Lori Vallow Daybell Tried To Blame Son's Death on Her Slain Daughter During Combative Dateline Interview
Lori Vallow Daybell tried to shift blame for her son's death to her slain daughter, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, while talking to Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison for an explosive new interview.
Lori Vallow Daybell, who was convicted of killing two of her children, continues to proclaim her innocence, insisting in a combative new interview from behind bars that she was “not there” when the kids died.
She even tried to pin the murder of her young son on her own daughter, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan — whose remains were found in 2020, dismembered and burned beyond recognition — during the explosive sit-down with Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison for an all-new episode airing Friday at 9/8c p.m. on NBC.
As Morrison told NBC's TODAY, Lori tried to use her time on the special, which is her first television interview, to shift blame from herself. During her time in the spotlight, she even winked at the camera as she was led from her cell in handcuffs and shackles on her ankles.
“That should have given us a clue what she was gonna be like,” Morrison said of the wink and his overall meeting with one of America’s most notorious killers.
What was Lori Vallow Daybell convicted of?
Lori was convicted in 2023 of killing her kids — Tylee and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow — after the remains of the two missing children were discovered buried on the Idaho property of her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, in 2020. Chad was also convicted of the kids murders in a separate trial, as well as the 2019 murder of his first wife, Tammy Daybell. And both Lori and Chad were found guilty of conspiring to kill Tammy.
“You’re the most hated mom in America,” Morrison told Lori in the episode, titled “Lori Vallow Daybell: The Jailhouse Interview,” as seen in a preview clip shared on TODAY.
“I heard that, and we all know what the media does and they exaggerate everything and they make stuff up and they twist things around so...,” a defiant Lori replied. “I don’t know how it became what it is today. It’s amazing to me and I don’t really know.”
When asked by Morrison if she felt misunderstood, Lori replied, “absolutely."
Referencing the number of years she's been behind bars, Lori stated to Morrison, “How do you know a person if you never talk to them in five years? How do you know anything about them? How do you know anything about their life? About how it really is?”
Lori Vallow Daybell claims she was "not there" when her kids were killed
When Morrison asked Lori about whether she or her brother Alex Cox — dubbed by some as her “Angel of Death” — had been there when her children died, Lori initially pushed back.
“What place was that? Do you have any idea?” she asked Morrison. "Well, I'm the only one that knows. Do you know? You're pretending like you know."
Morrison continued to press the issue.
“I’m asking you a question,” he told her. “Did you watch your children die?”
Lori replied, “That’s a really sad question," before finally adding, “I was not there.”
Dateline's Keith Morrison "flustered" by interview with Lori Vallow Daybell
Morrison admitted on TODAY that he was “flustered” by Lori’s combative demeanor throughout the sit-down.
“She’s a curious character and I just didn’t know what was driving her and I had a whole bunch of stuff prepared I wanted to ask her about but, again, how do you prepare for chaos? She came in and she had her own agenda,” he said. “She wanted to be the aggressor.”
Morrison added that Lori plans to represent herself in her upcoming trial in Arizona, where she's charged with conspiring to kill her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and that he felt that she was “practicing” on him before the trial.
“I think she was practicing on me, you know the kinds of questions that... would be asked,” he said. “Every time I’d ask her a question, she’d come back at me with, 'How do you know that, Keith?' And that sort of thing. It was fascinating.”
Lori Vallow Daybell tried to blame son JJ's death on her daughter, Keith Morrison says
According to Morrison, Lori spent much of their allotted time together trying to pin the blame for JJ’s murder on her daughter Tylee — despite the fact that police have concluded that Tylee died before JJ.
“She wanted to fill that entire 90 minutes we had with a long, shaggy dog tale about how her daughter killed her son and then killed herself,” Morrison said. "The authorities — the police who investigated this — know for a fact this is not possibly true. For one thing, they died two weeks apart.
“So, I tried to get her off that narrative and onto some of the issues — some of the things that they knew happened — and she wasn’t going there,” he continued. “So... it was a very interesting little tennis match we had.”
Along with Lori, the two-hour broadcast will also feature interviews with Lori’s sole surviving child, son Colby Ryan; as well as with retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Doug Hart; Madison County Sheriff Ron Ball, who was the former lead detective for the Rexburg Police Department; and Detective Ray Hermosilla, a co-lead for the Rexburg Police Department.
To find out what else Lori has to say about the brutal crimes, watch Dateline on Friday at 9/8c p.m. on NBC or stream it on Peacock after it becomes available the next day.
