Walks of 2024

Obviously the year is not over and I walk year round but I have finished my 'challenge' walks for the season.

I have been doing The Conqueror Challenges since 2020 and the year after I opted to walk a Marathon (aptly for the Marathon to Athens challenge) and then various Stupidly Long Walks out in the wild to make things more meaningful and more of an *actual* challenge. This year was no different although I mixed it up a bit.

Previously I have chosen to walk distances around the 20 mile mark, overnight. I like walking at night for several reasons: less risk of dehydration or heat exhaustion, I sunburn badly and my eyes are very photosensitive, less people which make an emergency pee in the bushes less of a problem, less traffic and the advantage of headlights making approaching vehicles easier to spot.

Slough to Ascot

My first walk of the year was a fairly modest 13 mile walk to do a section I'd had to re-jig on the aforementioned Marathon to Athens walk - I had intended to take The Long Walk into Windsor Great Park and along the edge of Virginia Water but Google Maps had failed to tell me the park closed at night!

This walk was consequently a daytime one and exceedingly painful as I had made a rookie error with my new hiking trainers but I'm glad to have done it.

The White Cliffs Of Dover

My first mini-break of the year was three nights in Dover to do my English Channel challenge. I'd rather have swum it but having to book swimming sessions just doesn't work for me. I had hoped to wild swim it in my local river until a pollution event put me right off the idea. As it was 2024 really didn't have enough 'summer' to make that workable.

The first walk was a yet more modest 8.3 miles from my hotel in Dover to Folkestone Central passing Samphire Hoe and Abbot's Cliff Sound Mirror. I was a bit peeved that the cliff path I had intended to take had been permanently closed off. Despite the lack of summer this was during a heatwave and I was melting when I set out before dawn!

The second walk was 9.7 miles from Deal Station back to my hotel via the Dover Patrol Memorial, St Margaret's Bay, and Foreland Lighthouse. This was a tad more comfortable as it was less insanely hot... or I had aclimatised.

In between I walked up the Dame Vera Lynn Way to Langdon Bay for a mooch around, and after both 'major' walks I mooched the marina and the New Pier.

Not only were the walks daytime AND rougher terrain than I am used to (absolutely LOVING my hiking poles!) but I had not before committed myself to do two challenging walks on consecutive days. It went pretty well overall but I gave myself such terrible blisters that I had to buy some Barbie Pink sandals from a nearby Poundland so I could get home again!

Cotswold Adjacent

Last year I ended up doing part of the Jurassic Coast Path (toward my Jurassic Coast challenge) from Weymouth purely because I couldn't make a decision about the Cotswold Way challenge.

I chose Chippenham because it is near the Cotswolds, the hotel was affordable, and on the Intercity line. The Cotswold Way proper is not easy to get to if you're dependent on trains as I am.

My first walk was 15.7 miles from Bath Station (the finishing point of the virtual challenge is in Bath) to my hotel in Chippenham. As I have already walked the Bath Road between Newbury and Twyford I have decided to challenge myself to complete the whole thing.

As the actual Cotswold Way was unavailable I looked to Cotswolds-set detective dramas - and that section crosses Box Hill. The Brunel-built Box Hill Tunnel featured in an episode of Macdonald & Dodds.

That first walk went okay. A few more shoe-based issues and some pretty torrential rain on the final stretch but no real dramas. I did the walk the first night of my stay, getting back to the hotel about 5am.

There was however, one problem: the final stretch of that walk would be repeated on the next... and it would be clearly impassible in daylight hours. There were no paths, overgrown verges and even at 3am there was more traffic than I cared for. The second walk *had* to be after dawn so, to quote Hercule Poirot, this caused my furiously to think.

In the end my daughter helped me re-jig the second walk which was a 10.5 mile loop from hotel to Yatton Keynell (purely because I had to visit Tiddleywink), South to Biddestone, North again to Giddeahall and then back into Chippenham. I set out before dawn - sunrise hit a little south of Yatton Keynell - and was back by 9am. That way I was able to avoid encountering much traffic on the roads while still being able to get photos of Biddestone - which is Carsley in the TV adaptation of Agatha Raisin.

Yatton Keynell and Biddestone ARE in the Cotswolds proper, but only just... so my third and final walk of this mini-break aimed to avoid any ambiguity. I took a couple of trains to get to Kemble (no connection with the fictional Kembleford of Father Brown). From here I did a very short 4.5 mile loop up to the Thames Head (source of the River Thames) back down along the Thames Path (even though there was no river to be seen) and back into Kemble.

