Murder, Faith & End Times: Leah Sottile on Lori Vallow & Chad Daybell

[00:00:00] This winter, take your icon pass north. North to abundant access, to powder skiing legacy, to independent spirit. North where easy to get to, meets worlds away. Go north to Snow Basin. Now on the icon pass.

[00:00:27] The views and opinions expressed by A Little Bit Culty are those of the hosts, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. That's true.

[00:00:36] Any of the fire content provided by our guest bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Unless you're abusing people then I have a problem maligning you.

[00:00:50] Also, we're not doctors, psychologists or wizards. We're just two non-experts trying to make you a friendly informative podcast that helps you understand culty shit. Hey everybody, Sarah Edmondson here. And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippy, Sarah's husband, and you're listening to A Little Bit Culty, aka ALBC.

[00:01:17] A podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side. We've been there and back again. A little about us, true story, we met and fell in love in a cult. And then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge.

[00:01:29] The whole thing was captured in HBO docu-series The Vow. Now in its second season. I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, Scarred, the true story of how I escaped Nexium, the cult that bound my life.

[00:01:42] Look at us. A couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night where we interview experts and advocates and things like cult awareness and mind control. Wait, wait, this does not count toward date night bait. We got to schedule that that's separate.

[00:01:55] So it's two days? We gotta hang in there? We do this podcast thing because we learned a lot on our exit ramp out of Nexium. Still on that journey. And we want to pay the lessons forward with the help of other cult survivors and whistleblowers.

[00:02:06] We know all too well that culty things happen. It happens to people every day across every walk of life. So join us each week to tackle these culty dynamics everywhere from online dating to mega churches and multi-level marketing.

[00:02:17] This stuff really is everywhere. The Cultiverse just keeps on expanding and so are we. Welcome to season five of A Little Bit Cultie, serving cult content and word salads weekly on your favorite podcast platforms. Learn more at alittlebitculti.com Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Cultiverse.

[00:02:52] Breaking news. We are interrupting our normal programming and bumping this episode ahead of the normal schedule because we have some breaking news. I think it's important to know this is about something that's happening right now. There's a trial happening right now.

[00:03:06] I'm not sure if you've been following it, but the Lori Vallow Debell case has been in the news now for a number of years. Shit is crazy. It is next level. I think Nexium's weird. Holy shit.

[00:03:17] I was asked to speak on it to be interviewed by Elizabeth Vargas a couple weeks ago and when I did, I mean we're totally honest, I did not know the depths to which I was uneducated about this. I don't think anyone knows until the trial is over.

[00:03:30] Right. And we still don't know. But one of our listeners recommended we talk to Leo Sotilli who wrote an incredible book and we'll be talking a lot about that. But just a little bit of backstory.

[00:03:40] Lori Vallow is a 49 year old American woman arrested in Hawaii in 2019 after her 17 year old daughter, Tiley Ryan, and her 7 year old son, Joshua, J.J., went missing in Idaho.

[00:03:52] With the police uncovered during the freakish and deeply disturbing investigation, certainly points a finger at Vallow for the death of her two children, whose bodies were tragically discovered in shallow graves.

[00:04:01] I also, this would be a good time to again say this is very dark and certainly needs a trigger warning. The current inmate, Lori Vallow, also seems to be linked to the suspicious deaths of her previous husband as well as the wife of her new husband Chad Debell.

[00:04:15] The allegedly murderous couple came to be after Vallow began obsessively reading Debell's apocalyptic texts instead of just checking like the New York Times bestseller list for books that aren't 100% unhinged.

[00:04:26] At the time is recording Vallow still on trial in Boise, which makes it all more timely and appropriate to speak with today's guest freelance journalist and author, Leo Sotilli.

[00:04:36] Sotilli's book, When the Moon Turns to Blood, Lori Vallow, Chad Debell and the Story of Murder, Faith and End Times illuminates the story of the former beauty queen and her grave digger turned doomsday novel slash extremist husband.

[00:04:50] Furthermore, the book asks the question, what's the bigger picture around today's doomsday culture?

[00:04:56] We loved our conversation with Leah and in case you somehow don't get it to the end, she has agreed to do a live zoom over on Patreon the week this podcast airs or perhaps the week after depending on our mutual schedules.

[00:05:08] So please join us over there so you can ask her questions directly because this is very complicated.

[00:05:13] And if you do want to be on that zoom, we recommend you read the book first to understand all of the people, all the characters involved in this absurdly challenging case to wrap your head around.

[00:05:24] And at the very least find out the updates in the case and I think she'll be there and she'll be able to give us kind of the inside scoop because one of the things that even just reading this in the introduction, it's it's hard to read but it's also some somewhat emotionally disconnected.

[00:05:37] And one of the things I don't like about headlines is you know, I think the emotion is important that helps people understand it and helps under people understand nuance and Leah brings that so without further ado, Sarah. Leah Sotilli. Leah, welcome to a little bit Colty.

[00:06:02] Yeah, thanks for having me. Good times about the end times. Yes. Wow. There you go. Hold it all together right there.

[00:06:11] First of all, we've been talking about this case a little bit in the podcast and I said I just don't know who to interview because I was trying to like figure out all the different characters are so many people involved.

[00:06:21] And then one of our audience members suggested your book and I was like, I wish that I had read it before was interviewed by Elizabeth Vargas. I really did not understand the complexity of this case when I was interviewed about it. So I appreciate you. It is wild.

[00:06:35] It's wild. There's so many moving parts and it certainly has a salacious headlines and we're going to have to transcend all that to get the human element of this. How did you come across this case and what's your personal journey with end times and extremism? Yeah.

[00:06:50] So personal journey is just that I have been a journalist writing about political and religious extremism for like the last decade or so. And I grew up Catholic.

[00:07:00] I went to Catholic school kind of thought that was what most people believed, you know, you only grow up knowing what you know. But at a certain point in my journalism career, I started to become really interested in the LDS faith.

[00:07:14] I live in Oregon and you know, I think it's hard to tell the history of the West without talking about the history of the Mormon church.

[00:07:22] So it became something that I started researching sort of out of interest but also out of necessity in writing about political extremism specifically because I've done a ton of work on anti-government militias. We had an armed takeover of a wildlife refuge that went on for 41 days in 2016.

[00:07:40] Remember that. And that was something I, yeah, I reported on that a ton. And the whole gist of that was it was led by a family who had really specific beliefs about what they thought the Mormon faith obligated them to do.

[00:07:54] So really it was because I had this kind of foundational background that there were people in like anti-government circles that had really radical, you know, completely fringe,

[00:08:05] and I was interested by the mainstream church in Salt Lake City beliefs that when I heard about Lori Vallow and Chad Debel and that they were missing,

[00:08:13] I'd read a headline in, I want to say December 2019 when they disappeared, which I'm sure we'll get into, that someone had speculated that maybe it had to do with their end times beliefs or their cult-like beliefs. I think it was the quote. And I thought, oh, that's interesting.

[00:08:28] I kind of come off of all this work on these fringe LDS beliefs. And I thought, well, that'd be interesting if this kind of yoga mom and this guy that's involved in his church believe the same things as these militia guys that I've just finished writing about.

[00:08:41] And it turned out they really did in a way. So that's, that's how it started for me was just kind of wondering like, huh, I wonder if they believe the same things. And that's just was the beginning of a very long rabbit hole.

