I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline, the dark story that's riveted the country mommy doomsday. Now exclusive new interviews and startling new information and a new twist that will leave you cold and basically a ticking time bomb.

We've kept really private, but this story had to be told because it's not going away. Just sick, who does that to children, who does that? Did you begin to rethink what happened to Tammy? Yeah, I did. Who is this woman that replaced my sister? Someone said I have a recording of Lori Barlow saying she wanted to murder your brother. I was going to kill him. Like the scriptures say, what he suffered is unimaginable. This is beyond disturbing.

What were they planning, what were they concocting was something that could have been prevented? There's still so much more to come. It's going to be surprising for everybody.

Here's Keith Morrison with Mommy Doomsday. You know her name by now, much of the world does Laurie valo de Belle, she's suspected of some of the worst crimes imaginable. We've been following her story for more than a year, tracked her from the Arizona desert to the mountains of Idaho to the beaches of Kauai.

We had nothing. No.

And back to the mainland again, that story all the way to a courthouse in Rexburg, Idaho, to answer the terrible allegations against her.

There's been a clear and alarming pattern in the defendant's life.

Of course, we know now what happened to her children, Tyler and JJ, and the horrible truth about where they were all those months after they were reported missing, letting family members just twist in the wind knowing your children are dead in someone's backyard.

It's inconceivable.

Lori has not been charged with murdering her children, but she is certainly under investigation for murder. And we've spent months now tracing her path of heartbreak, hearing the stories, many for the first time of the other people who've died after crossing paths with Lori.

Like her fourth husband, Charles, he knew that his demise was going to come in the form of this bubbly blonde in yoga pants. He knew that.

And the husband before that, he's dead, too. And the wife of Lori's current husband, her name was Tammy. I miss her a lot.

Tammy's only sister is speaking out for the first time anywhere.

She was a real person. She was an amazing, brilliant person that died too soon, as did so many, it seems connected to Lori and her new husband, Chad there seems to follow them like a shadow.

What were these two doing in their relationship? What were they planning? What were they concocting?

What indeed where to start? Maybe here. Phoenix, April 2018, the sudden death of Lori's third husband, Joe Ryan. This is his sister, Annie.

Do you think she had something to do with the death of your brother?

Seriously, I've wrestled so much with this question.

Joe was born in Connecticut in 1958, the eldest of five, and he was the youngest. Shortly after I was born, the family just fell apart and we were divided up into different foster homes.

But the best way to begin life split up, and it was just a baby when it happened and their big brother Joe seemed desperate for family when he was in his young 20s, he was in the Navy.

He organized this Thanksgiving dinner because we had never had Thanksgiving dinner together as a family.

And so he took on all of the costs of it and everything because it was just so important to him for us to be together.

He stayed single all through his 20s and 30s, patiently waiting, it seemed, for his chance to become someone who wasn't at all like his absent father.

He so much would talk about how when he had kids, he was going to be there at their games, at their place, you know. I mean, he wanted to be he was going to be the reverse of your father. Exactly. Everything, the opposite of our dad.

And then finally, Joe was in his early 40s, a successful businessman.

He called me to tell me he found the one her name Lori. She was Joe's hairdresser.

They were like a celebrity couple. They were beautiful. They were both super extroverts, you know, so they kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

Joe proposed Laurie said yes, on one condition, that Joe convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

And he did.

He had never been a religious guy, you know, so that was a tectonic shift from anything I had ever seen from him.

But he was very, very happy.

In 2001, just months after he'd better, Joe Ryan married Laurie Cox on the beach in Maui.

He was 43, she was in her late 20s, his first marriage, her third to which she brought her young son Colby, and something else Laurie was expecting a girl.

He was talking about wanting a little girl years before he met Lori. And so I was like you.

You're getting your girl in September 2002, there she was. They named her Tirelli.

Jo was over the moon with Tiree.

He was convinced that she looked just like him and she she didn't.

But we all had to pretend that she did go by the dream house for his new family near Austin, Texas, and proudly flew Annie and her family from the East Coast for a look.

But during that visit and he could see, as she put it, the new leather smell of the marriage had already worn off and Joe was fighting an old enemy, his hair trigger temper.

It was their first big rain and and the roof in the living room leaked. It was like humiliating for him. And he really lost it.

And it was in front of all of the kids, like punching the wall, dropping F bombs. Yeah. I mean, I didn't hate Joe. I wasn't. Yeah, I was just disappointed.

So much so that Annie would begin an estrangement from Joe that would last to her regret. Now forever, Joe wanted perfection.

What he got, he had no idea. When we come back, a shattered marriage and stunning claims of abuse.

Did you believe that Joe Ryan sexually abused me? I do not believe he sexually abused me. I did not, nor do I today. She was the mastermind behind the whole thing to see what he suffered. It's unimaginable. Contestant number 13 is Laurie. What a moment. It was 2004, Lori Ryan, center of attention in a beauty pageant competing to be crowned Miss Texas right here before the judges dropping what afterwards?

Sounds almost like a hint of my state, me, the good wife and a good worker. And being all those things together is not easy. So I'm basically a ticking time bomb.

Two months after the pageant, Lori filed for divorce. Ticking time bomb is a pretty good description of how it went.

This was just an awful, awful case, Tom Ware and Vivian Lewis, highly experienced mental health professionals, were assigned to help the court decide custody of Tyler.

Why are the two of you speaking out?

I'll be point blank, Frank. It's very hard to remove a child from a mother. And yes, there are children who need to be removed from their mother's care.

She was talking about Lori and about protecting Tirelli or trying to as tilings guardian ad litem.

Then I was her spokesperson and I still feel that duty now that in a way, I'm speaking for Taiwan.

During the fight for custody, Lori claimed that Joe had been sexually abusing both Tirelli and her son, Coleby.

In fact, Golby told us about his past with Joe during an interview last year.

He would like spank me. And then he just did weird things like a little hit in the head. I thought it was funny. And, you know, he was sexually abusive as well with you.

Not an easy job to investigate allegations of sex abuse, but that's what these experts were assigned to do in granular detail. Their conclusion.

Did you believe that Joe Ryan sexually abused Courtney?

I do not believe he sexually abused me. I did not, nor do I. Today, the allegations against Joe were absurd. Absurd. Now what what made you say that? It was the nature of one of the allegations. When you really look at it, it doesn't make any sense. It's not based in reality.

