Hidden True Crime - Ashlee Buzzard UNMASKED: Why Mothers Kill - Psychology Behind Filicide | Melodee Buzzard

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Dr. John is here to weigh in on the latest developments on the Melodee Buzzard case... What led Ashlee to take Melodee's life? Why do mothers kill? Sponsors: Get 50% off LifeMD’s Weight Management Program plus free shipping during their Holiday and New Year's Sale—get started at https://lifemd.com/HIDDEN. About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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atora.com slash remove. Hello, hidden gems. We are together. to talk about something very sad. When we're talking, it's actually never really happy. But this story about Melody Buzzard is particularly heartbreaking. It's something I've been processing ever since watching the news conference with all of you.

Right now, 40-year-old Ashley Buzzard is behind bars, charged with first-degree murder in the death of her nine-year-old daughter, Melody. Sheriff Bill Brown with the stand of bar. Barbara Sheriff's Department held a press conference today where we learned some horrendous facts about this crime worse than I could have ever imagined. We now know the cause of nine-year-old Melody Buzzard's death is gunshot wounds to the head. And not just gunshot wound, gunshot wounds is what Sheriff Brown stated.

In other words, almost like an execution to say the first thought that came to my mind, a mother to a daughter. We learned that they believed that Ashley Buzzard, Melody's own mother, acted alone. The timeline that we know is that on October 9th, 2025, was the last siding of the mom and daughter pair while on a multi-state road trip. This siding was a stop at the Utah, Colorado border. And law enforcement believed that the crime happened shortly after that stop, that crime being murder in the first degree. And on October 10th, Ashley Buzzard, Melody's mother,

returned to Lompoc, California, where they lived, and returned the rental car without her daughter. And we have been following this case from the very beginning. A reminder on October 9th, again 2025, the last siding on October 10th. Ashley returns home without her daughter. On December 6th, we learned today, it was two people out in Caneville, Utah. That's in Wayne County. It's an unincorporated community in the southeast area of the state, central southeast area.

they were taking photographs and they came across the remains a decomposed body. You could tell it was a female Wayne County Sheriff's Office was contacted. The medical examiner took over and then on December 8th, 2025, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department was notified of the remains found in Wayne County. We learned that on December 17th, that was an important day where a link of cartridges that had been found at the home and car of Ashley Buzzard in California matched those found at the crime scene. And then we learned that yesterday DNA testing concluded that is December 22nd, 2025, that the remains were indeed melody. and Ashley Buzzard was taken into custody this morning, again charged with first degree murder. The sheriff called it calculated and cold-blooded. They said as of this press conference, she is still not cooperating.

She is still not speaking. And then the question from reporter from the first question from a reporter at the press conference was, do you believe that Ashley Buzzard acted alone? and their answer was yes, she did. That's what they believe right now. And honestly, this whole crime is beyond shocking to me. It's a case of filicide, of course, of maternal filicide. Something you talk about often.

I have not heard of this with a mother shooting almost like, I mean, I'm just going to be honest here. It almost feels like an execution, almost, and that she's nine, too. So there's no like postpartum, depression. And, you know, I mean, and then I thought, well, maybe she handed her off and she didn't do it herself. And then to find out she did herself, there's so many elements of this that are so shocking to me. And I don't know of another case like this that I can think off of off the top of my head.

and you've told me that with something like this, it's so violent with a gun, it's not usually maternal felicit, right? Like, that's usually like a crime of a father. I don't know. There is, this is so sad. And I know it's late, and we're heading into Christmas Eve.

And so I just want to thank you for sitting down with us to try to process this with us, because this is, in my opinion, more tragic than I ever imagined. Worse than I ever imagined. And we still don't have a motive. No motive yet. Yeah.