[00:08:53] It kind of seems to that it's an unlikely reach for those extreme beliefs that it's actually getting into a little bit more mainstream with these two characters. Wouldn't you say? I 100%.

[00:09:05] Yes, I think that that what to me was one of the most chilling realizations as I was reporting on this book was that, you know, it's one thing when like a bunch of guys with AR-15s and like fatigues and all the militia, you know, uniform show up

[00:09:19] and start scaring people and they have radical religious beliefs. It's a whole other thing when it's a guy who serves in the priesthood of his church and a mom who teaches Sunday school are also talking about the same thing.

[00:09:30] So yeah, to me I was like, whoa, maybe this is a sign of these beliefs mainstreaming.

[00:09:35] Well, I was very appreciative of how you were able to do so much investigative journalism in terms of painting the picture of like the very complicated tapestry of the backdrop for both of these people and how they were raised.

[00:09:47] And it just made sense to me like obviously it's totally not in reality their beliefs, but given the way they were raised, it made sense to me how they got to that point.

[00:09:57] And so for those people who don't know anything about the case, I know it's going to be hard to summarize it, but in the best way you can and maybe I could ask the question if you could give a brief timeline, but also like what were the circumstances in their upbringing that you see led to them being where they are now?

[00:10:12] Sure, yeah. So to me this book is what it's like 350 pages and it was a very long study of me trying to figure out how Chad Debel and Laurie Vallow two people with wild religious beliefs could meet.

[00:10:26] Like what were the circumstances that would bring two people that had these beliefs together, especially if they were so as fringe as everybody says.

[00:10:33] So to me in order to answer that I had to go back all the way to the beginning of their lives, which is often what I feel like I do on extremism work as I just go as deeply as I can until their story of their upbringing, you know, were these ideas that they learned or from their parents?

[00:10:48] Was it passed down to them? Was it intergenerational? So in the case of Laurie Vallow, she was raised in Southern California in the San Bernardino area, raised it by all means in a very traditional California American household. You know, she was a cheerleader.

[00:11:05] She was the kind of young Mormon who went to like a religious school every day before before she went to her public high school raised in a big family. You know, they went to church every week, but they also kind of were living this more lavish lifestyle.

[00:11:20] They went to Hawaii a lot. The father ran for city council at a certain point. What I started to realize was that at a certain point Laurie's father, his name is Barry Cox, he started to develop a pretty serious anti-government belief system.

[00:11:36] So to me, you know, this was the world I was familiar with like, ah, okay, here's something interesting that isn't normal. I would say he decided he didn't want to pay the IRS anymore. And I think that's a really common thing.

[00:11:50] That's a common point of radicalization for a lot of people is that they're like, why should I pay the federal government all these taxes? So at a certain point, he developed this idea that he didn't need to pay his taxes and he started writing about it.

[00:12:03] So, you know, fast forward way all the way forward to when this case started on the day that Laurie Vallow was arrested in March of 2020 in Hawaii. Her father published a book about how Americans can fight the IRS.

[00:12:19] And it's about him bringing this like anti-tax sovereign citizen belief system together with his faith, with what he believes is, you know, talked about in the Book of Mormon.

[00:12:30] So I think that's the short story of Laurie Vallow is that she was raised in a household where her dad stopped paying taxes. That was something that happened when she was in high school.

[00:12:38] She then went through a variety of marriages that went awry and I think that's probably the best I can describe her. Chad Debell, who is her fifth husband.

[00:12:49] And these are not just to be clear, they weren't polygamous like she had was not married to the other people anymore. Although there was some overlap between Charles and Chad. Absolutely. Yes, yes, definitely overlap in the affair realm, not the polygamy realm, but yes.

[00:13:06] So Chad Debell was raised really in the kind of like bread basket of Mormonism in the Provo, Utah area, which is where Brigham Young University is. You know, he's just your kind of classic Mormon story knows all of his pioneer ancestors that came west, that settled into Utah.

[00:13:26] He described himself as a scripture nerd and that he was the kind of guy who would drive around his small town and people would think, oh, him and his friends are out cruising for girls, but really they were just talking about scripture. He actually writes this.

[00:13:38] So it's like he's like a Bible nerd. He goes to BYU. He studies journalism. He goes on a mission. You know, kind of does all the like A to Z of what you're supposed to do as a good Mormon guy.

[00:13:51] And eventually he starts to become really interested in the stories of near death experiences, which is a big part of the book that I wrote is talking about why near death experiences are appealing to some people on the fringes of the LDS church.

[00:14:07] Essentially he at a certain point claimed he had had two near death experiences, which I asked his brother about and he was like, yeah, that's news to me. I've never heard of him having near death experiences.

[00:14:18] But I think what which had Debo realized was that near death experiences could give him a sort of certain celebrity within fringe LDS circles. He was an aspiring writer and was having a really hard time selling his books.

[00:14:33] And all of a sudden when he became a near death experience celebrity, I would say, and that's, you know, air quotes around the word celebrity because it was a pretty small world. But he could get kind of, you know, some fame for that.

[00:14:45] So he talked about his near death experiences, how it gave him a certain access to the spirit world, how he could see beyond the veil and speak to, you know, his ancestors and things like that.

[00:14:57] So at a certain point Chad really kind of goes from this pretty, you know, normal Mormon guy into this world of fringe near death experiences and coming up with these kind of wacky spiritual ideas.

[00:15:10] And I say wacky because they are seen by people, I would even say probably at the edges of the Mormon churches is really out there. So yeah, he starts kind of traveling around these circuits selling his books doing speeches talking about his ideas.

[00:15:24] And these are the circumstances with which Laurie and Chad eventually meet in 2018 in Utah at one of these conferences. So fringe belief overlaps. Yes. Yes, exactly. So and in this kind of quest to become a public figure in that world, he started doing podcasts.

[00:15:43] And it sounds to me like Laurie Vello had started hearing some of those podcasts and she was reading his books and things like that and that she came and, you know, he was there sort of a scene I put in the book that he's selling books at a table.

[00:15:56] And all of a sudden, you know, it's like this, the crowd parts and this beautiful blonde walks towards him and they just are, you know, starry eyed for each other and fall in love immediately.

[00:16:05] And he tells her apparently that same day, you know, we were married in a past life, which to me, you know, somebody said that to me. I would be so creeped out. But to Laurie Vello, she was like, yes, we were.

[00:16:16] I think it like pretty early in this case, they're kind of developed this like real fascination with Laurie Vello like people started calling her the doomsday mommy and doomsday mother and they were the doomsday couple and stuff.

[00:16:30] And I think I talk a bit about that in the book that there was this kind of like, you know, people got really obsessed with with her and why she is the way she is. Yeah.

[00:16:40] And well, I do think that was quite well explained in your book also just the element of like her being so devoted to the church. But that's not really a place where women can shine.

[00:16:51] And then, you know, Chad giving her this like basically an ego boost of like, no, you're a goddess warrior, you know, I mean, I can't imagine many women who wouldn't like to hear that from a man like, it sounds great. Nippy, who's a goddess warrior?

[00:17:05] I mean, 10 years old Sarah, who do you think? Right. Like I can, I get that psychology. I mean, we call it love bombing, right? Like he, whether it was manipulative or true for him, he certainly, you know, boosted her.

