Crime Weekly - S3 Ep367: Melodee Buzzard Found | Mother Charged in Her Death

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

A body found in rural Wayne County, Utah has been confirmed to be that of 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard, who vanished in October 2025 during a trip with her mother. Ashlee Buzzard, 40, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with her daughter’s death. Try our coffee! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Hey, everyone back to crime weekly news. I'm Derek Lavasar. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. Happy holidays to everybody. We're coming to you after Christmas and after the new year when you're seeing this. And before the new year, we were talking about our, live and we were having this conversation and unfortunately during that live, some of you let us know that Melody Buzzard had been located. And this was something that we had talked about before. So we're going to

give you a little bit of a rundown and then we're going to talk about where we are now. So we're going to be revisiting this episode that we covered recently, which was the disappearance of nine-year-old Melody Buzzard from Lompoc, California. At the time, Melody was considered missing and investigators were focusing on her mother, Ashley Buzzard, whose behavior during this multi-state road trip raised a lot of red flags. Surveillance showed both of them wearing disguises, the rental car appeared to have switched plates, and Ashley returned home alone with no explanation as to where her daughter was. Unfortunately, as I just mentioned, there has now been a tragic development.

Authorities have confirmed that Melody's body has been located, and her mother, Ashley, has been arrested in charge with Melody's murder. She has entered a plea of not guilty, which is pretty common. Yeah, like, that's the least surprising thing. Yeah, exactly. Not shocking at all. So today we're going to be going through what investigators discovered, how they were able to locate Melody,

and what we know so far about the charges moving forward. Okay, so this actually, because we've been talking about Melody Buzzard's case, we covered this on a crime weekly news just a few weeks ago. And as we suspected, and as we know, behind the scenes, although we weren't hearing exactly what was going on, and we knew they had the rental car in police custody and they were searching it, we weren't hearing what they were finding. We knew they were executing search warrants. We weren't hearing what they were finding. So what we now have discovered is that Melody was actually found on December 6th, so quite a while ago. Because on December 6th, police in Wayne County, Utah responded to a call reporting a decomposed body in a rural.

area near the 3,300 block of East State Route 24. Reportedly, a couple who was traveling through the area, they were taking photographs against some red sandstone when they stumbled upon her body. Now, I wanted to look into this area because I wanted to get an indication of how much effort was put into concealing this body, Melody's body. And to me, it doesn't seem like much. From what I can tell, this location was most likely in the area that's called Capital Reef National Park. It's the county's biggest landmark main tourist draw.

It's full of massive red sandstone cliffs, fins, and domes that are extremely popular for roadside photography. So basically, you don't have to go out hiking to find these places and take these pictures. You can just pull off the road. For instance, the chimney rock area is right off Highway 24. It's extremely accessible. very common for travelers to stop and take photos. CNN actually reports that the remains were found in the rural community of Cainville. That does align with the area of Capitol Reef National Park. Canville sits between Hanksville and Capitol Reef. And there is something called the

Canville Badlands, which they've got vast stretches of beautiful, deep, red, rust, and purple sandstone. And it's an extremely popular roadside photo stop that requires no hiking. So basically, it seems like these people pulled over, maybe walked off the highway a little bit to take these pictures. And that's when they found Melody. Why am I focusing on this area? Why am I focusing on the discovery? We don't know anything yet, really, because what we'll find is the judge put sort of an order into place where nobody can talk about anything while the case is ongoing. But I wanted to know how far did Ashley Buzzard go to conceal Melody's body? Did she try to kind of take it out into the wilderness to make sure nobody would find it?

It doesn't appear that she did that. And I think that she didn't do that because she was planning on the fact of her erratic road trip and going all over, kind of making it so that the police could not track where Melody actually died and was left. and that way they would have to go through a lot of different locations. So when the authorities arrived at the location, they discovered that Melody, who at that time, was unidentified, had died from gunshot wounds to the head. And it has now been revealed that during the execution of search warrants that happened on October 30th at the Buzzard Home, the storage unit, and the car that Ashley rented, several items were found during those search warrants. So there was a spent bullet casing found inside the home and a similar round of live ammunition that was found. in the rental car. So the spent bullet casing was submitted to a National Ballistic

Imaging Database called N-I-B-I-N. Now, according to Sheriff Mika Gully of Wayne County in Utah, his office had been in contact already with the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office because obviously Ashley and Melody were known based on their movements. They were known to have been near or around that area. So Wayne County in Utah was in contact already with the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office and the FBI in the weeks leading up to the discovery of the remains concerning the ongoing investigation into missing nine-year-old Melody Buzzard. When the Wayne County Sheriff's Office processed the scene in Canville, they found evidence at the scene, which was submitted to the Utah State Crime Lab for evaluation and testing.

