An Arizona judge on Tuesday granted convicted murder mother Lori Vallow’s request for a mental capacity evaluation ahead of her second criminal trial.
Vallow, who was sentenced to life in prison in Idaho last year alongside her husband Chad Daybell for killing their two youngest children and Daybell’s former wife, now faces trial in Arizona for allegedly conspiring to murder 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 conduct the evaluation, and Vallow’s case has been cleared pending the results of the investigation, according to court documents obtained by Fox News Digital.
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Lori Vallow will undergo a mental competency evaluation before her second criminal trial in Arizona. (Maricopa County)
Vallow and Daybell killed two of Vallow’s children, 7-year-old JJ Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, as well as Daybell’s first wife, Tammy Daybell, in 2019.
While JJ and Tylee were missing and immediately after Tammy’s death in October 2019, Vallow and Daybell married in Hawaii in November of that year.
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Lori and Chad Daybell are accused of killing 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow in 2019. (Rexberg Police Department)
JJ and Tylee were found in shallow graves at Daybell’s rural property in Rexburg in June 2020, months after they disappeared from their home in September 2019.
The 16-year-old’s remains were burned while the seven-year-old was bound with duct tape.
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In this aerial photo, investigators search for human remains at Chad Daybell’s residence in Salem, Idaho, on June 9, 2020. (John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register)
Before her murder trial in Idaho last year, Vallow spent about nine months in prison Psychiatry in Idaho. After those nine months, Fremont District Judge Steven Boyce ruled in her first trial that she was “competent and competent again,” which was also cut short when she was committed to the mental institution.
Idaho prosecutors alleged during Vallow and Daybell’s trials that the couple held extreme religious beliefs, including the idea that some people had “dark” souls while others had “light” souls. They believed that the “dark” spirits could actually be so dark that they could be zombies.
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Charles Vallow died in July 2019. Two months later, in September 2019, Tylee and JJ disappeared. Tammy Daybell died of asphyxia in November 2019. Cox died later that same year in December 2019 from an apparent blood clot. (KASZ/Facebook/Post Register/John Roark/AP POOL)
“You drove 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 concluded of her trial in July 2023. “I don’t think to this day you feel any remorse for the effort and heartache that went into it “You caused it.”
He added that Vallow “has mental health issues.”
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Lori Vallows booking photo taken on August 1, 2023 at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Pocatello, Idaho. (Idaho Dept. of Corrections/LOCAL NEWS X/TMX)
A February 2023 psychiatric diagnosis revealed that Vallow suffers from a “delusional disorder” mixed with “hyperreligiousness” and a “persistent and unspecified personality disorder” with narcissistic features, according to Boyce.
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“Others were looking 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 found out they were dead, you collected publicly funded aid for them, and that was blood money that you kept for yourself.”
Lori Vallow, convicted in Idaho, faces additional charges in Arizona. (Tony Blakeslee/East Idaho News)
During her sentencing, Vallow spoke publicly for the first time since her arrest in 2020 and appeared to be in denial. She said at the time that she knew her children were “happy and busy in the spirit world.”
SEE LORI VALLOW IN COURT:
“I had many conversations with Jesus Christ, the Savior of this world, and our Heavenly Parents. Many angelic visitors came and communicated with me and even revealed themselves to me because of those conversations,” Vallow said during her speech at an Idaho court sentencing hearing. “I know for a fact that my children are happy and busy in the spirit world. Based on my communication with my friend Tammy Daybell, I know she is also very happy and extremely busy.”
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In her statement to the court, Vallow added that she “died in the hospital” while in labor with her daughter Tylee. Doctors revived her, after which she began seeing ghosts.
Lori Vallow Daybell smiled in and out of an Idaho courthouse on Aug. 16. (Tony Blakeslee/East Idaho News)
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“One of the times Tylee came to me as a ghost after she died…she said to me, ‘Stop worrying, Mom. We’re fine.’ “She knows how worried I am and how much I miss her,” Vallow said at the time.
The so-called “cult mother” was extradited to Arizona in November 2023, about four months after she was sentenced to life in prison without parole in Idaho.