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Colby Ryan, 26, has told how his mother Lori Vallow refused for four months to tell him what had happened to his sister and brother. He then found out the children had been murdered
The only surviving child of a California mother accused of murdering her two children as part of an apocalyptic ritual killing has said she refused to tell him what had happened to them, only saying: ‘Everything’s going to be revealed soon’.
Colby Ryan, 26, said he was still struggling to accept the charges against his mother Lori Vallow, 48, who faces the death penalty if convicted of her children’s murder.
Vallow is due to go on trial in Idaho in October.
Ryan’s siblings Tylee, 16, and seven-year-old J.J. were found dead in June 2020 at the Idaho farm owned by Vallow’s fifth husband, Chad Daybell.
He is also on trial for their murder, and shared with Vallow doomsday cult beliefs – convinced that Tylee and J.J. were possessed, and the only way to ‘free’ them was to kill them.
Ryan on Monday said that his mother refused to tell him what happened to his siblings, who vanished in September 2019, for months after their disappearance.
Lori Vallow pleaded not guilty to murdering her children during a court appearance in April
Joshua ‘JJ’ Vallow, left, and Tylee Ryan, right, were last seen in September 2019. Their bodies were eventually discovered buried on Chad Daybell’s property after a nine-month search
Vallow was arrested, along with Daybell, in February 2020. The children’s bodies were discovered in June of that year.
‘I asked her 100 times: ‘what’s going on?” Ryan told The US Sun.
‘And the only answer I ever got was: ‘everything’s going to be revealed soon.’
‘So I just left. It was always a question mark – you couldn’t get a straight answer.’
Ryan – who has written a new book about his experiences and how his faith has helped him, The God Over Odds – said that he asked her for months where the children were, after they vanished in September 2019.
‘Pretty early on I reached out to my mom and she was being really shady about it before she cut everybody – including me – off,’ he said.
‘And then obviously, you’re going to start questioning: ‘Is everyone alive? Are they okay? What if the worst has happened?’
‘But you can’t think like that.’
JJ and Tylee are seen smiling and hugging while standing on a boardwalk in front of a thermal feature at Yellowstone National Park in Idaho on September 8, 2019, with their uncle Alex Cox. It would be the last time that Tylee was seen alive
Lori Vallow (left) and Chad Daybell (right) were said to have extreme religious beliefs. Detectives believe the couple’s ‘belief system, lust and greed’ also led to the deaths of Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow
He said he never believed his mother, who he was close to, was capable of murder.
He never knew his biological father, and he and his mother moved frequently around the country.
‘I think she leaned on me for emotional support, almost like a sidekick,’ he said.
‘So that kind of forced me to grow up a little bit faster.
‘And her and I just had this bond that was more like friends. She would take me to do fun stuff, she took care of me, and it was just me and her – we kind of faced everything together.’
He said their bond frayed with her third marriage, in 2001, to Joseph Ryan – Tylee’s biological father – who physically and sexually abused him.
In 2006, Vallow married for a fourth time, to Charles Vallow.
But her fixation with doomsday cults began to deepen, and Ryan soon moved out.
‘It was kind of early on,’ Ryan said.
‘I’m not exactly sure when it started but probably when I was around 11.
‘I was never brought into it, really. I definitely feared it [the end times] because I heard it from her and because I trusted her.
‘But as I grew up, probably around 17 or 18, I was like: ‘I’m just going to live my life the way I can’.
‘I can’t live a life of impending fear of something happening. I can’t live like that. It’s an anxious life. So I never bought into any of the ideas that it was going to happen.’
In this June 9, 2020, aerial photo, investigators search for the human remains of JJ and Tylee at Chad Daybell’s residence in the 200 block of 1900 east, in Salem, Idaho
When Ryan learnt of his mother’s crimes, he was overcome with anger, he told The Sun.
‘They took my family away from me, they took them away from everybody else that loved them,’ he said.
‘It’s one of the most painful things ever to hear, to hear details about how your own people, that you grew up around and loved, killed your own family.’
He contemplated finding a way of seeking revenge, but realized it was not the answer.
‘I was very angry. I was hurt. I was uncomfortable. I was sick to my stomach all the time, and there was just this weight hanging over me,’ he said.
And the father of two said he was constantly aware of the absence of his brother and sister.
‘I miss them all the time.
‘I wish they were here to experience my family. I just miss their presence, like just being in a house together, having fun, and sharing our lives together.
‘[But] part of you needs [to let go].
‘Because if you’re holding on to like, ‘I just wish you were here,’ there’s almost no movement, you’re never getting out of that spot – it just keeps you in that graveyard.
‘So I love them and miss them all the time. But I also have to take an acceptance that they’re not here. And that was definitely hard.’
His mother could face the death penalty if convicted – something Ryan said is ‘hard’ to accept, but an inescapable fact.
‘It’s hard to hear that they would do that with my mom,’ he said.
‘But again, it’s out of my hands and always has been.
‘I’ve given up the fact that no matter what happens, it’s not going to change anything.
‘So I know they’re in jail, I know they can’t hurt anybody, and that’s the best I can possibly ask for.’
