[imagesource:netflix]

Joining the Netflix true-crime documentary series canon is the brainwashed Lori Vallow, the ‘cult mom’ in Sins Of Our Mother.

While Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal played out on our screens, Alex Murdaugh stood trial in a labyrinthine case that revealed his “jaw-dropping spree of recklessness, greed, and murder”.

The family man – and lawyer – was finally convicted of the double murder of his wife and son.

Meanwhile, Idaho’s Vallow is standing trial this week for the murders of two of her children and plotting to slay her husband’s ex-wife.

The Daily Beast reports that prosecutors wasted no time arguing to a jury that the 49-year-old was driven to murder because of “money, power, and sex”:

“That’s what this case is about,” Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake said in her opening statements on Monday, arguing that Vallow used those three tools and “the promise of those things to get what she wanted.”

Fueled by their doomsday-focused religious beliefs, Blake argued that Vallow and her husband, Chad Daybell, are responsible for the September 2019 disappearance and death of her two children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua “JJ” Vallow.

It is also alleged that the cult couple conspired to kill Daybell’s first wife, Tammy, for insurance and social security funds.

To catch up with the trial, you can watch Sins Of Our Mother on Netflix, which is mainly told through the lens of Vallow’s surviving son, Colby:

The three-part docuseries is directed by Skye Borgman, who has been behind two other big real-life crime stories for the streamer recently, Girl In The Picture and I Just Killed My Dad.

In an interview with E! News, Borgman said: “Lori Vallow has many faces. That of a mother, sister, wife…and liar. I don’t know if we will ever know exactly what motivated Lori to commit such unspeakable crimes. But to formulate any answer we must look at Lori through the eyes of the people who knew her best.”

Esquire outlines how Vallow become increasingly unhinged:

In 2015, Vallow reportedly started reading literature published by the religious preacher Chad Daybell, who believed that the apocalypse was coming, and who believed that humans could be graded from light to dark. The ‘dark’ individuals were possessed by the devil, while those who were ‘light’ were “followers of Jesus Christ”.

Then, in October 2018, Vallow met Chad Daybell for the first time and in December 2019, police declared JJ and Tylee missing.

Court documents state that Tylee was last seen on a Sept. 8 trip to Yellowstone National Park with Vallow and her brother, Alex Cox. Around that time, prosecutors say, Vallow had told her friends and family that Tylee had become “dark”—and that if a person had turned “dark” they would become a “zombie.”’

“You will hear about a rating system of light and dark,” Blake told the jury, adding that Vallow “told others that with the help of Chad, she could rate people as light and dark. Pretty soon this system evolved.”

Prosecutors say the kids were killed around September 2019, with JJ found buried in a pet cemetery at Daybell’s Idaho farm wrapped in a garbage bag, while his older sister was dismembered and buried in a fire pit nearby:

“You will hear it described as a mass of bone and tissue. That’s what was left of this beautiful young woman,” Blake said about Tylee. “The defendant’s daughter. Her DNA was found on a pick ax and a shovel later located on a shed on Chad’s property.”

Apparently, Vallow and Chad had been “dancing and celebrating their wedding in Hawaii while JJ and Tylee were cold in the ground”:

Image: Fox10

Chilling.

If convicted, Vallow faces a maximum sentence of life in prison after Judge Steven Boyce ruled against the death penalty last month. Meanwhile, Daybell, whose trial will be scheduled after Vallow’s is completed, may face the death penalty.

[source:esquire&dailybeast]