Within 24 hours, the crime lab obtained confirmation that the Wayne County case was connected to the Santa Barbara case. Cartridge cases found at the scene matched the single cartridge found in the buzzard home and prosecutors have claimed that Ashley Buzzard killed her daughter with a 9-millimeter gun. On December 22nd, the FBI Crime Lab determined the Utah remains were a familial DNA match to Ashley Buzzard, and then investigators got an arrest warrant for Ashley Buzzard on suspicion of murder. She was formally charged on Christmas Eve. She's being held without bail.

So a criminal complaint has accused Ashley Buzzard of lying in wait to kill her daughter, Melody. And although they believe the killing was planned before the road trip, investigators have been unable to locate a weapon or pinpoint a motive. The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office has commented on the ruthlessness of the killing, how it's, you know, very difficult to understand along with the level of premeditation. They said, quote, this level of criminal activity is particularly shocking, given the calculated, cold-blooded, and criminally sophisticated premeditation and heartlessness that went into planning it. End quote. Law enforcement believes that the killing occurred on or around October 9th, which is shortly after Melody was

last seen on surveillance video near the Utah, Colorado border. So Ashley Buzzard has been uncooperative this whole time, as we know. She refused to tell police where Melody was, and she has remained uncooperative after her arrest with the sheriff saying there was absolutely no change in her attitude or demeanor. It wasn't this thing where she was like, oh, I'm caught. Let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you why it happened. No, she's still shut down.

still not talking. And during her arraignment, the judge did grant a temporary restraining order that will prevent law enforcement from discussing any details of the case that have not already been publicly released. This past Friday, Ashley Buzzard pleaded not guilty. She'll be held without bail until a preliminary hearing which is scheduled for January 7th, where a judge will determine whether there's sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial. You know, it's funny. We were talking on our live the other day and how we wanted to be a little bit more positive because and I guess I'm kind of venting to you guys right now that are listening or watching, but this is what you come back to.

You know, we knew about it from the live, but this is unfortunately where we are. We're talking about a nine-year-old girl that was shot and killed. By her mother, allegedly. By her mother, allegedly, right. And, you know, it's interesting that they were able to keep this under wraps for so long. I will say that, considering how public this case was and so many people were covering it, it is it's impressive i'll say that they that law enforcement was able to keep this internal where

no media outlets got a hold of it and i didn't hear any murmurings of a body being found on the six and it possibly being connected to melody so that that's a rarity and it's uh you know kudos to them for keeping it under wraps for now because what it also accomplished was not only keeping it from the public but more importantly keeping it from ashley because if she had known that they had found Melody. Maybe she did. It doesn't seem like she did. But if she had known, there's the potential that she could have fled or she could have taken her own life. So good job by them to keep it under wraps until the last moment possible. And they got the jump on her. They got her in custody. And now she's going to answer for what she allegedly did. My personal opinion, she did it.

You know, we'll see how that all plays out. But I've said it before when we covered Melody's case And originally reminds me a lot of Timothy Pitson, and I hope it's not the same result there. But I feel like with these cases where these parents come back and the kids don't, just being a realist, more than likely, this was the outcome. They can't tell you where the child is, not because they're concerned about the child's safety and they want to protect them. I'm doing that in air quotes for everybody on audio. It's because they know that if they tell you where the child is, it's going to make them

look worse and the outcome's not going to be any better for them where as long as we don't know where the children are there's that what if what if she's not responsible what if she didn't have anything to do with this what if she's a victim as well and they want to keep that narrative and as long as they can keep it up they're not going to go to prison so there's multiple angles why they wouldn't tell us exactly what happened and it's the same reason she's not admitting to it now she's hoping that the investigation is flawed and that it goes to trial and she's found innocent

and if she is, she gets to spend the rest of her life walking around like nothing happened but this sounds like at least from the outside this police department if it's any indication of how good they are based on what they've done so far

it seems like they got their shit together at least so far I think they do I don't think there's any way that there's not enough to go to trial Based on what you just said, yeah, I agree. I mean, yeah, with the surveillance, the wigs, the...

