Brandon Boudreaux and Lori Vallow: Shooting, Trial, and Sentence

Brandon Boudreaux survived a 2019 rifle attack outside his Gilbert, Arizona, home, and in June 2025 an Arizona jury convicted Lori Vallow Daybell of a conspiracy to commit first-degree murder for orchestrating it. The Brandon Boudreaux and Lori Vallow conspiracy case became the second Arizona conviction against the so-called “doomsday mom,” who was sentenced the following month to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years, to run consecutively to the life terms she was already serving in Idaho for the murders of her two children.¹²

The Shooting Outside His Home

On the evening of October 2, 2019, Boudreaux was pulling into the driveway of his rental in Gilbert, Arizona, when he saw a rifle muzzle protruding from the rear window of a Jeep Wrangler nearby. He heard a loud pop. His car window shattered. Boudreaux accelerated away and escaped without physical injury. A bullet hole was later found in the frame of his Tesla, inches from where he had been sitting.³¹

That same night, he told detectives he believed Lori Vallow Daybell was the only person who would want him dead. He connected the attack to the killing of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, by her brother Alex Cox three months earlier.³

Why Boudreaux Was a Target

Boudreaux’s connection to Lori Vallow Daybell ran through her niece, Melani. Brandon and Melani married in 2008 and had four children together. By 2018 and 2019 the marriage was deteriorating, and Boudreaux testified that Lori “instigated drama” during that period, spreading false claims that he had hacked her computer and working to convince Melani that his soul was “dark.”³¹

Melani asked for a divorce after a June 25, 2019, argument, filed in July, and the divorce was finalized by mid-October. Custody of the four children was the central and bitter fight. Boudreaux testified that only Melani knew his new Gilbert address, the same address where the shooting took place.¹

Prosecutors argued the custody dispute and the “dark” labeling were pieces of a larger pattern tied to apocalyptic beliefs shared by Lori and Chad Daybell. The couple described certain people as taken over by dark spirits and reduced to “zombies” whose bodies had to be destroyed to free the trapped souls. Lori had applied the label to Charles Vallow before his death. She applied it to her own two children, Tylee Ryan and JJ Vallow, who were murdered in September 2019 and whose remains were later found buried on Chad Daybell’s Idaho property. She and Chad also exchanged messages about “death percentages” for his wife, Tammy Daybell, who died in October 2019 in a death later reclassified as homicide by asphyxiation.⁴⁵⁶

Within that framework, prosecutors contended, eliminating Boudreaux would clear him from the custody fight and from the lives of the children Melani wanted to raise inside Lori’s circle.¹

How Investigators Tied the Attack to Alex Cox and Lori

Investigators identified Alex Cox, Lori’s brother, as the shooter. The Jeep used in the attack had belonged to Charles Vallow. In the days before the shooting, Cox had the vehicle’s rear windows tinted to 5 percent and removed the backseat to create a firing position. Gunshot residue consistent with a rifle discharged inside the Jeep was recovered, along with Cox’s DNA and fingerprints.¹

Digital evidence filled in the planning. FBI cellular analysis showed Google searches from Cox’s account for Boudreaux’s address, shooting angles, escape routes, window-tint shops, ammunition loading, and ballistic trajectory calculators. A prepaid Tracfone bought at Walmart was located near Boudreaux’s home the day of the attack and had placed calls to Chad Daybell and Melani Boudreaux beforehand. Prosecutors said Lori staged a phone call between her device and Cox’s on the morning of the shooting to make it look as though he was still in Idaho. License plate readers caught the Jeep on Interstate 40 roughly 26 hours before the attempt. After the shooting, Lori and Cox were observed hiding the Jeep’s removed seat and a spare tire in a storage unit in Rexburg, Idaho.¹

Cox was never charged. On December 12, 2019, he was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his Gilbert home. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner ruled his death natural, caused by bilateral pulmonary thromboemboli, with cardiovascular disease as a contributing factor. Gilbert police closed their investigation in January 2021, finding no signs of trauma and no suspicious compounds.⁷

Where Melani Pawlowski Stands

Melani was never charged in the shooting. Investigators suspected she provided Cox with Boudreaux’s new address, and in November 2021 the Gilbert Police Department recommended attempted murder charges against Lori and Chad Daybell for the attack but did not submit charges for Melani. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office did not file.⁸

