Tammy Daybell, the late wife of doomsday author Chad Daybell, was likely restrained while she was asphyxiated, the Utah state medical examiner told the jury in the trial of Lori Vallow on Monday.
Ms Vallow is currently on trial in Boise, Idaho, after being charged with the murders of Tammy, 49; and her two children Joshua “JJ” Vallow, seven; and Tylee Ryan, 16.
Mr Daybell, who married Ms Vallow on 5 November 2019 just weeks after his wife’s sudden death on 19 October, is standing trial separately for the murders at a later date.
On Monday, Dr Erik Christensen explained to the jury how he had overseen the exhumation of Tammy’s body in December 2019 in Utah and then performed her autopsy.
While Tammy’s death certificate had said she died of natural causes, the autopsy found she had died by asphyxiation and that it was a homicide.
Dr Christensen explained that he looked for signs of an internal problem that may have caused Tammy to asphyxiate — a seizure or heart problem — but found none and a toxicology report found only therapeutic levels of medication she took.
He told the jury that there are many ways in which someone can be asphyxiated: smothering, neck, or chest compression. If you block a person’s ability to breathe by covering their nose and mouth, they can lose consciousness in only 10-15 seconds.
The autopsy revealed Tammy had bruises on her right and left arms and on her chest that could only have happened in the hours around her death. These were found to be consistent with someone being restrained and consistent with asphyxia.
Tammy was also found with a frothy reddish-pink foam emanating from her mouth. Dr Christensen told the court that this was pulmonary edema, a froth which comes from the lungs. While not a cause of death it is a manifestation of an underlying cause such as an overdose, drowning, or asphyxia.
Dr Christensen presented a diagram showing the locations of the bruises he found on Tammy. There were six on the front of her body and four on her back.
On her left side, she was bruised on her bicep and collarbone, on the right there were three bruises on her upper arm and one on her forearm. On her back, there were two bruises behind her triceps and two on the back of her forearm.
Photos of the bruising were shown to the court, with some only visible to the jury due to their sensitive nature.
All of the marks on her skin were in the initial stage of a bruise — haemorrhaging — which means they happened prior to her death, as once circulation stops no haemorrhaging can occur.
In Mr Daybell’s version of events, he awoke just before 6am to find his wife dead and said she had got up during the night feeling unwell.
The 911 call he made was played to the court on Friday. In the call, one of Tammy’s sons tells the dispatcher they have just found his 49-year-old mother on the ground “frozen”.
Tammy, who had been married to Chad since 1990, was an otherwise healthy 49-year-old when she died suddenly – around a month after Ms Vallow’s two children were allegedly murdered and buried on the Daybell family property in Rexburg, Idaho.
The court has heard from various friends and colleagues of Tammy who testified she was very active right up until the time of her death, attending exercise classes and clogging. She did not act as if there was some underlying health condition.
Tammy’s sister Samantha Gwilliam also took the witness stand and testified that her sister was “very healthy” before her death and that she had a feeling that something didn’t add up about her sudden death.
Ms Gwilliam said that she saw Tammy about two weeks before her death and “she did not look sick at all”.
She then got a call from Mr Daybell telling her that her sister had died – claiming she died in her sleep after being very sick.
At the time, Mr Daybell declined an autopsy for his wife and her mysterious death was ruled natural causes.
In a further twist, just 10 days before Tammy was murdered – on 9 October 2019 – she was shot at by a masked man on the driveway of her home.
The mother-of-five had returned from the grocery store and was unloading items when she noticed a man in all black, jurors heard. The man fired two shots at her and then fled. Ms Gwilliam recalled her sister saying she thought it might be a teenager at the time.
Just 10 days later, Tammy was dead.
The court in Rexburg has also heard extensive testimony and evidence indicating that Alex Cox, Ms Vallow’s brother, was the masked gunman.
He died suddenly in December 2019 and is also implicated in the deaths of Tylee, JJ, and Tammy, and an attempt on the life of Brandon Boudreaux, who was married to Ms Vallow’s niece.