As for Lori's allegations that Joe sexually abused Tirelli, do you believe Joe Ryan sexually abused Tyler? No, no.

In fact, both experts believe both Tyler and Colby were manipulated by Lori.

She was the mastermind behind the whole thing. Lori absolutely matches much of the criteria for an offending, falsely accusing mother. She was on a mission. She was on this. She wants Joe out of the picture.

We asked Colby about these findings. He said his mom has done a lot of things. Manipulating him and making these claims was not one of them.

I respect what he believes happened to him. It's his belief system based on his memories.

But when Laurie found out, the experts didn't believe the allegations against Joe. Oh, boy.

She said to me, if this doesn't come out the way I want it to, I'm taking the kids to Mexico. She made it very clear that this needed to go in the direction that Joe was guilty of incest. And if you didn't go along with that, then she could give you a very hard time. It got worse.

Laurie told her, said Lewis, that Tyler was the reincarnation of her late sister and that a former lawyer, a dead man, visited her at night. Did you believe that she was delusional in any way?

As I look back, I see delusion.

Later, Laurie told another therapist that death would be an option before giving entirely to her father, Joseph Ryan, even for a visit days after Laurie made that statement. Lori's brother, Alex Cox, a name you'll want to remember, track down Joe Ryan to a parking lot, lunged at him with a stun gun and later pleaded guilty to aggravated assault to see what he suffered.

Was. You. It's it's unimaginable just to see how much he was targeted by this family, in the end, both court appointed experts made the same recommendation.

They concluded Joe was not a danger to Tyler. But after a jury trial in 2007, the judge only gave Joe some visitation and made five year old Tyler sole conservator, her mother, Laurie.

I mean, when you think about it, children could be alive today had this gone just a little bit differently 13, 14 years ago.

By the time of the decision, Lori had remarried her fourth husband, who was a man named Charles. Valore they moved away from Joe, moved from Texas to Arizona. And when Joe followed, Lori did all she could to keep Tirelli away from him, enough to get her charged with judicial interference.

And then in 2014, Charles and Lori moved far away, took away.

The move to Hawaii was to completely sever the tie between Titli and Jo Jo.

Try to stop that. Joe went to great lengths to try to stop that.

She just kept finding these loopholes where, you know, it was like, oh, things didn't go the way I want. Well, then I'm just going to balance what Joe didn't know.

Was it the end of this fight I had of all of them, in fact, was very near. Coming up, Laurie would go and see the world is a better place without children in it. A sudden death and a terrifying admission, she actually said sometimes I think it would be better to put my kids in a car and go over the side of the cliff when Dateline continues.

Families are so complicated, aren't they? And he didn't speak to her brother Joe for years as Joe fought bitterly with Laurie over custody of Tirelli and poisonous allegations of abuse. And yet through all the trouble and he tried hard to stay connected to Titli even after Laurie married her next husband, husband number four, Charles Valo, who saw to it that Annie was included in this new extended family.

We went on a family vacation together, even after Laurie and Joe split up because I wanted to be a part of Tibs life. He was very kind.

Charles was the image of a man in love. Laurie seemed happy in her new life, too. They did eventually return from Hawaii to Arizona, where Joe still lives, and on a spring day in 2018 and his phone rang.

No, it wasn't Joe.

It was another of her brothers with news of a letter, strangely, from the city of Phoenix they were trying to find with a relative who could claim Joe's body.

Joe's body. Disbelief, shock. And he left urgent messages for Laurie.

So when she called me back, I was very surprised to hear her say, oh, yeah, I knew.

And when I said, What do you mean you you knew? Why didn't you tell me? And she said, Well, I didn't think you would care.

And Ernie was further shocked to learn that by the time she spoke with Laurie, Joe had been dead for more than a month. It happened in this apartment complex in Phoenix. Police reports that a neighbor's dog, it smelled something scratched at Joe's door when police made a welfare check.

They found Joe on his bed in what they called an advanced state of decomposition. Best guess he'd been dead about a week. The M.E. ruled Joe Ryan had died of cardiovascular disease, natural causes. He was only fifty nine. Laurie invited Annie out to Phoenix to comfort Tyler.

When I came out there, no one needed my support. Didn't see broken up about it all? No. Lori had no tolerance for it, because even if my eyes misted up, Laurie would go right into this campaigning mode against Joe. Annie, the world is a better place without Joe Ryan in it.

And you know which him saying this to Joe sister. Yeah. Yeah, she said that to me.

It was strange, said Annie. As was this lorry somehow had in her possession a box of family photo albums belonging to Joe, she had told me that she entirely went to the apartment and two police officers let them inside the apartment.

She said that she brought out these photo albums and then she said there were stacks and stacks of files on the floor of Joe's bedroom. It doesn't seem plausible that police officers would have allowed her to just start collecting her ex-husband files.

And Annie's eyebrows went up even further when Phoenix P.D. released photos it had taken inside of Joe's apartment the day his body was discovered.

So when I got these pictures, I was looking for the box of photo albums and these stacks and stacks of files, and I can't find them anywhere in the pictures.

And so that for me is really the biggest question mark.

In other words, I only wondered if Laurie actually got into Joe's apartment and removed the photo albums before the police got there.

Phoenix police have not responded to our request for comment. Any notice to the police photos revealed something that didn't seem like the Jocie knew on his front door.

There was an extra deadbolt on the inside. And to me that communicated a man living in fear.

And one more thing, she thinks about it all the time. The Joe she knew was a neat freak, a perfectionist.

And yet Joe's place was a mess. No pictures on the walls, bills from collection agencies strewn all about. She saw his driver's license photo taken seven months before his death.

His face was bloated and he just. You know, he just looked like a shell of the man I once knew, something broke Joe life broke, Joe or Laurie did, who knows, right?

Yeah, yeah.

During that trip. And he noticed something different about Laurie, too. Laurie had always been open about her LDS beliefs, but now she seemed to be moving beyond them into something more extreme.

Laurie seemed obsessed about the biblical end times.

She actually said, Sometimes I think it would be better just to put my kids in a car and go over the side of the cliff than to endure the how what's going to happen.

That was 12 18. Just a few months later, a recording was made, Laurie, in an unguarded moment talking about Joe and murder. Coming up, I was going to murder him, I was going to kill him like the scriptures say.