Southampton

I'd booked a single night in a hotel for a gig that got postponed so naturally I went for a walk!

7.4 miles took me across the Itchen Bridge along to a park called Miller's Pond - I wrote a book called The McKerrows of Miller's Pond on Wattpad - from there up Kathleen Road (my younger daughter's name) along to a 'Spoons where I ate and drank entirely too much, and then back via Northam Bridge.

I got lost twice! Firstly I managed to take a wrong turn out of the 'Spoons, then later I almost ended up in St Mary's Stadium!

That got me back to the hotel around midnight and then in the morning I mooched around Southampton taking in a selection of Titanic memorials. On my way back to the station I got DRENCHED! Even my undercrackers were soaked. I had to change back into my previous day's clothes in the loo on the train which were still somewhat moist from being in my backpack!

Slough To Twyford

My final 'big' walk of the season was a fairly simple overnight stretch of the Bath Road - 13.7 miles. I'll have to revisit Maidenhead sometime - it looked very nice! Unfortunately I really buggered up my left knee on this one. No idea how but it caused me issues almost from the get-go. I had hoped to walk all the way home (a total 17.2 miles) but by Twyford it was excruciating so I sucked up the expense and caught a train and bus home even though I had to sit at Twyford Station for almost two hours waiting for the first train of the day.

Verdict

I still have one more mini-break this year - my first ever visit to Derby - but being December I am unlikely to stray far. 

I may not have done any really big walks this year but I certainly feel that I have succeeded in getting out of my comfort zone with back-to-back walks, off road routes, and daytime walks. 

2025

I intend to walk Nine Mile Ride (14.7 miles) toward one of my Harry Potter challenges - taking in the real-world location of 4 Privet Drive before walking home.

I'm hoping to do some more of the Bath Road - perhaps Slough to Houslow with a detour up to St Dunstan's, Cranford where some ancestors are allegedly buried. That'd be about 12.9 miles. I'm also trying to work out the logistics of the central Chippenham to Newbury section - hopefully breaking at Avebury and Hungerford (Chippenham to Avebury - 13.4 miles, Avebury to Hungerford - 16.7 miles, Hungerford to Newbury - 9.5 miles).

I have a load of challenge codes banked including London which I'd like to at least partially complete real-world.

As for mini-breaks the Southampton gig has been rescheduled for January which is not very conducive for walking and the only other thing I have booked is a gig in London in March... and I haven't even booked accommodation!

On Unambiguous Grey

I have just brought myself to listen to Colby J Ryan's YouTube video "The Lori Vallow Interview // The Scar Wars Podcast Ep 3" and I do mean 'brought myself to' because listening to Lori is not a prospect I relish.

TO RECAP:
Colby Ryan is Lori Vallow Daybell's son, her only surviving child.
Lori is in jail serving a whole life sentence for killing his (half) sister Tylee (16) and his adopted brother JJ (7). She is awaiting trial for the murder of his stepfather Charles Vallow (62) and the attempted murder of Brandon Boudreaux (what relation is the estranged-and-now-ex husband of your mother's niece?!). Lori is also suspected (by followers of the case, not the authorities sadly) of killing Joe Ryan - Lori's third husband, Colby's adoptive father, Tylee's bio dad.
Confused?! May I recommend Bailey Sarian's video on the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GuonthUgY or East Idaho News' extensive coverage.
Colby has been INCREDIBLY deeply harmed by the sins of his mother (Sins Of Our Mother was a 2022 Netflix documentary mini series on the case).

Now I was very curious to follow the Lori Vallow trial as I expected her to have come up with at least some sort of cover story, some explanation of what happened to her children. I was astonished she offered no defence at all. The closest we got was at her sentencing when she said that 'no one was killed' and speculated about accidental death, suicide, and reactions to medication.
Subsequently I watched the Chad Daybell trial in the hopes that he would have some sort of story, even if it was to throw Lori under the bus where she belongs. Nada.
Don't get me wrong, I definitely think the kids were killed primarily so that Chad and Lori would not be encumbered with them (even though she was nearly of age Tylee had to die as they'd never hope to dispose of JJ with her still around) and, to an extent, for their social security money from the deaths of their dads (Tylee for Joe Ryan, JJ for Charles Vallow). But the entire scenario was SO STUPID. How could they possibly hope to get away with it?! There had to have been some plan, surely? And even if there was no plan surely they'd try to wrangle together some sort of explanation to mitigate their responsibility??? Apparently not...

