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By Erin Keller
Reporter (Live News)
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"Doomsday mom" Lori Vallow Daybell has been deemed mentally competent to stand trial in her Arizona case.
During a hearing on Thursday, doctors stated Vallow Daybell, 51, is mentally fit, according to a Rule 11 evaluation, a standard evaluation to determine mental competency.
The state did not object to the doctors' findings, and her trial can now proceed. A status conference is set for Friday at 8:30 a.m. local time.
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Newsweek reached out to lawyers for Vallow Daybell for comment.
Vallow Daybell is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 2019 murders of her two youngest children, Tylee Ryan and Joshua "JJ" Vallow, and Tammy Daybell, the ex-wife of her husband, Chad Daybell, in Idaho.
Chad Daybell, 56, received the death penalty for the same crimes.
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Vallow Daybell now faces more charges in two Arizona cases. She's accused of orchestrating the murder of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, and the attempted murder of her niece's husband, Brandon Boudreaux.
Last month, Vallow Daybell filed documents notifying the court that she wants to represent herself in her Arizona trial. The judge chose to defer a decision on this request until after Vallow Daybell's Rule 11 process completion since she had previously missed court appearances.
Competency to stand trial has been a recurring issue for Vallow Daybell, who previously faced similar challenges during her Idaho murder trial.
In June 2021, Vallow Daybell was declared incompetent to stand trial and spent 10 months in an Idaho mental health facility undergoing treatment.
Following her stay, she was deemed fit to proceed. However, in 2022, the trial was briefly paused for nearly a month due to renewed concerns about her mental state. Ultimately, the judge ruled that she was competent to continue.
In a November 2024 hearing, the judge asked Vallow Daybell about the evaluations she underwent at the Idaho facility.
"Several things. Several classes, competency classes, and meetings with doctors and evaluators. Many, many evaluators," Vallow Daybell said.
Her attorney, Pamela Hicks, objected to Vallow Daybell publicly answering the judge's question about disclosing her diagnosis from the Idaho facility.
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Lori Vallow Daybell's Crimes
Chad Daybell was a self-published writer of Doomsday-focused fiction when he and Lori Vallow Daybell had an affair while they were part of a "Doomsday cult" that shared apocalyptic religious beliefs.
Prosecutors in Vallow Daybell's Idaho case called witnesses who claimed the couple conspired to kill the two children and Chad Daybell's first wife because they wanted to overcome any obstacles to their relationship.
In February 2023, a psychiatric assessment of Vallow Daybell revealed that she suffers from a "delusional disorder" intertwined with "hyper-religiosity" and an "unspecified personality disorder" with narcissistic features.
During the Idaho trials, prosecutors presented evidence of the pair's extreme religious ideologies. They argued that Lori Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell believed in a system of "light" and "dark" souls.
They said Vallow Daybell believed evil spirits had taken over people in her life, including her children, and turned them into "zombies."
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