Your original point was that conspiracy to conceal evidence is not close to murder.
A close reading of Lori's charges shows the evidence for conspiracy to conceal the childrens' remains is consciousness of guilt.
- Chad hiding their relationship, lying to Tammy about the fire/burial, and encouraging MG's non-cooperation with police.
- Lori lying about the childrens' whereabouts, not producing her children upon court orders, and encouraging MG's non-cooperation with/lying to police.
It's a reasonable conclusion and it's evidence, after the fact. A conclusion that may be drawn by a jury. Nothing there about her phone data, prior communications or communications with Chad after the deaths, or her physical location.
Consciousness of guilt after the fact, concealment, particularly pertaining to two children on two separate dates, and the speed with which concealment was effected, is only a hop and a skip away from participation in and/or commission of the murders.
I expect murder charges against Lori whether or not they find her cellphone active next to Alex's, or her fingerprints/hair on the duct tape.
But I do realise that they need to develop all the evidence ready to proceed to trial - the autopsy results and the forensics and the phone data - before they write the arrest forms.
Lori's acts leading up to the murders are just as incriminating as her acts afterwards and we may draw the most obvious conclusions from them. Not that she was shocked and locked her brother out of the house after Tylee's murder, to protect JJ. Allegedly she asked Alex to take him so she could make her podcast and then said she asked him to come back and take him again when JJ was climbing the cupboards.
- Her children were in her house on the relevant dates. We know that because Alex was in there too, in the wee hours, when he didn't live there.
- JJ slept in her bedroom.
- She created an alibi for Tylee going to BYU before they went to Rexburg, when Tylee was too young to enroll.
- She made arrangements to sell JJ's trained service dog Bailey right after Charles' death. He would alert them if JJ wasn't safe.
- She labeled Tylee and JJ zombies, told MG that JJ was in the way of her mission, and lied about making plans for him to go to Kays when she had cut ties with her. The same lie she would carry over to the days after his murder.
- She disassociated from being JJ's mother, by telling neighbors he was her niece's drug-baby.
- She told her friend April that she could not have her children with her if she joined the 144,000.
- MBP even thought her own children were dead based on the doctrine - there was no cognitive leap from 'children going from light to dark' to 'children dying unnatural deaths'. She understood it to be a task, for the Lord.
- Chad had the burial plots ready there was no panic trying to find a disposal site, it was A to B as soon as Tammy left for work.
MOO