[00:17:20] The other kind of ironic slash, it's not like proof, but it just fits into the whole picture of his history as a grave digger. Yeah.

[00:17:29] You know, that's often a part of it that I totally forget about that I think Chad's first book was called One Foot in the Grave. He wrote two memoirs.

[00:17:37] So it was the first of his memoirs and it's about his life as a grave digger in this small town in Utah and how he, it's really weird.

[00:17:47] I mean, it's weird for a lot of reasons, but you read it in, you know, knowing what we know now and he comes off as just this kind of like small town gossip sort of making fun of people who are mourning or just kind of generally inconvenience by people needing, you know, funeral arrangements and things like that.

[00:18:05] Really sort of callous, but I thought it was very interesting. Like this is somebody who has positioned themselves to be near death in as many ways as he can, you know, from a young age, he was making money off being a grave digger.

[00:18:20] Then all of a sudden he needed to be this near death experience guy. It's like it's a long time fascination for him. Can you tell us in the audience a little bit about the shared beliefs that they had?

[00:18:31] Like where does the LDS belief system end and where does it go into their reality? Like what's the main crux of that? So I think the best way to answer that is, is that, and to be honest with you, like I didn't grow up LDS or anything.

[00:18:46] So this is all just from my own reporting. The LDS church does allow each individual member to receive revelation in a way to essentially have like a personal relationship with God to talk to God to receive, you know, instructions and messages from God.

[00:19:03] Where the church is very clear is that when revelation kind of walks out the front door of your house, so you could talk to your family about it, you could talk to your wife and say, God told me that we should do X, Y or Z.

[00:19:16] But when that walks out the front door and starts to make itself public and broadcast to other people, that's when things become really problematic. And that's really where Chad and Laurie got themselves sideways with the church.

[00:19:29] Because Chad would say, you know, I basically saw these visions of the world ending. You know, to me it's sort of this kind of funny chicken or egg thing. Like if you allow people to receive revelation and that revelation is very scary and, you know, world ending potentially,

[00:19:47] you might want to tell other people about that. But the church, you know, has been really clear over the years. You can't go start broadcasting these things and claiming that you're a prophet and things like that.

[00:19:57] But the LDS Church has this really long history of people doing that, of saying, you know, okay, thanks, but no thanks leadership. Like I received a revelation that was so powerful to me that I need to go start spreading that word.

[00:20:12] This is why the LDS Church has so many different schismatic breakaway groups that have said, like, no, no, no, don't listen to them anymore. I'm the one with the true gospel. You know, I hold that.

[00:20:24] So, you know, as far as specific beliefs, I think it's important to say that a lot of schismatic groups with the LDS Church are based around polygamy, where they say, you know, the prophet of the church revealing that we don't practice polygamy anymore. Yeah, I don't buy it.

[00:20:39] I think that that's what Joseph Smith, the prophet and founder of the LDS Church wanted. So, a lot of those schismatic groups are around the ability to practice polygamy.

[00:20:48] When it comes to Chad and Laurie, they didn't specifically believe, like, they're, I kind of talk about, like, is what they believed polygamy because they believed in something they called multiple probations, which is that essentially, you know, Chad and Laurie were married in a past life.

[00:21:04] And so when they met each other, they were like, oh, we're still married. But simultaneously, Laurie was married to a man named Charles Vallow and Chad was married to a woman named Tammy Daybell. To me, isn't that kind of polygamy?

[00:21:17] If you're, you know, believing you're married to more than one, it's like they had this kind of strange, like sci-fi timeline that they were living on, making this whole polygamy thing even weirder. To justify it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there was a lot of things like that.

[00:21:34] They also believed in things they would call castings where they would hold these kind of group meetings and sort of visualize that they were sending, you know, dark or light energy at people that they thought were kind of getting in their way.

[00:21:51] So I think the best example of that is that Laurie Vallow's fourth husband, Charles Vallow, he was, you know, really questioning a lot of these meetings she was going to her relationship with Chad Daybell.

[00:22:02] And so all of a sudden she sort of developed this idea that he was not even himself anymore.

[00:22:08] He'd been invaded by a demon spirit and that was up to her and her close friends to kind of like send this energy at him and try and kill him or make sure his car drove off the road and things like that.

[00:22:20] So none of these things are recognizable to Mormons.

[00:22:24] They're just like this interpretation of an interpretation of beliefs, but it does fit in a kind of wacky history that the LDS church has to kind of consistently deal with of people who just kind of go and decide this is what Mormonism looks like.

[00:22:40] We are the true church. This is Sarah and I'm proud to be a founding collaborator of the hashtag I got out movement. Learn more at I got out dot org. We're feeding the hungry shelf tags where a portion of your purchase will be donated to local pantries together.

[00:23:37] We can combat hunger in our local communities at Macy's. The Frankies were a picture perfect influencer family, but everything wasn't as it seemed. I just had a 12 year old boy still appeared asking for help. He's emaciated. He's got tape around his legs. Ruby Frankie is his mom's name.

[00:23:58] Infamous is covering Ruby Frankie, the world of Mormonism and a secret therapy group that ruined lives. Listen to infamous wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:24:10] Well, it does fit in terms of the process of how Mormonism breaks off to justify other belief system, which is the foundation of the religion in the first place.

[00:24:22] So it is kind of fitting that it would take on that kind of emulation of that behavior in order to justify whatever they want to do. Do you mean like Joseph Smith just coming up with this?

[00:24:31] Like I held some crystals and talked to Marona and now I'm the leader. Like, do you mean like that? Like people just saying I talked to God. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:40] You know, and I think it's, I mean, it's been very interesting to me as somebody who reports on religion. I think that's it's the history of the LDS church is so new. You know, we could look and tell that story that just happened like 200 some odd years ago.

[00:24:54] So you start to make you wonder which of these, you know, are all religions like this where it's just like a guy with some crystals and a hat and, you know, some fabled golden tablets and only he can see maybe I don't know. They kind of are.

[00:25:07] It kind of conveniently works out and everything works in their favor and they have the power and it's never a vision that's positive that doesn't it's there's never. It's never a vision that comes back where they don't seem to have more control after the vision. Yeah.

[00:25:22] Hey, listen, I had this vision. You guys should go do what you want. Yeah. You know, I've been I've been wrong this whole time. It's like, hey, you know, I've had a vision. I need 80 wives. Yeah. 20 of them are going to be underage. Give me your money.

[00:25:38] And I'm just going to take advantage. No, but I know we're laughing, but also like this isn't a bang on Mormon people. I'm sure there's lots of lovely Mormons out there. It's more just the major problem of it being okay.

[00:25:51] Like in some ways as a not religious person, but I'm also like pseudo spiritual or something that like and I don't use the word God in my daily life, but like I called the universe or whatever.

[00:26:02] But like to say someone has a direct line to God in some ways, I think that's, you know, great to say you can connect to your for me would be like my true self higher self the universe source, whatever. Like I don't make my decisions based on that.

[00:26:16] It's sort of like a knowing feeling, right? That sounds great. But when you take that and then start applying a belief system to everybody else of how everybody should be in making decisions. I think the word you use in your book was like your self prescribed morality.

