I was already familiar with the story, having listened to Keith Morrison’s excellent podcast, but this new 3-episode True Crime series tells the story in greater detail and with many people who knew Lori Vallow best contributing.
This is about as good an example of a True Crime tale as you’ll find.
She was blonde and, frankly, very hot. By all accounts Lori was a devoted mother of three, and very religiously devout within the LDS (Mormon) church. So how did things go so wrong? Why is she now awaiting trial for the murder of two of her children, not to mention being charged in the murder of her fourth husband and her fifth husband’s wife?
Director Skye Morgan, who also helmed the excellent Girl in the Picture earlier this year, has a lot of moving parts and many people appearing as interview subjects or in file footage from the dead, but she organizes and edits the narrative line so well, that the somewhat complex timeline is perfectly easy to follow.
She gets a huge assist from her eldest, surviving son Colby, speaking up for the first time in great detail. His insights are key and a new addition. He’s older-married with a child, and it is he who traces Lori’s previous marriages and how the one step-father he really cared for ended up dead.
It seems that two things (which are linked) led to Lori’s change in character, if not an official change in her sanity: her deepening involvement in a sect of Mormonism that included her future husband, Chad Daybell, and their fused beliefs in the soon-to-come Apocalypse.
But that’s not all, after Daybell’s current wife dies, Lori and Chad become a married couple whose youngest children Tylee and JJ goo missing. Perhaps they were on the “list” the couple made of people who were “dark” spirits or “light” spirits. Oh, and they say that some unfortunate people are “zombies.” Those people won’t fare well.
I don’t want to go into further details of the story, but I strongly encourage True Crime fans to watch the 3 episodes and just try not to cheer when these horrible people can no longer run from the law, not that they didn’t evade responsibility for a long time.
The people who loved them can only hang their heads.
Sins of Our Mother is currently streaming on Netflix.
