one hand, Vallow appeared to be getting ready for the top of the world based mostly on her weird doomsday beliefs.

On the opposite, she was researching life insurance coverage insurance policies for her youngsters, stealing their social safety and survivor advantages and getting ready to embark on a new life in Hawaii with Mr Daybell.

Within the month earlier than Tylee’s murder, trial testimony confirmed that the teenager’s social safety advantages have been modified to be payable into her mom’s checking account as a substitute of her personal and the mom and daughter then opened a joint account.

Lower than a month later, Tylee was lifeless – with all of the funds now going straight to her mom.

An analogous sample then unfolded within the days main up to JJ’s murder.

Following their murders, the couple then eloped to Hawaii and acquired married on a seashore – a wedding ceremony that on-line searches reveal they’d been planning for at the very least six months (when Tammy was alive and effectively).

All of it comes again to these three key parts of the cult playbook.

As prosecutors mentioned in each opening and shutting statements of her murder trial: “Cash, energy, and intercourse – that’s what this case is about.”

Whether or not that includes Vallow being beneath the spell of a cult, being a narcissistic cult chief or just the drive of her personal acutely aware wishes continues to be a thriller.