[00:26:29] You know what would you do to call it something about how you like you decide it's like your own morality that you're now imposing on everybody. Right. Exactly.

[00:26:36] Like you're the arbiter of the rules and and I think I think that's really smart the way you're saying it like it's about just sort of like packaging the beliefs in our own. The beliefs in a way that like Lori was somebody who has raised Mormon.

[00:26:47] She very much wanted to be like the best Mormon woman that she could be and had gone through all of these different divorces and a lot of family strife and things like that.

[00:26:56] But Chad really spoke to her, I think in a way that she was familiar with he used terms and stories and you know scriptures that she knew. And so she could, you know, kind of I think be convinced of this.

[00:27:09] But I think that, you know, this is one thing I want to I want to be sure to say is that a big part of my reporting was also trying to figure out who was leading who here.

[00:27:18] Because I think that like to me I came into it seeing to be honest, like I saw all of this like indictment of Lori Valo, you know, it was all her. But I thought well what about this other guy?

[00:27:30] Like is it possible that he could be, you know, that she was brainwashed in some way? Like, you know, being a feminist like thinking like maybe we need to like give this lady a little grace.

[00:27:40] But then as I got into the reporting, I started to actually wonder maybe she was leading him that she had this kind of long history of familial violence towards her partners and things like that. So I don't know if you want to get into that at all.

[00:27:55] But yeah. I guess the question is who's using coercive control over whom? Hmm. Right. And how do you define coercive control? I mean, you both would be able to tell me more than I would.

[00:28:05] Well, as I understand it, we've interviewed some people that are trying to get the courts to understand it.

[00:28:10] And one of the things in our case and specific is part of the reason law enforcement didn't take it entirely serious at first is because they didn't know what they were looking at.

[00:28:18] Meaning when Sarah and Sarah's case, she agreed to something but it was under a false premise. Right? So it was kind of a bait and switch. So what she was agreeing to in the initial deal wasn't exactly what the people that had in mind. Right?

[00:28:33] So Sarah was agreeing to the brand, but it wasn't Keith's initials she was agreeing to. And then there was collateralized with her agreement or whatever. And also that there was the blackmail being held over me that I had to obey. Right?

[00:28:46] Part of my commitment of joining this group was that to obey every command from Lauren and it was supposed to be things about my growth. And the actual definition of just looked it up.

[00:28:54] Just what's on the internet is course of control as an act or pattern or acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that's used to harm, punish or frighten the victim.

[00:29:03] So it's coercing someone to do something they wouldn't normally do using any one of those things. Like I wouldn't have done that. It's a gun to the head. It's a gun to the head. Yeah. Emotional gun to the head. Wow. Yeah.

[00:29:15] Maybe they're doing it to each other, but in the case of it sounds like in this one, you know, she's the easy one to come down on because of the salacious. Headlines, but upon further investigation, it's more nuance.

[00:29:25] And there's way more things that are informing how these things come into fruition. Totally. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting to think about if course of control was a part of this. I mean, they had people around them that believed what they believed and did what they said.

[00:29:40] But they seem to be really, really careful about who they shared their ideas with. So specifically, I remember there was a woman who is very close to Lorian Chad and she had texted Chad at one point and said,

[00:29:55] Hey, I'm going to bring a friend of mine to this meeting that we're having. You know, I think she'd be great for you to talk to. And he was like, no, no, she's not ready yet.

[00:30:03] And so he was really, really careful, I think about who he would share these ideas with. And I don't know if that's because he was afraid of the mainstream church finding out and excommunicating him,

[00:30:15] because this is like the fastest way that you get crosswise with the church or if there was something more there. But when it comes to Chad and Lorian, I think that they had proverbial guns to each other's heads.

[00:30:28] And it also seemed like their group, because when Elizabeth Vargas first reached out about the cult connection, I mean, I saw culty things, but it wasn't super well public. I didn't read your book yet that they had started a group.

[00:30:42] But that's different than preparing a people and the Internet of Vow, a voice of warning. So can you just explain all sort of those two groups and how that kind of was a pipeline to their group? Totally, yeah.

[00:30:56] So first, preparing a people was a circuit of conferences that kind of takes place in the intermountain West. So Idaho, Utah, Arizona, these areas of the country that are very heavily LDS.

[00:31:10] And for people who don't know, there is this kind of thing within Mormonism called preparedness doctrine where people have preparer stores. So they stock up on water and medical supplies and things like that as a way of being prepared for any eventual issues,

[00:31:28] like an earthquake or just natural disasters. It's like a very normal thing within normal Mormonism. However, people take things to the extreme. So with preparing a people, it was catered towards Mormons who were really prepping up believing that the end of the world was coming.

[00:31:47] I think it's important that the name of the church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And that Latter-day bit is super key here because it's about the part of the book of Revelation where it's prophesied that the world is going to end.

[00:32:01] Jesus will return, there'll be all kinds of mayhem and things like that. So preparing a people was for the people who were hardcore about that specific bit.

[00:32:11] And so it was about kind of looking for signs that the end was coming and what to do and these kind of fringe ideas that Lorian Chadd were talking about. Sort of adjacent to that is this website called Another Voice of Warning,

[00:32:26] of which I was a member for a very long time trying to understand this ideology from the inside out. But it's a website for people who are in the Mormon church, who are talking about things that the mainstream Mormon church would not be cool with like multiple probations,

[00:32:42] like near-death experiences, like hardcore prepping up for the end times. And Chadd really kind of found his audience on the Another Voice of Warning site. A lot of those same people, like preparing a people would get on there and give like discount codes and stuff for their conferences

[00:33:01] to the Another Voice of Warning crowd. So that was kind of their market that they were looking for where these sorts of people. Oh my goodness. There's plenty out there. Are you still a member of VAU?

[00:33:14] I am not, no at a certain point. I was like, I cannot pay for this anymore. But you know where to go in case they're right, right? Yeah, I mean I was actually really surprised when I was reporting the book.

[00:33:25] I was like, oh that's interesting. Like they want to divorce themselves from Chadd Debo, because all of his posts are still here. So I was able to just kind of like look back at everything he had ever written on there

[00:33:35] and saw how he was kind of like picking around for other near-death experience stories and things like that. I love how you called him an LDS Nostradamus. And also you called him White Bread Without Crests. These are the three quotes I wrote down.

[00:33:49] And that you said that the covers of his book were the Panera of book covers. Yeah, I mean you started picking up on all the shade I was trying to put out there.

[00:33:58] But your shade was so perfect. I mean without having like done the deep dive that you did, I really got the gist. Well, you're hitting on something I think is really interesting about Chadd and Lori.

[00:34:11] I think that sparks some of the fascination as you look at her and like objectively before this happened she was a bombshell. Like she was a beautiful woman and had this kind of like really wealthy lifestyle and things like that.

[00:34:24] And you're like, that guy? Like Chadd Deboe, where's these kind of clothes that look too big for him? That when he talks he's really unsure of himself. He carries himself like a really insecure person.

[00:34:36] And so it was kind of interesting to me to kind of go through that thought process of like why him? Like what's so appealing about that guy? I think it is what you said it's what he gave to her.

[00:34:46] And also like just based on your reporting and from what it looks like she did seem to be like the kind of woman who knew how to manipulate men and also law enforcement and people around her to get what she wanted. And the word grifter comes to mind.