I think we can start to narrow down motive a little bit if we look at some of the research on philocyte and consider the different types of philocyte and what drives them. Although I will say, I don't think we know. enough yet. I think really it's going to require a season forensic evaluator to get in and interview Ashley, and that's presuming that she's willing to be open about her life. But I think it's going to require someone to really do a very end-depth interview and to really dig deep into her past and to really do some testing, a lot of testing around different areas like personality and mood, that type of thing.

And only then, I think, will we get a better understanding of what's going on here? I think we have bits and pieces, obviously, that we can talk about. And they do help, I think, to kind of clarify this situation a little bit. But at the very least, this is complex. Yeah. Because I think you could make an argument for the different types of philicide that we're going to be talking about, you can make an argument that it fits one or several of them at the same time. But I mean, this is rare, isn't it? Like this, all the elements here?

You brought up the, you brought up the gun issue, which is really, it is that, I think that can lead us into this discussion because it is, it is unusual to have a nine-year-old in particular, a nine-year-old, as you said, more or less executed. by a biological mother. In fact, I'm going to read, this is from a textbook than one of my favorite textbooks that people will follow us.

I cite this book all the time. Domestic Homicide, patterns and dynamics by Liam and Conrad. It's published in 2018, so fairly recent. I'm just going to read, I'm going to give some of their basic overview of philicide and who commits

philicide. And so I think this is, this is a way to look at it to start thinking about this the majority quote this is on page 41 in the chapter called the destruction of descendants quote the majority of philocides were the results of impulsive violent acts committed by very young mothers against their children also a substantive proportion of the offenders were suffering from substance abuse problems international research consistently shows that mothers are overrepresented in cases of infant homicide. The younger the child, the higher the likelihood that the mother is the perpetrator.

And again, further, with regard to victim age, suicide is more common in the first year of life. So the statistics support the idea that biological mothers are mainly responsible. for psilicide and typically within the first year of life. The first year of life, right. And so, and so this obviously is atypical in that sense. You have a biological mother who's committing suicide with her nine-year-old daughter. So clearly outside of that early period of life, this doesn't seem impulsive, right? The statistics also show that in cases of like, let's say, postpartum,

heart of psychosis, that those types of phyllisides tend to be a little more impulsive. That someone's hallucinating or they're having persecutory, persecutory delusions about their child. They act out. They kill the child. And so those are typically driven by psychotic episodes that tend to be more reactive. So there's two types of violence. There's reactive violence and there's proactive violence. Reactive violence is impulsive.

It's done on the spur of the moment, often with. without any premeditation, proactive violence is premeditated violence. It's violence that's planned. This is a case of proactive violence or premeditated violence, clearly. This trip, for example, it seems to me like this trip, part of the reason for this trip is to throw people off the trap. That if you're going to travel thousands of miles and you're going to murder someone along the way, it's going to be much harder to figure out where that body is.

Right. So it seems like. Cainville. Canville, Utah. It seems like that's pretty deliberate. I mean, so on the one hand, you have these elements of premeditation. Yeah, well, let me be very clear that the body was found in Utah. The crime happened in Utah.

So a lot of people are asking, why is it not being charged or why would she not be tried in Utah? And their answer, they asked, where is this trial going to be? And the sheriff stated, it will be in California because that's where the intent was. this was premeditated, planned. The words he used were calculated and cold-blooded. And the intent was in California. So in other words, yes, this was premeditated and planned. They went to that car rental wearing wigs.

By the way, that premeditated filicide tends to be more typical of men. So males are more likely to engage in filicide with older children. They're more likely to be violent in the sense of, I mean, I take it back. Their crimes tend to involve guns more than women. In fact, I'm going to, this is from probably one of the best articles on suicide. It's by Porter and Gavin. It's from 2010. This is from trauma violence and abuse, the Journal of Trauma Violence and Abuse.

