Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Teen Girl Accused of Murdering Mom, Attacking Stepdad Pleads Insanity

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A 14-year-old girl is set to go on trial this month for the murder of her mother and shooting of her stepfather. Carly Gregg admits that she pulled the trigger, but she says she was insane when she did it. Based on the facts, the evidence, and even the state's expert witness evaluation, that is strongly how we anticipate the jury verdict coming out. I lay out the case against Carly Gregg and who's supporting her ahead of her trial. I'm Antoinette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. Most 14-year-olds are adjusting to their new school year,

Starting point is 00:00:44 figuring out their classes and their schedules, but not Carly Gregg. She is not doing that. She is preparing for her upcoming murder trial. Carly admits that she shot and killed her mother, Ashley Smiley, last March at their home in Rankin County, Mississippi, but she's saying she was insane at the time, meaning that her mental health was so bad that she didn't appreciate what she was doing was wrong. At a hearing last spring, a detective explained what happened when Carly and her mom arrived home around 4 p.m. on March 19th. At some point, Ashley goes into Carly's bedroom. Carly goes outside with the dogs. Eventually, Carly comes back in after Ashley's taken some items

Starting point is 00:01:26 out of Carly's room. Carly walks back in and notices her mother is in the bedroom and then proceeds to walk in the direction where Ashley and Heath's bedroom is. You see her come back into view of the camera. She has her hands concealed behind her back out of view of the camera. She looks into the kitchen and then proceeds to walk into her bedroom.

Starting point is 00:01:53 And then you hear a gunshot, a scream, followed by two more gunshots. Ashley Smiley was shot three times. Two of those shots were to her head. Detective Zachary Cotton testified at a preliminary hearing that after she shot her mother, Carly called a friend and invited her over to the house. Carly asked her to come over. We don't know for what purpose. She showed her deceased mother to the friend. So Detective Cotton said that Carly showed her friend her mom's body after she had shot her. This was about 45 minutes after the shooting. The detective explained what the friend named Brooke told them after the shooting. The detective explained what the friend, named Brooke, told them about the shooting.

Starting point is 00:02:26 She essentially stated that she was invited over to the residence by Carly, was unsure of what for. She had walked in. Carly asked her if she had ever seen a dead body before. She said no, proceeded to show her deceased mother that was in the bedroom, showed the gun that she used to shoot her mom, told Brooke that she had three shots for her mom,

Starting point is 00:02:57 and that she's got three more for her stepdad, two to the head, one to the chest. Then Detective Cotton said that Curly Gregg also shot Ashley Smiley's husband, Heath Smiley. I did not speak with him directly. I know an investigator went with him to the hospital, but he was extremely distraught, and it was hard to get anything out of him due to the circumstances. The only thing that we really have is what he told the initial deputies about how he had been shot, and that his stepdaughter was the one that had done it.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Heath Smiley survived and was able to explain what happened. He said when he walked in, he was met with a gunshot and that he wrestled over the firearm and that Ashley had, sorry, Carly had fallen backwards and that her eyes were really big and he said it looked like she had seen a demon or something to that effect and she was screaming and ran off. Carly Gregg's lawyers say she was taking an antidepressant called Lexapro when she

Starting point is 00:03:50 shot her mother and the elicited testimony from Detective Cotton, who said video cameras appeared to show her singing to her dogs after the shooting. The prosecutor is expected to push back against Gregg's claim that she was insane when she killed her mother, pointing to statements that she made at the jail. What, if anything, did the defendant tell, I believe it was Jordan at the jail? When she was provided with her paperwork, the shuttered lawn, she made something, a statement to the effect of, oh, you can kill somebody and pay a lot of money and get out of jail. Gregg's attorneys have tried to get her $1 million bail reduced. Carly's 14 years old, has no prior criminal history, and prior to the incident on March 19th, no prior history of violence whatsoever. In fact, Carly Gregg's attorneys have said that her family is actually standing by her, including the stepfather that she shot.

Starting point is 00:04:49 Gregg's lawyer says that she skipped a grade and had been student of the month and also student of the year. Nonetheless, the judge denied her request to reduce her bail, believing that the crime was premeditated. I do believe that Ms. Gregg does pose a special danger to others. I mean, I know the family knows it better than I do, but the heinous nature of the crime, the premeditation that seems to have been involved here is pronounced uh it's uh it's severe uh and it does concern me it does concern me that there is a danger whether there's a mental component to this or not and that's the question was Carly Gregg insane when she pulled the trigger just last week Carly Gregg was back in court where she rejected a 40-year plea offer from prosecutors.