[00:35:01] How much do you think like the current political climate, the current kind of distrust in media, government, et cetera plays into this and makes them maybe more a little bit more susceptible to these belief systems

[00:35:15] or maybe they prey on people that are having certain doubts about the political climate and the division that's going on in our world right now and that makes them a little bit more. It accelerates it a little bit.

[00:35:27] So I'm really glad you asked that because I think that for me, you know, this was an extension of the work that I've done on extremism. And I was very much seeing this case as it's an extension of this kind of political divide

[00:35:39] that we feel like we're all living in right now. I think it's important to talk about that within the history of the LDS church is this kind of persecution complex. It's very, very real. Like we said, this is all really recent history.

[00:35:54] So there were multiple moments in the history of the LDS church where people were persecuted for believing in Joseph Smith for believing, you know, supposedly, you know, you have freedom of religion in the Constitution, but they felt like that was not somehow being applied to them.

[00:36:10] So like when the Mormons came west and they were in Utah, there were raids of polygamous homes by the federal government, you know, homes burned to the ground and things like that.

[00:36:20] And over the years as I have reported on Mormonism, I've come to understand that story is one that has been passed down from generation to generation. And I think that infuses this hardcore prepper mentality, like prep up for an earthquake or a volcano eruption

[00:36:39] or if the federal government comes in and starts like burning people's houses down. There's a history between the church and the government. Yes. And a real, real distrust. So when I started writing about these militia guys that took over the wildlife refuge and went and interviewed their family,

[00:36:56] you know, they told stories about their town in Nevada was subjected to nuclear fallout from the Nevada testing site. You know, their whole town of LDS people were, you know, all of a sudden had cancer.

[00:37:10] And so that was kind of one more moment that people could point to and be like, look, the government will screw you. And so we don't trust them.

[00:37:18] So I think that that like is on the wind in a way that kind of distrust of the government in the intermountain west.

[00:37:25] And when you all of a sudden have in 2018, 2019 this kind of real political fear going on, that was great for Chad Daybell's book sales because he could all of a sudden say, seal the stuff that's happening.

[00:37:40] And he even says it in the beginning of his books, you know, this thing I talked about in the last book, weirdly, it came true. So do you think it's justified from your perspective? Do you think like there's legitimate like from their perspective?

[00:37:52] Do you feel like it's a legitimate concern or do you think it's something that's being played up, leveraged by Chad or both? Yeah. You know, I think you look at the history.

[00:38:00] Sure. Like you kind of wonder how can there be freedom of religion and also this oppression of this very specific group? You know, I think that that gets into a lot of conversations about that Joseph Smith in the beginning wanted to run for president.

[00:38:12] There were voting blocks and things like that that people were trying to tamp down. So I understand it, but as a way of understanding how people's belief systems could go extreme.

[00:38:23] So, you know, I don't think it's justified. You know, for me, I'm always looking like what that causal relationship is.

[00:38:30] So I think yeah, but for people like Chad and all the preparing people, you know, there's all these other conferences that kind of shop these conspiracy theories about why the world is the way it is.

[00:38:40] They're just seeing like there's just a market there waiting for it to be like, oh yeah, of course this totally plays into the way we're thinking. We got to buy this guy's books because he's going to show us the way and things like that.

[00:38:52] Okay. So we have a family member who is a prepper but not religious. Interesting. I have a friend who has another friend that we were talking about and I was commenting on how he reminded me of my older brother and they both work in finance.

[00:39:05] They both recognize that the flow of money is how they make a lot of their decisions and it's a lot of the behaviors in finance are precursors for what's to come and what might be coming. And based on markets, they prepare themselves.

[00:39:20] So you may say the market has its own kind of religious flavor to it as well, but there are certainly some precursors that might indicate, oh, these are hard times coming here stock up on this and that my brother has an affinity guns.

[00:39:34] And I think it's just kind of gone into a way of justifying buying guns. Needless to say after reading this book, I might become a prepper not for religious reasons but I'm not prepared and I like to be prepared.

[00:39:45] I'm prepared in my day to day with like a purse with like lip balm and tampons and things like that, but I'm not prepared for anything bad to happen beyond that. So it's inspired me.

[00:39:56] Well, it's interesting you would have that reaction because like I was writing this book during the moments when people were pushing around the towering shopping carts of toilet paper at Costco or whatever during the 2020 early days of the pandemic.

[00:40:10] And to me it was a bit of a difficult thing for me to wrap my head around like is there something about these people that makes them write?

[00:40:19] You know, I think it's interesting. I also think based on what you were saying, Nippy, like the very first story that I did on extremism was in 2014.

[00:40:28] I wrote a story for Playboy about a guy with the most hardcore prepper stores I had ever met and it wasn't religiously motivated at all. He just didn't trust the government.

[00:40:39] He was super freaked out about Obama and he decided he had this huge RV that he gave me a tour of and it was just like every single crevice and cranny of it was packed with ammo and canned food.

[00:40:54] And you know, his whole thing was like chow, canned chow mein, which to me sounds like the worst possible thing you would have in the end times.

[00:41:01] But you know, in tons of guns and he was basically like the only thing holding me back from hooking this thing up to my truck and pulling away as my wife.

[00:41:09] And like she thinks this is crazy. And basically like it's going to be on her in a certain point because I'm going to just hook this thing up and drive away when the end times happen.

[00:41:19] So to me it was the beginning of being fascinated of like so what does life look like for you afterwards? Like why do you want to survive in this like hellscape that you see coming?

[00:41:28] Exactly my argument to my brother. I'm like, okay, so like you live an extra three to six months for what? Sounds kind of crappy. And they don't want to live off the land but then the last 20 years of your life are like...

[00:41:41] I'm too much of a princess to live in that world. 100%. Like where am I going to sleep? No, no, no, no. It becomes like the people that survive it are going to be extreme people. Yeah, yeah. You're going to build an extreme culture right back up.

[00:41:56] We digress. We digress. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or never miss yoga. Maybe it's getting eight hours of sleep. That's my personal and everyone's dream, isn't it?

[00:43:06] Well, I definitely have some non-negotiables like I'm in Vancouver right now and I'm spending literally as much time as I can outside of nature. Hashtag cold pools, hashtag crushing it. Nature is a non-negotiable.

[00:43:17] Not enough time in the fresh air and the trees around me and I start to feel not great, not myself, not grounded. Therapy day is a bit like my nature walks.

[00:43:24] I try to not miss it and I know I'm just going to feel so much better all around if I make it a priority. I get so much out of it.

[00:43:30] It helps me put my worries and anxieties in their rightful place and helps me clear my mind so I can focus on what I really need and sometimes what I don't need. Like, I don't need to be overbooking myself just because I hate to say no to people.

[00:43:40] You know what I mean? Thanks, Therapy. Thanks for helping me see that. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist

[00:43:54] and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Look, even when we know what makes us happy it's hard to make time for it. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. Never skip Therapy Day with BetterHelp.

[00:44:08] Visit betterhelp.com slash culti today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P dot com slash culti. Back to the case. You spent two weeks attending Valo's trial. What was that like? Oh, wow. Yeah, it was wild.

[00:44:23] So I think we're in, it's like day 21 today of the trial. I was there for the first week, which was jury selection, which was fascinating in its own right.

