BOISE, Idaho — For five weeks, 18 men and women, 12 actual jurors and six alternates, listened to horrific testimony in the Lori Vallow Daybell Trial. A jury found Vallow guilty of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and grand theft in the death of her two kids JJ, Tylee and her current husband's late wife, Tammy Daybell.
Tiffany was juror #17. She asked KTVB not to share her last name. She sat just feet away from Vallow every day. Tiffany didn't know she was an alternate until the very end of the trial, but she talked with KTVB about what it was like to serve on the jury up until that point.
“It's been an incredibly surreal experience for me, it was just so bizarre,” Tiffany said. “It was almost like, you know, one of those little puzzles with 1000 pieces in it, and you're putting, you know, little pieces together slowly.”
As a mom of a teen, who is around the same age of Tylee, Tiffany said that was the hardest part of being on the jury for this particular case.
She told KTVB, jurors weren't given notice about when that graphic testimony would happen, but the court would provide them with tissue and barf bags, so it was a sign of something to come. She also said, the court provided them with contact info for free mental health resources, which she's considering using.
“Not being able to understand how somebody, how anybody could you know do that to their own children, it was so hard for me,” Tiffany said. “I can't even comprehend, like, what goes through somebody's mind to harm a child, I just can't.”
During the course of the trial, jurors saw autopsy photos of JJ, Tylee and Tammy.
“One of the questions they asked us, you know, in a questionnaire model in the selection process was you know, you're going to be shown autopsy photos, you know, is this something that do you think that you could, you know, be okay with? and I checked yeah, sure. you know, I think so. but I wasn’t, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life…but I know that I needed to do it to be able to bring justice to those kids, because, you know, they didn't have a say in it,” Tiffany said.
She also told KTVB, she spent most of her time watching Vallow and her reaction to the evidence presented.
“I just felt like I had more emotion than she did and the only time I saw her have emotion was when she saw a picture of JJ and she kissed her lips and just went like that (motions her fingers toward a picture) it just felt like so, not sincere to me,” Tiffany said.
When KTVB asked how Tiffany prepared for the trial and the evidence she was presented, she responded: “I’m not really sure I did prepare myself, how can one prepare themselves to see what we saw.”
She also described Vallow’s lack of emotion as “inhuman.”
Once the trial ended, Tiffany told KTVB, she immediately looked up the case to fill in the holes and answer some of the questions that weren’t answered for her during the trial. Even though she didn't deliberate she still feels she was an important part of the process.
“At first, I was extremely disappointed that my number got drawn, even though I knew that was going to be a possibility, but after hearing about the deliberations, I really feel that it's not that I didn't miss out on anything, but I just feel like they voted or not voted, but they found her guilty of the charges that I would have,” Tiffany said.
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