Starting point is 00:05:49 All right, Ms. Gregg, did you receive that recommendation of 40 years? Yes, sir. And it was your choice and your choice alone to reject that recommendation? Yes, Your Honor. If she proceeds to trial, count one, what's the potential sentence? Life. If the jury fails to affix the sentence at life, what's the sentencing range? 20 years to 40 years. All right. And count two, what's the potential sentence? Between 20 years and

Starting point is 00:06:12 life. All right. She's 14 years old, so if the jury fails to affix the punishment at life, she's facing 50 years? Give or take, Your Honor, yes. Okay. And in count three, what is she facing? Another 10 years. Another 10 years. So the jury will either acquit you or you'll be facing two life sentences or this court can sentence you up to 93 years. Do you understand that?

Starting point is 00:06:42 Yes, Your Honor. It's your choice and your choice alone to proceed understand that? Yes, Your Honor. It's your choice and your choice alone to proceed to trial. Yes, Your Honor. With Gregg using an insanity defense, her lawyers have said that she will be evaluated by an expert, which led to the judge scolding them for being late in turning over reports. Here we have an expert that's going to be doing an evaluation. We do not plan on calling after that. All right. And just for the clarification, we're aware of the time constraints, and we know that we have to get our evaluation done, our evaluation to happen on Thursday. Actually, the reports were due a month ago, Mr. King. I signed an order more than a month ago.

Starting point is 00:07:27 Now, after that hearing, Greg's attorney, Bridget Todd, talked about why Carly rejected the plea offer. Carly, of her own free will and decision, decided that she trusts the Rankin County jurors more than she trusts a 40-year plea offer by the state. Todd also discussed the insanity defense. Based on the facts, the evidence, and even the state's expert witness evaluation, that is strongly how we anticipate the jury verdict coming out. The prosecutor is asking for a gag order, citing that prior comment and others from Carly's defense, in which they said Carly's stepfather will testify that she didn't seem to recognize him when she shot him. The state is also asking the judge to order Greg's lawyer to turn over

Starting point is 00:08:10 discovery. The trial starts on September 16th. But the question that everyone wants to know is why? Why did Carly Gregg shoot and kill her mother and shoot her stepfather? The death of Ashley Smiley is a terrible, terrible story, but we're able to tell you about it because of sponsors of Crime Fix like Morgan & Morgan. Morgan & Morgan has more than 1,000 attorneys that you may want in your corner if you are ever hurt. Morgan & Morgan has won several multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements recently for victims who were in life-altering car crashes, all of which were considerably higher than the highest insurance company offer. Starting a claim takes eight clicks or less, and it can all be done from your smartphone. And there are no upfront fees. You

Starting point is 00:08:54 only pay Morgan & Morgan if you win. So if you are ever hurt, you can easily start a claim in eight clicks or less at ForThePeople.com slash CrimeFix. I want to bring in Jimi Hendrix, not the singer. He is the owner of the website Jackson Jambalaya down there in Mississippi. Jimi, thank you so much for coming on. This case just boggles the mind. Carly Gregg is now conceding, admitting that she shot and killed her mother and shot her stepfather. But she's saying she didn't know right from wrong when she did it since she's pleading insanity. That is absolutely correct. This case

Starting point is 00:09:31 has shocked the community, shocked everybody. I mean, Rankin County, where this murder happened, is right next door to Jackson, Mississippi, which for two of the last three years has had the highest murder rate in the country. So, and unfortunately, we've had many murders involving juveniles over there. But usually you see the same pathologies, low education, you know, single parent home, poverty. I mean, there's a certain profile they tend to fit. Over here, we have she's living in a suburb in a nice home, mother and stepfather. She's a very smart kid, 30 on the ACT, skipped fourth grade. I mean, this kid is 13 or 14, scoring a 30 on the ACT. She's obviously very smart.

Starting point is 00:10:17 Wow. When a kid like that snaps, everybody's going, why? 30 on the ACT. At age 14, I mean, that sounds like Doogie Howser kind of stuff. Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, she's very smart. Her mother was a very popular math teacher at Northwest Rankin High School. So this crime caught everybody by surprise.

Starting point is 00:10:49 And then, of course, when we got into the preliminary hearing where the Flowood police investigator, Zachary Cotton, gets up there and says, well, here's what we saw from the, they had a camera inside the kitchen. That's right, the kitchen. One outside and one in the kitchen. And it didn't show the shooting, but it recorded the sounds of the shooting. And it showed Carly going into her mother's room and coming back with her hands behind her back with an object in them. You can guess what that was while her mother is in her head gone and gotten something out of her room, Carly's room. And so then you see her and then he testifies she had called a friend, had her come over. I mean, it was like she showed off her trophy. Look, have you ever seen a dead body before? I mean, we're talking 14 year old girls here. Okay. Have you ever seen a dead body before?

