A hair stuck to the duct tape wrapped around the 7-year-old boy’s body matched that of the child’s mother, a DNA analyst told jurors Monday in the woman’s triple murder trial.
Hair found on tape attached to a black plastic bag that wrapped Joshua “JJ” Valo’s body contained a partial DNA profile that was compared to three DNA samples, including one from the boy’s mother, said Kelly Coleman, a DNA analyst. Bode technology. The results showed that the hair came from the mother.
“The partial DNA profile matched the DNA profile provided from Lori Valo Debell,” Coleman said. “The probability of randomly selecting a random person with profile 1 is 71 billion.”
Valo Debel is charged with conspiracy, murder and grand theft in the deaths of her two youngest children and a romantic rival who prosecutors say had a doomsday-focused plot with her brother and her fifth husband. The husband, Chad Debell, is also charged in the lawsuit, and the brother, Alex Cox, died of natural causes before charges were filed.
Idaho prosecutors said the couple espoused strange doomsday-centric beliefs involving demonic possession and “zombies” to further a plan to kill JJ, his older sister Tylee Ryan and Chad Debell’s ex-wife Tammy Debell so they could collect life insurance and survivor benefits. .
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Both pleaded not guilty to murder, conspiracy and grand theft charges and are being tried separately. Debell’s trial is still months away.
Vallo Debell has also been charged in the Arizona death of her fourth husband, Charles Vallo.
In July 2019, Vallo DeBelle’s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed her outside her Phoenix-area home. Cox told police the shooting was in self-defense and was never charged in the case. He died of natural causes later that year. Valo Debell has not yet had a chance to enter a plea in the Arizona case.
The children were last seen alive in September 2019, just before Tylee’s 17th birthday. Police discovered they were missing a month later when an extended family member became worried she couldn’t hold JJ.
Their bodies were buried in Chad Debell’s yard the following summer. JJ’s remains were taped, wrapped in plastic and taped again, and Tylee’s remains were badly mutilated and burned. Some of Tilley’s bones showed evidence of stab or cut marks, an investigator told jurors last week.
Tammy Debell died in October 2019 and her death was initially reported as natural causes. But after Chad Debell and Valo Debell married two weeks later, investigators became suspicious and eventually exhumed Tammy’s remains. An autopsy revealed that she had been strangled.
On Monday, a DNA analyst told jurors that the hair sample was not complete enough to run through the FBI database, but he was able to compare it to DNA samples from Tilly, Vallo Debell and Melanie Gibb, Vallo Debell’s friend. The FBI database was not needed, Coleman said, because he had three DNA samples from people he knew.
April Raymond, Valo DeBelle’s former friend from Hawaii, As previously testified About a visit to Valo Debell and Tylee’s home in Hawaii in early 2019, where Raymond said Vallo Debell told him that Charles Vallo was having an affair and needed a place to stay.
When a prosecutor asked where JJ was, Raymond replied, “He said he was done with JJ and that Charles and his sister Kay had to figure it out.”
Valo Debal was also heard The recording is played in court He deserved to find happiness, as his sister, Summer Shifflett, testified. Shifflett was heard crying and screaming in a jailhouse call with Valo Debelle in June 2020 after police found the children’s remains.
“I would have taken Tylee and JJ in a heartbeat and so would everyone else, you know,” Shifflett said on the call.
The trial started last month and will last for 8 weeks or more.