I am possessed of some imagination, I can come up with a bunch of scenarios that, whilst unlikely to be believed in court, might at least cast some doubt...
For example:
Tylee dies first. She was a teenage girl suffering from pancreatitis and ovarian cysts. Perhaps she'd had enough of the pain, perhaps she was suffering from mood swings. Perhaps she was horribly depressed from the upheavals of her young life - death of her bio dad, death of her stepdad, being moved to a whole new state...
Suppose then that she took her own life... maybe she left a note where she blamed all her misery on her mother? It is not so very hard to imagine a parent freaking out and hiding the evidence. Even an accidental OD and Lori *might* have made a very bad decision.
Tylee was supposed to be going off to university early. This didn't hold up as she had never applied but would likely keep family and friends from becoming suspicious, at least for some time. A better idea would have been to claim Tylee had run away...
Anyway, with Tylee disposed of Lori may have underestimated how much she relied on the parentification of her daughter - Tylee did A LOT for her autistic little brother. Maybe Lori's eye was off the ball so to speak and JJ died... there's a reason plastic bags have a keep-out-of-reach-of-children warning on them!
Having already buried Tylee on Chad's land (which was INCREDIBLY STUPID, Idaho is full of empty space) perhaps it 'only made sense' to those two idiots to do the same with JJ. Perhaps they were afraid JJs death would make the authorities realise Tylee was missing. So they buried JJ too.
But none of this holds up to scrutiny.
Certainly the failure to successfully cremate Tylee explains a difference in the burials but if JJ had died an accidental death why would they leave the bag on his head?! How could they have hoped to explain the disappearance of a 7 year old child? Unless they were to claim that Tylee had returned and kidnapped JJ or even fake a stranger abduction - which they didn't - it simply wasn't feasible that both kids could be gone. Lori and Chad weren't worried about the kids *at all* which was absolutely damning.

So almost a year and a half on from Lori being convicted it was interesting to see whether she'd managed to invent any kind of a story... Sadly it never crossed my mind that she could have accepted any responsibility but that's just as well because she won't.

Firstly, I want to credit Colby on his self-control. How he could listen to his mother's nonsense and offer her 'forgiveness' - before justifiably cutting her out of his life - is utterly beyond me. I'd have told her to shut her lying mouth, tell her she was evil through and through, and hang up. That'd have been about three minutes into the call that lasted AN HOUR. The number of moments where his expression was just *shooketh* that she would come out with such utter CRAP was heartbreaking.

Lori ranted about how she's the only one who knows, and how Colby is the only one ("apart from me" she qualifies) who really cared about the kids. Some comments on the video cited examples they saw as love-bombing, others of emotional manipulation (being apparently tearful one moment then speaking in a normal tone the next), but one of the really noticeable traits was STALLING FOR TIME. She didn't answer questions directly but talked round in circles as if hoping Colby would miss that she hadn't answered; then, when pressed for an answer, it seemed to be created on the fly.
After FIVE YEARS she still hadn't thought of a plausible or coherent cover story. Why? Because she is stupid? Possibly. She's certainly not very bright. But I think it's mostly because she finds it so audacious that he especially, her own son, dares to question her.
Honestly? I'm kinda disappointed. I don't want there to be any doubt of her guilt but the truth is just so damned uncomfortable.

But what I want to really expound upon here is the concept of GREY.

We talk about good and evil, heaven and hell, sanity and madness, black and white. Grey is taken to be an ambiguous middle ground where the two polar opposites are co-mingled.

There is, however, another form of grey. An absolute of grey.

Imagine the metaphor as a saucer - a dollop of white paint on the left rim, a dollop of black on the other and the grey mixed between them. So far, so straightforward right?
Q) Where is this 'other' grey area?
A) UNDER THE SAUCER.
It's a grey made not of paint but of shadow. A grey that exists not of blending two things but in the absence of either. Good and evil are social constructs - this is a grey are that belongs to a time before society was constructed.
Perhaps an easier grey to understand is one where white paint is joy and black is misery - the shades of grey are the remaining spectrum of human emotions while the absolute of grey is completely devoid of such - a complete numbness to anything and everything. If you can't experience joy why avoid the causes of misery? In the same vein, if you can't experience guilt or shame why would you avoid evil?