What did you think, as you heard those actual words, to hear her talk so confidently about wanting to murder Joe? It was astounding. It was during his trip to suburban Phoenix after her brother Joe's death, something flashed bright neon in her mind about Joe's ex-wife, Laurie, or Lolo, as the family called her.

I actually had a text exchange with one of my daughters where I said, I think Lolo might be a sociopath. I wanted nothing to do with her after that visit.

And so and he did not until she learned in late 2013 that her niece, Tirelli was missing. Lori's story hit the world stage to search for these children.

It has now gone. Are your children still alive? And someone approached me with an offer.

Someone reach out to me and said, I have a recording of Lori Barlow saying she wanted to murder your brother. Would you like it? I'm like, let me think about it.

Yes, I'll start by saying that I am a personal witness. Other resurrected Jesus Christ.

The tape was secretly but legally recorded at a religious gathering Laurie attended in a Phoenix suburb six months after Joe's death.

Here, Lori talks about her custody battle with Joe and again accuses him of unspeakable crimes, which you'll recall mental health professionals did not believe Joe committed.

I had been married to someone who was very awful, who raped my children, and I had divorced him and gotten away from him. And he was constantly trying to get custody of my three year old daughter and just to rub it in my face. So the court told me that if I didn't take my daughter to him and drop her off with him every weekend or every other weekend, that they would put me in jail. So.

I had to go take her to this monster, my little sweet little baby girl, and drop her off on the tape, Laurie said she was nearing a breaking point and then found a version of LDS holy book and applied it to what she said she'd endured from Joe.

I was going to murder him. I was going to kill him, like the scriptures say, and I just thought I couldn't take it anymore. And I would go to the Scriptures and find all the things like if he comes against you, once he becomes against you twice, if it comes against you three times, then you can kill him. There it is. There's my answer.

What did you think, as you heard those actual words that you played the tape and you heard her say those things? My first reaction was shock to hear her talk so confidently in front of other people about wanting to murder Joe. It was astounding.

But he also said on the tape that she decided not to go through with murdering Joe, that instead she dedicated her life to going to the LDS temple.

I don't want to do anything that's wrong. I do not have a murderous heart. I just wanted to stop the bleeding and stop the pain.

And anyway, hadn't the medical examiner ruled Joe died of natural causes? The heart attack, basically.

But then he looked at the Army's report discovered there had been only an external examination of Joe's body so they didn't open him up.

It seemed like the M.E. may have based his cause of death on Joe's medical history.

In fact, the Army's office told us that's not uncommon and likely what happened. And he found herself wishing the police had asked themselves a particular question when they contemplated Joe's untimely death, when he died, who gained anyone? Yeah.

So this is something I've been trying to find out about since the beginning. And as someone who was privy to this information, just let me know that there was a life insurance policy, a payout as 2013 drew to a close.

That according to this insider center, Lohri up to one hundred fifty thousand dollars.

Then just a few months later, life insurance would become an issue again when Lori's fourth husband ended up dead as well.

Coming up, she was always happy, bubbly and everyone loved her. The good life in Hawaii. Another joyous beginning, another dark ending. Whether they murder me, kill me, threaten to murder you. When Dateline continues. It was early 2019, only a couple of months after Hillary was caught on tape admitting she'd consider murdering her third husband, Joe Ryan.

I was going to murder him. I was going to kill him.

And just weeks after Joe's life insurance had paid Lori and daughter Tirelli as much as one hundred fifty thousand dollars when police in suburban Phoenix found Lori's fourth husband, Charles Barlow, in a real jam.

What makes her a danger to herself and to others? And they murder me. Kill me? She threatened to murder you.

Yes, of course. As we know now, Charles was right to be worried about his safety.

This man, who so rarely seem worried during his 62 years on earth leaving Charles Valo, was one of seven children born to staunchly Catholic parents in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

He was tall, athletic, played college baseball and then moved to Dallas, became a salesman, was very good at it. As a young Dallas model discovered, he came over to introduce himself. I said, I'm Kimberley and he said, you're my wife, that's your name, you're my wife. And I thought, wow, he's very secure.

Kimberly was right. Charles was it was 1982. She was 19. He was 26.

Who was dating him like he was a romancer.

I remember a lot of flowers. I remember jewelry. He knew how to do the guy thing.

Their wedding in 1984 was Texas sized in every way. Big hair, big, this big veil big. That's how it was. Charles really had a lot of shine. He was kind of a go big or go home guy.

He wanted to make a big family, too. But life doesn't always cooperate with ambition.

Kimberly had a miscarriage.

I was disappointed, but he was literally devastated. He cried nonstop.

Then the flipside of love, confidence that once seemed attractive began to look carolus.

One day, said Kimberly, Charles was fiddling with a handgun. He didn't mean to fire it, she said. But you did. How close did it come to you? Very, I would say about this far from my head, and I just couldn't believe it.

We can't know Charles's version, of course, of the marriage or the divorce. He got very vindictive and he got very aggressive toward me. Charles has a sense of desperation about him when things go sideways.

But eventually, a divorced and wounded Charles landed in Austin and found love again with this woman, Cheryl. They married in nineteen ninety one.

I was very young when I married him. I was twenty three. He was 34, still very successful. They both were financially. But what Charles wanted more than anything was children. They adopted one of Charles's nephews and then Cheryl gave birth to a son.

But after 12 years, it all turned sour and it just became a situation where we're just not cut out for each other.

Right. And this is not going to work. And so they both moved on.

We both moved on. Their divorce, too, was angry, bitter, though Cheryl still liked him.

So when he met Laurie Ryan two years later, I was happy to see him find his next spouse because that part is a little unusual.

But you're happy to have somebody.

I really was, because I thought she, you know, this beautiful woman, she's got two kids. She's very religious. This is going to be wonderful.

Charles proposed marriage. Laurie had a condition Charles would have to convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, which he did.

Sound familiar. And he joined Laurie in another cause, too. He helped Laurie with her custody battle while fighting his own all in the same family court.

That's when Laurie leveled those sex abuse allegations against Tyler's dad, Joe Ryan, followed by turmoil, many court dates involving several households and investigations and a constant airing of grievances.

And at the center of it all, said Cheryl, was Laurie.

