Just two months before Idaho mom Lori Vallow’s two kids went missing, she and her 17-year-old daughter Tylee Ryan spoke to Arizona investigators about the shooting death of Lori’s husband, 62-year-old Charles Vallow.
The pair are seen during the police interview in a new video released by the Chandler Police Department.
“I heard the shot,” Lori told investigators.
Lori’s brother Alex Cox, who authorities said died of natural causes in December 2019, said he shot Charles in self-defense.
“I did not see the shot, but I came back around and saw that he was on the ground,” Lori said in her interview with investigators.
With her husband on the ground, Lori left with her kids and went to Burger King. Video shows her in the drive-thru minutes after the shooting.
“Tylee was just looking at me with the crazy eyes like, ‘What just happened?’ and I told her to get in the car, and we are going to take JJ to school, and I just left,” Lori explained in her interview with investigators.
Tylee could be seen crying at one point in the 2019 police interview. At another, she talks about having to sleep with a bat next to her bed because of the volatility in her young life.
“It wasn’t like, ‘I am going to take the bat and like do something with it,'” Tylee explained in the interview. “It’s just like I need something in my hands to feel safer.”
Lori has been charged with conspiracy to murder the case of her husband’s shooting death. She is also charged with the murders of her two children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” and Tylee.
Their bodies were found on Lori’s next husband, Chad Daybell’s eastern Idaho property in 2020.
Lori has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has been found unfit to stand trial following a psychological evaluation, and remains in custody.
Daybell has been charged with first-degree murder for JJ and Tylee Ryan’s deaths. He also pleaded not guilty to all charges and faced the death penalty if convicted.