Did Chad Daybell or Lori Vallow drive the doomsday beliefs, according to Dateline's producers?

Brittany Morris re-listened to testimony from the Idaho trials and found witnesses, including Melanie Gibb, saying Lori Vallow got her information from Chad Daybell, such as who had been identified as dark, and then relayed it to everyone else. The producers' view, echoing law enforcement, is that neither would have gone so far without the other: Daybell supplied the content and Vallow was the persuasive, inviting messenger.

• Morris described the small group meetings as selling exclusivity, community and a sense of purpose.
• Daybell told Vallow the two of them had been married in previous lives.

▸In their words

“I think that they were selling exclusivity, right?” Brittany Morris · at 10:22 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Dateline NBC (2026-10-28). Read the whole episode summary →

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