The ballistics match. Moving the license plate, the ballistics match. The fact that we have reports that Ashley Buzzard has been, you know, quickly or slowly losing grip with reality, not in the best mental state. The fact that she was completely uncooperative when she came back and had no story other than she gave melody to somebody at the zoo, or that was apparently what she told the guy that she wouldn't let leave her house. But regardless, she didn't say anything. It wasn't, if you're not looking, it's a Casey Anthony. If you're not looking for your child who's missing, it's because you know, you know what happened. So in the previous video when we were talking about this, I said, I hope she does know what happened, but that Melody is alive.

And that's why she's not worried. Now that we know Melody is not alive, the fact that you weren't worried tells me everything I need to know. I'm with you. I completely agree. And I think the ballistics, too, is going to really put a whole. hole in her her whole theory because if there was a scenario where the child goes missing from the home, it opens up so many lanes where something could have happened, the kid could have been kidnapped, all these different things, right? But when you have, I'm assuming GPS data to

show her whereabouts and where she was traveling, and I'm assuming this is all speculation on my part, at some point it's going to put her cell phone or her vehicle in the vicinity of where Melody was found. Yes, yes. I'm sure they already had that, to be honest, yes. So couple that with the ballistics match and all these other things and her just complete flat out lies, it's not going to bode well for her. I think we can all see what the outcome's going to be here. Yeah, I can look it up really quickly, but how far is Cainville from the Utah, what was it, the Utah Colorado border, where both Melody and Ashley were last seen on surveillance. So how far is Kaneville from where they were last seen on surveillance, and if it's not far, you're going to

have a hard time trying to convince anyone that something happened in this short amount of time when you were with her on surveillance and then suddenly you weren't. And then like the Skeleton brothers, you're going to have to make up some bizarre story about you gave melody to somebody and you don't know who that person is and they killed her. Nobody believes it. Nobody believes it. Just like they don't believe it with the Skeleton Brothers. And it's like, it's frustrating for me because I was, I don't want to say like I was rooting for Ashley, but I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, as we all tend to do, I think, when it comes to parents who are being looked at for the disappearance or the murder of their kids. You'd like to think nobody's capable of that. You'd like to think they're not. And also, like we did mention in the live, you logically and intellectually know this parent, if they are not responsible, even if there's a small percentage chance that they're not responsible, they are going.

through the worst time of their life right now, they are going through the worst pain they will ever go through. I'm not trying to pile on. But yeah, I regret giving her the benefit of the doubt. I think it's the right approach. You never want to go in there and make things worse. Yeah. Victimize a victim. I mean, it's always, I think it's better to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. And I think off camera we were talking about it where we kind of knew the writing was on the wall. But what I'm interested in finding out as this goes to trial is how. how accurately they're able to determine time of death? Because you always have complications with that.

She was last seen on, what, October 9th? So when they last saw her on surveillance camera. I believe it was the 9th. It was the 9th. Okay. And I think that they're going to be able to pin time of death down pretty accurately because they would be, because they know where Ashley's car traveled, right? So they know where she was on certain times.

So if she's in this area, the Utah, Colorado border on October 9th, when you're last seen on surveillance, and then Ashley leaves that area the next day, well, we know she didn't leave with Melody because Melody's still there. That's right. That's right. And I think they'll do it the other way as well where they'll actually look at the body and let it tell them how long it had been there. And I hate to say it. Well, they said that the body was decomposed. Decomposed. Yep.

But, and by the way, guys, when I say that, I just want to preface it, I'm saying it because at that point, it is a body. It is evidence. And that's not to diminish what's going on here. I'm just trying to be as accurate as I can with you guys. But they will take the body and they'll try to determine an exact day. If they can, more than likely that won't be possible. But you have to deal with things like insect activity, predation, all of those variables will come into play. But if you have someone who's good, they'll probably be able to tell you, yeah, she's been here for approximately two. months, which aligns with everything else that you just said, Stephanie, the camera footage, her being seen with Melody, her being seen without, all of this coupled with the ballistics match, all of that will paint a picture of what occurred here. So there's still a lot of work to do. And I'm sure on December 6th, when they found what they believed to potentially be Melody, the wheels were already turning. There was already stuff going on behind the scenes. And I'm trying to be as respectful as I can be here. Based on the conditions, it can change some things. A lot can happen to a body in two months where it's unrecognizable. But from my own

experience, if in the right conditions, if you're looking for a particular person and you see that body, usually it's the hair. I'm just, again, I'm trying to be as respectful as I can be right now and not trying to bring everyone down, but it is what it is. There are things that won't decomposed. And if you look at Melody's photo, she's beautiful hair, absolutely stunning hair. And that is something that would be immediately recognizable to someone who's probably been looking at her photo now for two months, you know, where they have been studying this picture, trying to find this young girl. And they come across this body. And there are some characteristics that would still be intact at that point that would give you a very good indication as to whether or not the person you're looking at. is the person you're looking for?

