Lori Vallow News: Latest Developments Include Ex-Husband Lawsuit, Niece Speaks Out About Missing Children

New information continues to emerge in the case of Lori Vallow and her missing children. According to legal documents from 2006, Vallow’s deceased ex-husband, Joseph Ryan, sued her for allegedly breaking a custody agreement and hiding their daughter, Tylee, who is 17 years old, and remains missing.

Ryan had argued in his motion that Vallow defied their agreed-upon custody rules and prevented him from seeing his daughter all throughout August 2006. At the time, the conflict escalated to a fight between Ryan and Vallow’s brother, Alex Cox, the latter of whom attacked Ryan with a stun gun. Cox died of natural causes in December.

Ryan continued his custody battle until 2018 when he died from a heart attack at age 59. His death is now being investigated alongside a string of other strange deaths that have followed Vallow and her current partner, Chad Daybell.

Meanwhile, in a new interview with East Idaho News, Vallow’s niece Melani Pawlowski and her husband, Ian, spoke about their relationship with her aunt and the missing children, Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old J.J. Vallow. In the interview, Pawlowski said that she believes Lori Vallow is a “wonderful mom” who would never purposefully harm her children.

“I’ve never seen any evidence or anything at all that tells me that Lori would purposely harm her children,” she said. “It’s hard, all the attacks out there. I still see her as the wonderful mom she is.”

Pawlowski also defended her uncle Alex Cox's shooting of her aunt’s fourth husband, Charles Vallow, as self-defense.

Despite offering numerous defenses of her aunt, Pawlowski also said that she never saw the children after moving to an apartment near Lori Vallow’s residence in Rexburg, Idaho, in late October, despite Vallow talking about them frequently. Tylee and J.J. were last seen attending school in September.

“She said that [JJ] loved his school there,” Pawlowski said. “She always talked about her children, but during that time – from November to I guess the 20th is about when Ian and I started dating – I didn’t see them, but I didn’t see a lot of Lori. I saw Alex pretty much every day, and anytime I would go over, I’d say, 'Where’s Tylee?' and it was like she was out with friends.”