Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Missing Girl Spotted in Disguise in New Photos

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Detectives and FBI agents have been searching for Melodee Buzzard, 9, for nearly two weeks. The girl's school district called the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office on October 14 to report Melodee's "extended absence." The sheriff has described Melodee's mother as being "uncooperative" in the investigation. The FBI has released new images of Melodee that appear to show her wearing a wig in surveillance video from October 7. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through the new information in the case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Information about Melodee Buzzard's whereabouts can be submitted to:Detectives Line: [phone]Anonymous Tip Line: [phone]Online Tips: SBSheriff.orgPLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/CrimeFixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Billy Lane https://www.facebook.com/TheEssentialsOfficialFacebookProducer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Family members of now 9-year-old Melody Buzzard say the last time they laid eyes on her was years ago, but that seemed to be her mom's doing. And now that school officials have reported that it's also been a long time since they've seen Melody, fears about her safety, have everyone from sheriff's deputies to FBI agents on the lookout for her. So what does the new evidence tell us about the strange case of Melody Buzzard? I'm sitting down with a missing person's investigator to hash it all out.

Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. The disappearance of nine-year-old Melody Buzzard has a California community puzzled and worried between confusing timelines, second and third-hand accounts, and a lack of information about the girls. whereabouts in the last few years, the mystery has only deepened. But now that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office has released brand new surveillance images of Melody, which they hope could provide some answers about the young girls' apparently prolonged absence, people are actually relieved because at least they know that she is likely alive. Melody lived with her mom in Lompoc, California. That's on the state's central coast in Santa Barbara County. According to paternal relatives, Melody's birth father, died in a motorcycle crash when Melody was only six

months old. And after that, her mother, Ashley Buzzard, allegedly cut off contact with that side of the family. Those family members say they haven't seen Melody in at least a couple of years. And the only photos they could give Santa Barbara County investigators showed what she looked like when she was much younger. Melody's aunt, Lisabeth Meza, claims that Ashley, she's had some mental health problems over the years and cut off contact with them early in Melody's life. Ashley Banfield actually asked Meza about the last time her side of the family had contact with the little girl during an interview on News Nation. Her mental health declined even more and she just slowly cut every off even more. We did have a little bit of contact. I know my husband got in contact with

her at one time and said, if you don't let the family see her, at least let my mom see her. And we saw her one time, I believe it was after her birthday, after Easter. My mother-in-law had presents for her, and she did come over with her. But you can definitely tell at that time Ashley was unwell. She had her hair very short, like a buzz cut, and she was at that time wearing a hood. And she didn't stay for very long. She told my mother-in-law, I can't do this. And she took Melody, and that was a lot.

time we seen her. The sheriff's office put out an alert, noting that the now widely disseminated photo of Melody, a little girl with long curly black hair and a wide, cute smile was at least two years old. But it was actually the local school district that reported to police that Melody might be missing. One of her last known appearances in public was when she went with her mom to the Mission Valley Independent School to enroll in the Lompoc Unified School District, Independent Study

program back in August, according to the district. But after enrolling in that program, which is similar to homeschooling, the district stopped hearing from Melody or her mom, very, very strange. In a statement, district officials said, in our independent study program, if a student fails to pick up assignments, the student is referred back to their school of residence, which then contacts the family to complete enrollment. If attendance does not begin, the school follows mandatory truancy procedures, including phone calls, letters, emails, and home visits. When a student or family cannot be reached after these efforts, the school requests a welfare check from law enforcement.

And that's exactly what happened. The district reached out to the sheriff's office, and the sheriff's office started reaching out to people who might have seen Melody, including, of course, her mom, Ashley. But that's when things took a weird turn. When deputies went to Ashley's home, Melody wasn't there. And Ashley didn't really provide a reason for why or where she might be instead.

Ashley was described in her daughter's at-risk missing person bulletin as being, quote, uncooperative with law enforcement. Can you imagine? Lori Miranda, the girl's grandmother, told KSBY News that she first learned that Melody was missing when the police called her. Quote, he said,

did you know that your granddaughter was missing? And I said, missing. He goes, what's the last time you talked to your daughter? I said, I don't know, two years, a year and a half ago. Now Santa Barbara County investigators have released a timeline of what they know so far in this investigation and have new surveillance photos of a girl they say is Melody from as recently as early October. The timeline graphic that the Sheriff's Office release starts with the original photo provided to police, which they believe was actually taken in 2023. The timeline then skips ahead to October 7th of this year one week before Melody was reported missing.

Investigators say they found surveillance footage of Melody outside a rental car business, and they believe she might actually be in disguise. Can you believe it? The sheriff's office said, in the photo, Melody is wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and what appears to be a wig that is darker and straighter than her natural hair. Investigators believe the wig may have been used to alter her appearance. In the photos, Melody is wearing colorful leggings and a gray. hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her head.

