The only problem I have with this is, as per posts from yesterday, the only way to walk Lori out of the courtroom appears to be to parade her past the first row of the gallery - on the inside.
???
I guess in Rexburg, either gallery members never jump to wring prisoners' necks, or prisoners never attack gallery members?
Welcome!! Great post. Still chuckling at "how they even had time to find someone bereft of any sense to marry them".
To answer the questions I know I can answer, it seems to me that "The Cult" is currently comprised of a circle of extremists from the AVOW (A Voice of Warning) and PaP (Preparing a People).
I think CD is the most famous person in this subset; and that he came by this status because he has published so many of the others (Hector Sosa; Julie Rowe; others we may not yet know of).
I also think there's scant evidence to say that Chad has always been more "extra" than Lori; though in a different way.
He's, at minimum, pushy in his status as author and publisher; if not exactly dynamic.
I fully believe that he believes his own books; and that this is currently a dangerous mental place to be.
He certainly doesn't seem to have had as much experience disposing of spouses; Lori is a tougher nut to crack.
She's not nearly as devout; or wasn't, IMO.
Her first marriage was reportedly to a non-LDS teen swain, and swiftly annulled by her family.
If I had to guess, I would say that Lori has always felt out of place in her life, neither religious enough for Mormons nor comfortable enough being a (by LDS standards) worldly freak.
We also know from his sister Kay, that ironically, Charles Vallow saw Lori as the be-all and end-all of LDS propriety, and in fact converted to LDS for Lori. CV did not, in fact, worry about anything Lori said about the LDS Church, until she started saying she was a translated being/god and had been sent to kill him; and that Charles was not simply "Charles" anymore, but that he had been body-snatched and replaced with someone named "Nick Schneider"

).
The overwhelming majority of Lori's past spouses, when they have not simply been killed outright, seem to have gone down in a blaze of accusations of domestic violence. This has led people to believe that not only is this "Lori's playbook"; but that Lori has opened and shared her playbook of tactics to rope in her niece Melani, who is employing similar scorched-earth smear tactics in her attempts to break from former spouse Brandon (when killing doesn't work, say they beat up or sexually assault you or your shared children!).
Lastly, it seems pretty clear and obvious that Chad "led" Lori into this current state of mind.
Irrespective of anything else, it is he who knew the infrastructure (AVOW, PaP, etc.) and its key players with F2F intimacy, to the point where all of the key players appear to consider Chad's words "as good as" if they were spoken by a divinity, to the point where they are willing to hang their hats on this in public ("Chad says this is a custody debate? Okee dokee!").
IMO, "The Cult" swirls around "Publisher and Motivational Speaker" Chad, not Lori. Without Chad, Lori's just another second-class divorced Mormon woman (paraphrase of Lori's Hawaii friend April from Dateline).
Chad's good at the talkin'; Lori's good at the killin'.
As for the "with other family members" contingent, these people are IMO delusional and have not so much as an inch of wooden pegleg to stand upon.
We know from several family members and all the things that we're seeing behind the scenes, that LE has interviewed and searched the property with everyone with any type of familial connection to Lori and/or Chad that they can locate.
None of these people are criminal masterminds, and none of them have done a good job of hiding their whereabouts, because well, they weren't expecting to have to.
They have found and (presumably, since they know where to find all these people) searched the homes of Colby Ryan, Melanie B-P, Brandon Boudreaux, Melanie Gibb (friend), Zulema Pastenes (AxC's widow of 10 days), Lori's surviving sister Summer, Lori's surviving brother AdC (estranged and making no bones about it), at least one of Chad's brothers (IIRC the youngest, Matthew, who has given a press statement denouncing these latest developments and stating they, too, have been estranged for some time); Lori's parents (Cox family); Chad's parents; Tammy Daybell's parents (Douglas family, as per our VI
@Maxxer500, who also said, at minimum, that their own home had been searched for the children IIRC); and any of the Daybell children's residences.
So... where are the kids, oh dear "Family has them", contingent?