Tom Evans has spent over two years trying to understand not why, but how a mother can brutally murder her husband, her lover's wife and her own children. It's the question that he was left with when he finished his jury service in Lori Vallow Daybell's trial in Idaho.
He knew it was a complex question with a complex answer, but that the answer was important. Tom said at the end of her trial: "If we just put her away and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, we are missing the point."
Sitting through her trial in Idaho as a juror, Chad Daybell's trial in Idaho as an observer and Lori Vallow Daybell's trials in Arizona has convinced Tom that there are connections between their crimes and other fundamentalist religious forces at work in our country.
Crimes against innocent children are being committed continually and very little is being done to stop it. Children are raped, trafficked and enslaved all in the name of religion and it's happening right under our noses.
To answer the burning question of how, Tom goes all the way back to the 1820s and works his way through to the present. After writing three books on the subject and immersing himself into researching religious zealotry, Mormon fundamentalism and cults, he is finally satisfied with the answer.
Tom believes that what we do with the answer will define our times. Can we accept that our culture created Lori Vallow Daybell and that we must take responsibility for her? Or, will we be offended by Tom's idea that it's our history that led to her crimes?
It's a controversial question. No one is left out of his critique. Religious zealots, narcissistic power-hungry men, the media, the justice system, our government, Christianity and yes, even you and I, have to be able to look at ourselves and ask how we created Lori Vallow Daybell.
The answer to that question will determine how we proceed into the future and deal with people like Warren Jeffs, Lori Vallow Daybell and Sam Bateman. Yes, those people are all in prison and will be for the rest of their time on earth, but others have filled the void and on it goes. The roots of the problems are still with us and will be until we expose them and have the courage to make changes to stop them.
Tom hopes that this book and his two previous books in the trilogy will contribute to the solution.