Starting point is 00:11:28 Here's my mother basically. And then she takes her mother's phone and text her stepfather and says, when are you coming home? And then she tells her friend, I'm going to like, you know, she's waiting for him to get home so she can ambush him and kill him. And she damn near succeeded. I mean, thank goodness. I mean, but she shot him. She was trying to shoot him in the head. She shot him in the shoulder. I suspect the reason why she didn't kill him was,

Starting point is 00:11:53 if you know anything about guns, revolvers tend to have very heavy trigger pulls. I don't know if you've ever fired a.38 or not before, but they're a lot, probably twice the trigger pull of, say, a Glock. Okay? And if you're a small girl like her, you're going to have problems with it, if that makes sense. It's going to cause, you know, the recoil. So that's just get a little bit too much in the weeds. But go ahead.

Starting point is 00:12:19 She's been in jail, obviously, since the shooting. And she's in with adults. I mean, this is a 14 year old girl who is in jail, in adult jail. I mean, the whole thing is a little confounding to me. Let me explain that. OK, she's in the she's in the adult jail because under Mississippi law, she's been certified to be tried as an adult. Sure. But she is in the adult jail. But she's basically in isolation because under the federal courts, they have to keep them away from the adult prisoners. And they're doing that. And they run a pretty good jail in Rankin County. Now, the other problem is why they don't put them with, say, the regular juveniles, because they have a policy. They don't want to say,

Starting point is 00:13:01 unfortunately, teens arrested for homicides, for carjacking, you know, really, truly violent crimes being placed with, say, a kid who's in there because he had a bag of marijuana or he acted out at home or he ran away. I mean, you see what I mean? You don't want those types of juveniles around the ones who are, I hate to say it, but killers. And I've had that explained to me like that over and over by law enforcement. And over in Hines County, they've had a jail. They're under consent decree at their jail. And that was an issue the feds raised with them, which is placing juveniles, you know, where they shouldn't be. So everybody's they like they tiptoe on that one. So

Starting point is 00:13:40 she's in isolation to answer your question. A lot of people, you know, don't want to know why somebody did something. They just watch a case unfold and they say, OK, they either I think they did it or the state's proven its case or they haven't. Carly is saying, yes, I did this, but I didn't. My mental health was so bad at the time. I didn't know what I was doing was right or wrong. Do we have any indication of why she did this? Because this is a 14-year-old girl, you're saying, who's a very smart girl, 30 on an ACT. What a 14-year-old is even doing taking the ACT? I have no idea.

Starting point is 00:14:18 Why she went and grabbed a gun and killed her mother? Do we have any clue? We don't have any idea. Now, her attorneys are claiming they had switched her drugs and five days before the murder, she was put on Lexapro. The only problem is when you talk to people who take Lexapro, one, it takes two weeks to build up in your system. But number two is, from what I understand, it kind of mellows you out. Now, maybe withdrawn from a previous drug may have caused it. Who knows? That's why you

Starting point is 00:14:45 have expert witnesses. But nobody really knows. I mean, there's been various talk. I mean, maybe a vape pen was taken away and she got mad. Maybe her cell phone was taken away and she got mad. Maybe it was over a boy and she got mad. I mean, but nobody knows. They're just speculating, just throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks. You said that this has shocked the community down there. I mean, I mean, but, you know, there there are murders that happen sometimes, you know, sadly, you know, over drugs and things of that nature. These things that you see on the news that are terrible. But this is a child, a teenager killing a parent. And we do see that sometimes, sadly.

Starting point is 00:15:27 Do we think that we will get any answers at this trial? And do we think that there's any chance that Carly Gregg will testify? I'll be surprised if she testifies. I mean, I think they would be. I don't know. I don't think she will, though. As far as what was your question again? Sorry. Do you think we'll get any answers if we're going to trial?

Starting point is 00:15:52 I think I don't know if we'll get any true answers, but a lot more information. I'm sure we're going to get her drug history and we'll have the battle of the experts. I'm sure usually in trials we usually get a lot more information. So I think we're going to be a lot closer to the answer in about three weeks when the trial starts. Did Carly ever give a statement to law enforcement? Are you aware of that? That I don't know. I've gone through the court dockets and looked for any information about that. But right now, I haven't seen where she gave any statements. I mean, now my sources in law enforcement say she's been a model prisoner.

Starting point is 00:16:29 I mean, she doesn't give any trouble. If they ask her to do something, she does it. She understands everything. I mean, so, you know, but as far as getting any other trouble, no. This was the first time for her. What was the reaction to the rejection of the plea deal? I mean, she could have gotten 40 years and then been out of prison when she was, you know, 54 years old or what have you. But she's rolling the dice, as they say, and she's going to trial, which is her right.