Detective said that her mom, Ashley, is also known to wear wigs. Thanks to that footage, investigators say they were able to narrow down the window of Melody's disappearance to between October 7th and October 10th. And what's critical to know about those dates is that the mother and daughter had gone on a road trip during that time period and Ashley reportedly came back without her child. You know, if you ever get hurt, you may need someone in your corner to fight for you. Morgan and Morgan can do that. The firm has more than a thousand lawyers on its team because they are big, big winners.

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So if you're ever hurt, you can easily start a claim at for the people.com slash crime fix. Click the link below to try to start that claim or scan that QR code that you see right there on your. your screen. The white Chevy Malibu that Ashley allegedly rented that day traveled as far as Nebraska and Kansas, according to the FBI. Grandma Lori told KSBY that they have family in Ohio, but that she's not aware of any connections to Nebraska. The timeline graphic notes that the welfare request by the school district was called in on

October 14th and a search warrant was served on her home the next day. The graphic reads, Melody is not located. Ashley remains uncooperative. Authorities told local news outlets that the searches inside the home didn't yield any new details about where Melody might be. The FBI joined the investigation on October 18th, and as of October 22nd to the current date, the timeline indicates Melody remains an at-risk person.

Ashley remains uncooperative with investigators. In a press release, Sheriff Bill Brown said, we are grateful to the media for disseminating Melody's photo and the information surrounding her disappearance far and wide, which we hope will help us solve this perplexing case. We are hopeful that Melody might be with someone, perhaps an extended family member or friend who may not be aware of the circumstances of her disappearance. The sheriff's office also said it appreciated that many in the community wanted answers and were also keen to help out investigators. However, he asked that people refrain from launching their own operations and investigations because it could interfere with the actual police

work that's unfolding right now. Instead, they're asking for people to call their detectives or submit an anonymous tip. The phone numbers and web addresses are on the screen right now, and we're also going to put them in the episode description as well, so you can go back and find them later. So to discuss this latest development, I want to bring in Billy Lane. He's a private investigator, a retired law enforcement officer, and also the head of a nonprofit called We Are the Essentials for the Missing. They help locate missing people. Billy, I am very perplexed by this case. I don't understand why Melody Buzzard is not with her mother and in school. So I feel like it's good news that the investigators has said, hey, I mean, we know

she's alive, at least, that they believe she's on this surveillance footage, but not great news that we don't know where she is and who she is with. It's very concerning. This case has taken so many different turns from the very beginning. I think we all thought the worst when we first started listening about the case and diving into this case. But now, thank God that we have some video that shows that she's potentially still alive. Thank God. So I believe that there is a lot of mental health issues going on with the mom, some type of paranoia. Possibly she believes that somebody's going to try and take the child, possibly coming after her.

Maybe she feels like the child is her only, like, thing that she has left in her life. And I don't know she's trying to protect it or move it or keep it away from everybody else, but there's a lot of moving parts of this case. Definitely a lot of moving parts. And I don't understand why mom is uncooperative. Now, if there are mental health issues, as you say, let's say that's one of the possibilities and mom thinks somebody's going to take Melody and she's got Melody with somebody. I mean, let's hope Melody is with somebody who's caring for her.

But Melody should be in school. She is a little girl. You know, she's like a nine-year-old girl. So she should be in school learning and in a stable home environment. not running around the country with somebody else and captured on surveillance footage. So where do you go from here? Obviously, the FBI is involved in this case. You know, law enforcement's all over it.

So why is somebody who has Melody not coming forward and saying, hey, I've got her. She's safe. I mean, there's something more going on here that we don't know about. And you never know who she's with and what they're. thought process is with this whole scenario. The mother could have suggested to these people that somebody truly is after Melanie and that law enforcement doesn't understand that she could have manipulated not only I believe the daughter, but she could have manipulated whoever the daughter is with. So there's those factors involved. And now we've got a multi-state search

for this young girl. That's the reason I think you see the FBI's involved because she did take across state lines and the resources there for local law enforcement just isn't there. And that's the reason you need that federal resource to come in to try and really put some some pressure on this investigation and get it moving in the right direction. I think that, you know, the FBI is involved because they have the resources, right? I mean, they have more resources than anybody else. And of course, you're saying, you know, across state lines, yes. But how do you get mom to cooperate? What do you do to address whatever's going on with mom and get her to cooperate with law enforcement and and figure out where

melody is. And I'm kind of wondering if mom even really knows where she is. Well, I have a feeling she does know where she is. I have a very good possibility that she's the one who took her to wherever she's at and wherever she's being taken. I would tell you, as a former police detective, the old school thought was find a reason to arrest her, put her in jail. And hopefully she would realize that this is serious now and that she needs to come forward and give some information about what's going on here. But the other side of that coin is if she's arrested and she's given an attorney, the attorney's going to tell her not to talk to law enforcement without presence of an attorney

and not to admit to anything that would show that she's guilty in any possible type of crime here. So this is really very perplexed. I think the most important thing that law enforcement can do and has done already is a search warrant for the home, a search warrant for her cell phone. I believe that that cell phone is the most single important piece of evidence that's going to lead us to where she's at. We have this surveillance image of Melody, right? So we have this surveillance image. That, to me, says there's got to be surveillance of her outside this store. And I would think possibly you go to, okay, what vehicle did she get out of outside of this store?