The title of this article is Infanticide and Needs. Anaticide, a review of 40 years of research literature on incidents and causes. This is a really excellent overview of statistics on suicide. Let's talk about the use of a gun. So they say that Bingohor, who's a well-known researcher from the East Coast, who's done a lot of research on sexual abuse and family violence, Philicide and Orm Aramrod from 2001 suggest that women are more likely to use their hands

as a weapon and less likely to use firearms compared to men. They also did a study. They also looked at, since they were reviewing the literature, they looked at 11 studies. So I'm just going to go through from 1989 to 2007. They reviewed, these are female-driven phyllisides. They reviewed 11 studies. I'm just going to read the,

the most common means of murder or of homicide here. So this will give you a good picture of how most women commit suicide. Here they are. Here's all 11. Smothering, suffocation, suffocation slash hanging, blunt force strangulation or strangulation, suffocation slash drowning, suffocation stress, emulation, drowning, blunt force, head trauma, exposure slash drowning, stabbing slash defenestration, and blunt injury. So those were the 11 means of philicide.

And studies between 1989 and 2007, what do you notice about them? None of them are guns. None of them involve guns. None of them involve shooting the child. Exactly. And that's not to say, by the way, there are, there's our, some estimates that roughly 25% of phyllisides do involve possibly a firearm, but the vast majority, the vast majority, 75 to 90% of phyllisides are precisely of this type

suffocation, right? And so this is atypical in that sense, too. If you look at this fill aside. And if you just presented the means and the way this occurred and the trip and the premeditation, I think most forensic psychologists would say, that sounds like a male. If you had to guess, right, if just based on the statistics and the probabilities and base rates, and by the way, on that issue of base rates, so the base rates would be the number, the average that would occur for a particular type of crime. If you just looked at that, you'd be more inclined to say,

this seems like a male would have committed it. So, obviously, so again, this is not common. Right. Not common. Not common. In the sense that you, right, you have a gun, you have an older child, you have a nine-year-old. So typically, when we think of philicide, oftentimes we think of postpartum psychosis,

which most of those involve children two years or younger, oftentimes less than a year, but somewhere in that range. And so we know Melody's nine years old. This tends to be, by the way, a lot of the men who engage in suicide, they tend to fit the category of psychopathic features, more so than psychotic features. The holidays can quietly throw people off. schedules fill up, routines disappear, and it gets harder to feel comfortable or confident in your

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Okay. And I think there's also a guy named Jeffrey McKee. There's the textbook, it's a classic textbook. McKee's a forensic psychologist. He's done a lot of research. In case that was blurry, why mothers kill? Why mothers kill, a forensic psychologist case book. McKee, McKee has a similar, he has a similar,

typology as Langman, except McKee's obviously specifically looking at philicide. And McKee's typology is divided into five categories. He's got the category of detached mothers, abusive or neglectful mothers, psychotic or depressed mothers,

retaliatory mothers, and psychopathic mothers. So So McKee is one of the researchers that focuses more on this issue of psychopathy or antisocial traits with mothers. And usually that category, by the way, would apply more to males. So again, here you have the use of a gun, the older child, possible antisocial or psychopathic traits. those would all tend to fit the pattern of a male perpetrator. So this is very atypical in that sense. Right. Okay. Yeah, it is. I was right. That's what I felt.

I think everyone was just, everyone is just shocked at this crime. This is atypical. It is atypical. The other thing that's, I think that's in play here that a lot of people aren't going to talk about is this and the reason I bring up Langman's research on school shooters is because he has this category of traumatized and I think Ashley Buzzard definitely fits into that category. I don't know how much. But into a traumatized mother. Right. Into a traumatized mother. And I think what becomes complicated about this case is that this trauma component, I think it definitely plays a role. And that that makes this way more complicated in the sense that I think a lot of research on

Philicide wants to place people into the psychotic category or the psychopathic category. I do. Right. I'm like, this is a psychopath. Yeah. Yeah, I do. There's a psychopath. It's premeditated. Like you said, it was almost execution style, right? Such an evil act. Right. Only a psychopath could do it. That's where my brain goes. But then you have these elements too that don't fit, right? Like, why doesn't she dispose of her cartridge cases at her house. They don't have the murder weapon, but they found multiple cartridges. Right.

