About This Episode
What is this episode about?
The episode "Deceived | Warning Signs | 1" from Cold opens with Nancy Jo Hancock recalling a first date with Charles Vallow, a promising evening shadowed by troubling stories about his estranged wife. Months later, a discovery recasts that date in a far darker light. The episode then shifts to eastern Idaho, where journalist Nate Eaton begins pulling on the thread of a strange missing-children case, uncovering a web of deaths, disappearances, and extreme beliefs that will come to define the story.
The case behind the episode
The events trace back to the Lori Vallow-sagen — dommedagsmor dræbte to børn, in which Lori Vallow Daybell killed her two minor children and conspired in the deaths of several others, driven by apocalyptic religious beliefs. The case involves four victims — Tylee Ryan, 16, JJ Vallow, 7, Tammy Daybell, 49, and Charles Vallow — with Lori Vallow Daybell, Chad Daybell, and Alex Cox named as perpetrators across Idaho and Arizona in 2019. The broader killings are also catalogued as the Vallow-Daybell-sagen — dommedagsmor og børnedrabene i Idaho, describing how doomsday beliefs drove Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell to murder Lori's children and Chad's then-wife. Lori Vallow Daybell has been sentenced to life in prison.
Hosts and release
Dave Cawley hosts Cold, a narrative true crime podcast produced by KSL Podcasts that investigates disappearance cases, with each season examining one unsolved story. This first episode, running 34 minutes, was released on October 29, 2026, and is available on Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music. The series previously covered the Susan Powell, Joyce Yost, and Sheree Warren cases, and this new season turns to the Cold format's narrative approach to tell the Vallow-Daybell story from its earliest, most unsettling warning signs.
