Lori Vallow starts 2nd day of her 'cult mom' murder trial by flipping her hair, smiling, and talking
- Lori Vallow flipped her hair, smiled, and chatted about yoga before her trial Tuesday.
- Vallow is accused of killing her two children and her husband's former wife.
- Witnesses have testified that the "cult mom" became radicalized in doomsday beliefs in 2019.
BOISE, Idaho — Lori Vallow smiled, flipped her hair, and chatted about yoga Tuesday morning as court officers adjusted the chains on her ankles.
Shackled, Vallow was led to a wood table in an Ada County courtroom, where court officers chained her legs to the floor.
Grinning, she told her attorney, John Thomas, that she'd practiced yoga for years.
Her apparently upbeat attitude was in contrast to testimony on Monday — the first day of trial — in which two witnesses connected to the family described the disappearance of her now-dead children and the discovery of their remains. Vallow is accused of conspiring with her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, to kill her two children and Daybell's former wife.
Kay Woodcock, who described Vallow's adopted son J.J. Vallow as her "beautiful grandson," and Brandon Boudreaux, another relative, had addressed Vallow's alleged spiral from what Woodcock described as a "doting mom" to a doomsday fanatic.
Finding the kids
Woodcock and her husband hired a private investigator to surveil Vallow at her Rexburg, Idaho, home, Woodcock testified. When the investor failed to find J.J. or his older sister Tylee Ryan, the Woodcocks went to the police, she testified.
The children hadn't been seen in two months by the time police got involved. The day after police visited Vallow's home for a well-being check — during which she lied and said the children were with a relative — she and Daybell fled, police previously told Insider.
They were found vacationing in Hawaii in January 2020. The children's remains were found buried on Daybell's property in June 2020.
Boudreaux — who was married to Vallow's niece — sobbed Monday as he described being asked in June 2020 by police in Idaho to identify the remains of young J.J. Vallow.
"It's a pretty overwhelming task to do," a red-faced Boudreaux said after wiping his face with a tissue.
Boudreaux became emotional describing how close his four children had been to 7-year-old J.J , who he called his nephew.
"He seemed to love hanging out with my kids," he said, adding that his family and Vallow's spent holidays together and vacationed to be with each other.
Boudreaux, whose face was red and pained as he flicked his eyes at Vallow, also testified to how he had baptized Tylee Ryan, at Vallow's request, into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and how her religiosity changed markedly after 2018 when she met Daybell, an apocalyptic author and doomsday entrepreneur.
"It went from zero to a hundred real quick," he said. "It just seemed extreme."
On October 2, 2019, Boudreaux, who was married at the time to a Vallow's niece — another member of the doomsday religious group — was shot at outside his home in Arizona.
Prosecutors say that shooting, and an attempted shooting of Tammy Daybell before her death, are tied to the Vallow and other members of the religious group.
Throughout his testimony, Vallow whispered to her lawyers and filled a page of a legal pad with notes.
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