It's heavily redacted, but the 59 page report released by Gilbert,
Arizona police department revealed some very interesting insights into Alex
Cox's last days before his bizarre death.
If you've been following the Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow case,
there were some connections to be made here.
And that's exactly what we're going to do.
I'm Chris with True Crime Recaps.
Alex Cox is a central figure in the murders of his sister,
Lori Vallow Daybell's two kids, seven year old,
JJ Vallow and 16 year old Tylee Ryan.
After all it was data from Alex's cell phone that led police to their bodies
buried in Chad Daybell's backyard. Then Alex himself conveniently died on
December 12th, 2019,
just a couple of weeks after Idaho police started questioning Chad and Lori
about the kids' whereabouts. As a reminder,
Chad and Lori skipped town and went to Hawaii where they got married and hid
out. And Alex, when the police came around,
he left his townhouse in Rexburg,
which was conveniently located right next door to his sister Lori's.
And days after the police dropped by,
Alex had moved in with his girlfriend Zulema Pastenes in Gilbert, Arizona.
Now in Arizona, if a person is charged with a crime,
they can prevent their spouse from testifying against them.
Even if their spouse wants to testify.
The rule is called the anti-marital fact privilege or spousal privilege.
Not saying that's what happened here, of course,
but a law like that couldn't hurt if Alex was guilty of murdering those kids.
The timing is especially convenient. Only days after Alex moved in,
the couple took a spontaneous trip to Vegas and got married on November 29th,
2019. Alex took his wife's last name. So when he died,
he was actually Alex Pastenes. According to the chapel minister,
he remembers that wedding because of Alex's nontraditional request to take his
wife's last name. He also remembers the wedding being very fast,
cold, and impersonal with no one there.
The chapel security guard served as the witness for the marriage certificate.
On that same trip to Vegas Lori's niece, Melanie married her second husband,
Ian Pawloski. Alex and Zulema attended their wedding.
And Alex served as the witness for the certificate. Days later however,
when Ian heard about his new wife's strange religious beliefs,
he told the police that Alex and Zulema had stayed behind in Vegas because they
were "preparing earthquakes" and that they expected one of those earthquakes to
hit in Utah and cause many injuries,
which would result in a lot of zombie possessions. Again,
just as a reminder for Chad, Lori, and his followers,
a person who was possessed by a dark spirit was a zombie and they would need
to be killed in order to release their soul from their physical body.
Allegedly that's why JJ and Tylee may have been murdered.
But Alex and Zulema didn't tell many people their happy news.
Zulema's own son didn't even realize his mother and Alex were married when Alex
died in front of him on his bathroom floor,
a little less than two weeks after they took their vows.
Her son is the one who called 911 to try to get help for Alex.
Take a listen to this clip of that call from East Idaho News.
Okay. What is your emergency? Um, I have a
older male here named Alex he's uh, he just passed out here on the,
on my bathroom. Okay. Is he awake right now?
Okay. You think he's unconscious? Yeah. Okay. Is he breathing normally?
Like you can see his chest rising and falling.
Hello? I hope so.
I have the paramedics on the way,
but I need you to try to help me with some information while they're driving
there to help him. Okay. Okay. How old is he?
He seems to be in his forties. Okay. Do you know him?
No, it's my mother's boyfriend. Okay. And how old are you?
I'm 25. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Is he on his back or on his stomach? Where is he at? Okay.
Can you lay him flat on his, back on the ground? Um,
let's try it. Just there's feces there.
And I'm trying to just keep cool right now.
You said he's what feces on the ground. Okay.
I know that's gross, but if we can just go ahead and get him flat on his back,
I want to make sure he's breathing because if he's not,
we're going to do a few things.
We've got to get you on your back, do chest compression.
Okay? Give her the phone. Then
come up there. We need to get him on his back.
Can you put your mom on the phone?
Just listening to that call a person might think that Zulema was coincidentally
coming home when her son yelled to her that Alex needed help.
But what we now know, thanks to this new police report,
is that Zulema herself called her son and asked him to check on Alex.
What would prompt her to do something like that? On the day he died,
Alex called Chad Daybell and asked him to give him a priesthood blessing over
the phone.
Then Chad texted Zulema and told her Alex was not doing well and she should
leave work and go home.
She called Alex and he was having a hard time talking to her,
so she called her son to have him check on him. And the rest we know.
In the police report, Chad's name is redacted,
but East Idaho News has been able to confirm through multiple sources that Chad
played a pivotal role that day.
At her husband's deathbed Zulema was approached by investigators.
Her first reaction was to ask if she was under suspicion for his death.
After police reassured her that she wasn't a suspect,
she told them Alex was complaining of shortness of breath six
days before he died.
He even drove into Mexico to buy cheap prescriptions to try to treat himself
since he refused to get medical treatment. My question for you is,
did he know what was happening to him?
How did he know he was about to die on that day and needed Chad to bless his
soul before he departed this earth?
