Rare Death Penalty Sentence in Idaho for ‘Doomsday’ Killings

An Idaho man was sentenced to death on June 1st for murdering his wife and his girlfriend's two children.

Chad Daybell, 55, showed no emotion when he heard the order of the court.

Fremont County Prosecutor Lindsey Blake said “This has been a tough case because of its complexity, both in telling the story of an investigation that spanned years and trying to figure out the best way to present it in a way that would make sense to others."

Capital punishment for the Rocky Mountain region is rare. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Idaho has carried out only three executions since 1976, when capital punishment was re-installed.

For comparison, Texas has executed 580 inmates in the same timeframe.

The last execution in Wyoming was in 1992 for Mark Hopkinson who was found guilty of ordering the bombing of a family's home; three people were killed as a result.

READ: The Last Time Wyoming Used the Death Penalty was in 1992.

In 2004 Wyoming man Dale Wayne Eaton was sentenced to death for kidnapping, raping, and murdering Lisa Marie Kimmell, a young woman who was traveling from Denver to Billings in 1988. She was missing for eight days before her body was found floating in the North Platte River near Casper.

The case went cold for fourteen years before DNA profiling linked Eaton to the case. In 2002 the victim's car was recovered from his property where he had buried it beneath the ground.

Eaton's death sentence was overturned in 2022 after competency evaluations found him unfit to proceed.

In the case of Chad Daybell, he has a right to appeal the death penalty after 42 days when the death warrant is to be issued.

Daybell's second wife, Lori Vallow, was also convicted for murdering her children and conspiring to kill Daybell's first wife; she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in July 2023.