LORI Vallow and “doomsday cult leader” Chad Daybell first locked eyes at a spiritual conference in 2018.

Years before being accused of her children's murder, footage appears to show Lori listening intently in the audience while Chad speaks at the event held in St George, Utah.

The moment Vallow and Daybell first met was shared in an ABC 20/20 clip.

At the conference, Chad said: “If you’ve had this Holy Ghost experience testify to you, you’re on the right path.”

Messages that were handed over to police appear to show Daybell writing a “love story” to Lori.

Cops branded the texts as a “romantic novel of sorts” and they appear to document the relationship between the couple, according to East Idaho News.

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One text said: “Friday morning, Oct. 26 driving south on the freeway… A voice said… You will meet an extraordinary woman today who will change your life forever.”

Their names were disguised as James and Elena in the messages.

Another message said: “When their hands touched, he felt a shock pass through him, and his heart started beating fast.

“Elena was gorgeous and vivacious, and James was a little intimidated yet honored that she would talk to him.”

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Beth Karas, ABC News consultant, said: “It appears to be autobiographical, so it does give us a lot of insight into those first days and weeks of the relationship between Chad and Lori.”

Daybell and Vallow have since been charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the September 2019 deaths of Lori’s kids Joshua “JJ” Vallow, and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan.

The two kids had been missing for nine months when their bodies were eventually found buried in the backyard of Daybell's east Idaho home in June 2020.

Lori’s brother Adam Cox spoke out about the couple’s relationship in the 20/20 doc.

'THIS IS NONSENSE'

He recalled how he taught his younger sister to shoot a basketball as the pair grew up in South California.

Adam told ABC: “There was nothing odd, there was nothing alarming or something that you would think, ‘How could she go off and do these things?”

He admitted that he saw an "unsettling shift" in his sister's behavior, claiming she would tell him that she's spoken to Jesus "face-to-face"

Adam said: "I was like, Lori, what you're saying is not true. This is nonsense."

Vallow and Daybell, a former pastor, were members of an apparent "doomsday cult" and married just two weeks after Daybell was widowed.

Daybell bizarrely believed the spells in the Harry Potter books were real and could be cast by those with a “great focused will”, according to crime author John Glatt’s book, The Doomsday Mother: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and the End of An American Family.

He also claimed wizards, sorcerers, and zombies were all real and that he was an immortal “translated being”.

And, Daybell alleged that “translated beings” possessed powers of teleportation, allowing them to travel through portals and carry out the Lord’s work, according to the book.

The pair married just months after Tylee and JJ were last seen alive.

Tylee and JJ vanished without a trace in September 2019 as cops opened a probe.

Throughout the investigation, Vallow reportedly stated her kids were safe and living with family members in Arizona.

She was arrested in February 2020 on charges of deserting and abandoning her children.

Just over four months later, JJ and Tylee's bodies were found buried in Daybell's backyard in Fremont County, Idaho.

But, one of his children Seth Daybell told CBS in August: "He knew how to dig graves and that doesn't sound believable to me. This is a man who buries pets, at like, as deep as he can."

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