Jury selection in Chad Daybell Idaho trial starts Monday

BOISE, Idaho - Zombies, dark spirits and murder are just some of the things people can expect to hear about if they tune into the Chad Daybell trial.

Chad Daybell is the fifth husband of Lori Vallow Daybell, the woman convicted of murdering and conspiring to kill her two kids and her husband’s late wife.

Jury selection in Chad Daybell trial starts Monday

Zombies, dark spirits and murder are just some of the things people can expect to hear about if they tune into the Chad Daybell trial.

Jury selection for his trial is expected to start on Monday at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, ID.

"Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell represent a very fringe part of the LDS faith, and that people who are mainstream Mormons might not even recognize," Leah Sottile, a freelance journalist, and the author of the book ‘When the Moon Turns to Blood’ said. The book examines the culture of end times paranoia and the deaths surrounding Lori and Chad Daybell.

From Arizona to Idaho to Hawaii, and through Netflix documentaries and podcasts, the couple gained widespread attention for their beliefs and the disappearance of Lori’s kids, 7-year-old JJ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan.

"They take a radical interpretation of LDS scripture, where they believe that they will be the leaders of a group that called the 144,000, that was prophesied in the book of revelation, essentially, god's chosen people," Sottile said.

The kids vanished in September of 2019. Lori Vallow Daybell never reported them missing. The couple then got married in Hawaii, just two weeks after Daybell’s first wife, Tammy died in October of 2019. Then in June of 2020, investigators found the remains of JJ and Tylee buried in Chad Daybell’s backyard in eastern Idaho.

Last year, a jury convicted Lori Vallow Daybell of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of JJ, Tylee and Tammy Daybell.

While Chad Daybell’s trial is scheduled to start Monday, former Idaho attorney general and current criminal defense attorney Dave Leroy told FOX 13, there are some key differences between Lori’s trial and what people can expect during Chad’s.

"Number one, we know about the evidence or a great body of it already, and so the defense will be more prepared," Leroy said. "Secondly, there are different charges here, Mr. Daybell is charged with first-degree murder of his wife that has never been tried before, and third, this is a death penalty case."

Since the death penalty is on the table and this trial comes just one year after Lori’s, Administrative District Judge Steve Hippler said the Ada County Courthouse has processed 2,500 jurors. That’s the most he’s seen in his tenure.

"The pretrial publicity creates the potential for more people having been exposed to that, which creates additional problems in terms of finding unbiased jurors," Hippler said.

Part of the fascination in this case stems from the extreme religious beliefs the couple shared, which will likely be on display during the trial.

"Chad, and Lori would take LDS scripture and then just sort of add on these almost like fantastical sci-fi elements," Sottile said. "So, talking about zombies being the arbiters of a dark and light scale system where they could say someone had been infiltrated by a dark spirit, and that they, you know, could go light again, but in this case, all of the people who were killed, went dark, so that has nothing to do with the LDS faith."

The trial will be live streamed. It’s expected to last eight-to-10 weeks. As for Lori Vallow Daybell, while she has been sentenced to life in prison, she is currently in an Arizona jail where she faces conspiracy to commit charges in the death of her fourth husband Charles Vallow and her former nephew Brandon Boudreaux.