Is Lori good or evil?
I suggest that she is neither, merely amoral. She appeared to Colby to have been a good mother in the past - but it is my belief that she did not change, suddenly or over time; she was never good. The good mom was a role she was playing, that suited her - benefitted her - at the time.
Her inability to accept the evil in her own actions suggests to me that she doesn't even fully understand the concept. Evil to her is an abstract thing that applies to historical events and other people.
She's so self-centred that whatever she does is clearly okay because she's the one doing it - the literal centre of the universe in her eyes. A clear parallel to her mindset can be seen in Israel who is blind to the horrors it is wreaking on Palestine due to a mindset of being God's chosen people and a chronic victim complex: it is simply inconceivable that Israel could ever do evil so they bomb indiscriminately 'safe' in their arrogant assurance of righteousness.

Is Lori sane or mad?
Again, I'm going to say neither. She's neither in her right mind nor out of her mind; her mind is just fundamentally WRONG.
She's refused to co-operate but a narcissistic personality disorder seems a likely diagnosis... which isn't an illness precisely, nor is an excuse for her actions. Lots of narcissists live law-abiding if somewhat dysfunctional lives. She knows what she did was 'wrong' but simply doesn't care. One of her stock phrases has been 'doesn't count for me' - she believes she is above the rules of society which is pretty 'insane' to a lay person but not actually a sign of actual loopyness (to use the correct sciency words lol).
I don't believe she is suffering from any illness or that she has experienced any brain injury. I don't believe she is mentally incompetent - as I said before I think she's incredibly stupid for imagining she's convincing anyone of her innocence - but not in a scarily low IQ and needing a responsible adult kind of way.
I don't believe she can be cured or even successfully treated. Perhaps if the kink in her personality had shown itself earlier in life therapy might've been productive but at 51 as she is now she's simply wallowed too long in her own self importance to ever be disabused of the notion.
I also don't believe she acted under the influence of an evil male - be it Chad or her conveniently dead brother Alex. Folie à deux is an old-fashioned 'diagnosis' and a vague possibility but as most of the victims benefited Lori, not Chad or Alex, if there was any shared psychosis Lori was the instigator. Chad has always seemed weak and suggestible; I got the impression Lori had a Cersei Lannister kind of hold over Alex too.
A lot is made of 'religious mania' or 'delusions of grandeur' but they are symptoms, not diagnostic traits. People can be excessively religious, hold unhinged beliefs, be incredibly big-headed... but it doesn't make them crazy, or wicked.
Do I think she really believes she's a personal friend of Jesus and that God's law doesn't apply to her? Again, no. I think it's a convenient way of excusing her actions whilst confirming how 'special' she is.

Take this section of dialogue from Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014):

• Rhomann Dey : I have a family who are alive because of you. Your criminal records have also been expunged. However, I have to warn you against breaking any laws in the future.

  Rocket Raccoon : Question. What if I see something that I want to take, and it belongs to someone else?

  Rhomann Dey : Well you will be arrested.

  Rocket Raccoon : But what if I want it more than the person who has it?

  Rhomann Dey : Still illegal.

  Rocket Raccoon : That doesn't follow. No, I want it more, sir. Do you understand?

  [to Gamora who's laughing] 

  Rocket Raccoon : What are you laughing at? Why? I can't have a discussion with this gentleman?

  Drax the Destroyer : What if someone does something irksome and I decide to remove his spine?

  Rhomann Dey : That's... that's actually murder. It's one of the worst crimes of all, so also illegal.

  Drax the Destroyer : Hmm.

Lori was presenting as a perfectly sane person until just like Rocket she decided she wanted something (be it Chad or the kids' money) more than the person who had it, and then just like Drax she found Tylee irksome and decided to remove her spine. Which is disturbingly accurate - see forensic testimony for details.
The difference is that Lori had known all along that taking other people's property is wrong, as is murder. There's a certain argument that the USA is actually a lawless corner of the universe where this'd make sense but again it doesn't hold up ;)

I met a girl like Lori once, only a kid and she didn't do anything violent or wicked but honestly she was one of the most frightening people I have even met... and I've met some scary folk! It wasn't that she was a compulsive liar, it was the fact she didn't care about being believed. Most liars are attention seeking - they want sympathy, validation, or whatever, or it's a power trip about fooling others. She wasn't giving those vibes at all.
It was literally the only time I interfered in my children's friendships; I told them to be EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS on what they told her about anything as I suspected she would either adopt stories as her own or use it against us (we haven't got much in the way of skeletons in the closet but everyone has things they'd rather not broadcast) and I BANNED HER FROM THE HOUSE. Literally one meeting and I never wanted this kid near me again. This was the sort of kid who might accuse anyone of anything and in an age of 'believe all victims' they might just do that.

