‘Sins of Our Mother’: Lori Vallow Claimed Her Children Had Turned Into ‘Zombies’ Before Their Disappearance
Sins of Our Mother is the upcoming Netflix docuseries that follows the case of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell. In September 2019, Vallow’s children — Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17– suddenly disappeared into thin air, and the story garnered international media attention and scrutiny.
The three-part series will focus on Vallow, and how she devolved from a devoted Idaho wife and mother of three, to a religious extremist preparing for the end times. It will also reveal the truth behind JJ and Tylee’s disappearance.
Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell’s doomsday beliefs made them suspects in ‘Sins of Our Mother’
Vallow and her husband, Daybell, are former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who broke away from the church after developing extreme religious beliefs. They were members of an alleged “doomsday extremist group” called Preparing a People, and their strange worldview made them prime suspects in the disappearance of Vallow’s children.
According to police documents, Vallow told her best friend Melanie Gibb that she and Daybell were spiritual leaders who were on a mission during their time on earth.
“She (Gibb) was told by Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow that they held the religious belief that they were a part of the ‘Church of the Firstborn’ and that their mission in that Church was to lead the ‘144,000’ mentioned in the Book of Revelation. They also stated their mission was to rid the world of ‘zombies,'” the police document read.
Lori Vallow claimed her children had turned into ‘zombies’ before they disappeared
Gibb explained to the police that the term ‘zombie’ refers to someone whose mortal spirit has left their body, and their body now hosts another spirit. The new spirit in a ‘zombie’ is always considered a “dark spirit.”
Idaho News reported that Gibb heard Vallow talk about zombies a few times, and sometimes it was in reference to her own children. Gibb says that the first time she heard her friend use the term was in the spring of 2019, when Vallow called Tylee a zombie because the teen didn’t want to babysit her little brother.
Gibb also revealed that Vallow told her that she first learned the “zombie” concept from her new husband, Daybell, at the beginning of that year.
The last time Gibb heard Vallow call one of her children a zombie, was the last time she saw JJ. She says that she went to visit Vallow in September 2019, and she ended up being the last person to see JJ before he disappeared.
“Gibb reports that when she arrived in Rexburg, Lori Vallow informed her that JJ Vallow had become a ‘zombie,'” Rexburg police Lt. Ron Ball wrote in his report.
‘Sins of Our Mother’ will reveal what really happened to JJ and Tylee Vallow
Gibb says that Vallow and Daybell believe when a zombie takes over someone’s body, the person’s “true spirit” goes into “limbo” The duo also believe that when the spirit is in limbo, it is stuck there “until the host body is physically killed.”
“As such, death of the physical body is seen as the mechanism by which the body’s original spirit can be released from limbo,” the court documents read.
This strange, complex case is documented in Sins Of Our Mother by director Skye Borgman. She directed another Netflix documentary about an Idaho LDS couple and their daughter’s kidnapping titled Abducted in Plain Sight. Borgman noted that the two stories do have some similar details, but they are extremely different cases.
“They’re both family stories, and they both have LDS ripples in them,” Borgman told KTVB. “With Lori, it’s substantially different. I think that she had these beliefs and went beyond anything that LDS condones, or that LDS talks about. And she got to this point of extremism, and I think that those two things are incredibly different.”
Sins of Our Mother premieres September 14 on Netflix.