Officially Alex died from a bilateral pulmonary embolism,
which is basically blood clots in the lungs,
which were made worse from high blood pressure. When he was found,
it was reported that there was pink foam at his lips,
the same pink foam that was reported to be found on Tammy Daybell's lips when
she died suddenly on October 19th.
Despite the fact that she was a healthy woman training for a 5k,
her sudden death was considered to be from natural causes and no autopsy was
ordered.
Her body was exhumed after police started doing the same thing we're doing.
Connecting some dots around some very suspicious behavior from Chad and Lori.
Her body was exhumed only one day before Alex died.
There are a lot of theories about Tammy and Alex's death.
Poison is the most common theory and specifically Malachite poisoning,
which would present as copper poisoning.
Many of the symptoms that Alex suffered are the same and a pulmonary embolism
leaves a pink foam around the mouth.
Malachite is also extremely symbolic for Chad and Lori,
and by extension for Alex,
since he was considered to be a true believer in Chad's cult.
They think of it as a stone of transformation.
Lori's wedding ring is silver and Malachite.
In ancient Egypt coffins were painted with Malachite pigment to symbolize a
connection to the God of the underworld.
They believed Malachite would ensure someone safe passage into the afterlife,
assuring their rebirth.
Could Alex have poisoned himself or did Chad convince him to?
Chad is a person who the prosecution called 'extremely manipulative'
and Alex was 'deeply religious'. Or in other words,
what we have here is a cult leader and a cult follower.
Nothing good can come from that combination.
There's no doubt that everyone involved was either manipulated or doing some
manipulating of their own. When Zulema was questioned after Alex's death,
she said he didn't have much contact with his brothers and sisters.
At Chad's preliminary hearing his own lawyer said, quote,
"the relationship between Alex and Lori was a little more than close.
They were extremely close.
He actually gave up a job so he could be with Lori in Idaho.
He had a habit of kind of following her." If that's true,
then certainly his longtime girlfriend would be aware of this.
Zulema did admit she knew Lori,
but she said she didn't know where she lived or what her phone number was.
According to the report quoted by the East Idaho News. She, quote,
said "the last time she tried texting Lori,
the number was disconnected.
She had met Lori a few times before when Lori lived in Arizona,
she had not seen Lori since she moved.
She did not think Lori was married." Now that same day Zulema's daughter had
a different story.
She told detectives that Lori and her mother were good friends who went to the
same temple.
Zulema was also considered a 'prepper,' which means she was preparing for the
end of the world. And it was Lori that introduced Zulema to Alex.
According to her daughter, the couple was planning to move to Idaho,
to live near Chad and Lori,
but that plan changed suddenly around Thanksgiving, 2019.
The same time that police started investigating the disappearance of JJ and
Tylee. Listen to this quote from the East Idaho News, "Back at the hospital,
a family member showed up and told Zulema
she should not speak to investigators without an attorney.
When they got home,
she got a phone call from someone and moments later Zulem told police she
wasn't saying anything else without a lawyer." That's when Gilbert police got a
search warrant for her house.
And one of the items they grabbed was Alex's cell phone and data was extracted
from it.
Maybe the same data that eventually led Idaho police to the bodies of JJ and
Tylee.
Lori's friend has told police that the last time she saw JJ alive was when JJ
was asleep on Cox's shoulder the day before JJ went missing.
This report also answered a question I've had for a while.
What did Alex actually do for a living?
It turns out he was a long haul truck driver when he wasn't trying his hand at
stand up comedy. When he died, according to what Zulema told the police,
before she lawyered up, he was trying to get work driving a truck locally
so he would be around more.
Murder charges against Chad and Lori in the deaths of JJ and Tylee are hopefully
coming soon. In a recorded conversation,
played during a court hearing last week, the special prosecutor,
Rob Wood told Lori's sister Summer Shiflett in October that he's
planning to file conspiracy to commit murder charges.
But as of right now, those charges haven't been filed.
Rob himself came close to being removed from the case as a result of that
conversation since Chad and Lori's lawyer called him manipulative,
because he seemed to be attempting to turn Summer as a witness against Lori.
Although it doesn't sound like she was fighting too hard.
She can be heard thanking him for pursuing the case and finding the kids'
bodies.
Even though she and her mother were on national television assuring all of us
that Lori would never hurt those kids,
even though they hadn't been seen for months at that time.
But the judge overturned the motion and Rob is still in the prosecution seat.
According to the East Idaho News,
next up on the docket is a court hearing to discuss moving the trial out of
Fremont County,
because it'll be pretty hard to find someone there who doesn't already have an
opinion on this ever developing case.
It'll be pretty hard to find an impartial jury anywhere considering the way
those children's bodies were found and the many deaths shadowing,
both Chad and Lori. Speaking of! By way of an update,
the autopsy results on Tammy Daybell have still not been released even though
they were done last December, 2019.
Hopefully the prosecution is holding those close to the vest to be used at trial
right now. A date for that change of venue hearing is still TBD.
What else should we know about this case and the people involved?
Let's talk about it in the comments.
And thank you for letting me catch you up on this latest development.
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