The point is, every word that came out of Lori's mouth had that same vibe. She was bullshitting but not for clout, not to be believed, not out of any emotion at all. She is a truly frightening person and I am immensely relieved that she'll never be out of jail again. I can only hope she is not allowed to influence / corrupt other vulnerable inmates.

The Chad Is (Not) Great

I have been following the Vallow-Daybell case since early 2020 - after Nate Eaton of East Idaho News followed them to Hawaii but well before the children were found.

If you're not familiar with the case you may try this as a primer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GuonthUgY
A Who's-Who follows at the end of this blog
It's an incredibly complicated case with multiple conspirators, multiple victims, links to multiple states - principally Idaho, Arizona, and Hawaii - and, I kid you not, religious cult practices and ZOMBIES.

What follows are my personal opinions only.

EDIT: 7th June 2024

I have now been sitting on the Death Penalty ruling for a little while. As a Brit, I am not a fan; as someone who thinks Lori is the more responsible party, I am not a fan; as someone who thought the body of evidence was weak, I am not a fan... but I'm okay with it.

Which is a relief.

The thing is, I had expected a decent defence. A scenario where it would be hard to discern where the truth lay. But we didn't have that so I am comfortably assured of his guilt.

The defence I anticipated would have gone something along the lines of

• Lori taught Chad light / dark (throw her under the bus properly)
• Lori persuaded him he had the divination skill / ability to judge light / dark, reveal death percentages, identify possessing demons etc (to explain Chad's texts - after all, we don't have evidence to real-world conversations so anything could have been said)
• Lori said Tylee had run away to Annie's (or someone else from her dad's side - to explain her absence)
• Lori said Kay had taken JJ (or someone else from his dad's side - to explain his absence)
• Chad and Lori therefore didn't have custody of any minors (explaining what happened in Hawaii)
  Chad didn't have to know his new wife was still pocketing the kids' Social Security money
• Lori and Alex knew when his house would be empty so they could dispose of the bodies and frame him
• The storage place video was just him helping her out with some stuff, couples do that
• Tammy died after ingesting something Chad brought home from Lori or Alex
  
• The whole murder-by-asphyxiation-because-they-couldn't-find-an-actual-cause-of-death thing was pretty ludicrous; and IMHO not taking a medical history from family members was an inexcusable lapse - medical records are not reliable. Neither, of course, is family testimony but it builds a picture
• Chad was an idiot, sure - but who thinks their girlfriend is bumping people off?! You just don't expect that... so he didn't see the signs

It still wouldn't have held up as Lori and Chad BOTH told people Tylee had died but there was doubt to be cast and then the defence just didn't. 

So yes, I am comfortable with the sentence passed.

Yesterday an Idaho court found Chad Guy Daybell guilty on all charges - now it is only to be decided whether he gets Life Without Parole, or the Death Penalty. His second wife, Lori Vallow (nee Cox), was convicted last year and she only escaped the possibility of being executed for her crimes by opting for a speedy trial.

I have mixed feelings about this as I am British and not a big fan of the death penalty. I can see it when there is exceptional cruelty, torture, sadism etc. but while this is NASTY I don't feel it meets my personal threshold. I am also conflicted as I feel Lori was far more guilty of the two.
There was evidence of manipulation on both sides but Joe Ryan (and Stacey Cope) died BEFORE she even met Chad. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a lot of the incriminating things he texted were seeded by Lori. Lori was the main person to benefit from ALL the deaths, even Tammy's. During the trial it was brought up how the only link between Alex and Tammy, who he tried to shoot, was Chad. That's not true: the link is LORI. Alex was trying to kill Tammy to clear the way for Lori to marry Chad... he was doing it for HER, not HIM!
In fact, had I been on the jury I couldn't have found Chad guilty on the evidence provided. Sure, it was a series of unfortunate coincidences, and there's no way on earth he was innocent, but the case never progressed onto anything solid. There were no witnesses, no forensics, none of those really damning things that seals the baddie's fate in crime dramas.
It leaves me feeling antsy about due process because if they can convict someone of first degree murder on so little there's not much hope of justice for the wrongly accused.