She faced unrelated legal trouble. In November 2019 she was arrested for criminal trespassing at Boudreaux’s parents’ home in American Fork, Utah, while trying to locate her children, pleaded no contest, and received a 180-day suspended sentence in December 2020. A felony computer tampering charge tied to accessing Boudreaux’s business bank account was dismissed in 2023.⁸⁹

Weeks after her divorce was final, Melani married Ian Pawlowski on November 30, 2019, at a Las Vegas chapel. Alex Cox and his new wife, Zulema Pastenes, served as witnesses. Melani and Ian then moved into a Rexburg, Idaho, apartment complex in the same building where Lori and Cox were living.¹⁰

The Conspiracy Trial and Conviction

The Boudreaux case went to trial in Maricopa County Superior Court in 2025, with Lori Vallow Daybell representing herself. It was her second Arizona conspiracy trial; a jury had already convicted her in April 2025 of conspiring to murder Charles Vallow, with prosecutor Treena Kay arguing the killing was a premeditated “execution” driven in part by a $1 million life insurance policy.¹¹¹²

Boudreaux testified on June 5, 2025, recounting the shooting and its effects on his family. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that his description of the Jeep had shifted from “olive green” in his 911 call to gray in later interviews. Vallow Daybell did not cross-examine him during that session, telling the court she lacked documents held by her private investigator; the judge allowed her to question him at a later date.³

Kay described the case to jurors as a “dark conspiracy” against Boudreaux that he had not known about until the bullet hit his car.¹³ On June 12, 2025, the jury returned a guilty verdict on conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.¹⁴

Sentence

On July 25, 2025, Judge Justin Beresky sentenced Vallow Daybell to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years on each of the two Arizona conspiracy convictions. He ordered the two Arizona sentences to run consecutively to each other and consecutively to the Idaho life terms already in place. “You should never be released from prison,” Beresky told her.²¹⁵

As part of the earlier Idaho proceedings, Vallow Daybell was ordered to pay over $2 million in restitution, with Boudreaux among the named recipients.¹⁶

Boudreaux at Sentencing

Boudreaux gave a victim impact statement in court. He described years of “fear, paranoia, vigilance, loneliness, regret, sadness, depression” and said his family had been “continuously pursued” and forced to put normal life on hold for months. The attack, he told the court, was meant to rob his children of their father and would have shattered their sense of security. “We can never go back. There’s no way to fix these things.”¹⁷

He said he had chosen to forgive Vallow Daybell “so I can be a better father, better husband, better son and brother,” while adding, “I have never seen any remorse or acknowledgement from Lori.” His stated hope was that the outcome would “protect others from facing it.”¹⁷

1
Court TV. AZ v. Lori Daybell: Cult Mom Conspiracy Trial — Brandon Boudreaux
2
ABC News. Lori Daybell Sentencing Murder Conspiracy Arizona
3
Courthouse News Service. Shooting Survivor Testifies in Lori Daybell Murder Conspiracy Trial
4
NPR. Lori Vallow Zombie Murder Trial
5
Courthouse News Service. Doomsday Mom Lori Daybell Convicted of Conspiring to Murder Ex-Husband
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CBS News. Lori Vallow Daybell Doomsday Mom Trial: What to Know
7
Fox 10 Phoenix. Gilbert Police End Investigation Into Alex Cox’s Death
8
Fox 10 Phoenix. Melani Pawlowski Computer Tampering Case
9
KSL TV. Brandon Boudreaux Body Camera
10
East Idaho News. Melani Pawlowski Speaks About Her Rough Childhood, Family Deaths, and Her Sudden Las Vegas Wedding
11
ABC News. Lori Daybell Closing Argument Murder Conspiracy Trial
12
NBC News. Doomsday Mom Lori Vallow Sentenced in Arizona Murder Conspiracy Trials
13
Court TV. Lori Daybell Conspiracy Trial Prosecution Closing Argument
14
12 News. Jury Returns to Deliberate Lori Vallow Daybell Murder Conspiracy Case
15
PBS NewsHour. Lori Vallow Daybell Receives Life Sentences in Arizona Over Murder Conspiracy Convictions
16
Court TV. Chad Daybell’s Attorney Files Appeal Following Death Sentence Decision
17
East Idaho News. Live Updates: ‘It Will Take an Act of God for You to Ever Go Free,’ Judge Tells Lori Vallow Daybell During Sentencing