A Kauai Circuit judge confirmed Lori Vallow’s bail at $5 million Friday during a court hearing in which the mother of two missing children declined to waive extradition to Idaho.
Vallow’s two children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17, have been missing since September.
“We are hoping against hope that Tylee and J.J. will be reunited with other family members,” Kauai Prosecutor Justin Kollar said.
Judge Kathleen Watanabe rejected defense lawyer Dan Hempey’s request to lower Lori Vallow’s bail to $10,000 and scheduled another extradition hearing for 9 a.m. March 2.
Vallow, who was held at the Kauai police headquarters’ cellblock, was transported by state deputy sheriffs after the hearing to the Kauai Community Correctional Center.
Only Vallow, and not her husband, Chad Daybell, stood before the judge Friday despite the disappearance of her two children and the suspicious deaths of her and her husband’s spouses and her brother.
Daybell sat in the courtroom gallery watching.
He is free “to move about as he wishes” since Kauai police have not received any order from any other jurisdiction that he is part of an investigation or that he is under arrest, Kauai Police Chief Todd Raybuck said at a news conference following the extradition hearing. “We have no local charges or concerns here on Kauai.”
Kauai County Prosecutor Justin Kollar said the extradition hearing is to establish Vallow’s identity and not to litigate the merits of the case, he said at the news conference. She can only contest the legality of the arrest.
She was charged in Idaho with two felony counts of desertion, nonsupport of dependent children, resisting or obstructing officers, criminal solicitation to commit a crime and contempt of court.
Vallow left Idaho on Nov. 26, the day detectives met her to ask about her children’s whereabouts. She and her husband were in Hawaii within a week. Vallow refused to obey a court order to produce the children to authorities Jan. 30.
Raybuck said the children have not been spotted since they were last seen on the mainland.
The children were last seen in September, a Rexburg, Idaho, police affidavit said. The boy’s image was last captured Sept. 17 in Rexburg by a doorbell camera.
The girl’s last known photo was taken Sept. 8 during a day trip to Yellowstone National Park with Vallow, her brother Alex Cox and J.J. Vallow.
The case has received national publicity since Dec. 20 after Rexburg police and the FBI issued a news release about the missing children.
Kauai police arrested Vallow at 2:30 p.m. Thursday on a warrant issued by Madison County in Idaho. She was at the couple’s rented condo in Princeville, Kauai, where they have been living since Dec. 1 when they flew to Kauai from Los Angeles without the children.
The couple married on Kauai on Nov. 5, two weeks after Daybell’s wife, Tammy, died from natural causes, according to her obituary. Authorities had her body exhumed, but the test results have not been released.
Daybell collected $430,000 in life insurance proceeds, a Feb. 18 Rex- burg Police Department probable-cause police affidavit said.
While in the process of divorce, Vallow’s estranged husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed July 11 in Phoenix by Cox, her brother, who claimed self-defense. Cox died in December of unknown causes.
IN DIVORCE documents, Charles Vallow raised issues of her involvement in a cult, saying she believes she is “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020.”
Daybell has written apocalyptic novels based loosely on Mormon theology.
Vallow was known to police because a vehicle in her possession was connected to a possible attempted murder on Oct. 2 of her niece’s ex-husband in Arizona.
Police on Nov. 27 discovered inside Vallow’s storage unit in Rexburg a blanket with pictures of her children, toys, a backpack with her son’s initials, children’s clothes, bikes, a scooter and a photo album.
Vallow moved to Rexburg in September with her children, although she told people Ryan was attending classes at Brigham Young University-Idaho, the police affidavit said.
On Feb. 16 a tipster sent Rexburg police a photo of Vallow and Daybell on Maui, where they rented a car from Hertz, but no children were with them.
J.J. Vallow’s prescription for his autism medication was never picked up from an Arizona pharmacy that filled it in January 2019, and it has not been filled in Idaho.
Vallow pulled her son out of elementary school after three weeks and said he would be home-schooled.
The FBI and Kauai police have assisted Idaho police since December by performing surveillance on the couple while on Kauai.
A Kauai detective saw them at least three times, but never with the children. When a search warrant was executed Jan. 26 at their Kauai condo at 4141 Queen Emma Drive, Unit 3, only one bed — and no items that appeared to belong to children — was found in the condo.
