'Doomsday Mom': Here's How My 4th Husband Died

Lori Vallow Daybell is representing herself in her latest murder trial, this one over the death of her fourth husband, and in her opening statement Monday the so-called "Doomsday Mom" gave her version of events. Authorities say Charles Vallow was fatally shot by Daybell's brother, Alex Cox, in July 2019, but Cox insisted the shooting was self-defense. Daybell said the same Monday, claiming the confrontation began with Vallow, from whom she was estranged, "screaming" at her because she refused to give him his cellphone, ABC News reports. She says her daughter Tylee, Vallow's stepdaughter who reportedly had a strained relationship with him, then came out of her room with a bat in an attempt to defend her mother. (Daybell and her current husband, Chad Daybell, were convicted of the September 2019 murders of Tylee and her brother, JJ.)

Daybell says Vallow and Tylee struggled over the bat and ultimately Vallow got it and lifted it as if to hit the teen, NBC News reports. That's when Daybell says her brother started fighting over the bat with Vallow. "The evidence will show that after this struggle on the ground between Charles and Alex, that Charles prevailed with the bat and began to come toward me with the bat as I ran away from him into the kitchen," she said in her opening statement. "Evidence will show that at some point while I was running away from Charles, who is chasing me with the bat, that Alex apparently retrieved his gun." Prosecutors, however, say Daybell and Cox conspired to kill Vallow and make it look like self-defense so Daybell could collect life insurance money and marry her current husband.

Cox died later in 2019 from a pulmonary embolism and was never charged in Vallow's death. In addition to her children's murders, Daybell and Chad Daybell have also been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Tammy Daybell, Chad Daybell's first wife. Daybell is also accused of conspiring with her brother to kill Brandon Boudreaux, the estranged husband of her niece; she has pleaded not guilty but a trial date has not yet been set in that case. (Boudreaux was not killed.)