So she hid the murder weapon, but kept the cartridges. Yeah, it's confusing. Right. Like, there's elements of, I mean, most criminals don't plan that well. But I think there's enough, there's enough contradictions here in terms of premeditation. She takes her out of school and doesn't, make any effort to pretend like some like she's homeschooling her or right like right she doesn't pick up the work that's where they found out that they wanted to do a welfare check if she had just

picked up the work they would have never done the welfare check right so just skipping that right details like that which when i look at these types of mistakes that are pretty glaring pretty obvious. Like the first thing I think is there's conflict there, right? Like this this criminal is leaving enough obvious clues so that you're going to figure out that she did it. And why would that person do it? And I mean, part of the answer is I think it's not necessarily conscious, but part of the answer is because there's a certain amount of conflict or ambivalence about committing these crimes. And according to Tyler, not to throw this in too, but according to Tyler, who was in Ashley Buzzard's home after Melody was missing and allegedly trying to get Ashley to say where Melody was, according to him, she had a pillow that seemed to be dressed in Melody's clothing on our couch.

Right. I mean, that wasn't part of the press conference today, but that's a little odd. Right. Is she trying to create the fantasy that her daughter is still alive? Is she feeling some remorse or guilt over her deceased daughter over the murder that she knows she's committed? Right. Like those are all questions that I think are important to consider here. I think in that kind of takes, I think that takes us into the trauma component of this crime. And when I talk about the trauma component, what I mean by that is, there's some evidence you have we found an article 1995 yeah Santa Maria Times February 11th

1995 it discusses actually her mother sorry Ashley Buzzard's mother so Melody's grandmother Lori Miranda and Ashley Buzzard is nine years old in the article and is quoted in the article where they talk about having to hide when she is nine years old because of an abusive relationship that her mother, Lori, was trying to escape from and that she was very, very scared. I can pull it up here on my phone and tell you some of the quotes from Ashley in this article. One part of the article it states for Ashley, life has made her grow up quickly.

And her mother says she has seen so much. much. She is very responsible. It's excellent grades in school, but I want her to enjoy being a kid now. She has never done that. And then Ashley states, I was scared referring to the time when they did not have a permanent residence. I knew no one here. I felt very uncomfortable. But things are different now. It makes me feel good to be with people who think highly of me, who will tell me I am doing a good job, Miranda said. Their tumultuous home life in Orange County, coupled with their experiences in the Santa Maria Valley, has given them both a different perspective on life. I was afraid. I was scared. And I think that's a really interesting

window into Ashley's childhood and trauma. So what do we know? We know that for a period of her life, and this is, again, this is Ashley, she was homeless. We know that her mother, Lori Miranda, fled an abusive relationship. So we also presumably know that Ashley grew up in a home with some violence. He has seen a lot, her mother said. She's had to grow up. She has seen a lot. She grew up with, as she says, as she says in the quote, she grew up with a lot of fear. So if that fear, let's assume that that fear is fairly constant, that could be the basis for an anxiety disorder or even PTSD. That if she's growing up with this violence and she's constantly afraid and traumatized by the home, the instability in the home, that could lead to an anxiety disorder such as PTSD or PTSD is now, it's, own disorder, but...

And I find it really interesting that she hid when she was nine years old, they had to escape and go into hiding and were homeless the same age. Her daughter, Melody, was when they took off to sort of hide, right? Put wigs on. Go into hiding. Yeah. Put disguises on. No one can find us.