Just because the kids bodies were buried on his property doesn't mean he had to have known they were there... by that logic Tammy and their son Garth both had to be in on it too cos they were there as well!
I would have thought there'd be SOMETHING tangible - a witness to the fire that destroyed Tylee for example, someone who'd seen him dig the pit or collect the firewood. The police found Tylee's DNA on a couple of Chad's tools but opted not to fingerprint them to see who'd handled them last?! Honestly, I'm with John Prior (Chad's lawyer) on that one - it had been the best part of a year and Chad hadn't cleaned or reused the tools to destroy that evidence??? Yeah, that screams set-up.

Tammy's death bothers me enormously: there was no technical cause of death found so they ruled asphyxiation / homicide. HUH?
People die in their sleep, suddenly and of no apparent cause, all the time. SIDS (Cot Death) is well known about in infants but at any age essentially the same thing can happen, something a lot of people don't know about until it happens to someone close. Just because you can't find a cause does not equal murder, any more than multiple cot deaths in a family indicates murder (see: Sir Roy Meadow).
One suspected case I recall was that of the son of British actor Nicholas Lyndhurst; a second (private) autopsy found the cause of death to be leukaemia. Did they check Tammy for leukaemia? Her family said she'd been tired, breathless, bruised easily... all of which would fit.

The fact that they relied on her medical record and didn't talk to her family is incredibly problematic to me. Although it is dangerous to BELIEVE the family they certainly ought to be part of the investigation. For example, they made a big deal of sleep apnoea not being on her medical record but that just means she never sought treatment or diagnosis - at least one of her kids claims that they and Tammy's father have it. That's what we'd call a relevant family history right there; an inherited trait to STOP BREATHING IN YOUR SLEEP (which would also explain Tammy's alleged tiredness).
Tammy allegedly didn't like doctors so there'd likely be a lot missing from the official record; people don't tell their doctors everything even if they do go regularly. Then there's the fact doctors don't record everything accurately - I know my own records have errors, omissions, and outright lies in them. This idea that your doctor *knows* you hasn't been true for most people in generations!

Don't get me wrong, it would be unbelievable if Tammy's death was actually natural but if she was asphyxiated I feel sure there should have been more proof of it - it's possible to do without leaving trace evidence (fibres in the lungs etc) but you'd expect more injuries from crushing, restraining, or fighting back.
I also want to know exactly how they ruled out poisoning by malachite: Chad and Lori were all about malachite, repeatedly referenced 'malachite balm', malachite is highly poisonous and causes symptoms very like those experienced by Tammy and Alex.
Basically, I think they missed something and I don't like that they got a First Degree Murder conviction anyway.

One of the big GOT YOU! moments in the trial was in rebuttal where it came up that (1) Chad had searched how to turn off the location / GPS data on an iphone (Jan 2019) - Chad had an Android not an iPhone - (2) and an application to delete the location / GPS data associated with his account (Aug 2019) but his PC wasn't secure and was located in a family room so they can't prove either action was him (I didn't catch them say the application was made from a secure phone and not the desktop). Also, if he was smart enough to wipe his location data (incidentally this was before Lori and the kids had moved to Idaho, before he was even in the frame for anything) how did he not think to wipe his search history?!
IMHO all they *actually* proved was that Chad had an affair with and married a woman who was, along with her now-conveniently-deceased brother, implicated up to her eyebrows. Doesn't seem enough to me.

As I say though, there's no doubt Chad is guilty - your wife dies mysteriously (while you're having an affair with a woman whose last two husbands have also died mysteriously) and re-marry SEVENTEEN DAYS LATER??? Her minor kids go missing and you stay married, you go to Hawaii where she claims she has no minor kids and you stay married, she gets arrested and you stay married, the kids turn up murdered on your property and you get arrested too and you stay married, she is tried and convicted and sentenced to life without parole and you STILL STAY MARRIED??? That's not what innocent people do!!!