[00:44:34] Because yeah, you were hearing, you know, they had to go through, I think, 150 people to find the jury that they have because there's just been so much media saturation of this case, specifically in Idaho.

[00:44:46] They had to move the case from eastern Idaho four hours west to Boise to the biggest city in Idaho. And even then it was really hard to find people who didn't know about it. So that was interesting.

[00:44:57] They really were trying to get anybody off the jury with religious beliefs or who are parents. They didn't, you know, the defense team definitely didn't want a lot of people who had little kids on the jury.

[00:45:08] And then the very first week of the prosecution presenting its arguments was fascinating. And to me, it was my goal to sit in the courtroom with Lori Vallow.

[00:45:18] And so I was sitting like 15 feet from her and trying to kind of like look at this person and wonder if she really is guilty of everything that she's accused of. Like, yeah, I still can't see it.

[00:45:30] Like you look at her and she looks like the most normal person in the world. And for our audience who doesn't know what is she accused of? Yeah. So she is accused of first degree murder of her two children, seven year old J.J.

[00:45:42] Vallow and her daughter, 16 year old Tylie Ryan. Both of them were found dead in Chad Daybell's backyard about six months after she was arrested in Hawaii.

[00:45:53] She's also accused of conspiracy to murder of both of the children, but also conspiracy to murder Chad Daybell's wife, Tami, of 29 years who dropped dead very suddenly in October of 2019. So, you know, the timeline of this story is a couple of years long.

[00:46:10] But really it's July 2019 to October of that year when Lori Vallow's fourth husband, Charles Vallow, is suddenly shot to death by her brother, Alex.

[00:46:21] Then she all of a sudden picks up and moves to Idaho where she starts, you know, basically having an affair with Chad Daybell under the nose of his wife. Her daughter disappears. Her son disappears.

[00:46:35] Tami Daybell Chad's wife all of a sudden drops dead at age 49, you know, extremely healthy woman. And then they get married. Two weeks later. Two weeks after Tami does. Yeah. Yeah. Two weeks later.

[00:46:48] Yet just yesterday there was a bunch of testimony around that that people involved in the LDS church in the town that they lived in in Idaho sort of saying we knew Tami. She was wonderful.

[00:46:58] And then all of a sudden they had a funeral for her just a few days after she died and Chad was getting married two weeks later. And we all were just kind of confused about what to do with that. So they're kind of stupid. In what way?

[00:47:11] Well, like it seems like it's over. Well, the other charges that Lori is facing I should talk about our grand theft that she was cashing in the insurance policies of her children. So there's kind of a complicated story around that.

[00:47:26] But essentially what the prosecution is arguing right now is that they were living off of the insurance policies of Charles Vallow of Tami Daybell of an insurance policy that J.J. Vallow got when his father Charles died and an insurance policy that Tiley Ryan got when her father, Lori Vallow's third husband also died.

[00:47:51] And that's a part of this story that isn't really getting talked about as much in court is that, you know, with the exception of Lori's first two husbands, husband three and husband four died in pretty sudden and tragic ways.

[00:48:02] And I think that there is a lot of speculation around whether or not Lori also maybe was involved in the death of her third husband. Heart attack? Was that right? She had a heart attack and was found dead in bed.

[00:48:14] The other person we haven't really talked about here, if you want to get your mind blown, maybe is Lori Vallow's brother Alex Cox, who is sort of seen by Chad and Lori as this sort of guardian angel for Lori.

[00:48:27] When Lori's third husband was found dead in his apartment of a supposed heart attack, he had just gone through, they'd gone quite through quite the, you know, horrible child custody deliberations over Tiley Ryan, their child.

[00:48:44] And after that was all said and done, Joseph Ryan, who is her husband, he did have some custody of Tiley. But on one specific occasion, he was chased down in a parking lot by Lori's brother Alex and tased. And Alex went to jail for that.

[00:49:02] So then fast forward to fourth husband, Charles, he was shot to death by Lori's brother Alex. Alex. And then, yes.

[00:49:11] And then now the prosecution is building this case that Alex Cox's phone was in Chad Daybell's backyard in the specific places the children were buried on the last days they were ever seen alive.

[00:49:23] So there's kind of this thought that Chad and Lori, you want to talk about coercive control, that they were forcing Alex to maybe potentially be their hit man. Can I also tell you how mind blown I am at this moment about something else that's totally weird? Yes.

[00:49:38] I did look on IMDb and yes, the movie is called, I guessed it, Doomsday Mom. I swear to God I hadn't looked at that before. It's got a rating of 5.3 out of 10.

[00:49:48] And it was just clearly filmed in Vancouver because I know most of the actors this where I'm from. And guess who plays Alex Cox in real life? Who? Somebody I tried to recruit into Nexium. Wow. I'm going to text him later. It just comes full circle.

[00:50:08] Like I think I have nothing to do with this one, nothing to do with it but I was wrong. Turns out maybe it was a fact. Doomsday Mom, 5.3 out of 10, filmed in Vancouver. He's a really good actor by the way. Really good actor.

[00:50:19] Anyway, I'm going to have to watch it now and see how well he plays Alex Cox. But this is, this is, yeah, like when I tried to like figure out all the players in this to be on Elizabeth Vargas' interview, I really couldn't wrap my head around it.

[00:50:30] I stayed very vague in regards to like coercive control and how cults can get extreme and things like that. Because there were just too many people, but your book really fills in all the backstory.

[00:50:41] And yeah, thank you for bringing that up about the tasers because I had forgotten about that part. Yeah, I mean it's clearly a pattern. Yeah, I think totally.

[00:50:47] And I think that's something that the defense really wants to keep out of the courtroom in Idaho right now is this whole backstory with the, you know, dead third husband and the tasing of him by Laurie's brother.

[00:50:58] I think I should also probably say for people who don't know the timeline is that in December when, you know, news came up that the kids were missing and things like that. All of a sudden Alex Cox dropped dead. The brother.

[00:51:12] So you've got all this kind of questions around what happened. I know it's not funny. I laugh because it's just sort of like when you hear people digest it for the first time it is pretty mind blowing.

[00:51:24] But if I'm writing like a bad script, like if I'm too lazy to write it was like let's just kill him off. That's what it kind of feels like. It's like it's just nuts.

[00:51:32] And Laurie and Chad had been on the phone with Alex in the hours and days before he died. He also died pretty conveniently on the day after Tammy Debel's body was exhumed by the state of Utah because all of a sudden there were sort of questions around like,

[00:51:50] hang on, these people are missing. These kids are missing. Isn't that the guy whose wife just all of a sudden dropped dead at age 49 a couple months ago? Better exhumed her body and did it in autopsy. The results of that have not been released yet, correct?

[00:52:06] They were released this week in court. So when it comes to Tylie Ryan her body was in such a state that they said she was, you know, her cause of death was homicide by unspecified means. So obviously you look at what had happened to her.

[00:52:18] It was clear that it was homicide. JJ Vallow and Tammy Debel were both asphyxiated. And when it comes to Tammy, she had bruises on her body that suggests that maybe she was held down by someone and asphyxiated.

[00:52:33] So yeah, the idea, you know, Chad told in the moments after she died, oh, she had health problems. She had seizures. And it was just, yeah, it just made sense that she died, you know, to the medical examiner in Utah who has done apparently 7,200 autopsies in his career.