Was there a license plate on that? And then are you able to track that vehicle with a license plate reader? That's where my mind goes when I think about how you could like kind of take that surveillance image and you know where you got that surveillance image and then kind of, you know, go out from there, expand from there. Absolutely. The license plate reader cameras are very important in this scenario. Phone pings are very important leading you back to a place that has a certain. surveillance video system like you had just mentioned to identify her, to identify others that mom

might have made contact with or were mom might have been that day. It's really important. I mean, video, like I said before, video is the most single important thing when it comes to missing people. A lot of people think they see people when they go missing, but in their minds, it's really not them. They're just trying to be helpful. And we support people who do try to be helpful because without their eyes, we wouldn't be able to see what we see today. So I think it's very important, but to get back to your point, video cameras, cell phone cameras, even car vehicle cameras are possibly going through the parking lot, might have picked her up getting into a car. So anybody in the public should keep that in mind if they think they've seen

her. You know, she's obviously got the hood on. That's another concerning thing for me. It's almost like, and maybe she's just wearing a hoodie, right? Maybe it's not a big deal. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. But it almost seems to me like she's got the hood up because is she trying to hide her face a little bit. I think possibly because I think she, you know, she's a cute little girl with long hair. She's got the big hair. I mean, she's kind of unique looking in my view. You know, when I see her and I see that big curly head of hair, you don't see a lot of little

girls like that. So she does have kind of a cute little unique way about her, a unique look. And I would think that if she walked into a gas station and there's a big nationwide blow for her, somebody might be like, oh, my God, that's that little girl I saw on on social media or whatever. So somebody's obviously maybe trying to take, take it, make efforts to disguise her. What do you think of that? 100%. And I believe that person is the mother. I believe the mother has convinced her that she needs to change her look. You know, there's been reports that were potentially wearing a wig, you know, the hoodie. So the young girl is going to have to

feel comfortable in feeling need to do this. And the person to enforce that would be mom. You figure mom spent the last year for more with her in isolation, potentially, telling her and changing her mind and convincing her that things are going on, which may or may not truly be going on in reality, but in the mother's reality that there's something, somebody, somehow, something is coming after her daughter, and now she's convinced a daughter of that. So the daughter could be part of this unwillingly, but just being manipulated by the mother. So the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office, they kind of basically knew, we need some help here. You know, we can't. do this whole thing by ourselves.

So they asked the FBI to get involved. The FBI is now involved. So this has turned into a nationwide search for this little girl. We talked about the license plate readers. We talked about the cameras, you know, cell phones, things of that nature. I mean, what else can the FBI, what other resources do you think they can bring to bear to try to bring this little girl home and to figure out who she's with? Well, just the fact that the FBI's involved, for most people, changes the whole scenario.

If there is some story made up by the mother, I think now that the fact that the FBI's involved, then maybe people see that the FBI's involved on media will realize that this is a serious situation. Not only that, but they can bring in resources for search warrants, for subpoenas. Any of the actual rental car that she might have been using could potentially have a tracking system on it itself. So I'm sure they'll be looking into that. a lot of corporations are a lot more willing to operate and cooperate when federal authorities are involved, like the FBI. I will tell you that. Some other times, they're less willing to be cooperative, but when federal law enforcement gets involved, they want to be in the best

light, which they should be. So a lot of times, things run a lot smoother with the FBI. Cell phone companies, they can get things back faster, typically, and that this is an active investigation, potentially trying to find this young girl before something seriously bad to her. And I think at this point, it's a race against time. What is your gut telling you here? I know you said you thought maybe the mom was having some mental health issues. You know, this is a girl, this is a child. She has no control over where she's being taken or anything like that. And she's at the mercy of adults. So what's your gut saying as far as what's how this is going to unfold and what's going to happen?

Well, in these type of cases, even when we start looking for missing people, we look at possibilities and probabilities. I would say at this point, there's several possibilities. I would say the highest probability is that she's alive and she's with somebody. And then the second probability would be that she might not longer be with us and that there may have been a drive to take her to a location where it was away from the mom. I pray that's not the scenario here. I pray that mom was paranoid and wanted to take her someplace safe because maybe she felt like the media and all these people were beating on her door. So she had to take her somewhere. And I, uh, I would encourage anybody that might be in those states or those areas to, and even nationwide, to start looking for her.

And if they think they see her to take either a picture or a video with their cell phone, call the FBI, turn that into the FBI tip line. And note the location of where and what time you've seen her. This could be a game changer. Somebody knows where this young girl is at if she's still with us. Somebody definitely knows. And they should call and turn her over to law enforcement because there. are people missing her who love her and want what's best for her. Billy Lane, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. I really appreciate it. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. God bless.

Again, I want to put those numbers up on the screen for you to call if you have information about this case or Melody's whereabouts. The detectives line is 805-681-4-1-171. There's also an anonymous tip line. That's 805-681-4171, and you can also submit online tips at sbsheriff.org. That information is also in the show description, as I mentioned earlier. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm me and Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I will see you back here next time.