BOISE, Idaho (NewsNation) — Chad Daybell showed up at the school district where his late wife, Tammy, worked two days after she died to collect her life insurance money, a district employee testified Thursday at the trial of Lori Vallow.
Vallow, Chad Daybell’s current wife, is accused of killing her two youngest children, 7-year-old JJ Vallow and almost 17-year-old Tylee Ryan. The two went missing in September 2019. Their bodies were later found on Chad Daybell’s property in Idaho.
Both Vallow and Chad Daybell face charges in connection to JJ and Tylee’s death, as well as Tammy Daybell’s in October 2019. However, the couple is being tried separately.
Also on Thursday, body camera footage showed Vallow lounging poolside in Hawaii Chad, as police closed in during the couple’s 2020 island getaway.
In the video, Vallow doesn’t act surprised and nonchalantly reacts to the police officers handing her paperwork regarding the whereabouts of JJ, according to NewsNation senior national correspondent Brian Entin.
The case has gotten national attention, in part because of the extreme, “doomsday” beliefs Vallow and Chad Daybell shared.
On Wednesday, Angela Yancey, who worked as the payroll and benefits administrator at the Sugar-Salem School District in Idaho, where Tammy Daybell worked as a librarian at Central Elementary, was called as a witness.
Recalling the day Chad Daybell came to the school district, Yancey said it was unusual, in her experience, for someone to come that soon after a death to claim someone’s life insurance, according to the East Idaho News.
When Yancey told him he needed a death certificate, Chad Daybell said he already submitted for eight of them. Yancey, who, per the East Idaho News, has helped employee families 15 times with life insurance, testified that she had never heard of someone ordering eight death certificates — the most, she said, was three.
As part of her job, Yancey said, she conducted benefit meetings where plans were discussed, along with life insurance policies. The East Idaho News reports Tammy Daybell made a change to her life insurance plan in September 2019, increasing it to the maximum amount, which was five times her salary, and added an additional option. Both Tammy Daybell and Chad Daybell signed the necessary form because she elected spouse coverage, the East Idaho News said.
The total amount was then $130,000, the news outlet wrote. When she was first hired by the school district in 2017, though, Tammy Daybell had elected for only the minimum amount of $10,000 in life insurance.
Wednesday would have been Tammy Daybell’s 53rd birthday. A foundation that assists libraries and supports literacy programs in Utah and Idaho was created in Tammy Daybell’s honor by her family and friends. It wished her a “Happy Heavenly Birthday” on Twitter.
“You are so very loved. You are so missed. We’ll do our best to honor your legacy,” the Tammy Douglas Daybell Foundation wrote. “Let’s get some books into the hands of kids today.”