Exclusive
HAUNTING WORDS
Lori Vallow’s son Colby reveals chilling warning his ‘cult mom’ gave when he asked her where his murdered siblings were
LORI Vallow's son has revealed the haunting response the "cult mom" gave him when he demanded to know where his missing siblings were after they vanished without a trace.
In an exclusive interview with The US Sun, Colby Ryan recounted how he visited Lori in jail after she was arrested in February 2020 to plead with her for information about where his sister Tylee and little brother JJ were being kept.
18
18
18
Tylee Ryan, 16, and Joshua "JJ" Vallow, 7, were officially reported missing in November 2019. Neither of the two children had been seen or heard from for several weeks; Tylee was last seen on a family trip to Yellowstone National Park on Sept. 8, and JJ vanished in Rexburg, Idaho, on Sept. 22.
For several months, Lori had maintained that her children were safe and living with family members in Arizona but refused to disclose where or with whom, and ignored a court order to produce the kids to authorities.
Growing increasingly concerned for the well-being of his younger siblings, Colby went to see Lori in jail in a desperate bid to finally get answers.
"I asked her 100 times, 'what's going on?'" Colby told The US Sun. "And the only answer I ever got was, 'everything's going to be revealed soon.'
"So I just left. It was always a question mark - you couldn't get a straight answer.
"It was already hard enough to reach out and be the one to chase her down," he added. "But that's just kind of how it went."
Read More on Lori Vallow
A HARROWING DISCOVERY
For the next four months, Colby would remain entirely in the dark about his siblings' whereabouts.
Investigators would then make a horrifying discovery on June 9, 2020, shortly after they served a search warrant at the Salem, Idaho home of Lori's husband, doomsday author Chad Daybell.
In the backyard of the property, police found two sets of human remains buried in shallow graves that were soon confirmed to belong to Tylee and JJ.
Tylee's remains had been dismembered and burned, while JJ was found wrapped in reams of duct tape and stuffed in trash bags beneath the earth.
Most read in The Sun
Chad Daybell was taken into custody the same day and both he and Lori were later indicted by a grand jury on a number of charges related to the kids' deaths, including first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Lori's devoted brother Alex Cox was also believed to be involved with their murders. However, he escaped charges after he died suddenly in December 2019 from what were believed to be "natural causes" spurred by high blood pressure and blood clots wedged in his lungs.
Five months earlier, Cox had shot and killed Lori's fourth husband, Charles Vallow, during an altercation.
While police initially ruled that Cox had acted in self-defense, an investigation into the shooting was reopened after the discovery of Tylee and JJ's remains. That case was still being investigated at the time of Cox's death.
For Colby, learning of the horrific way in which his siblings' lives ended was nothing short of devastating; harder still was coming to terms with the fact members of his own family were allegedly responsible.
The 26-year-old said he knew early on that something was amiss, though he didn't for one second ever believe his mom - who he once considered to be his "best friend" - would be capable of doing anything to harm her own children.
"Pretty early on [after their disappearances] I reached out to my mom and she was being really shady about it before she cut everybody - including me - off," Colby recounted.
"And then obviously, you're going to start questioning, 'Is everyone alive? Are they okay? What if the worst has happened?' - but you can't think like that."
Still grieving the loss of Charles Vallow, his adoptive father, Colby said he was determined to stay positive and put his faith in a higher power that everything was going to be okay.
"There was a lot of back and forth and a lot of fear," Colby said. "But I had to keep faith also that there was a possibility nothing happened because I couldn't imagine anything happening, especially with my mom.
"In my mind, there was just absolutely 100% no way that she would hurt them."
'MY BEST FRIEND'
Colby recently released a self-published book, , in which he discusses his faith and how turning to God helped him overcome the traumas of his childhood.
Growing up, Colby didn't know his biological father and was rarely able to settle in one place for too long before Lori would decide to move again in search of yet another fresh start.
Through the disfunction, Colby said he was forced to grow up quickly. He also forged an incredibly tight bond with his mom, who he described as being closer to that of a best friend than a parental figure.
"I think she leaned on me for emotion support, almost like a sidekick," he said, "so that kind of forced me to grow up a little bit faster.
"And her and I just had this bond that was more like friends ... she would take me to do fun stuff ... she took care of me, and it was just me and her - we kind of faced everything together."
18
18
18
18
Colby and Lori's tight-knit bond became somewhat frayed a few years after she married her third husband, Joseph Ryan, in 2001.
According to Colby, Joseph Ryan - Tylee's biological father - was both physically and sexually abusive towards him.
Lori was apparently unaware that Ryan was sexually abusing her son until after their divorce in 2004. However, Colby said the physical abuse was carried out in plain sight for all to see and his mom "wasn't really there" for him throughout it all.
