A forensic pathologist testified that Idaho mom Lori Vallow Daybell’s young son had traces of alcohol and the chemical GHB, commonly known as a date rape drug, in his system when authorities discovered his body three years ago.
Dr. Garth Warren of the Ada County Coroner’s office said Wednesday during Vallow Daybell’s triple-murder trial 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow died from “asphyxia by plastic bag to the head and duct tape over the mouth,” in June 2020.
But Warren said the boy’s toxicology report showed low levels of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid in his liver samples, known as GHB, alcohol, caffeine and theobromine that can usually be found in cocoa and tea, according to East Idaho News.
Despite the disturbing revelation, Warren testified that couldn’t tell how GHB, also known as the party and date rape drug “G” got into JJ Vallow’s system.
“There’s really no way for me to tell for sure whether this is just a naturally occurring product in the body that was there or if JJ was given GHB,” Warren said. “I can’t say one way or another based on the levels.”
Warren also did not say how alcohol got into the boy’s body.
Vallow’s trial has been the subject of national fascination. The former all-American mom and Mrs. Texas beauty pageant winner was the subject of a Netflix documentary that depicted her downfall after better days, such as winning $17,500 in 2004 on the “Wheel of Fortune.”
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Vallow Daybell and her husband, Chad Daybell, are accused of murder in connection with the deaths of JJ, her youngest son, and her daughter, Tylee Ryan, 16, who was last seen a few days before her 17th birthday in 2019.
Prosecutors allege that Vallow Daybell and her husband practiced apocalyptic and doomsday-driven religious beliefs as part of a plan to kill the kids and Tammy Daybell, Chad Daybell’s former wife.
On Wednesday, some in the Boise courtroom saw some images of Vallow Daybell’s kids’ remains. But Warren provided gruesome details about the kids’ death that were far more graphic than Rexburg (Idaho) Police Det. Ray Hermosillo testified about discovering their bodies two weeks ago.
Authorities in Idaho began investigating Vallow Daybell and her husband after other family members said they hadn’t heard from the couple’s kids in months and reported them missing in November 2019.
Police said the kids were last seen in Rexburg, Idaho, on Sept. 23, 2019. The pair soon left Idaho and fled to Hawaii in December 2019, authorities said.
They found the couple in Kaua’i, Hawaii, in January 2020, without the kids. The couple was eventually extradited to Idaho. Authorities found the kids’ decomposed bodies in Chad Daybell’s eastern Idaho backyard in June 2020.
On Wednesday, Warren testified that JJ Vallow had a white plastic bag over the head wrapped multiple times with duct tape with “some light brown and red hemorrhages and abrasions that are most consistent with scratching are on the left side of his neck and jaw,” according to KTVB-TV.
With the “scratch-like abrasions” on his neck, the pathologist testified he wondered at times, “Was JJ trying to get the bag off his head? It could be scratch marks of him trying to get it off his head.”
Warren said JJ Vallow also suffered bruised and hemorrhaging forearms as ankles were also wrapped in tape, East Idaho News reported.
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Lori Vallow Daybell’s defense team takes aim at pathologist’s findings
During a testy cross-examination, Vallow Daybell’s defense attorney John Thomas asked Warren how can the pathologist come to the conclusion that JJ Vallow was suffocated with a plastic bag.
Warren said that based on everything he ruled out, and that there was a plastic bag over his head, “it was reasonable to conclude that was the cause of death,” KTVB-TV reported.
Thomas then pressed Warren on how he could have definitively known a suffocation was due to the plastic bag if Warren didn’t do other procedures during an autopsy, such as swab JJ Vallow’s nasal cavity.
Warren told Thomas he wouldn’t do that in this circumstance.
“Well I’m just basing this off of what I’ve seen in movies,” Thomas told the pathologist.
“That’s scary,” Warren replied.
“Why is that scary? What are you basing this off of,” Thomas questioned Warren about the pathologist’s practices.
“My knowledge,” Warren said.
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Also during his testimony, Warren determined that the cause of death of Vallow Daybell’s only daughter, Tylee Ryan, was “homicide by unspecified means.”
But I just can’t pinpoint exactly what that was,” Warren testified, according to East Idaho News.
“We were looking for anything. Bullets, a portion of a knife, any other foreign debris that we could collect as evidence,” Warren testified. “Essentially what we saw was a collection of bones along with other debris. A lot of mud and dirt.”
Warren testified Wednesday that when he typically performs an autopsy, he gets a whole body. Instead, Warren said “essentially received Tylee’s remains in multiple different bags,” when he started performing the teen’s autopsy.
Lori Vallow Daybell’s daughter’s ‘organs burned away or were never found’
At times, Warren’s testimony sounded similar to Hermosillo, the Idaho police detective who previously testified that Tylee’s body had been burned and destroyed – a mass of blood and tissue placed in a partially melted plastic bucket and buried in a part of the yard the Daybell family called the “pet cemetery.”
On Wednesday, Warren testified that he was able to identify portions of Tylee’s skull, including the area where her eyeball would be, and portions where her teeth would have been, East Idaho News reported.
The pathologist also found Tylee’s heart connected to her right and left lung, a kidney, a portion of a liver and some fragments of brain matter.
“These organs had severe decomposition, significant burning artifacts, they were charred and shrunken,” Warren testified. “Presumably, the rest of (her) organs burned away or were never found.”
