A US woman has been found guilty of murdering two of her children because she thought they were zombies and she had been sent to usher in the Biblical apocalypse.
Lori Vallow Daybell was also convicted of conspiring to kill a love rival during the trial in the northwestern US state of Idaho.
Vallow Daybell faces up to life in prison without parole over the deaths of her 16-year-old daughter Tylee Ryan and adopted seven-year-old son Joshua "JJ" Vallow.
How did the children die?
"Tylee's body was burned beyond recognition. Her body was dismembered in such a grotesque and extreme manner," that the medical examiner couldn't determine the cause of death, Madison County Prosecutor Rob Wood told the court.
"JJ Vallow's voice was silenced forever by a strip of duct tape over his mouth," Wood said. "A white plastic bag was placed over his head, and secured with duct tape around and around from his forehead to his chin."
Vallow Daybell and her fifth husband Chad Daybel, who faces similar charges in a separate trial, didn't report the children were missing in late 2019.
Their bodies were found months later, in June 2020, on property owned by the couple in Idaho.
Pair linked to several other deaths
The police inquiry into the children's deaths quickly took a macabre turn as it emerged that several people associated with the pair had died in recent years.
Chad Daybell, the self-published author of several apocalyptic novels, has been charged with the murder of his first wife, Tammy, in 2019.
Tammy was reported to have died ostensibly of natural causes. But an autopsy of her remains later showed she was asphyxiated.
Daybell and Vallow Daybell moved to Hawaii only a few weeks after Tammy's death and got married.
Vallow Daybell's third husband, Joseph Ryan — Tylee's father — had died in 2018 of a heart attack.
A year later, she was in the process of divorcing her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, when he was killed by a gunshot, fired by her brother Alex Cox.
Cox told police he acted in self defense. He was never charged in the case and died later that year of what authorities determined were natural causes.
Doomsday beliefs
During the trial, prosecutors described Vallow Daybell as a power-hungry manipulator who killed her two youngest children for money.
Vallow Daybell's previous husband Charles Vallow said she had claimed to be "a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ's second coming."
Vallow Daybell and Daybell met in 2018 at a religious conference in Utah.
He was the leader of a radical Mormon sect that was preparing for the end times.
Daybell told her they had been married in several previous lives and she was a "sexual goddess" who was supposed to help him save the world, Defense attorney Jim Archibald said.
A former friend testified that Vallow Daybell believed people in her life had been taken over by evil spirits and turned into "zombies," including her children.
Her defense team said she was a normally protective mother who fell under the romantic sway of a wannabe cult leader.
The pair's story was the subject of a Netflix true-crime documentary series "Sins of Our Mother," released last year.