I saw her more in court than I did out of the courthouse. I saw and instability.

And I didn't want her around my boys to see this instability. Not that I'm aware of.

He didn't share it with me. Instead, Charles was adding to his family.

In 2014, he and Laurie adopted another of Charles's nephews, JJ, a boy with autism. And after that, they moved far away from past spousal wars to one of Lori's favorite places on Earth, Kawai. And into a fine, big house on a golf course, we immediately hit it off as soon as he found out I was from Louisiana and where the English and his wife Frankie were active in a branch of the LDS church on Kauai, Charles and pressed Wade Laurie charmed everybody.

I was a part of the Sunday school program and she had a beautiful voice. She could really sing and did frequently.

Yes, she was always happy, bubbly and was great with the music and teaching the kids music like really good with the kids and everyone loved her.

Wade and Frankie introduced the values to the island life, fishing adventures, picnics on the beach. In this photo, you can see Jayjay over there scoping out the food. And though the boy was clearly a handful, said Wade, Charles was very good with him. There was patience and calm.

There was never anger. I mean, he didn't get red in the face like, you know, I'm saving this up for later.

I'm sure there wasn't even a reaction of that nature.

And they both were good with JJ. I mean, I think it took both of them because probably one had to go hide and scream it under their pillow every once in a while. That I mean, that's just what I would think I would have to do.

They were surprised to learn that in twenty eighteen, Charles and Laura left their paradise and moved to Phoenix. I'm like, why would you have left? Like, why would you ever have left out houses? Like he goes, you know, JJ needed needed things that we couldn't provide on the island.

Seemed like a fine reason taking care of family.

But of course that wasn't going to happen, was it? Coming up, she was attracted to him on a spiritual level after the man who'd become husband number five. Did you see evidence that she and Chad were falling in love? Oh, yeah. He seemed to be convinced that she was a very powerful woman. By the spring of 2018, Charles and Laurie and the kids, Tyler and JJ, we're back living in suburban Phoenix. It was about that time.

You'll recall the tires and noticed Laurie was very focused on the biblical end times and according to Anthony said something quite bizarre.

She actually said, sometimes I think it would be better just to put my kids in a car and go over the side of the cliff dark.

Yes, but perhaps it depended on the beholder.

She had a lot of the same energy and enthusiasm for learning and excitement for the second coming.

After 12 years of marriage to Charles, Laurie fell in with this woman, Melanie Ghaib, at a church meeting, you know, like a sister, kind of a friend.

But you just meet suddenly and just like this, this girl is a lot like me.

So together, the two of them took a road trip to St George, Utah, to attend a religious conference. And there a meeting took place that would alter many lives and possibly end a few as well.

Because at the conference, Melanie saw a man she knew and a frequent speaker at gatherings like these and author of End Times themed fiction, Chad Dibbell.

He talked about the second coming and the tribulations that would accompany that, he could see the spirit world, he said, could see the past, could see the future. Lori seemed entranced, she was attracted to him on a spiritual level. After all, Chad was a devout Mormon, very married. Lori was married to, of course, a back home in Phoenix. Melanie got to know Lori's husband, Charles valore seemed like a really nice guy.

He seemed to always be taken Jayjay places.

But after that conference, they could also see that something had come between Lori and Charles.

She seemed to be upset a lot. I could never really figure out why.

Then one weekend, when Charles was out of town on business, Lori decided to hold a spiritual conference at her house and one participant drove all the way from Rexburg, Idaho, 13 hours to be there.

Chad was there and he seemed to have a great respect for women. And so I think that was pleasing to Lori. He seemed to be convinced that she was a very powerful woman.

You are here with Lori and Melanie this morning on our podcast, Feel the Fire.

Melanie had a podcast back then, spiritual and health issues. Lori became a regular on it. And soon there was a special guest, Chad Dibbell, the burning in my chest just so strong that I finally had no connection to Jesus that I've never felt before.

By this time, a more earthly attraction was obvious to Melanie.

Did you see evidence that she and Chad were falling in love? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I asked her, like, why don't you get a divorce?

And she said, Chad and I are not allowed to because they were devoted followers of the LDS faith, said Laurie, but said not only what Lori was telling her now was way out in left field heretical, not church teaching at all. Chad told Lori they were both beyond human, exalted, translated beings. He called it godlike and he told her they shared a secret. They'd both lead multiple lives, him especially over thousands of years. How many?

Thirty one. How many lives had she supposedly had? Twenty one.

And what's more, in seven of those previous lives, said Chad, Lori had been his wife, and she seemed to be very drawn to that idea.

It was very exciting. How weird must that be?

Not only am I attracted to you that we've been married seven times and on different planets and different lives.

Yeah, she was actually intrigued by it.

And now Chad told Lori they the two of them had been chosen and picked by God to lead an elected group of people, one hundred forty four thousand souls who would usher in the end times and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

They were in charge of this group and they would find couples are people that would be able to fulfill this calling as the days and the tribulations came upon the world.

People like Lauren's older brother, Alex Cox, remember him.

The guy who teased Lori's third husband, Joe, intended to kill him back in 2007.

And where would the righteous gather right here, according to Chad, near his home in Rexburg, Idaho, said, you know, the people one hundred forty four thousand are going to move here.

They figured that most people would end up in tents and things of that nature.

Meanwhile, as these extra special heavenly beings, Chad and Lori, sneaked into an LDS temple, into the holiest places in that faith and performed a secret do it yourself sealing ceremony, sealing themselves as husband and wife for eternity. But of course, Lori was also inconveniently still married to Charles and for now, at least for now. Coming up, I'm going to kill you. Murder today with tomorrow. It's not every day that we have someone come in and say that their life is threatened, their life, and she's got angels ready to dispose of his body.

Scared. When Dateline continues. Late January 2019, Charles Velho flew home from a business trip and the pickup truck he parked at the airport in Phoenix is gone.

He couldn't reach anyone at home. So what's going on tonight? I can't get in touch with my kids. The rest was captured on police body cam once Charles got a ride home and found he was locked out of his house. And once police helped him get in, he saw that many of his things were gone. Police blurred this video for privacy reasons. There were police but in the house, but there was more to it, a whole lot more.

Charles told police that Lori's mind was increasingly clouded by strange and apparently homicidal religious teachings.