The mother and son managed to rekindle their close relationship after Lori left Ryan, but a wedge would be driven between them again a few years later when Colby noticed his mother's Mormon beliefs being slowly plagued by radical doomsday prophecies.
BEGINNING OF THE END TIMES PROPHECIES
Lori married for a fourth time in 2006 to Charles Vallow, providing Colby with the stability and the reliable father figure he had for so long craved.
But where his mother was concerned, Colby said Lori appeared to be withdrawing, leaning increasingly into bizarre ideologies about an impending rapture and the end of life as we know it.
"It was kind of early on," Colby said of noticing his mom's doomsday beliefs coming to the fore. "I'm not exactly sure when it started but probably when I was around 11.
"I was never brought into it, really. I definitely feared it [the end times] because I heard it from her and because I trusted her. But as I grew up, probably around 17 or 18, I was like, ‘I’m just going to live my life the way I can’.
"I can't live a life of impending fear of something happening. I can't live like that. It's an anxious life. So I never bought into any of the ideas that it was going to happen."
Colby decided to move out of his mom and Charles' home when he was still in the 11th grade in search of a purpose and something to be excited about in his future.
All the while, his mother grew progressively more convinced that the end times were fast approaching. Her doomsday delusions were apparently exacerbated after she met Chad Daybell at a Preparing A People conference in Utah, in October 2018.
The pair, who were both married, began secretly exchanging texts, emails, photos, and videos in the weeks after, with Daybell telling Lori they had been chosen by God to lead a group of 144,00 souls to usher in the end times and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
He also told Lori that her husband was no longer her husband, but rather a "dark spirit" by the name of Nick Schneider who had taken over his body and needed to be vanquished.
Charles Vallow would be shot dead by Alex Cox just months later, shortly after he threatened to tell Daybell's wife Tammy about his and Lori's affair.
According to authorities, not long after Charles was killed, Lori was convinced by Daybell that both of her children had been possessed by evil spirits as well.
The only way to free them, she allegedly believed, was for them to be killed.
LAST GOODBYE
Colby last spoke with his two siblings on August 30, 2019, during a Facetime call just days before Tylee was seen for the very last time.
He described the conversation as "normal" and insisted there was no kind of special goodbye as he had plans to see them in just a few weeks time.
But Colby would tragically never see his siblings again.
The last known sighting of Tylee came during a family trip to Yellowstone National Park on September 8, 2019, while JJ was last seen on September 23, being carried by Alex Cox as he slept in his uncle's arms.
Investigators believe that the two children were killed by Cox at the direction of Lori and Daybell. The FBI discovered Cox had been at the Daybell property on both September 9 and 23.
Daybell's wife Tammy also suddenly passed away in October 2019 in her sleep, two weeks before Vallow and Daybell tied the knot in Hawaii. Her death was initially deemed to be the result of natural causes but is now considered suspicious.
Alex Cox then died on December 12, 2019, the day after Tammy Daybell's body was exhumed for further investigation.
'DARK THOUGHTS'
When he learned of his siblings' tragic fates, Colby said his mind was immediately taken to a very dark place, with feelings of overwhelming anger and resentment consuming him for months.
"They took my family away from me, they took them away from everybody else that loved them," he said.
"It's one of the most painful things ever to hear, to hear details about how your own people, that you grew up around and loved, killed your own family."
18
18
18
18
Colby said for some time he fixated on the idea of getting revenge on his mom and Chad but ultimately it was his faith that steered him out of the darkness of his own thoughts and back into the light.
"It was dark, so dark, but that’s how you feel when you want revenge and I had to let that go," he said.
"I was very angry ... I was hurt. I was uncomfortable. I was sick to my stomach all the time, and there was just this weight hanging over me."
"I miss them all the time," the father-of-two added of Tylee and JJ. "I wish they were here to experience my family ... I just miss their presence, like just being in a house together, having fun, and sharing our lives together.
"[But] part of you needs [to let go]. Because if you're holding on to like, 'I just wish you were here,' there's almost no movement, you're never getting out of that spot ... it just keeps you in that graveyard.
"So I love them and miss them all the time. But I also have to take an acceptance that they're not here. And that was definitely hard."
'I FORGIVE YOU'
In addition to releasing a book, on which he regularly discusses his faith and Vlogs about his family's day-to-day lives.
In an emotional video shared on his page in September last year, Colby made the incredible declaration that he had forgiven his mother for the role she allegedly played in Tylee and JJ's deaths.
Speaking to The US Sun, Colby revealed that he told his mom face-to-face he had forgiven her when he last visited her in prison after his siblings' bodies were found.
