The world did not end on Wednesday, despite the prediction of the religious cult that Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow belonged to. The couple is currently in custody and facing charges related to the disappearance and later murder of Vallow’s two children.
Daybell himself had previously predicted that the world would end on July 22, along with visions of earthquakes hitting the Wasatch Front in Idaho. Daybell was something of a celebrity in doomsday prepper circles, so much so that his obsession with the world’s end was part of what drew Vallow into a romance with him. As KSLTV noted, Daybell had written extensively about the topic. He even referenced the 2009 apocalyptic film, 2012, five years ago.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“Sheesh, I’m starting to sound like Woody Harrelson,” he wrote at the time, referring to Harrelson’s character in 2012 as a “crazy doomsday profit” to describe earthquakes. “The first one is moderate and it disrupts life for a few weeks,” Daybell wrote. “Many older brick buildings crumble, and roads suffer damage, but repairs are made quickly.”
Ian Pawlowski, the husband of Vallow’s niece Melanie Pawloski, had spoken with the FBI back in December, where he also talked about the couple’s obsession with end-times earthquakes. “I shared ideas about earthquakes being prepared in SLC” and that they “were ‘preparing earthquakes’ at the time I spoke with the police,” he said, according to court documents.
Vallow also spoke about the matter in a podcast back in 2018, which was part of the larger Preparing a People platform. “We are gathering together as saints, as brothers and sisters and preparing for the second coming,” she said.
Emails between the two that were sent in January of 2019 were also tracked by detectives in Arizona, which detailed a list of “seven missions to accomplish together.” The items include translating ancient records to identifying locations in northeast Arizona for white camps and supplying items to whomever they deemed as members of righteous families. It’s believed that these correspondences could hold clues about the murder of Vallow’s two children, 17-year-old Tylee and 10-year-old JJ.
During a special episode of Dateline back in June, Vallow’s former best friend Melanie Gibb spoke out about the couple and their beliefs, which she subscribed to at one point. These beliefs include reincarnation, zombies, and the fact that they thought that Oprah Winfrey was an evil spirit.
