Religious Narcissism: Inside Chad Daybell's Belief System | Spiritual Abuse Psychology
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 910 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
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Summary
Chad Daybell kept spreadsheets.
Not business records. Not finances. Lists of people — family, friends, his own children — each assigned a "light and dark rating" on a scale he invented.
Everyone who dropped below a certain number was declared a "zombie." Everyone declared a zombie ended up dead.
This is Part 2 of "The Chosen Ones," Hidden Killers' 5-part psychological examination of spiritual abuse and religious trauma through the Vallow-Daybell case. Today we focus on Chad Daybell: the gravedigger who claimed to see visions, the author who said his fiction was prophecy, the man who built a high control religion that justified murder.
We examine the psychology of the charismatic leader — specifically, the type who isn't obviously charismatic. Chad Daybell wasn't magnetic. He was available. He found a community hungry for visions and end-times urgency, and he filled that void.
According to testimony, Chad Daybell taught that demons could enter bodies after death. That some people had been "taken over" and were no longer themselves. That killing these "zombies" wasn't murder — it was mercy.
Tammy Daybell. Charles Vallow. Tylee Ryan. JJ Vallow. All rated "dark." All dead.
If you've experienced religious narcissism from a spiritual authority — or watched someone you love fall under that influence — you'll recognize these patterns.
Chad Daybell was convicted and sentenced to death in 2024.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Brewski. |
| 0:03.4 | Here now, Tony Brewski. |
| 0:06.1 | I want you to picture Chad Daybell's home office. |
| 0:09.8 | It's in Salem, Idaho. |
| 0:12.9 | I know, Salem. |
| 0:14.8 | It's like a small town, maybe 10,000 people. |
| 0:19.6 | The house is modest. |
| 0:21.4 | Office is probably just a spare bedroom, bookshelves lined with his own self-published |
| 0:25.1 | novels, a desk where he sat for hours writing about the apocalypse. |
| 0:31.2 | By the time he met Laurie Valo-Chad had written over 25 books. |
| 0:36.2 | And this was before AI. |
| 0:38.0 | He had titles like The Great Gathering and the Celestial City. |
| 0:44.0 | Most of them were about the end times. |
| 0:47.4 | But the collapse of civilization, the return of Christ, the chosen few would lead God's people through the destruction. |
| 0:56.8 | He ran a small publishing company out of that office. |
| 0:59.9 | He had a podcast. |
| 1:01.4 | He spoke at conferences where people paid money to hear him describe what God had shown him. |
| 1:06.9 | And here's a detail that should stop you call. |
| 1:08.5 | He also kept spreadsheets. |
| 1:10.7 | During Chad's trial, prosecutors showed the jury, printed pages recovered from his computer, |
| 1:16.3 | documents where he had assigned what he called light and dark ratings to the people around him, |
| 1:21.4 | family members, friends, his own kids. |
... |
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