I have wondered if she's replaying, I wondered this before Melody was found, She was replaying some of that trauma. Now I don't know because her trauma never had with, you know, executing, you know, been executed. But, you know, I don't. Right. Well, that's a really important question because, you know, I used to do a lot of work with veterans. And I did work with Vietnam veterans and veterans from Afghanistan in particular. And there's something called anniversary trauma.

or anniversary date trauma. And that is essentially a lot of veterans will have, so I would have guys come into my group and you could tell on a particular week of group they would be on edge. And you could tell that they were off, that something was really bothering them. And oftentimes the group members would check in with them

because they'd see these people, these veterans would be visibly shaken and they'd be really uncomfortable. And when they processed it, almost always they would come to the conclusion. They would understand that it happened to be around the same time as a conflict or an ambush or some type of situation that they would encounter. It was traumatic. And so they weren't even aware of it. They didn't even remember that it was the anniversary of, let's say, an ambush that they were involved in or some type of engagement with the enemy.

And when they process it, they would realize that it was that it was their bodies and their minds were both telling them that something was wrong. And so they were kind of reliving that trauma without even recognizing it consciously. were experiencing the anxiety and flashback sometimes and nightmares and sleep issues and maybe even sadness but all of these these elements from these conflicts were coming back and they weren't aware of it and so that's called trauma, trauma, trauma, or trauma date anniversary or anniversary anniversary trauma. And this has a lot of the components of that.

Okay. Yeah. That without even, I think without even being conscious of it, it appears possible that Ashley is, as you say, is she's reenacting some of that trauma. She grabs her daughter, takes her on a trip. I don't even know if she remembered her mother doing that, right?

Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. But there's certainly. components of reenacting that. In Freudian terms, it's called the repetition compulsion. It's one of the reasons, in more modern terms, we call it self-verification theory, which is that whatever it is, however we see ourselves, we try to verify that perception of ourselves, even if that means engaging in negative behavior. So that's one of the reasons why people will get an abusive relationships or bad relationships over and over.

because they're reenacting some of those past traumas from relationships that whether they like it or not, it tends to confirm how they see themselves. That people would be uncomfortable sometimes if they didn't relive those situations. And so it's possible that you have some version of this anniversary trauma where she picks up her daughter. She's trying, one of the points, by the way, of the repetition compulsion is it's an attempt to master,

something that we failed to master. So if you have this trauma from being homeless and going on this road with your mother, and who knows, by the way, like, who knows what happened to her when she was homeless? Right. We know that children that are homeless are much more. to violence, to abuse of all physical and sexual abuse, right? We don't know what happened. We don't.

We know she came from a violent home. It's interesting that you said, oh, mastery to try to fix whatever if she failed. She said things are different. Now, quote, it makes me feel good to be with people who think highly of me. Well, tell me I'm doing a good job. But the problem is you can tell a child that all you want. But that's not the child's lived experience. The child may hear that, but they don't feel it.

And so a lot of times the repetition compulsion is an attempt to go back and to try to solve that unresolved wound. And it's difficult to do that, by the way. And that's why we keep doing it over and over. And I think you can argue that part of the reason she's doing this is to try to resolve that past trauma. Now, obviously, the problem is that her daughter becomes kind of the pawn in this drama that she's trying to resolve if that's what she's doing. And I don't know if it is. I'm just, this is a hypothesis. Right.

Because you mentioned the traumatized mother. This is a hypothesis of a traumatized mother. This is a hypothesis about why she would have ambivalence. Why she would, how this isn't necessarily just a cold calculating murder where she's thought through every element. She's disposed of all the cartridges, right? she's disposed of the body 20 miles from the road rather than half a mile from the road. She's continuing to pick up schoolwork. She's not doing that.

Right, right. Well, she didn't bury the body either. You know, there's no bearing of the body. There's just leaving this little girl on the side. I mean, so you could argue that that is, that's some degree of ambivalence or conflict or turmoil that she's experiencing where she can't fully plan this crime to, such a degree that you'll never figure out whatever happened, right? Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the

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and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring, or just a VPN. Again, ORA gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at ORA.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.

It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But ORA goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN.

ORA gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove. I mean, but the other side of that is maybe that's mental health. Mental health has been brought up a lot when it comes to Ashley Buzzard. Maybe there are some psychotic features here. Or maybe she's got severe depression or clinical depression, major depression. where she can't make these kinds of decisions well.

