The stepfather of two missing children from Idaho, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, shared an update on the children while leaving Hawaii this week. “The kids are safe,” Chad Daybell told ABC News. He declined to offer any more details.
JJ and Tylee were last seen in September, weeks after Daybell married their mom, Lori Vallow. Idaho police began searching for JJ and Tylee in November after they attempted to conduct a welfare check on JJ. The New York Times reports that the couple told police the children were living in Arizona, and when authorities arrived the next day with a search warrant, Vallow and Daybell had fled. They were eventually found in Hawaii, where Vallow was arrested after ignoring court ordered-deadlines to bring the children to authorities.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Vallow is being held in a Hawaii jail on charge related to her children’s disappearance. Her bail is set at $5 million and she will be extradited to Idaho. Vallow has denied any wrongdoing.
It has been revealed that Vallow and Daybell are reportedly doomsday believers, and Daybell has written and self-published a number of fictional doomsday books. Tylee’s aunt, Annie Cushing, told KSLTV in a Skype interview that Vallow was attracted to Daybell’s preachings and had become “obsessed” with end of times ideas.
“It’s like she wanted me to be afraid of the end times,” Cushing said. “There was one time where she was talking about it and she says, sometimes, I think it would be better just to get put my kids in a car and go off the side of a cliff.”
“That’s what makes me feel Lori was a sociopath,” she added. “To her, this was all a game.”
A number of mysterious circumstances surrounded the couple including the recent deaths of several people close to them. Vallow’s ex-husband Charles Vallow (Tylee’s stepdad and JJ’s adoptive father) was shot and killed by his brother-in-law (Vallow’s brother) Alex Cox in July 2019, and Cox died a few months later after claiming the shooting was in self-defense. Daybell’s wife Tammy Daybed mysteriously died in her sleep in October, and Daybell and Vallow married two weeks later. The New York Times reports that Tammy’s remains have been exhumed and that tests have been performs on Cox’s, though the findings have not been released.
After Charles Vallow’s death, Lori Vallow moved from Arizona to Idaho to be with Daybell. Tylee was homeschooled and JJ was last seen in school on Sept. 23.
Photo Credit: ABC News