She said, you're not sure who you are, what you do with Charles, but I can murder you now with my powers, as should be a New Yorker. She won't go to the doctor because she's a translator. And they would find out she's. She cannot be killed. She cannot die.

Charles didn't know the half of it. Lori had revealed even more to her friend Melanie. She had told me that she had seen and like a dream that he was to pass away. Yes. And Chad had a vision to the Charles had been overtaken by an evil spirit named Nick Snyder. Chad calls her up on the phone and says, I just want to let you know that Charles, something happened to him. It became as unclean spirit.

So what, he'd become a demon or something? Or I guess you could call that they they later phrased it as a zombie.

A zombie? Well, that sounded ominous. But if Charles had any inkling that his wife's new beliefs grew out of her relationship with Chad Dibbell, he didn't say so.

In fact, in a second encounter with police the day after the first one, all he asked for was help for Laurie told him he was very worried about her. I've tried to support as much as I could, but it's gotten really, really bad that we should celebrate says. Nick Snyder of taking over Charles's body and Charles was killed. I'm going to kill you for murder today or tomorrow. I'm scared.

OK, eventually Charles and the police found Lori. He requested she take a mental evaluation and she did. She went down to the police station. Her visit captured on Bodycam.

Unfortunately, we the hotels just all calm down or something.

You know, Laurie told police that Charles was the problem. He cheated on her. She said flew into a rage when she confronted him. She said the cops seemed sympathetic.

But just talking to you. I mean, I don't see you being a danger to yourself or any anybody else.

And that's exactly what the mental evaluation found. Lori's friend Melanie was there when Lori walked out.

She passed easily and she got out and they thought she was completely normal. Yeah, a lot of people thought she was completely normal, including you.

Oh, yeah. She was very good. She was slick.

Within days, Charles went to see a lawyer. Taylor Larson couldn't forget that visit if he tried.

It's not every day that we have someone come in and say that their wife has threatened their life and that she's got angels ready to dispose of his body.

A truism if there ever was one. But there was more of a more temporal nature.

She took out a total of thirty five thousand dollars out of the business account and pretty much drained everything that was in that account. Oh, boy.

So could he actually afford your services at that stage? He had to go and try to scrape and make money real quick to retain our services to file divorce.

Not only a divorce, but Charles also wanted an order of protection. It wasn't necessarily to protect Charles himself, but it was more to protect J.J..

What about Tyler? Was he worried about her, too?

He was worried that the Lori may be brainwashing her with some of her extremist beliefs.

What was your impression of this guy? Was he broken or what? My impression right off the bat was this is a broken man. He had been crying.

Everything that he knew was was gone by just two months later.

Well well, Charles wrote his attorney an email saying he and Laurie were back together.

And at the end, he told me that love wins. Wow.

So he was excited about this? Yeah.

I emailed him back and I and I said, Charles, I'm happy for you.

Well, you certainly wouldn't want to rain on his parade. Absolutely. Privately, what did you think?

Privately, I thought maybe this wasn't the best idea. At the young family law.

Attorneys instincts were right. Within weeks, Laurie had left Charles again. And one day when Charles came to pick up JJ for visitation, we will paramedics, both policemen and.

Coming up, he said, if anything happens to me, know that it was Lori and her brother Alex that did it, Charles's deadly premonition, was it about to come true? It was July twenty, nineteen thirty a.m. when police in suburban Phoenix responded to the call of a shooting in a gated community, Belmopan, one of the officers found a man in the driveway and guided him to the curb.

It was Lori's brother and disciple, Alex Cox. I don't live here. My sister lives here and my niece was there. And you're just visiting? I was visiting for the night. Inside, lying dead on the floor with two bullets in his chest was Charles Valo property, several gunshot wounds as police were talking to Alex, who admitted he was the shooter.

Laurie arrived.

That's Tyler on the left. Police blurred her image because she was a minor. And if Lori was upset, her brother Alex had just killed her husband. She didn't act like it.

How long have you lived here? Like three weeks. Oh, jeez. Yeah, OK. That's why the person I got you like my never sorry.

Police said that Lori's demeanor made about as much sense as the explanation she and Alex put forward for the shooting. Something about a tussle over a cell phone. Tiley bringing out a baseball bat. Charles making threats, Alex responding. So I went to my room and got my gun. Charles soon lay dead on the floor. There's a couple of shell casings. Laurie Alex entirely were all taken to the Chandler police station, questioned Alex claimed he'd killed Charles in self-defense and lacking clear evidence to the contrary, police released them all back to the house.

Lori's friend Melanie was shocked. She told us yes. She said Chad Dibbell had prophesied that Charles would become a zombie and would die but shot to death.

I'm thinking he's going to pass away like they would have a prayer. Maybe the spirit will leave and his body would just die. And yeah, I just like I didn't see that coming.

And when Charles's sons heard the news from Lori, here's his ex-wife, Cheryl, my oldest son. He's sitting in my yard screaming and crying. And I thought, oh, my God. So I bring him in the house like, what's wrong? And he shows me the text from Lori.

Text message, a text message. Sorry, your dad passed away, but don't worry, I still love you with a heart emoji.

And what did you think? What did you feel like? Couldn't believe that she did that in that way.

I immediately knew they killed him.

They. What did that mean? Probably the same thing it been for Charles. His former lawyer, Taylor Larsen, remembered what Charles once told him.

He said, if anything happens to me, know that it was Lori and her brother Alex that did it. The instigator would be Lori, but it would be done through Alex's hands.

In fact, not only had Charles seen it coming, he'd done something about it. When, shortly after his death, Lori tried to collect on a million dollar life insurance policy. She found out that Charles had removed her as beneficiary.

She got nothing. Then, weeks after the shooting, Lori took Thailand JJ and moved north to Rexburg, Idaho, to get close to the man she believed she had been married to seven times in seven lives. Chad, they believe she gave other people a story, that she was going to get a job there.

But her and I both know it wasn't about a job. It was about her connecting with Chad and living up there and being part of their mission. The mission you'll recall together, they elect for the end times and the second coming.

That's why Lori's brother and disciple Alex moved to Rexburg to each of them rented a townhouse in this complex once they were settled.

Alex and Lori took Tyler and JJ on a family trip to nearby Yellowstone National Park. These photos are the last images of Tyler. Melanie knew by then, Laurie told her that Tyler had been declared a zombie.

