Inside Lori Vallow's Relationship With Chad Daybell

Lori Vallow's former best friend describes them as 'like gasoline and fire'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 23, 2020 1:46 AM CDT
Inside the Relationship Between Vallow, Daybell
This file photo provided Friday, March 6, 2020, by the Madison County Sheriff's Office shows Lori Vallow, also known as Lori Daybell.   (Madison County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)

Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell are suspected in the deaths of two of Vallow's children—and many stories have come out describing the couple as being obsessed with "end times," "doomsday," or "apocalyptic" prophesies. Now, Vallow's former longtime best friend is talking to NBC News about their relationship—and she says it made sense to her because both of them are good liars. "I saw him as the hand and her as the puppet on that hand," Melanie Gibb said on Dateline. "They were both like gasoline and fire. Not a good match. But equally destructive to each other. So in a way, they were their equal match, in that they were destructive to each other. They both had deception in them." Gibb has been cooperating with police for months, the AP reports; it was she who told investigators Vallow had described her kids as "zombies" before they disappeared.

When questioned by police in November about her son JJ Vallow's whereabouts, Vallow allegedly told them he was with Gibb in Arizona. When police couldn't get a hold of Gibb and asked Vallow to call her, Vallow claimed she was at a movie with JJ and wouldn't answer her phone. Gibb says a nervous-seeming Daybell called her that same day and told her not to answer when contacted by police, and Vallow later informed her she had told police JJ was with her. Gibb says Vallow also asked her to take a picture of a large group of kids. "It's like a bomb drops on you," Gibb says of that moment. "What do you do?" When police ultimately reached her, she told them JJ was not with her. "I can’t even begin to tell you how horrible that moment was for me," Gibb says, per the Deseret News. "They tried to use me as their way of escape." (More Lori Vallow stories.)

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