‘Deceived,’ Episode 1: Two children are missing and no one is talking
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IDAHO FALLS — Nancy Jo Hancock, of Mesa, Ariz., could not believe what she was seeing and hearing.
She had been watching an episode of “Dateline NBC” while folding laundry when she suddenly saw a picture of Charles Vallow, the man she had briefly dated six months earlier, appear on her TV screen.
“And it’s the picture that he used on the dating site, so it’s a very familiar picture to me,” Hancock recalled. “I paused it, and I rewound it, and I listened, and I saw the date.”
Now the show’s narrator was saying Vallow had been shot dead by his brother-in-law, Alex Cox — and it had happened the morning after she had dinner with Vallow. Suddenly, she knew why he had stopped responding to her texts.
Hancock is one of the many people sharing their stories in “Deceived: The Daybell Story,” a new podcast from journalist Nate Eaton and KSL Podcasts.
In addition to Hancock’s recollections, this first episode takes listeners behind the scenes and into the East Idaho News newsroom. Eaton shares what it was like for him and his colleagues to try and get information about a mysterious investigation going on in Rexburg toward the end of 2019.
“I get this text from a source, a police source, who said, ‘Something big is about to happen,” Eaton said.
Then, just before Christmas, police issued a news release about two missing children who were believed to be in danger.
“It was strange because their parents refused to talk about it,” said Nate Sunderland, Eaton’s colleague and Managing Editor at East Idaho News. “And we’re like, ‘What? What does that mean?’ That was kind of the beginning of what easily became the strangest case we’ve ever dealt with.”
Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow were gone, seemingly disappeared. Their mother, Lori Vallow, and her new husband, Chad Daybell, had also disappeared, and police were desperate for any information on the kids.
Check out Episode 1 of “Deceived” now to hear more about the early days of the search for Tylee and JJ, learn how Eaton knew where to go looking for their mother, and find out why Hancock – who was hesitant to do an interview – changed her mind and spoke out.
For more information about the podcast, visit the KSL Podcasts website. If you want a deeper dive into the case, check out the Daybell Case story archive on EastIdahoNews.com.