And J.J. a couple of weeks after the Yellowstone visit, he was seen on his neighbors ring doorbell video playing in the courtyard with a friend. But according to Melanie Lowry said he, too, had become a zombie. The reason why I believe he became a zombie is that he was going to stop Chad and Lori from going forward. And I think he was in the way. And I think that's why he became a zombie. And what happens to zombies seems like they are dying.

Melanie said she had no clue at the time what plans might have been made for Talia J.J. but she did know that Lori and Chad were deeply in love and there was a problem. Chad was still married, had been for nearly 30 years to a woman named Tammy. Coming up, she was amazing. She was an awesome person. Tammy's sister speaks out for the first time on television.

You could tell they were affectionate and they loved one another. Well, that just adds to the weirdness of it all. It does when Dateline continues. Out beyond the gleaming spire of the LDS temple and Rexburg, Idaho, Chad Darvell, self-styled religious guru, was taking liberties with biblical commandments. By the fall of twenty nineteen, he'd been married to his wife, Tammy, for nearly three decades. They had five children, but security cameras had lately caught Chad helping another woman move items in and out of a storage unit and patting her in a very, shall we say, affectionate way.

That woman, of course, was Lori. The two of them took to walking together at the BYU Idaho running track, said Lori's friend Melanie, holding hands, hugging, kissing in full public view.

Did you ask them, aren't you afraid of being discovered by Tammy? Yes, I said, well, Tammy usually doesn't come out over here. They didn't seem to be worried about it.

And Tammy Dibbell in Ignorant Bliss, went about the life she believed still existed.

You know, she was amazing. I mean, we all have our faults, but she was an awesome person. I could go to her with anything.

This is Tammy's only sister, Samantha, and Samantha's husband, Jason and I were brothers, breaking their silence in their first ever interview.

There were hand in hand, one of the same when people mention Tammy, you thought about Chad. When people mentioned Chad, you thought about Tammy. They would hold each other's hands and sit right next to each other. I mean, you could tell they were affectionate and they loved one another. Well, that just adds to the weirdness of it.

Does Tammy, the sister the woman Chad married, was one of five children raised in little Springville, Utah, and by all accounts, was gifted. A lover of books from an early age even had her own lending library.

She made little library cards for us to check out books from her. And I remember one time I didn't return stuff in a proper fashion and got a little bit slip for like a nickel or something.

Everybody talks about how bright this woman was. Unusually so, I gather.

Yeah, all really pretty smart in our family.

Tammy played in marching band, was yearbook editor, graduated with high honors and had her eye on a guy who graduated a year before her Chad day Bill.

Back then, Tammy confided all to her cousin Patty.

The first time that I knew about them, she told me he was on a mission and she said, I'm going to marry him when he comes home. And I was like, Did you know him before? And she said, No, but I'm going to marry him.

And which had returned to Utah after spending two years in New Jersey.

So when she got engaged, I was happy for her. But also like, oh, man, it's almost like I mean, she's leaving you to go be with some guy.

Yeah. How dare she.

They were married in an LDS temple at their wedding. You could see how happy they were. And Tammy, the girl who could have done anything was content.

Some of her friends apparently pushed her. You know, why don't come on. You got to be this or that or a scientist or a you should be more ambitious and professionally.

But but that wasn't her. She was happy being a mom. And that's OK. It's OK to want that in Springville.

Chad and Tammy lived just around the corner from Samantha and her then new husband, Jason, the only brother in law in the family. Yeah, he was someone that I, quite frankly, looked up to, in a way, a mentor.

Chad was in charge of the local cemetery while he was there, is where he started to just get some ideas that, hey, I think I have a story to tell and I'd like to tell it.

So Chad started writing books and with Tammy, the girl who'd grown up with her nose in books, launched a mom and pop publishing company.

Tammy love to help the business with that.

Chad could just focus on his writing until they went bankrupt. That is that's why Tammy started working at Art City Elementary, was to help pay bills, supplement the income. But she loved it.

It was twenty fifteen the year of their twenty fifth wedding anniversary when Chad told Tammy he received a revelation, God was telling him to take her and their five kids and move four hours north to Rexburg, Idaho.

How did she feel about that? At first she wasn't happy about it. But, you know, as we do in our religion, she prayed about it and try to decide what it was that she was supposed to do. And Tammy blossomed in Idaho living on a big rural property where she raised animals and had a big garden and found a fulfilling job as a school librarian, as far as I knew, she was really happy. The tables had lived outside Rexburg for about four years when in early October 2019, Tammy announced she was coming home for a visit alone.

It was a few weeks after Lori's children, J.J., entirely were last seen. Was it unusual for her to drive down without Chad? Yeah, actually, they normally drove together, but he said he was busy working, so she decided to come on her own. And it was a really fun visit. She was happy. It was like we were kids again and not in our forties.

Then after an overnight stay, Tammy said goodbye, voided her car to Idaho. And drove away. And Samantha never saw her sister alive again.

Coming up, a sudden death and a sudden wedding if you almost betrayed. Yeah, that is too soon for anybody to get over my sister.

During her four years in the farm country outside Rexburg, Idaho, Tammy Dibbell embraced a quiet life of service to her faith, her students to her family.

Then it was just a week after that quick visit home to Utah in her own driveway, her Facebook post, something really weird just happened. A guy wearing a ski mask was suddenly standing by the back of my car with a paintball gun. He shot at me several times.

She kind of played it off a little bit because it seemed kind of ridiculous. Who wants to shoot a paintball gun at you?

You know, a prank, she's thought. So did the sheriff's deputies who responded.

And then 10 days later, on October 19th.

I got a phone call from Chad telling me that she had passed away in her sleep. How do you process something like that? You don't. I mean, there's just so many thoughts running through your head. And a lot of it was like, no, that that didn't happen.

What did you say happened? That she'd been sick and had a coughing fit and passed away? How did he sound on the phone? He sounded upset and devastated. I mean, I was crying and he was crying. And, yeah, it was a really hard moment.

Tammy Dibbell was just 49 years old. Slim fit, as far as Sam knew, perfectly healthy. Were you surprised to discover there had been no autopsy?

You know, the question that had been asked by my wife to Chad on Saturday when she passed and his response was, well, she's already over the mortician.