Well, listen, they left on October 7th for the road trip. Ashley returned October 10th without Melody. There you go. She was seen on surveillance, October 9th. So I think the October 9th speculation is absolutely correct, which breaks my heart. Because by the time the investigation started, which was, I think, October 14th or 15th, Melody was already gone. She was already gone. And so, yeah.

I mean, this is just, it's devastating. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it here. Good cases, yeah. They're the worst. They're the worst. But we had to cover it, right?

We were talking about it on the live. And for anybody who caught the live, a lot of you were talking about it, but some people were upset that we weren't diving into the details. Well, first off, we didn't know them. We were surprised to hear about it. And so we couldn't research it while we were on the live. But we did say we were going to cover it. And that's what we're doing.

And there's a lot of cases we could be covering right now. Unfortunately, we haven't really talked. talked about Brian Walsh at all. And that's a huge case in the news. That's something that we'll have to dive into. Anna Walsh, yeah. We'll have to dive into as well. That guy seems like a psycho, especially when you start looking at those Home Depot, Lowe's security footage.

I mean, he's, he's Fodos, basically. He really is. Yeah. He really is. A lot of people said they do want us to do Chris Watts again. I was looking at the comments from the live. People said, yes, do Chris Watts again. Elizabeth Smart.

People said, yes, Elizabeth Smart. A lot of people were saying, Stephanie, I know you've already covered Matt. Madeline McCann because people said, which, but do Madeline McCann, I would love to do Madeline McCann with you. So we have a lot of great cases to cover in 2026. Make sure you're sending your requests. Yes. Your recommendations, put them in the comments.

We look through them and we write them down. But yeah, I feel terrible. No, it's awful. And we got too young. I mean, we both, I have a nine-year-old. Yeah, so do I basically. She'll be nine on January 3rd. So, I mean, it's, it just, it hits close to home.

I can't imagine ever, ever. care what the circumstances are. I don't care if I think the world is crashing down around me and the apocalypse is coming and the aliens are coming back to kill us all tomorrow. I could never harm my child. I don't understand people who can. I have no pity for them. I have no sympathy for them. And people are like, what's the motive? What's the motive? I don't care. Now, she's going to go for mental, you know, I was mentally ill. That's going to be her defense. We all know it. I don't care, throw the book at her, put her behind bars forever. I don't care. Agreed. If she's guilty, she's lucky to be behind bars, but as I've said before with parents in prison, they may be

criminals, but there is a code when it comes to kids and they don't take kindly to those types of acts. But positive note, you were mentioning people wanting us to cover certain cases. Another case that we mentioned was Amanda Knox, right? That's what we're covering next. We're going to be diving into that this week. We're going to be doing a multi- part series on Amanda Knox, and I'm interested to get into it. I know the surface level points of it. I think everybody does, but I don't know all the details. And who better than the Stephanie Harlow to give them to us? I've read Amanda Knox's book. I've read a lot about this. I've watched everything about it I can find. So I'm definitely excited to dive in.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. We have some other things that we had a whole meeting today talking about building a stronger sense of community here at Crime Weekly. We kind of alluded to it on the live, but we have some big plans for 2026. We're going to be offering you guys a lot more content. And again, we want to kind of keep the main focus on community, building what we already have built on over the last five years to have a place where we can all go and conversate and communicate

and talk about things that we're passionate about, specifically in true crime and we're going to have those announcements soon very soon we just want to work out the final details but within this month you will be hearing about it and i think you guys are going to be pretty excited so that's going to do it for us we're thinking about melody's family and friends everybody involved in the entire community uh a lot of people affected by this and we're thinking about them right now and if there's a major update in the case we'll absolutely bring that to you but until then everyone stay safe out there and we will see you later this week Bye.