A mother in the United States who used her apocalyptic religious beliefs to justify murdering two of her children and conspiring to kill her husband’s ex-wife has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Idaho woman Lori Vallow was in May found guilty of killing her 16-year-old daughter Tylee Ryan and adopted seven-year-old son Joshua “JJ” Vallow.
Vallow, whose case was the subject of the Netflix true-crime documentary series Sins of Our Mother, claimed to be a goddess tasked with ushering in the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Judge Steven W Boyce on Monday handed down three consecutive life sentences due to the gravity of Vallow’s crimes, describing the murder of a child by a parent as “the most shocking thing really that I can imagine”.
Boyce said Vallow had justified the killings by going down a “bizarre religious rabbit hole” from which she had yet to emerge.
“I don’t think to this day you have any remorse for the effort and heartache you caused,” he said.
Vallow’s fifth husband, Chad Daybell, the leader of a radical Mormon sect and self-published author of several apocalyptic novels, is awaiting trial over similar charges, including the murder of his first wife. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The case first drew widespread attention after the disappearance of Vallow’s children in 2019.
Vallow and Daybell never reported the children missing and their bodies were found in June 2020 on property owned by Daybell in Idaho.
Prosecutors alleged that Vallow used religious beliefs to justify the murders.
Vallow’s lawyer, Jim Archibald, argued during the trial that there was no evidence tying Vallow to the killings and that she had been a protective mother whose life took a sharp turn when she met Daybell and fell for his “weird” apocalyptic religious claims.
He suggested that Daybell and Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox, were responsible for the deaths.
Vallow told the court ahead of her sentencing that she was regularly visited by the spirits of the three victims and the children’s spirits had told her to “stop worrying” and that she “didn’t do anything wrong”.
Source: Al Jazeera
BDST: 0952 HRS, AUG 01, 2023
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