They said there was no need to have an autopsy decisions to have back. That's one. Tammy's funeral at the family's LDS ward in Springfield, Utah, was painful beyond words.

And Chad, I never got to talk to him about Tammy and what happened at the end. And in that lens, I felt like was he avoiding talking to me? I don't know.

Did Chad ever tell you he didn't want to live in that house anymore after Tammy died?

Yeah, because he said it was going to be hard to be there where she had been.

And he had said that he was going to stay with a friend, uh, friend Lori, who we would later learn picked out these wedding rings on Amazon two and a half weeks before Tammy died.

As the weeks passed and Tammy's family struggled to grasp life without her, Jason got a call from Chad who'd taken a trip to Hawaii, they thought to grieve.

He says, I have something I need to tell you, but don't tell anybody. I got married while I was in Hawaii. I sat there for a good five seconds and I said, Excuse me, you did what? And he says, I got married while I was in Hawaii.

What was it like to hear that? It was shocking because at that point, Tammy only been gone for a month. And I just thought, is the grief clouding his judgment? I mean, who goes and does that? It didn't make sense to me. And obviously, I was really upset. You feel almost betrayed.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I felt like that was too soon for anybody to get over my sister, get over my sister.

She asked him why would he do that? He just told us that he had known her from before and she understood what he was going through because she had lost a spouse through like a heart attack is what he told us. Which I didn't know was that a childhood spent borrowing Tommys detective books I was about to pay off.

What did you find out about Lori when you did your research? There was just various things on the Internet. And I found out her name really wasn't Lori Ryan. It was Lori Valo and her husband had died from a heart attack, but he was shot. And I just thought, is this the same person? But there was a Lori Barlow that had done podcasts with Chad. And you follow that trail yourself. This was just me trying to figure out who is this woman that replaced my sister because that was how I was choosing to grieve.

One morning, bill after another. And you're like, no, there's something seriously wrong here.

Yeah, you were angry.

For starters, it didn't feel right to me. And I'm very good at telling when people are lying to me. And I felt like I was being lied to.

Did you begin to rethink what happened to Tammy? Yeah, and I didn't like it.

But if Tammy's family didn't like it now. Oh, boy. Just wait a couple of weeks. Coming up, is JJ safe here, safe and happy secret recordings as friends turn adversaries?

I believe that you have been very deceived by saying these are my friends and now is confronting them.

When Dateline continues. Tommy Davis was brokenhearted family hope the shocks would subside after his sudden unexplained death at her widower Chadds marriage two weeks later in Kauai to a mysterious woman named Lori. But then Chad called the family with a question that again set off the seismic scale.

He called to ask about if we'd known anything about Tammy being exhumed, which we didn't know about at the time. Really? No. We had gone over to the cemetery to look and saw that it had been dug up. But when he had caught I can imagine what it's like to see that.

Yeah, it was shocking. But it was true, investigators have exhumed Tammi's body, tested it and reburied it the same day that Samantha grilled Chad about this new wife of his.

I said, OK, so tell me about her. And I said, do you have children? And he told me, no, her children are grown, will be empty nesters. But as we know, even as they were talking, police and the FBI were on a nationwide search for Lori's two children, Tirelli, age 17, and Jayjay, who were seven.

You may have heard this part of the story, how Jayjay grandparents, alarmed that they hadn't heard from him, called police who went to Lori's townhouse in Rexburg High or in the police department.

There you got to meet police body cams recorded the conversation.

So we were here in Arizona to see what they're doing. He's got one of my friends in Arizona. So I lose the friends with my friend Melanie.

Do you remember Melanie Laurie's friend, another true believer?

I get this phone call out of the blue and she said, Hey, Melanie, I just want to let you know that the Rexburg police are going to call. Don't pick up. How did he seem? Calm. No, no, nervous. And he said and Laurie is going to tell them that JJ is with you.

I think they are.

And right there at the movie that's happening to you right now, as Melanie head spun, her phone rang again.

Lori calls and says, hey, everything's fine. Oh, I tell them that JJ was with you. You guys were frozen. So she said that he was visiting me. We were in a movie theater watching Frozen. It's like a bomb drops on you. What do you do? You just are in shock a little bit more.

You try to just ask Melanie to lie to the police and in that request revealed that they'd been lying to her, too. Was that the moment this all changed for you about it? Absolutely. I can't even begin to tell you how horrible that moment was for me. No words can describe it.

You betrayed by these people? Oh, yeah. They try to use me as their way of escape.

When police contacted Melanie, she told them the truth. JJ was not with her. She didn't know where Tyler was either. Police returned to Lori's house with a search warrant, only to find that Lori and Chad had skipped town, gone back to Kauai.

No sign of either JJ or Tirelli. Melanie began cooperating with the police investigation. She called Lori and Chad one final time and recorded the conversation.

This is a recording on December 8th at three forty three p.m.. Wall Melody. Hi, Chad.

Hey, Laurie, where the call was friendly at first. Is JJ safe and safe and happy? OK, well that's good to hear, but the tone of the call soon turned. This wasn't a friendly phone call.

No, I believe that you have been very deceived by Satan. I believe that he has tricked you. I mean, Tammy dies and then your husband died and then. And then he's missing. It just doesn't sound like God's plan to me. You know me now. This does not sound like you. It sounds like you've been influenced by somebody who wants you to believe things that I fear, fear the world. It was a very unnerving phone call.

These are my friends. And now it's confronting them that they are potential killers from the teachings of my church. There's a guy named Core and Core. Horror was an Antichrist. I called both of them Arcore.

That's what you think is my car. Are you kidding me right now? How did it feel when you got off that call? Oh, I was a little shaken.

I had confronted my adversary. Right.

And then her mind flashed back to an earlier conversation with Lori's brother and disciple, Alex. And I said to him, Do I want to know what happened to JJ?

Because that little feeling inside was going on something kind of weird going on. He goes, you don't want to know.

And then the story got even weirder. OK, what is your emergency? Alex fell ill and died suddenly in suburban Phoenix at the age of 51. An autopsy determined the cause was blood clots in his lungs.

Maybe he felt guilty and that's a lot of weight to carry as a person.

Police and the FBI were now working furiously to find the children. They approached Samantha and Jason, asking them if they'd learned anything from Chad that might help them locate JJ entirely.

When the police asked that, I was like, Oh, so I am being lied to.

