When the Moon Turns to Blood: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and a Story of Murder, Wild Faith, and End Times

when the moon turns to blood tells the grisly story of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, which started with the search for Vallow's two missing children, Tylee Ryan (age sixteen) and Joshua Jaxon “J. J.” Vallow (age seven), in 2019 as the COVID-19 pandemic began and only ended recently with the convictions of Vallow and Daybell. The missing persons’ hunt cast light on further deaths around the couple: two of Vallow's five former husbands and Daybell's wife, Tammy Daybell. Suspicion grew as the couple got married and ran off to Hawai‘i with the insurance money while the missing person hunt for Vallow's children continued in Idaho for over two months. Media focused on the “strange spiritual beliefs” (26) of the couple, identified early on as a key to finding the kids. Rumors that they were waiting for the end of the world in a bunker turned out to be untrue as the couple were discovered vacationing in a Kaua‘i condo. Months later, the children's bodies were found buried in Chad Daybell's backyard.The book is structured chronologically, with chapters of analysis interspersed, helping to provide a necessary narrative through line. The story is dramatic, even head-spinning at times. It can be hard to keep track of the various characters and crimes. Leah Sottile's account also does not include what happened after Vallow and Daybell were arrested, as it was published before the trials concluded and the guilty verdicts passed down.While the series of gruesome murders dominate Sottile's narrative, she also makes space to explore who Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were as people and as Latter-day Saint believers, narrating how they met through online and in-person Mormon prepper forums. She describes how Vallow discovered her capacity to receive visions, and Daybell wrote apocalyptic novels based on his own revelations and near-death experiences. Vallow was also beautiful, affluent, and blonde. Her appearance, combined with the horrific details and religious themes of the case, catapulted the case into international media, in which Vallow was cast as “Doomsday Mom.” Sottile attempts to dig deeper than this, going into Vallow's personal history in detail, writing about her relationships with her many husbands and children, her sovereign citizen father, and her extramarital affair with Daybell. Sottile explores who she was, who he was, and what they believed before they conspired to have both of their spouses and Vallow's children murdered.Sottile fits Vallow and Daybell's crimes into an apocalyptic framework. She signals this framework in the book's title, derived from a line in the Book of Revelation, and in the prologue by noting that the children went missing as the pandemic was beginning, a synchronicity evoked as “it was the year it felt like the world might end” (6). Vallow and Daybell's beliefs were explicitly eschatological. Together they predicted an imminent end times, claiming they knew when Jesus would return and that they had a special role to play in these events. They believed they were “the head of the 144,000” prophesied in the Book of Revelation, those chosen to be saved (190). In their own estimation, the couple had special powers, such as teleportation, conjuring natural disasters, receiving visions, and having past lives in common as well as a deep spiritual bond. They encouraged each other to believe in this elite status, elevating each other as “translated” or resurrected or changed without tasting death, which put them on the level of gods, unable to die or be killed.The flip side of this exceptionalism was paranoia. Others were out to get them because of their special status. A small, committed group formed around them, echoing their grandiose claims, fears, and predictions. The group divided people into “light” and “dark,” depending on their “vibrations” of spiritual energy. Those who were dark were seen as possessed by demonic spirits, called “zombies,” whom they justified killing so as to save the human body from the demon. The apocalyptic framework justified violence by providing them with a structure in which to fit other people as either good or evil, saved or damned. As with other cases of religious violence, they sanitized their acts as God's work.The focus on apocalypse and religion more broadly elevates the book from dwelling on the tawdry elements of extramarital affairs and insurance fraud, as so many media accounts have. As a journalist, Sottile's work, such as the acclaimed Bundyville podcast, seeks to contextualize and complexify fringe elements of American religion, especially in the Pacific Northwest.1 Yet this remains a trade book, not an academic monograph, and it provides more space for the life history narratives of the central figures than an analysis of religion.With this caveat in mind, it remains a significant contribution to take a media storm and calmly dissect the relevance of religion, not quickly and simplistically reduce it to mere greed or psychosis or “black widow” narratives. Sottile carefully contextualizes Vallow and Daybell's beliefs in the history and theology of Mormonism, such as Latter-day Saint interpretations and uses of the Book of Revelations and ideas about eternal life. She identifies core components of their beliefs as central to Mormonism in general while untangling the more heterodox formulations, such as the Danites and blood atonement, as well as the political apocalyptic White Horse Prophecy. This latter prophecy, which persists as popular or vernacular religion, also leads to further contextualization in recent forms of millenarianism. Sottile references other well-known cases of end-time violence, such as Waco, the Order of the Solar Temple, and the Manson Family. She also picks out crossovers with new age spirituality, noting its widespread presence among Mormon communities in Utah despite being officially excluded (81). This crossover was influential on Vallow and Daybell, who are situated contemporaneously among conspiracy theories like QAnon, the Trump era, pandemic politics, survivalism, and Mormon extremism.This mix can confuse those unfamiliar with it, but it is a crucial part of the story of contemporary religion in the Mountain West. Sottile is at pains to tell this broader story, which she argues is about culture and identity, not just money and immorality. The “strange spiritual beliefs” of Vallow and Daybell make sense in that mélange of extremist Mormon right-wing politics with new age spirituality that situates crystals within bunkers, prepping alongside energy healing. Sottile ably pulls together these diverse threads without falling into the “cult” analysis trap of labeling Vallow and Daybell as either brainwashed dupes or charismatic leaders.What When the Moon Turns to Blood does well is place seemingly aberrant and shocking beliefs and actions in a larger religious context that includes millenarianism, new age spirituality, and Mormon extremism. In doing so, it lifts a sensational case out of the voyeuristic true crime genre. It is well sourced from public records, scholarly interviews, and academic literature. These strengths were acknowledged when it was named a 2023 Oregon Book Awards Finalist for the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction. As a journalistic account, academics will notice minor slippages, such as equating “apocalyptic” with violence or conflating a portal with a vortex (50–51). However, general readers are unlikely to notice these issues in an otherwise strong work. Its strongest appeal lies in taking seriously something shocking and soberly making sense of it through a broader religious context.