(NewsNation) — “Doomsday mom” Lori Vallow doesn’t want the grandparents of JJ Vallow, one of her kids she is accused of killing, to be present in the courtroom during her trial.
A judge will make a ruling on the matter next week.
Vallow’s defense team told Judge Steven Boyce that she doesn’t want Larry and Kay Woodcock in the courtroom. Her reasoning is that legally, they aren’t grandparents. They told Boyce that Kay “gave herself the title grandma.”
“It’s absolutely terrible. This would be revictimizing a victim to say they’re not victims,” Lauren Matthias, host of “Hidden: A True Crime Podcast,” said during a Wednesday appearance on “Banfield.” “Not only did they give up this child, JJ, that they love, for adoption. They took him home from the hospital. These are grandparents. When they did choose to give JJ up for adoption, because they wanted him to have brothers and sisters, they said, ‘Only if we can remain his grandparents.'”
The Woodcocks told host Ashleigh Banfield that they weren’t willing to make a “Banfield” apearance Wednesday night because they are so devastated.
Larry Woodcock recently told “Banfield” that the decision not to pursue the death penalty in Vallow’s case is a “slap in the face.”
“I no longer consider Boyce a judge. From this point on, I will not refer to him as a judge,” Woodcock said during an exclusive interview last week.
Vallow is accused of killing her children, 17-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow. They disappeared in 2019, and their bodies were found in the backyard of her now-husband Chad Daybell’s home.
Vallow’s trial is scheduled to begin Monday. A trial date has not been set for Daybell, whose case was separated from Vallow’s by a judge.