She can't plan as well as someone who's premeditating or murder. So perhaps, right, that you could go either way. I mean, but then you could argue that some of her childhood traumas could lead to major depression. So maybe it's both, right? This is where it gets complicated because you can, you can see how all these variables could come together. There's a confluence of these elements.

that make it really difficult. Well, there are times when Melody, as a young child, was given another home because of her mother and her mental wellness. So mental illness is something that has been brought up a lot with Ashley. But again, when we think of mental illness, we don't think of a mother executing her nine-year-old daughter. There's also the trauma of losing.

losing her, of losing Melody's father. Right. When Melody was just six months old, her father was killed unexpectedly in a motorcycle accident. Right. Her father, Ruby L. Meza, was killed at six months, right? And so that was incredibly traumatic. Traumatic to Ashley.

And one of the consequences of that was her attempt to self-harm. Correct. And after that accident, she, apparently there were calls from CPS because her home was not being maintained. It caused unexpected financial concerns in writing a baby. She didn't have the support. Right. There were, there were. So it does seem like after the father died in an accident that there was some depression possibly.

She struggled to maintain her home. There were all kinds of major stressors. Her partner dies. She's pregnant. She has a child. There's the birth of a child. All of those are major stressors. You've got all these major stressors coming together.

And I think for a normal person, coping with those would be difficult. But here, not only do you have these stressors coming together, but you have someone who grew up in a violent home who became homeless, right? She's, we don't know, like, what other traumas were there? Was she the victim of some type of abuse? I mean, that's possible. It's highly possible. Yeah.

I mean, so, so I think you've got all these elements in play. Right, and we have to learn a lot more. Right. Well, what were your thoughts, though, when you heard this? I mean, this was, I know that you did not still believe Melody was alive. Yeah. You know, in our private conversations. And the more time that went on, I too was starting to agree with you.

I had more hope earlier on in the case. But to hear how, you know, even Lori Valo, like, well, I mean, we don't know, you know, got someone else to help her, you know, I don't think she saw what happened to Tiley. You know, there was some, like, disconnect in her. I mean, this mother doing this, just pulling over, you know, and I picture Melody, you know, did she know what her mother was about to do to her? You know, I just... Well, obviously at some point she did.

I mean, unless she drugged her, I guess we won't know. if she medicated her, but it seems like, yeah, seems like her daughter must have been mortified. She must have been terrified, right? It just, yeah, it's unthinkable to pull a gun on your child and then execute them by shooting them in the head multiple times. To do that, you know, again, I mean, this is where I think, this is where it starts,

this is where this question of that act in and of itself definitely has some antisocial or, let's say, psychopathic features. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, when it comes to these categories, so the phyllisides that tend to involve more psychopathic features, those usually result in murder convictions. Many of the philocides that involve the more psychotic elements, those tend to skew towards the insanity plea. Or they're not always successful,

but that's where the defense typically will go. And so in this case, it seems, if you're thinking about it in terms of the prosecution, it seems like it would be a really difficult argument to make that this involves some degree of insanity. Yeah. Because of all the planning and just the nature of the homicide,

the nature of, as you describe it, the execution-like style. It speaks to something sadistic, right? It speaks to something sadistic and or narcissistic, right? Or maybe even to some degree, I brought this up in our first show on Melody, but maybe even retaliatory in the sense that perhaps she blames her. You know, that she blames her in part for her part. partner's accident. I wondered if it was retaliatory, like, revenge on Melody,

Melody caused financial distress. Yes. Melody caused mental illness. Melody caused, you know, her father to be in this accident. Everything is Melody's fault. I've wondered that, too, if this is retaliatory. And we don't know the details either. We don't.

We don't. So typically... We're speculating here. Well, we don't know the details. The motorcycle accident was, Was her partner in a hurry to get home to watch the baby? I'm just saying. We don't know.

