Lori Daybell tells jurors she is ‘all about spreading love’ in murder conspiracy trial

PHOENIX — Lori Vallow Daybell on Thursday asked yet another jury to remember that she is innocent until proven guilty, saying part of its job will be to consider whether there was even a crime committed.

She said she is being blamed by her niece’s estranged husband for their divorce, and he pointed the police at her immediately after someone fired shots at him. Daybell asked the jury to consider what Brandon Boudreaux’s motivation was when he brought up her name. She said she was not living in Arizona, where the shooting occurred in 2019, and didn’t know that it had happened.

Related: Jurors picked for Lori Vallow Daybell’s conspiracy to commit murder case in Arizona

“I am all about spreading love and will continue to do so even after this trial is complete no matter the result,” she said during the trial’s opening statements.

Daybell is on trial for conspiracy to murder Boudreaux, and she is representing herself. Although officers believe her brother, Alex Cox, was the one who fired the gun, testimony during Daybell’s other trials has suggested she may have been involved in planning the shooting. Cox has since died.

Daybell said the job of prosecutors and investigators is to “fill in the gaps, make up a theory and present it to you at trial,” saying they did not see what happened. She said she and her brother were always close with Boudreaux and always had a friendly relationship. She questioned why he would hire a private investigator.

“Was I an enemy to Brandon? That is news to me, and hopefully by the end of this trial, we will all have some answers to that question,” she said.

She said Boudreaux providing information to the case agent is “what a conspiracy looks like — two people trying to set up another for a crime.”

This is Daybell’s third criminal trial. She was convicted of murdering two of her children in Idaho and conspiring to murder her then-husband in Arizona. In the first trial, she was sentenced to five terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Boudreaux testified about the Oct. 2, 2019, shooting. He said he remembers turning the corner onto his street and coasting, waiting for his garage door to open when he noticed a Jeep parked so it was almost blocking his driveway. He said it had no back tire and Texas license plates.

“The back window pops up, I see a muzzle, I hear a bang … and my window shattered. … All that happened in like the snap of a finger,” he said Thursday.

He said he hit the accelerator and drove away, no longer planning to turn into his driveway.

“I remember having a hard time breathing, you know, just feeling overwhelmed that someone shot at me,” he testified.

Boudreaux said he called 911 and wondered whether he was overthinking it because there was no bullet in his car. Later, a bullet was found in his car’s frame.

Premeditation and an alibi

Deputy Maricopa County prosecutor Treena Kay described the incident in her opening statements Thursday, saying a bullet hit the frame of Boudreaux’s Tesla, damaging the driver’s side window inches from his head.

“In the back of that Jeep was this defendant’s brother, Alex Cox. He had been lying in wait with a rifle for Brandon to return home,” she said.

When police asked Boudreaux if he had any enemies, he told them about Daybell and Cox. Police learned that the brother and sister were in Rexburg and contacted Rexburg police, initiating what would eventually become the monthslong search for Daybell’s murdered children.

Kay argued that Daybell loaned the Jeep to her brother so that he could kill Boudreaux. Kay said Daybell and Boudreaux’s then-wife, Melani Boudreaux, were close and “had it out for Brandon,” while the couple was in the process of divorce. Kay said Melani Boudreaux knew when her husband would be dropping off their children that morning, but didn’t know he would go to the gym before returning home — noting that the Jeep was parked on the street running for over an hour.

Kay said Daybell’s “first mistake” was allowing Cox to take the Jeep to get its windows tinted. The prosecutor said Daybell’s Google account shows searches for how to get the back seat out of a Jeep on the day Cox left. She said Daybell got a storage unit and placed the seat and rear tire in it while Cox was gone.

She told jurors Daybell was Cox’s alibi. She bought a burner phone with Cox shortly before the shooting, which he took with him to Arizona, and initiated a 24-minute phone call with his regular phone that he left with Daybell in Idaho shortly before the shooting. Kay said the only phone number the burner phone had calls with was Chad Daybell, the soon-to-be new husband of Lori Daybell.

“She provided the means — the Jeep, she helped get the Jeep ready, and she tried to provide an alibi for her co-conspirator,” Kay told jurors.

She said Cox made a mistake by logging onto his Google account on his burner phone. She said he searched for places to practice shooting, window tinting and trajectory angles, along with Brandon Boudreaux’s address and directions for how to travel on back roads. She said these things show evidence of premeditation.

“Alex Cox, Lori Vallow’s Jeep, and Alex’s rifle are here in Arizona waiting to commit this shooting,” she said.

Despite Cox’s attempt to use back roads, Kay said license plate readers caught the Jeep traveling from Idaho to Arizona. After the shooting, she said Cox and Daybell searched for news in Gilbert to try to find out what police officers knew.

She told jurors they would hear about an incident on July 11, 2019, but did not describe how that was the day that Daybell’s then-husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed in his Arizona home.

 

Boudreaux testifies Daybell was involved in his divorce

 

Boudreaux said his then-wife treated Daybell as a mother figure, since she had lost her mother as a child.

On June 25, 2019, he said he had a disagreement with Melani Boudreaux after she said she didn’t want to go to his grandfather’s funeral. He said he tried to talk to her about their relationship and she accused him of hacking Daybell’s computer.

He said that stuck out to him because he didn’t know why that mattered and it was not something he had done. He said the argument lasted for hours and escalated and included multiple allegations that didn’t make sense. By the end, his wife was asking for a divorce.

Boudreaux said because of the computer comment, he wondered if some of the allegations came from Daybell, and reached out to her in a text during the fight, asking her to not try to break up their marriage for the sake of their children. After that night, he said he had no other conversations with his wife. He said he did not want to get a divorce, but agreed to one.

He said he had just moved into a rental house after selling the home they lived in during their marriage when the shooting occurred and only five people had been told what his new address was — his wife and four people who helped him move. His wife was the only one with a connection to Daybell or Cox.

 

The last of many jury trials

 

Daybell was found guilty in Idaho of murdering and conspiring to murder her children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ “Joshua” Vallow, weeks before the shooting Boudreaux reported. Their bodies were found months later.

She was also found guilty during that 2023 trial of conspiring to murder Chad Daybell’s then-wife, Tammy Daybell, who died later in October 2019. She was sentenced to five terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Chad Daybell was found guilty of the three murders the next year and was sentenced to death.

In April, Lori Daybell was found guilty of conspiring to murder her then-husband Charles Vallow, who witnesses said was shot and killed by Cox in her Arizona home in July 2019. Daybell also represented herself in that trial.

The current trial was delayed after she showed up to court in a wheelchair on Monday and said she was too sick to pick a jury. On Wednesday, she returned to the Phoenix courthouse and maintained she was sick, but the judge did not allow further delays.

A jury of eight men and eight women, including four alternates, was picked on Wednesday. The judge said Thursday that already one of the jurors had been excused, meaning there are now 15 jurors.