[00:52:51] He said there was no evidence of any of that. She died by asphyxiation. Dark. It's so dark. And for those who haven't kept track, I'm trying to do it in my head. There's like seven bodies now. So there's, is that right, Joe?

[00:53:03] The third husband, Charles, the fourth husband, Alex, her brother, Tammy, Chad's wife. And then the two kids are six. Six? Six. Yep.

[00:53:14] There is some speculation around way back in the past, Lori's sister died and that supposedly, and I feel like I try and report on it in the best way that I can in the book. She died and she was alone with Alex Cox at the time.

[00:53:28] That was, you know, back way, way, way before all this started. So but yeah, six to seven people, that's not a real normal. No. It's not coincidence.

[00:53:37] I feel reported on this very carefully, but I'm wondering what your opinions are now if you can say about how law enforcement didn't act properly a number of times along the way.

[00:53:46] Well, sort of talking about what you all were saying with, with nexium that like law enforcement didn't quite know what they were looking at. I think that that was definitely the case here.

[00:53:56] The sort of irony of it is that I feel like I have to bring up one other part of this that we didn't talk about. Sure. And the niece was somebody that she recruited into this kind of group of casting, you know, energies on people.

[00:54:09] And at a certain point right around when Tammy Debel died, there was a drive by shooting that was committed on her husband, the nieces husband.

[00:54:18] And the commonly held belief now is that Alex Cox drove Tiley Ryan's car down to Arizona and tried to shoot and kill this nieces husband. He had a million dollar life insurance policy at the time. Obviously, the shooting didn't work out.

[00:54:34] He's alive and he testified in the case. So on the question of law enforcement, I think it's very interesting because I saw that when Charles Vallow was trying to get the police's attention like my wife has lost her mind. She thinks she's a God.

[00:54:49] She thinks she's going to, you know, she has this wild LDS belief system that doesn't line up with what the mainstream church says. The cops really looked at him like he was the crazy one.

[00:55:00] And then later, the same police officer responded to the drive by shooting that I just told you about. That police officer is LDS.

[00:55:09] And I thought, well, that's really interesting because you have people even that are police officers who are LDS not recognizing that this is maybe something they need to be aware of that's happening in this area of Arizona where they lived.

[00:55:24] So yeah, I think that also Lori was really believable. You know, you look at interviews that she did with detectives and you just see them take her side so quickly and say, oh yeah, your husband that's been calling the police about you.

[00:55:38] What a jerk, you know, and she she really, really had everybody wrapped around her fingers. So from your perspective, what kind of psychology are you looking at in the players involved? I think that's difficult to say.

[00:55:51] So since this has gone on, she was arrested, I guess, over three years ago. She has gone in and out of competency, as they say.

[00:56:00] So her ability to aid her in her defense has been hindered for years because she keeps going into mental hospitals in Idaho to be restored to competency. So details of her mental health have not come out.

[00:56:16] I have heard kind of second hand that there are mental health issues in her family that I think could be hereditary. But yeah, beyond that, that's kind of all that I know. I don't really know. Question, you did bring this up in your book.

[00:56:30] Why are you not okay with simply saying she's a sociopath? Just because I'm not a psychologist and I couldn't get anybody to say that directly. So I just didn't feel comfortable speculating. I mean, sure.

[00:56:43] And to be honest with you, like I've written about some really dark stuff in my 20 years of being a journalist, seeing the things that I saw in that courtroom,

[00:56:52] to me there is no real way of explaining that people of clear mind could do those things specifically to children. Terrific. It's truly, you know, I wrote this book, I spent so much time reporting on it.

[00:57:05] And then I sat there in the courtroom and thought to myself, this is so much darker than even I realized. Yeah. So yeah, no, I don't think that somebody that is thinking clearly could do that. Yeah.

[00:57:18] I felt like your description of that was very empathetic and also, you know, I feel like the term sociopath,

[00:57:26] especially in this case shuts down a lot of like the road of trying to understand how somebody gets to this point specifically with the backdrop of the Mormon church or an extreme version of it. And I think it's actually more responsible to not label her that way. Right.

[00:57:41] It's a great point, Sarah. I think it's the same thing like when you say, oh, it's a cult, people tend to go, oh, that does not apply to me.

[00:57:47] But if you say it's a group of people abusing their power, it leaves a little bit more open of like, well, how do they use your power? What do I need to be sensitive to similarly with calling them a psychopath? What was the word? Psychopath or psychopath?

[00:57:59] It's just a way to kind of end the conversation in some ways. It shuts it down. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

[00:58:05] To me, it is, you know, for the LDS church, I think there's a lot of ways that they conjure the flames of these radical movements as much as they want to say that they're not a part of them.

[00:58:16] And I think it's important that they realize there are, you know, we talk all the time about how our society is rife with untreated mental illness. We don't know how to get a handle on that.

[00:58:27] Well, that means that there are going to be some people who have untreated mental illness that might get really excited about these fringe groups.

[00:58:35] And so I think that the church has to be really careful in making sure that they're not contributing to those getting bigger, that this paranoia about the end of the world is outsized in a way. And what else do you want people to know?

[00:58:47] Like, you're, I feel like you're the expert in this case and so many people are following it from like 2020, you know, and that's not enough, which we've experienced also. So yeah, what do you want the world to know?

[00:58:59] I think that to me it's frustrating because I think it's a case that gets just labeled as true crime. And because of that, that means, I mean, obviously it is true.

[00:59:10] There's many crimes as we have talked about, but it kind of reduces it to something that maybe a lot of people don't need to think about.

[00:59:17] I think what I try to argue in the book is that this is not an isolated case, that there are actually other cases of LDS fringe characters who killed people in the name of their belief system. That this isn't a fluke.

[00:59:32] This is a part of something that's been going on for a while and it's going to keep going on.

[00:59:36] So I think to me, it's what is most important to me is that people realign their thinking to see this as a manifestation of religious extremism as our political moment becomes, you know, as people get more and more freaked out about the world.

[00:59:52] You know, I hope we don't see more of this kind of thing, but I think that it's important to see it in that context instead of just like the serial killer, you know, true crimey blood and guts world.

[01:00:02] And where does that fit in with blood atonement and white horse prophecy? Oh, don't get me started. Yeah. So the white horse prophecy is this, you know, it was described to me when I first heard about it in like 2015 as a Mormon urban legend.

[01:00:19] The important thing to know is that the LDS church has consistently throughout history said like we don't believe in this. This is not a part of our church.

[01:00:27] But the gist of it is, is that a man revealed after Joseph Smith died that Joseph Smith had told him that sometime in the future that the Constitution will hang by a thread as fine as silk fiber and it will be up to the LDS people to save the Constitution

[01:00:44] and basically, you know, bring humanity back from the brink of disaster. So, you know, like I said, the LDS church has said, yeah, we don't believe that, but it is very, very popular to believe that specifically in this region of the West that this case happened in.

[01:01:00] Chad Debo would often talk about other people who believed in that in his books. He would use that term as fine as silk fiber or hang by a thread. Same with Lori's dad. He would write about that kind of thing.

[01:01:12] You know, I think when I first heard about the White Horse prophecy, I thought, oh, it's just not it's it's not that big of a deal. Like it's just this out there thing and I and I reported that in some work that I did.