And the search for the kids was about to go nationwide. Seven year old Joshua Valo in 17 year old Tyler Ryan were last seen in September.

Lori and Chadds lives would be turned upside down, as would be so many others that make you wonder if he'd been lying about a whole lot of things.

Yeah, I hate to even say it, but they would have been empty nesters because those kids were gone. And it's really heartbreaking because that's just awful.

Coming up, we'll play the jailhouse phone calls and a devastating discovery as we watched that with the world was physically ill.

That's when the reality really hit.

Chad Morris Dateline. January twenty twenty, we said nothing, not quite the quiet island getaway Chad and Lori had planned for quite.

What do you guys have to say to the people who are looking for your kids?

What did it feel like when you saw the two of them walking around in Hawaii? Oh, I was livid.

I was not cool. And it didn't last before long. A judge in Idaho issued a warrant demanding Laurie produce her children. When she didn't, she was arrested and flown back to Rexburg, but still she refused to reveal where JJ and Tirelli were.

Chad followed, settled back into that home he once shared with Tammy, and then June 9th, 20 20 until entirely had been missing for eight months.

Lady, as a reporter for East Idaho News and a Dateline contributor, he was on his morning run that day when he heard his phone chirp. A text from a friend did not know they were raiding Chad Day Bill's house.

Tons of cops there.

I made a call to the sheriff and he confirmed we are there.

The roads to the house were blocked. They raced to the airport, jumped in a helicopter.

We are almost over. I'm checking out. I thought they would be seizing things from inside of the home and I looked down and they're in the backyard and they have like a grid in the backyard and I see dogs running around. And so I instantly knew they weren't focused on the house. They're focused on the yard, on the property.

Before long, Chad, watching what was going on from his daughter's house across the street, received his regular jailhouse call from Laurie.

Well, I OK. And believe Chad sounded despondent in the courtroom, in the courtroom and I tried to call you later. Yeah, he might be OK with you. There would be no more phone calls, not after this.

And they dug out the first body. Chad apparently got in his car and left and the police followed him and pulled him over.

They placed him into handcuffs, a passing driver record of the arrest on her cell phone.

And Jad was charged with two felony counts of destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence. Soon, Laurie would be to four months. There have been theories Taylor had been buried in Yellowstone Park or even were safe in a hideout with followers of Chad and Lori.

But no, none of the above. Not at all. They were killed and buried among pets on Chad and Tammy's property, Tyler's body was dismembered and burned.

It is just sick. As we watched that with the world, you know that we watched that play out on television with everybody else. I was physically ill. Who does that to children? Who does that?

That's when the reality really hit. And when I found out. About the state of tilings remains, I will never understand the indignity that they treated her with. It was so much worse than I had imagined and I thought I prepared myself for the worst.

How did authorities know where they might find the bodies? Chad, it turned out, had given it away, overplayed his hand.

In a text to Tammy at Chad's preliminary hearing, FBI agents who had spent months combing through thousands of texts revealed that most of Chad's texts were unexciting, short, mundane messages about logistics and life. Except on September 9th. Twenty nineteen, he said this.

Well, I've had an interesting morning. I felt I should burn all the limb debris by the fire pit before it got too soaked by the coming storms. While I did so, I spotted a big raccoon along the fence. I hurried and got my gun and he was still walking along. I got close enough that one shot did the trick. He is now in our pet cemetery.

Fun Times attack sent the day after Tirelli was last seen alive.

So of course investigators wanted to know where exactly was this pet cemetery.

And they spoke with some of Tammy's family members. One of her sisters said, Oh, yeah, I know where that is. It's right by the fire pit. And the investigators put two and two together that maybe we need to look at this firepit. Oh, and Alex Cox's phone pinged at that location of the pet cemetery.

Alex Cox, Lawrie's violent brother at that time, still very much alive. Phone records showed he spent several hours at the pet cemetery that day. They were able to get right to the GPS location of where Alex had spent his time in Chad's backyard. So we're talking about within feet, within feet.

Then two weeks later, September, twenty third, the morning after the last confirmed sighting of Lori's son, J.J., Alex's phone pinged. Don't judge property again. The FBI agents couldn't miss the connection.

And once we discovered the human remains embarrassing, number one. And number two, that was when we stopped.

John and Lori have both pleaded not guilty to all charges. So far, they're being held in separate jails, each on a million dollars bond.

They are prime suspects, but neither has been charged with murder. Remember, the mental health experts had warned the court about Lori more than a decade ago, learning what happened to Tyler and JJ was just too much.

I actually became nauseous, really. It made me sick to my stomach. Holly was my client that was found in a pet cemetery. It's just unbelievable.

It was something that could have been prevented. And I'm sorry that Tom and I weren't listened to. And that leaves two children dead.

As for the others who've died after coming into contact with Lori, Lori's third husband, Joe Ryan, found in his apartment in 2018 after that tape surfaced of Lori saying she wanted to kill Joe, I was going to murder him.

Phoenix police announced they would review the case, but that review led to the same conclusion. Joe Ryan died of natural causes.

His sister, Annie, still feels like Joe's death may not be a coincidence, given all that happened after.

They feel like I'm looking at a 500 piece puzzle and I have like maybe two hundred and seventy pieces. There's still so many pieces to this that are missing.

As for Lori's fourth husband, Charles Barlow, Chandler, Arizona police have told us there is still an open and active investigation into his death and that it will likely be referred to prosecutors within months.

That's a tricky one, because who are the witnesses to that death, Tiley? Who's no longer here? JJ, who's no longer here? Lori, who has not been cooperating with police. And of course, Alex, who pulled the trigger, who's no longer here.

And finally, there's Tammy Chadds wife who died so mysteriously in 2013. Her autopsy was finally completed a month ago, but the results have not been made public. Chad, in that last phone call with Melody, insisted Tammy's death was natural and may have been getting weaker.

I'm going to go to the doctor. It must be especially hard.

You wait with that wheel of justice sort of slowly growing.

How is that to deal with just like with grief? You know, you have good moments and you have a sad moment. She was amazing. We just want her to be remembered and not forgotten.

Remembered and not forgotten. Tammy Charles Titli, JJ Innocent and unaware. They encountered, too, who imagined they flew close to heaven. And instead, we're mere dust like the rest of us, and left death in their wake. That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at nine eight Central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.