Who's Who
Killers and Conspirators
Lori Cox Vallow - mother and murderer; convicted 2023
Chad Daybell - Lori's 5th husband, murderer; convicted 30th May 2024. Wannabe religious leader / prophet
Alexander Lamar 'Alex' Cox Pastenes (51) 2019 - brother of Lori, alleged murderer (died before he could be investigated)
Zulema Pastenes - wife of Alex for about 5 minutes before he died, most people following the case suspect she was a co-conspirator as she was a follower of Chad & Lori
Melani Cope Boudreaux Pawlowski - Lori's niece, most people following the case suspect she was a co-conspirator as she was a follower of Chad & Lori. Her ex husband Brandon was the target of a botched shooting by Alex. She is now remarried and has at least one more child

Victims and those who died under suspicious circumstances
Stacey Cox Cope (31) 1998 - Lori's sister, mother of Melani. Her death was mysterious and while all the family but Alex were away... While most followers of the case consider Joe the first victim those who know about Stacey's death have other ideas. Curiously Lori had ANOTHER deceased sister, Laura Lee, who died in 1971 aged 42 days. That was two years before Lori was born but Lori creepily adopted Laura's nickname - Lolly - as her own
Joseph Anthony 'Joe' Ryan Jr (59) 2018 - Lori's 3rd husband, they had been acrimoniously divorced for many years at the time of his death. Supposedly died of a heart attack but his ex wife Lori both had him cremated without informing his family, and she got life insurance from him. Most people following the case believe he was Lori and Alex's first victim (see Stacey Cox Cope)
Leland Anthony 'Charles' Vallow (62) 2019 - Lori's 4th husband; was shot dead in supposed self defence by Alex Cox; Lori is to stand trial for his murder. Lori was shocked to discover Charles had changed his life insurance beneficiary to Kay
Tylee Ryan (17) 2019 - Lori's daughter, born to her 3rd husband Joe Ryan; her burned and dismembered remains were found on Chad Daybell's property. Lori continued to draw Social Security money for Tylee relating to Joe's death
Joshua Jaxon 'JJ' Vallow né Canaan Todd Trahan (7) 2019 - Lori's son, adopted with her 4th husband Charles Vallow; biological grandson of Kay Woodcock; found buried (intact) on Chad Daybell's property. Lori continued to draw Social security money for JJ relating to Charles' death

Tamara 'Tammy' Douglas Daybell (49) 2019 - Chad's 1st wife; prior to 'dying in her sleep' she was the target of a botched shooting by Alex Cox
Alexander Lamar 'Alex' Cox Pastenes (51) 2019 - see under 'killers and conspirators'

People on Chad and Lori's 'Dark' List (aka potential victims)
Brandon Boudreaux - Melani's 1st husband; Brandon was the alleged target of a botched shooting by Alex Cox
Braxton, Brees, Brighton, and Blake Boudreaux - at least two of Melani and Brandon's children were on the dark list; they are now in their father's custody
Heather Daybell - Chad's sister-in-law, wife of his brother Matt
Detective Ray Hermosillo - a police officer investigating Chad and Lori
Samantha Gwilliam - Chad's sister-in-law, sister of Tammy
Kay Woodcock - Kay was Charles Vallow's sister; Kay was the biological grandmother of JJ. If she had not called for a welfare check on JJ Lori and Chad might've got away with it. Kay and her husband Larry have been front and centre advocating for Lori and Chad's victims. lori had alternately claimed Kay was trying to abduct JJ and, after his disappearance, that he had gone to live with Kay.
Adam Cox - Lori's only surviving brother; Lori claimed he was out to kill her. Adam was a friend of Charles and they had hoped to stage an intervention to protect the kids... but then Charles was killed

Survivors (close relations not mentioned above - incomplete)
Colby Ryan - Lori's surviving (adult) child, born to her 2nd husband and adopted by her 3rd. When he was contacted about JJ's disappearance he asked after Tylee... who the police didn't even know about at that time!
Summer Cox Shiflet - Lori's only surviving sister
Emma Murray, Garth Daybell, Mark Daybell, Seth Daybell, Leah Murphy - Chad and Tammy's adult children

Other
Mandy Leger (46) 2022 - JJs biological mother. Lost custody to Kay and Larry Woodcock due to substance abuse issues and initially had visitation but JJ was adopted out while she was in rehab which devastated her. She had always hoped to be reunited with her son but her world fell apart when he was murdered. She died of a heart condition... or a broken heart.
Dennis Todd 'Todd' Trahan - JJs biological father. Lost custody to Kay and Larry (his mother and stepfather) due to substance abuse issues and initially had visitation. Trahan, as of JJ and Tylee's celebration of life in April 2024, was incarcerated.