The body of Lori Vallow’s 16-year-old daughter had been gnawed on by an animal and hacked with a tool before her severely burned remains were discovered buried in an Idaho backyard, the doomsday cult mom’s trial has heard.
FBI forensic anthropologist Angi Christensen, who examined Tylee Ryan’s skeletal remains, testified Wednesday that there was evidence of “carnivore activity” on the back of one of the girl’s legs.
Tylee’s pelvis area had also suffered several “sharp traumas” that were inflicted by a tool that likely had a point or bevel on it, Christensen testified, according to the East Idaho News.
Some of those sharp trauma puncture marks went all the way through the bone, the forensic expert testified, adding that a number of the bones also appeared to have been bent around the time of death.
Grisly photos of Tylee’s skeletal remains were shown to the jury but withheld from others in the courtroom as Vallow’s weeks-long murder trial progressed.
Vallow and her husband, Chad Daybell, are accused of murdering Tylee and her 7-year-old brother J.J. Vallow after they vanished in Idaho in September 2019. The children’s remains were discovered buried in a shallow grave in Daybell’s backyard a year later.
Tylee’s cause of death was ruled a homicide by unspecified means because her remains were so badly burned and decomposed by the time they were found.
Prosecutors have previously argued that Tylee’s remains were so burned that investigators initially weren’t sure they’d found a body until a skull was located.
“The vast majority of the time when I perform an autopsy, I get an entire body and there’s a process we go through. Tylee’s case was different. Her remains were received in three separate sealed bags,” medical examiner Dr. Garth Warren testified earlier Wednesday.
Despite Tylee’s body being discovered in pieces, Christensen said there was no evidence that the teen had been dismembered.
She testified that when a person is dismembered, the limbs are usually removed at the joints. In Tylee’s case, the sharp traumas found on her body were all located in the pelvic region.
While Tylee’s manner of death was undetermined, her younger brother’s autopsy showed he had been asphyxiated with a plastic bag and duct tape over his mouth, the medical examiner told jurors.
J.J.’s body also had scratch marks on his neck and bruises on his wrists and ankles where he was bound with duct tape, Warren added.
“Was J.J. trying to get the bag off his head? It could be scratch marks of him trying to get it off his head,” Warren testified, according to KTVB.
Vallow is on trial for the murders of her children, as well as Daybell’s ex-wife, Tammy Daybell.
Prosecutors allege Vallow and her husband were motivated to kill by their belief in a “doomsday” religious cult, as well as “money, power and sex.”
The couple are also accused of collecting life insurance money and Social Security cash related to the three deaths.
Both have pleaded not guilty to murder, conspiracy and grand theft charges.
