Lori Daybell’s niece testifies about zombies, castings at Chad Daybell’s murder trial

BOISE — Chad Daybell had a pendant that he would use to get answers from God, and then he’d share those answers with Lori Vallow Daybell and her friends, according to testimony presented in his murder trial Monday.

Melani Pawlowski, Lori Daybell’s niece, testified that Chad Daybell did not need to use the pendant to get answers but would sometimes use it as a tool by swinging it like a pendulum. It was one of the examples she gave explaining the influence he held over their fringe religious group.

“Chad was said to have a gift to spiritually discern,” Powlowski said. “He could see light and dark — or if a person had good intentions.”

She said she believes that it was Chad Daybell who eventually labeled both 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow as “dark” before their deaths.

Pawlowski said she met Chad Daybell in November 2018, about a year before he married her aunt. She said she would get advice from him through Lori Daybell and eventually became so close to the couple that she began referring to them as “Mom and Dad.”

At one point, she said Chad Daybell told her that her ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux, was tracking her car. When she later found out that was true, “It validated a lot of the things he was saying, for me at least,” she testified.

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KSL.com is streaming the trial each day.

Pawlowski spoke about “castings,” which she said was an idea that was “constantly changing” as Chad and Lori Daybell added their own changes to information that initially came from a podcast by Julie Rowe, an author whose books were published through Chad Daybell’s publishing company.

Later, Pawlowski said she learned from Lori Daybell that some people were considered “zombies,” but she assumed the idea came from Chad Daybell.

“There was some type of darkness that you couldn’t cast out. … That person would pass away because the darkness was too much … it overtook them,” Pawlowski said, describing what she recalls being told about zombies.

Please read Emily Ashcraft’s complete story on KSL.com.