Report: Chad Daybell said missing Idaho kids ‘are safe’

In this Friday, Feb. 21, 2020, photo, Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow’s current husband, walks into court for his wife’s hearing on child abandonment and other charges in Lihue, Hawaii. Vallow’s children, 7-year-old Joshua “JJ” Vallow and his 17-year-old sister, Tylee Ryan, haven’t been seen since September 2019. After fleeing from Idaho to Hawaii during an investigation, Vallow, 46, was arrested Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020 on charges of felony child abandonment. Chad Daybell’s longtime wife, Tammy Daybell, died in October. The obituary said the 49-year-old fit school librarian died of natural causes, and the family declined an autopsy before she was buried in Utah. About two weeks later, Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow married on a Hawaii beach. | Dennis Fujimoto, The Garden Island via Associated Press

Chad Daybell reportedly told ABC News that the children are safe

Chad Daybell, the stepfather to the two missing Idaho children, told ABC News earlier in March that “the kids are safe,” in what was a rare public statement from Daybell.

What’s going on:

• Lori Vallow, the mother of two missing children Tylee Ryan and Joshua “JJ” Vallow, has been charged with desertion and nonsupport. She made her first court appearance in Idaho on Friday. She has not said anything about the whereabouts of her children.
• Chad Daybell reportedly said “the kids are safe” in a report to ABC News as he left Hawaii. He did not add any other details.
• Larry Woodcock, the grandfather of the two missing children, said Daybell should be believed.
• Woodcock told ABC News: “I just think that we have to believe that they’re safe.”
• Authorities have said that Vallow and Daybell have not cooperated with police on the whereabouts of their children and accused the couple of “lying,” according to HuffPost.

What this means

• “Fox Nation” host Nancy Grace said she was “shocked” by Vallow’s court appearance on Friday.
• Grace said: “In the last hours, the so-called ‘cult mom’ ... just finally agreed to be extradited from Hawaii back to Rexburg, Idaho. She was just in court on that extradition and she didn’t just show up — she showed up in style with makeup, blue toenail polish and pink handcuffs. And she took the time to curl her hair in cascades down around her face.”
• Grace said: “I’m not a fashion (critic), but while the FBI, the police, and the grandparents are ... looking for her children, she has time to put on lipstick?”
• A body language expert, Blanca Cobb, told WFMY News something similar: “When you see behavior that doesn’t seem to fit, you have to ask yourself, ‘Why?’ You can’t say automatically, ‘Well, I wouldn’t act that way so someone shouldn’t act that way. But you should ask yourself, ‘What’s different? Why would they be acting a nontypical way?’”

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