The Doomsday Mother

Starred review from November 1, 2021
This chilling narrative from bestseller Glatt (Golden Boy: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite) does justice to the case of Lori Vallow, who is accused of plotting the 2019 killings of her 16-year-old daughter, Tylee, and her seven-year-old son, J.J. Vallow became obsessed with the doomsday prophecy of her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, and the couple considered themselves “gods, leading an army of chosen ones to survive the end of world... on a divine mission to rid the world of evil zombies.” After Vallow came to believe that her children were zombies who stood in the way of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, she allegedly persuaded her brother Alex Cox that evil spirits had taken over the bodies of Tylee and J.J., leading him to kill them and hide their remains on Daybell’s Idaho property. Eventually, after Cox’s death from natural causes, the authorities gathered enough evidence to charge both Vallow and Daybell with murder; a trial date is pending. Despite readers knowing the grim ending from the start, Glatt’s extensive research, including interviews with family members, makes this a white-knuckle page-turner as he traces Vallow’s descent into madness. This definitive look at a case Glatt considers the most “terrifying” of his decades of experience as a journalist is must reading for true crime fans. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret Literary.

January 7, 2022

Glatt (Golden Boy: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite) pieces together a bizarre account of murder. In 2019, the disappearances of seven-year-old J.J. Vallow and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, a brother and sister from Idaho, generated extensive national media attention. When their bodies were found in 2020, the siblings' mother, Lori Vallow, and her husband, Chad Daybell, were charged with their murders, as well as with the murder of Daybell's former wife. Here, through interviews with Vallow and Daybell's friends and family, Glatt reconstructs events leading up to the disappearances of J.J. and Tylee and postulates that the children were murdered because Vallow and Daybell belonged to a doomsday cult called Preparing a People, and Vallow believed her children had been replaced by zombies. Glatt examines Vallow's and Daybell's early lives and shows how they became susceptible to such ideas. Next, he looks at their relationship to see how the couple's obsession led to their cult involvement and, allegedly, to murder. In addition to his interviews, Glatt also relies on court documents and police reports to enhance his analysis. VERDICT True crime fans will likely be interested in Glatt's fascinating account, which comes out before Vallow's and Daybell's upcoming trials, but the book might become outdated as new information surfaces about this ongoing case.--Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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