[01:01:23] And I heard from a lot of people who said no, no, it's way more mainstream than you think.

[01:01:28] And this is kind of a part of Mormon culture that people don't like to talk about is that there are people who believe that, you know, saving the Constitution and their religion go together.

[01:01:40] So to me, that's where I started to have some lights go off in terms of Chad's work when I started to see those terms and kind of that regurgitation of the White Horse prophecy idea.

[01:01:51] Blood Atonement is another thing that the church has been real cagey about whether or not they believe that but it Brigham Young who you know obviously BYU is named for. He was a acolyte of Joseph Smith that brought the Mormon people West to Utah.

[01:02:05] He had talked about that people might have to pay in the future for their sins by spilling their own blood.

[01:02:13] And there have been multiple instances where people have been killed in the name of French Mormon ideology where where people thought that they had to kill someone in order to absolve them of their sins to allow them to go to heaven and things like that.

[01:02:28] So within, you know the kind of online extremist movements that I think are, you know, we're talking a lot about now in American culture. There are groups of of LDS men who are starting to kind of really get excited about that idea of blood atonement again.

[01:02:43] Do we need to kill people in order to make sure that this, you know purified LDS people goes forward into the future.

[01:02:52] So these were all things I was kind of thinking about with Alex Cox and with Lori Vallow and Chad Debel, you know, was this a manifestation of their own belief in blood atonement or their idea that they need to be the ones to save the Mormon people.

[01:03:05] Well, that's where I felt like your book just really pulled together so many different things.

[01:03:10] Like I read under the banner of heaven last year before we did some Mormon episodes and I was, I didn't know anything about that history and was, oh, and also I went to my acting career coming back and do it.

[01:03:21] I was auditioning for the TV series and I didn't know much about what happened to Brenda and that's what the TV series was about.

[01:03:28] And I was, you know, researching it to interview John DeLynn at the same time auditioning for it and just like really trying to get into the mindset and the character mindset is not a method actor but just like really trying to understand it. Yeah.

[01:03:40] You know, and finally ending and then reading this and just seeing how it all came together again like I said at the beginning of the episode just really feeling like you takes a somebody who's interested in this case from a voyeuristic like since I was a kid.

[01:03:50] From a voyeuristic like sensational perspective to a educated, compassionate human story of so many extreme beliefs as the backdrop. Yeah, thank you. You know, I was somebody who read under the banner of heaven by John Crack our ages ago and thought, you know, it blew my mind.

[01:04:08] Like I did not, you know, I always grew up. I knew a ton of Mormons when I was a kid. Is this the same thing? You know, it's not.

[01:04:14] And I think my goal was when I wrote my book was to, you know, take that foundation that Crack our had built that there's something about the LDS church and its history that maybe should be examined a little bit closer and kind of update that for this modern moment and

[01:04:30] and apply these other things that I feel like maybe are more mainstream. You know, that book is mostly about polygamy and blood atonement and things like that. But I thought, you know, those are really out.

[01:04:40] I mean, polygamous groups, I think get a lot of attention as they should. But, you know, the stuff around Laurie and Chad is even is more mainstream. It's the kind of thing you're going to see in a Phoenix suburb like with Laurie.

[01:04:52] So I thought that that was important. And why the title of the book? Yeah. So two things. I'm a, you know, longtime heavy metal fan. So I wanted to write a book that had a sounded like it had a metal title.

[01:05:06] To be honest, like I thought that sounds like a metal album. I would listen to that when the moon turns to blood. We should talk. So yeah.

[01:05:13] So but the other thing was is it's I mean, it's sort of, you know, you want heavy metal material, the book of Revelation is a great, great source for that kind of thing. The things in the Bible that happen.

[01:05:23] There is a moment in the book of Revelation when the moon turns red, that it's like that they're sort of like blood dripping from the sky and things like that.

[01:05:32] And I just thought that seems like a perfect illustration of what you would have to believe to follow Chad and Laurie. Definitely. Obviously we're going to encourage people to read the book and where else can they find you? Are you most active on a particular platform?

[01:05:46] You know, I'm still doing a lot of tweeting apparently. So I do tweet quite a bit, but I also have a newsletter, a sub-stack newsletter people can subscribe to. And I've been doing a lot of trial updates.

[01:05:58] So things that come out of the trial that maybe need a little bit more of a deep dive than what's, you know, the reporters who are there every day can do. So I've talked a little bit about the conferences, preparing a people and things like that.

[01:06:10] And some of these ideas that are being discussed in the trial that you might not understand what they're talking about. So yeah, Twitter and sub-stack I would say are the best places. Okay, great.

[01:06:21] I look forward to catching up with you in a couple of weeks and hearing the latest breaking news on this crazy case. And thanks for your incredible reporting and for coming on. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Such a treat. Thank you, Leah.

[01:06:50] I love our interviews with journalists, Sarah. It is nice to take a break from talking to survivors and just to learn the complexities of a case like this. I feel very grateful that she did the homework and we didn't have to.

[01:07:10] And they bring, you know, they bring new language to it. To stuff that doesn't have language. I think collectively one of the things I love about what we're doing is we're bringing a language to things that at first blush people don't know what they're looking at.

[01:07:22] And the more you talk about it, the more people will recognize the symptoms. So when somebody does go to the police and complains about these behaviors, the police don't side with the perpetrator.

[01:07:30] They actually can understand and recognize what the victims are saying to at least a few people. And so I think that's a great thing.

[01:07:36] And even though I didn't really know what I was talking about when Elizabeth Marcus interviewed me in a van down by the river in front of our house. You still get a good job of, of. I still stand by what I said.

[01:07:47] And one of the key points was that when people don't know what these things look like, it can end in tragedy. And I think that's a great thing. I still stand by what I said.

[01:07:59] And one of the key points was that when people don't know what these things look like, it can end in tragedy. And this is a case that proves that just in the same vein as Jonestown, Waco, Heaven's Gate. And this is, this is the exact same playbook.

[01:08:16] So I hope that this is an opportunity for law enforcement and people in positions of authority to know what it looks like. And so they will not let it get to this extreme case. Thank you, Leah, for your work. Thank you, Leah. Oh, oh, oh, one more thing.

[01:08:29] Y'all, if you are in Portland, near Portland or willing to travel to Portland, please come see me do my first TEDx talk. It'll be May 20th at the Keller Auditorium. I have 100 books to sign and give away.

[01:08:40] I'd love to meet you, high five you, and just have you in the audience for support. Please do come and come say hi. I hope you can be there. See you on Zoom on Patreon. Bye everybody. I'm hanging on to the way to my love.

[01:09:01] If I let go of it all, I could leave, but I know I won't. For more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page-turning memoir. It's called Scarred, the true story of how I escaped nexium, the cult that bound my life.

[01:09:41] It's available on Amazon, Audible, Narrated by My Life, and at most bookstores. A Little Bit Cultie is a talkhouse podcast and a Trace 120 production. We're executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nipy Ames with writing, research, and additional production support by senior producer Jess Tardy.

[01:10:00] We're edited, mixed, and mastered by our rocking producer Will Rutherford of Citizens of Sound. And our amazing theme song, Cultivated, is by John Bryant and co-written by Nigel Asselin. Thank you for listening.