Lori Vallow Has Been Married a Few Times — Not All of Her Former Husbands Are Alive Today

In February 2020, Lori Vallow was arrested in Hawaii where she was vacationing with her fifth husband, Chad Daybell. She was subsequently charged with two counts of felony desertion of a child as well as misdemeanor charges of resisting and obstructing an officer, solicitation of a crime, and contempt. By that time no one had seen her children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua "J.J." Vallow, since September 2019.

Four months after Vallow and Daybell were taken into custody, the badly decomposed bodies of Vallow's children were found buried on her husband's property in Rexburg, Idaho. The following day, Vallow and Daybell were indicted on multiple charges connected to their deaths. In July 2023, Vallow was given multiple life sentences while Daybell was sentenced to death nearly a year later. This is not the first time someone close to Vallow has died. Here's what we know about her husbands.

According to ABC News, Vallow was married three times between 1992 and 2006. She was quite young the first time she walked down the aisle. In 1991, Vallow graduated from Eisenhower High School in Rialto, Calif., and married her high school sweetheart Nelson the next year. The marriage didn't last long. One of Vallow's high school friends told WJXT it was probably because she was a devout Mormon while Nelson was not.

Vallow wasn't single for long and in 1995, she married William Lagioia, with whom she shares a son named Colby. They were divorced in 1996, which freed her up to marry Joseph Ryan in 2001. He adopted Colby and together he and Vallow had Tylee. "One reason Lori had wanted to get married was to have another baby," her mother told ABC News. "So, she got pregnant with Tylee right away, and she was really excited about having Tylee."

Like her previous marriages, Vallow's time with Ryan was short-lived. She filed for divorce in 2004 while claiming that Ryan was abusive toward her children. Those claims were never proven and contributed to a contentious custody battle that turned violent when Vallow's brother, Alex Cox, attacked Ryan. Believing what his sister was alleging, Cox assaulted Ryan with a taser in August 2007. Cox got three months in jail and Ryan died of an apparent heart attack in 2018.

Once again, it was just Vallow with the kids until she met Charles Vallow. He was described as the "best of Lori's husbands" by Vallow's mother, Janis Cox. "We all liked him. He's from the south, very well-mannered, and they seemed like a really good couple," she said. Charles even converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after marrying Vallow. Soon after they were married, Vallow and Charles adopted J.J., Charles's nephew.

By all accounts, Vallow and Charles were happy for roughly 14 years until she started talking about a new religious group she was enthralled by. "She would bring it up more and more often, and I could see that she was becoming more involved with it and it was kind of becoming more of the focal point in her life," said Vallow's friend, April Raymond (per ABC News). This led to Vallow's obsession with an author who wrote doomsday books. His name was Chad Daybell.

Things started to fall apart for Vallow and Charles in January 2019. By that point, he had accused his wife of having an affair with Daybell. She also accused her husband of cheating, but that has never been proven. After a particularly upsetting fight, Charles called the police after Vallow said she could murder him with her powers. The couple separated and in July 2019, Charles went to Vallow's to pick up J.J. only to get into a scuffle with Vallow's brother that ended in Charles's death.

Cox was never charged for Charles's murder and in September 2019, they moved to Idaho to be closer to Daybell. That's when Tylee and J.J. disappeared. Vallow and Daybell were married soon after, then charged with the deaths of Vallow's two kids.