(NewsNation) — One of the observers at Lori Vallow Daybell’s latest trial is a former Idaho police detective whose investigative work helped convict the “Doomsday Mom” of killing her two youngest children.
Ron Ball was a lieutenant with the Rexburg Police Department when authorities were searching for Vallow Daybell’s missing children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow. Their bodies were found in June 2020 on the property of her fifth husband, Chad Daybell, who would also be convicted of their murders.
“He knew what we were going to find on the property that day,” Ball recalled Wednesday on “Banfield.”
The former investigator said he told Daybell he was being detained after one body had been recovered.
When asked if he would like any message relayed to his family, Daybell reportedly replied, “I’ve already told them that I’d probably be going to jail today.”
“It was almost a confession. It’s probably the closest we had to any type of confession from Chad,” Ball said. “At that point in time, we knew that he knew that it was just a matter of time and that he was on the clock and his freedom was on the clock.”
Vallow Daybell was also convicted of conspiring to kill Daybell’s spouse, her romantic rival, in a case that drew national attention. She is serving three life sentences. Her nickname “Doomsday Mom” derives from her reported beliefs that people can be possessed by evil spirits and turned into zombies.
Currently, she has been standing trial for murder conspiracy in the 2019 shooting death of her fourth husband in Arizona and is acting as her own attorney. Ex-detective Ball, who is now the sheriff for Madison County, Idaho, has been watching it unfold.
The prosecution rested Wednesday, with Vallow Daybell telling the court she doesn’t intend to call witnesses but may herself testify. Ball said he thinks Vallow Daybell wants to tell her story to jurors.
“I’m extremely interested to see how she closes this thing out — whether or not she does testify — or her closing statement,” he said.