"We got into a conversation and I confronted her," Colby said. "And then I told her I forgive her [or] that I was trying to."
"It took me so long to actually forgive," he added. "What forgiveness really is though, is releasing your own anger and all that stuff, and you're just saying I don't need to carry this [burden] anymore.
"Forgiving people is very difficult. Sitting there and being so angry at them and holding them accountable for your whole life is easy.
"But I felt that it was important ... because by holding that burden you're holding yourself in a cage.
"I could spend the rest of my life, like, 'I can't believe my mom did this, I'm so mad at her, I want to hurt her' ... that can be the rest of my life but I'd be miserable, so who am I helping?
"So when I released those feelings, I released her, and I released myself."
Colby continued: "I forgave her, I forgave Alex, I forgave Chad - I forgave everything and everybody that was involved ... and it just freed me to be able to do something positive."
'DIDN'T WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE'
With almost exactly two years having passed since Tylee and JJ were found dead, Colby says he still cannot fathom what must've been going through his mother's mind to allegedly murder her own children.
"I can't, there's just no way to connect to that," he said. "I cannot tell you what you'd have to believe and think to do something like that.
"You have to be [out of your mind], but I don't think there's anybody that's completely just out of their mind who can still make decisions and lie.
"So I definitely think there's a consciousness there," he added. "But I can't tell you how she got to that point ... [she's] just nor the same person."
Colby said it's his belief that his mother became obsessed with doomsday rhetoric - like the kind espoused by Daybell - because her life was "too traumatizing" and she just wanted to leave it all behind.
"I just don't think she wanted to be around anymore," he said. "Our life was hard so I think she went to that place to get out of her life.
"She didn't want to go through anything else, and so that's when all of that started.
"But obviously, it completely took another turn."
'SHE'S GUILTY'
Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell are charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of Tylee, JJ, and Daybell's wife Tammy.
The couple, who are still married, have both pleaded not guilty.
Lori's trial is currently slated to commence on October 11 after she did not waive her right to a speedy trial. But a judge is currently considering a motion to delay proceedings to coincide with Daybell's trial in January 2023.
Prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty in both cases.
Despite his mom's claims of innocence, Colby said there is no doubt in his mind that she's "100%" responsible for all she stands accused of and "knew exactly what was going on."
18
18
18
18
"As a parent, you're responsible for your kids' safety, especially if they're minors," Colby said. "She was responsible for her kids. She was responsible for what happened.
"And I know she was a part of it," he claimed. "And that hurts a lot to say."
Colby no longer recognizes his mother for the woman she is today, he said. And while he has no desire to have a relationship with her going forward, he said it's "hard" to hear that she could potentially be put to death if found guilty.
"It's hard to hear that they would do that with my mom," he said, "but again, it's out of my hands and always has been."
Colby admitted he typically refrains from following the coverage of his mom's trial now, again accepting that her fate is out of his hands. Reliving the harrowing details of his siblings' deaths will also not change the fact they're no longer here, he said.
"I've given up the fact that no matter what happens, it's not going to change anything," Colby said.
"So I know they're in jail, I know they can't hurt anybody, and that's the best I can possibly ask for."
A NEW CHAPTER
Colby's new book, The God Over Odds, was released on Amazon on April 3.
The book is the first of a two-book series that explores how Colby overcame profound trauma and devastating loss through religion and his belief in God.
The first installment follows Colby's spiritual journey up until the age of 18. The second book, which doesn't yet have a publishing date, will predominantly focus on the heartbreak and hardships he's endured over the last few years.
Colby said that while sitting down and revisiting the traumas of his past has been emotionally taxing it's also been incredibly therapeutic.
By sharing his own story, he hopes to inspire others broken apart by tragedy and provide them with a blueprint from which to build themselves back together again.
"It’s hard to be vulnerable and go through everything that happened and it’s hard to talk about your trauma, but in a crazy way writing the book was actually so freeing," Colby said.
"I was remembering stuff I didn’t even know happened and when I started writing it just all came out.
"It was almost like ripping off a band-aid in a good way," he added. "It was like, 'Okay, this is no longer this concealed thing that's trying to heal under a band-aid, let's just get it all out there.'
"And then after that, it was done and the pain doesn't have to exist now.
"There's still stuff to process through but after getting it out I'm in a way different place.
Read More On The Sun
"This story and everything that's happened is not just for me to sit back on and be like, 'this is a crazy life.'
READ MORE SUN STORIES
"It's now for other people to connect with aspects [of my story] if they've ever been through something similar."
18
18
18
We pay for your stories!
Do you have a story for The US Sun team?
Email us at [email protected] or call 212 416 4552. Like us on Facebook at and follow us from our main Twitter account at
Topics