Red-Haired Ash Reads

This book was mind blowing and eye opening. First, I didn’t know anything about Lori Vallow or Chad Daybell before reading this book. Which is surprising considering how high profile their case was/is and that it was relatively recently that this happened, but they were arrested during the height of COVID when I wasn’t really keeping up with criminal cases. 

Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were charged with murdering Lori’s seven year old son, JJ, and seventeen year old daughter, Tylee. They gave the police the run around for a long time on where the children were but their bodies were finally found on Daybell’s property gruesomely murdered. Neither of them have even declared why they murdered Lori’s children, but from accounts from their friends and family, it seems this was all to do with religion and believing the end times were coming and demons were inhabiting people. 

This book goes over the Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) religion, the extremist groups within Mormonism, near death experiences (NDEs) in Mormonism, and their obsession with the end times. Before reading this book I knew nothing about Mormons really and it was really eye opening to learn how extreme some of their beliefs are and how it can lead to extreme fringe groups, like the one Chad and Lori created. Their extreme beliefs led them to create a group around them who believed everything they preached about demons inhabiting people, the upcoming end times, and many other wild things. I was constantly highlighting passages of this with their wild beliefs and going WTF. 

This case was just wild and Sottile did a fantastic job at researching and presenting this case in a clear, well rounded way that really engaged and informed the reader. I learned so much about Mormonism, preppers, NDEs, and just how easy it is to twist religion to make fringe groups that can be dangerous. For a topic I had never heard of, this was a fantastic true crime story that touches on religion, cults, and crime. 

TW; murder; pedophilia; child kidnapping, death, torture, and rape; racism; gun violence;

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