Woman says Charles Vallow mentioned changing insurance beneficiary the day before his death

PHOENIX — Despite the challenges in their marriage, Charles Vallow still spoke kindly of his estranged wife — Lori Vallow Daybell — up until the night before he was shot and killed in her home, according to the woman Vallow went on a date with that night.

Nancy Jo Hancock said she met Vallow on a Latter-day Saint dating site, and they were messaging there and later texting and talking “a lot.” She said they probably had multiple conversations over three hours and “hundreds of texts” during about a week before they met.

“I just remember thinking that he was strangely calm and still kind toward Lori, even through what they were going through,” Hancock testified Wednesday.

Hancock said they stayed at a restaurant talking until they noticed everyone else had left, and then talked for another 45 minutes outside, but she didn’t hear from Vallow again.

The case

Daybell’s trial in Arizona for conspiring to murder her then-husband, Vallow, began this week. He was killed in her home in July 2019 after coming to pick up their son JJ Vallow to bring him to school when Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, shot him.

Daybell has already been convicted of murdering her two youngest children, 7-year-old JJ and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, along with conspiring to kill her new husband Chad Daybell’s wife, later in 2019. Lori Daybell is serving five life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The children were reported missing for several months before their bodies were found buried in rural Idaho on Chad Daybell’s property.

At the start of Wednesday’s trial, Lori Daybell questioned Daniel Coons, a detective with the Chandler Police Department, following his initial testimony on Tuesday. Daybell, representing herself, asked whether various items at the scene of Vallow’s death were tested, including the fabric of her husband’s shirt and a mark in the floor that the officer said he believed was from a shot that hit her husband.

“Would it be fair to say that you made an assumption early on and only investigated the things that supported that assumption?” she asked Coons.

He responded, “No, ma’am.”

When she listed facts asking if they are all he knows with certainty, he told Daybell she oversimplified and that there are more things he knows in the case than the few she listed.

He testified that of the two shots, the location of the projectile marks in the room and other evidence at the scene supports the theory that Vallow was shot once while standing and once while on the ground — suggesting at least the second shot was not in self-defense as Cox claimed.

‘Don’t flatter yourself’

Hancock said in the week she knew Vallow she learned a lot about his children and his relationship with his wife, who he said he was divorcing in their conversations. Hancock said she was surprised with the amount he shared about his life on their date, including information that he had changed the beneficiary of his life insurance to his sister. She suggested he tell Daybell about that change based on concerns he had expressed for his safety during their date, and said Vallow chuckled and noted that would probably be a good idea.

She said they had planned to meet up again the next day, but she didn’t hear from him again and was puzzled at how she had misread the date but figured he had made a decision to not reply.

Hancock said Vallow was like a child on Christmas morning with how excited he was to see his son the next day. After learning on TV months later that Vallow had died, she reached out to JJ’s grandmother, Kay Woodcock, to let her know what Vallow had said about JJ the night before his death.

Daybell asked Hancock whether she typically goes on dates with married men, mentioning repeatedly that Vallow was her husband — leading the prosecutor, Treena Kay, to object based on harassment. The judge sustained that and multiple objections to repeated questions and comments from Daybell concerning the woman’s responses.

When Daybell asked if the two had spent their whole date talking about her, Hancock responded, “Don’t flatter yourself. No, we did not spend the whole time talking about you.”

Dark spirits

Christina Atwood testified that she met Lori Daybell and Charles Vallow at church and later visited their family in Hawaii after they moved there.

She said in late 2018 or early 2019, after Daybell returned to Arizona, she reached out to Atwood and invited her to go to Hawaii, but Atwood did not go.

“She was concerned about dark spirits plaguing (Vallow),” Atwood said, testifying that Daybell spoke about her husband being possessed by a bad spirit on multiple occasions.

She went to multiple meetings with Daybell and others in a group and said during one meeting, Cox said he wanted kill Vallow. She said she was disturbed that Daybell didn’t react to the comments, and was also disturbed to hear that Daybell had put some of JJ’s medication in Vallow’s drink. She said she confronted Daybell about this, and Daybell distanced herself afterward.