Starting point is 00:17:00 Yeah, she's definitely going to trial. And the judge is not in a mood to grant continuances right now. The defense, I've never seen anything like this where in county court and in circuit court, which is where it is now, where they have just angered just multiple judges. They have blown past discovery deadlines. In fact, last week, Judge Arthur was chewing out the defense for not turning over their discovery. They hadn't turned over any discovery last week. He gave them 24 hours to turn it over. And yet they did it again this week in the hearing Tuesday. He asked them, when are you going to have your mental evaluation? Remember, we're like four or five months into this and we still hadn't had a mental evaluation as of Tuesday by the defense. And as you know,

Starting point is 00:17:44 that's very important, especially when you go through McNaughton or present an insanity defense. And he said, where is it? And then they came up, oh, we have this expert from Harvard who's in Massachusetts is going to do one. He said, I told you to provide that to us a month ago. And what was really curious was back at the preliminary hearing in April, they said, oh, we're going to have a Dr. Webb do his mental evaluation. But they mentioned this, they had a motion to reduce bond because at the time she had a million dollar bond. Now she has no bond. But they said, well, we need to reduce her bond because our expert doctor cannot evaluate her at the jail. And the judge said flat out, oh, yes, you can. We

Starting point is 00:18:28 do it all the time. You can have the doctor come up to the jail or we can transport her to his office and bring her back to jail. That's no problem. And I think part of the problem has been you have one lawyer is a DUI lawyer. That's what he does. Now, if you get in that, say you kill somebody and you're drunk driving, yeah, he'll, okay, he can handle that. But he's basically a DUI minor felony lawyer. The other two lawyers on the case, they've handled exactly one or two criminal cases apiece in addition to this one. The rest of their cases are in chancery court. And for your viewers, that's in Mississippi where you have family law, guardianships, restraining orders, et cetera. That's where they're handled.

Starting point is 00:19:13 So they're basically family law lawyers trying to do a criminal case and they've consistently missed deadlines. They've been chewed out the judges. They filed motions like two days for a hearing when you're supposed to have it five and they've had to postpone hearings. Sorry, because they didn't post, they didn't, what is it? Submit their motions on time. I mean, it's just been, it's been a repeat theme. And Judge Arthur last week in the hearing, he just flat out chewed them out. EQs have been trying to engage in trial by ambush. And it, when I talk to prosecutors, they are just extremely frustrated because they're like, these people are not turning over everything they're supposed to. If you look at the docket, there are quite a few motions to compel that have been filed by the prosecution because they're just not turning it over.

Starting point is 00:19:56 And I don't know. And as far as the insanity defense goes, yeah, they filed it yesterday. And you're right. She admitted it sort of that. Yeah, I did it. But but I think what they're going to try to claim is that they changed her drugs and the drug alterations caused her to go crazy and shoot her mother. So we'll see. Jimi Hendrix says there's been mention of one doctor visiting Carly Gregg in the jail, but another doctor may be enlisted by the defense to evaluate her for the trial. Remember when I said they were about mental evaluations and they came up this week in court said, oh, we're going to have this guy from Massachusetts do it. I guess he did it Wednesday or Thursday. And it's going to be, I guess, through a Zoom or something or something online. Well, I checked with my sources in the Rankin County Sheriff's Office. One of their experts, Dr. Webb, he has visited the jail four times to meet with Carly Gregg.

Starting point is 00:20:50 And there have been two other visits by other medical professionals to talk with Carly Gregg. So my question is, were they not getting a report they liked? Or why did they veer away from this guy who they've been talking about using since April. And then all of a sudden they're coming in and using somebody from across the country. It's just, it's curious. It is curious for sure. Is anybody supporting Carly Gregg? Does anybody show up for her? For her family. In fact, at her preliminary hearing, Judge Morrow, the county court judge, he asked them, if I let her out on bond, how does the family feel about, are y'all comfortable with her being released on bond or staying with you? And one half of the courtroom was packed with family members. And I got a picture of it on one of my posts.

Starting point is 00:21:43 They all raised their hands, every one of them. So family, from my understanding, has been very supportive of her. The stepfather, he said, according to her lawyers now, haven't seen him and testified anything. They say he's standing by her and that when he confronted her when he was shot, she had this weird look on her face. It's like he didn't even recognize her. I mean, so, but yeah, family is standing up by her. Very interesting. Well, Jimi Hendrix, owner of Jackson Jambalaya, we appreciate you coming on.

Starting point is 00:22:15 Thank you. Thank you. Now, Carly Gregg will be back in court on September 10th for a motions hearing. And then the trial will begin, as I mentioned, on September 16th. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Teen Girl Accused of Murdering Mom, Attacking Stepdad Pleads Insanity

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