Daybell predicted wife's death 8 months before he and Lori Vallow allegedly murdered mother-of-five

Chad Daybell predicted his wife's death eight months before he and Lori Vallow allegedly murdered the mother-of-five.

Alice Gilbert, a friend of Tammy Daybell's, told Vallow's murder trial on Tuesday that Daybell claimed 'he had a vision that Tammy's time on Earth was coming to an end.'

'He didn't know how or when - but he didn't see her living past the age of 50,' Gilbert told the Ada County Courthouse in Boise.

Vallow, 49, and Daybell, 54, are accused of killing Tammy at the couple's home in Rexburg, Idaho, in October, 2019. She would have turned 50 the following May.

The doomsday couple, who married two weeks after Tammy's death, are further accused of killing Vallow's children JJ, seven, and Tylee, 16, in September, 2019.

Chad Daybell predicted his wife Tammy's (pictured together) death eight months before he and Lori Vallow allegedly murdered the mother-of-five

Vallow (pictured at an earlier court appearance) and her lover Chad Daybell are accused of killing JJ and her daughter Tylee, 16, in Rexburg, Idaho , in September 2019.

Tylee, 16, and JJ, seven, are shown with their uncle, Alex Cox, in what is believed to be the final photo of them, taken during a family trip to Yellowstone National Park on September 8, 2019 

Gilbert, who wept at times on the stand, told jurors she was 'shocked' when Daybell introduced them to Vallow as his girlfriend just a week after Tammy's funeral.

'They came in and sat on the couch. They were quite affectionate with each other,' she recalled.

'It was abnormal for us to see Chad that way. His arm was around her, he had his arm over her legs. She was giggling and laughing. For my husband and I, we were embarrassed just because we hadn’t seen Chad that way. They looked like teenagers.'

Gilbert said she asked if Vallow had any children. She said the pair claimed Vallow had a daughter who'd died recently - without explaining how or mentioning her younger brother JJ.

'I had the impression that Lori had no other children, that she was an empty nester. I thought the daughter who had died was like an older daughter who died of cancer or illness or something,' Gilbert told the court. 

After cops started searching for the missing children, Tammy's body was exhumed in December, 2019. An autopsy - which Daybell had refused following her death - found that she had died as a result of asphyxiation.

Gilbert, who had attended the same Mormon temple as Daybell in Rexburg, said she confronted him over the kids' disappearance when he visited her home after Vallow's arrest in Hawaii in February, 2020.

Daybell asked if Gilbert and her husband Todd would lend him money so that he could post Vallow's bond.

'When he asked us to do this bond, I felt like 'because you are asking this of us, I am going to ask you some questions'', Gilbert recounted.

'I asked him: "Where are the kids Chad. Doesn't Tylee deserve a life, a car, a boyfriend." And he said: "She didn't like people and she didn't like me."'

Prosecutor Lindsey Blake asked if anything struck Gilbert about the response.

Gilbert said it did 'because he used "didn't" - he used the past tense.'

She also told jurors of Daybell's unusual demeanor following his wife's death and that the funeral arrangements were made 'very quickly.' 

Chad Daybell appears during a court hearing in St. Anthony, Idaho, Aug. 4, 2020

Vallow's children, Tylee and JJ disappeared in September 2019, but their remains were not discovered until the following June

Gilbert said she went over to visit the Daybell property the morning of Tammy's death.

'The children were stunned. They were all on the couch and chairs and they could hardly speak. They were stunned. Chad was not stunned,' she testified.

Gilbert said she went to visit some of the Daybells adult children in the following days.

She recounted how their daughter Emma said of her father that 'he didn't want anything to do with her or her siblings.'

Gilbert told the court how their son Garth said 'he was hoping he wouldn't lose his dad too.' 

A few days after the funeral, GIlbert said she wanted to check on Daybell to see how he was doing. She called him and asked if she could come over and visit, he refused but told her he would come over to her home instead. 

'He came in and he sat in the kitchen. We asked him how he was doing and he said, "Well I'm doing really good", and that he had met the woman that he was going to marry,' Gilbert testified. 'We were shocked and he went on to say how beautiful she was.' 

Vallow and Daybell tied the knot on a beach in Kauai on November 5, 2019. Receipts show she purchased her own wedding ring on Amazon almost three weeks before Tammy's death. 

The children were missing for almost a year before their corpses were found buried in Daybell's yard on June 9, 2020.

During the opening, prosecutor Lindsey Blake described how charred remains were all that was left of Tylee.

She told jurors: 'You will hear it explained as a mass of bone and tissue. That's what was left of this beautiful young woman.'

Tylee's DNA was later found on a pickaxe and shovel in a shed on the property. JJ's body was wrapped in trash bags and duct tape - the tape binding his arms in front of him and wrapping around his head.

The key individuals in Lori Vallow's tangled family tree, including her five husbands, two dead children and killer brother

The two children and Daybell's previous wife Tammy were all killed because they stood in the way of the couple's relationship, the State says. 

'Remember, the defendant will remove any obstacle in her way to get what she wants, and she wanted Chad Daybell,' Blake told jurors.

'The defendant used money, power and sex to get what she wanted.'

Jurors have heard from friends and relatives of Vallow that she and Daybell believed the children were 'dark' and referred to them as 'zombies' before they disappeared.

'The common theme was the body has to be destroyed,' Blake said. 'The defendant and Chad used their self-proclaimed religious teachings to justify their actions to others — their actions from affair to murder.'

Prosecutors say the couple planned to use life insurance money from Tammy's death, and that Vallow kept collecting and spending the children's social security and benefits after they died.

The trial opened on April 10 and the State is still laying out its case. 

Vallow denies two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of conspiracy in the deaths of her two children and Tammy Daybell.

She further denies grand theft for allegedly collecting government benefits on behalf of her children after they were killed.

Daybell is being tried separately.