PHOENIX (AP) 鈥 Jurors began deliberating Monday in the Arizona trial of Lori Vallow Daybell, the Idaho woman with doomsday religious beliefs charged with conspiring to murder her estranged husband in suburban Phoenix.
The jury convened for a short time Monday afternoon and will resume deliberations Tuesday.
Throughout the trial that began two weeks ago, jurors heard two vastly different versions of at her home in 2019.
Prosecutors said that Vallow Daybell and her brother, Alex Cox, had planned to kill Vallow so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend, Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.
鈥淲hat we see is a very planned out, premeditated murder,鈥 prosecutor Treena Kay told the jury Monday in her closing argument.
Vallow Daybell isn鈥檛 a lawyer but has chosen to defend herself. She or put on any evidence in her defense, but said in her opening statement and again Monday in her closing argument that her estranged husband's death wasn't a crime.
鈥淭his was a tragedy," she said Monday. "Don't let them turn my family tragedy into a crime.鈥
Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she would face a life sentence without the possibility of release until serving at least 25 years.
She is already serving for killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival in Idaho.
In the Arizona case, Cox had said he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Vallow. Cox died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs, and his account was later called into question.
Vallow Daybell said in her opening statement that Vallow chased her with a bat during the encounter and Alex shot Vallow in self-defense after she left the house.
After the shooting, Cox waited 47 minutes before calling 911 鈥渢o stage the scene" and leave a bat near Vallow's head, Kay said.
The jury on Monday also listened to a recorded conversation between Vallow Daybell and the life insurance company. Vallow Daybell believed she was the beneficiary of her estranged husband's $1 million policy, Kay said.
In the recording, she is heard saying that Vallow had been shot and that 鈥渋t was an accident.鈥
As Kay addressed the jury, Vallow Daybell kept glancing at the jurors.
Last week, Adam Cox, another brother of Vallow Daybell, , telling jurors that he had no doubt his siblings were behind Vallow's death.
Adam Cox said Vallow鈥檚 killing occurred just before he and Vallow were planning an intervention to bring Vallow Daybell back into the mainstream of their shared faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He testified that before Vallow鈥檚 death, his sister had told people her husband was no longer living and that a zombie was living inside his body.
Four months before he died, Charles Vallow from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets. He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.
The trial over Vallow鈥檚 death marks the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell. She鈥檚 scheduled to go on trial again in early June on a charge of conspiring to murder , the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell鈥檚 niece, Melani Pawlowski.