I don't know. But the thing about retaliatory filicides is they're mostly by men. And the purpose is to harm the spouse or the partner. And here, I think it would be a peculiar retaliatory philocyte in the sense that there's no partner to harm. harm here. Other cases of retaliatory we've discussed. Travis Decker. Travis Decker. He kills the children because his ex-wife, who's divorced him, which he's not happy about,

but his ex-wife is now seeking full custody of children and try to limit his visitations. So he decides for whatever reasons that the children, well, I mean, he wants to punish him. her. So he murders the kids and then he murders himself. But the purpose is to punish her. And so here, this doesn't, again, if this is retaliatory, it doesn't really fit that profile. But however, one could make an argument that maybe part of it is retaliatory in the sense that she blames her. And she's blamed her for years for the loss of her partner.

And it's not hard to imagine that she pinned a lot of her hopes and dreams on this relationship with her partner. Yeah. And then he's gone. And again, the financial stress. Yeah. You know. And maybe even getting in trouble with PPS. Who knows?

So this kind of leads me into, this kind of leads me into different types of philocyte. different categories of philocyte. We've talked about this before. I'll just quickly go through these again, but there's generally three types of philocyte. There's pathological philocyte, which includes altruistic, filicide. Altruistic philocyte is when, typically when the mother, sometimes the father, they believe they want to relieve the child's real or imagine suffering. So the belief is that the child, the belief is that they're rescuing the child from a cruel world. And that they can't, they themselves struggle to cope in that world. They don't want their child to have to live or maneuver in this world.

So this is what is called altruistic. The textbook I cited, however, they don't use this. They call it pseudo altruistic because obviously, It's not altruistic if you're murdering your child. So I prefer to use the term pseudo-altruistic. But the murderers, the mothers who engage in altruistic philocyte, they believe that they're helping their child by murdering them. They believe that they're rescuing them from this cruel world that they should not have to live in. And again, like, I can make an argument that that might be in play here to some degree in the sense that Ashley confronted, Ashley was homeless, Ashley has a

these financial struggles, right? Life is not easy for Ashley. Right. And so it's possible that Ashley perceives that her daughter will confront the same circumstance, the same world. Right. And again, I don't know if this is accurate, but you could argue that she decided she premeditated the murder because she didn't want her daughter to confront the same traumas and dilemmas.

and hardships that she confront it. And so in that sense, you could say perhaps that she sees some of this as being altruistic. The other category of pathological phyllisides is the psychotic category, which we've talked about. So this falls into more of the mental health category. This would be schizophrenia or depression or postpartum psychosis. Then there's, we touched on this.

Postpartum psychosis doesn't make sense because. Yeah, this is clearly the same. and postpartum psychosis. The next category we touched on briefly, or we just talked about, which is retaliating thylacine. This doesn't really fit that category necessarily. Although, again, it's a little confusing because I can make an argument that perhaps there's some component

of retaliation. Although I don't really think it fits that category necessarily. Then there's the category of fatal abuse, which essentially is a child that's being maltreated or abused, and that abuse goes too far and the child passes away. This doesn't seem to fit that category either. So those are the main categories. Then you have a few other categories.

You have paternal filicide. Obviously, that doesn't apply. She's Melody's mother. So although, as we discussed, a lot of the pattern here tends to be more paternal philosophize like. The final category, which when typologies were first developed for suicide, there's a psychologist who's Reznik who developed a version of most,

who came up with a lot of these different categories initially. But he has a category called Unwant the Unwanted Child. And that applies to mothers essentially who, you know, as the category suggests, they don't want their children. So it could be that the children are illegitimate. It could be that the children have health problems. It's, it's, typically the reason mothers will engage in philocyte is, it's similar to altruistic in the sense that they believe that whatever the children's health problems are or circumstances are, then in some ways they'll be better opt-dict. Wouldn't that usually happen when they're infants or babies?

Is this like a Lake and Snelling case where like you don't want an unwanted pregnancy or are you talking about an actual child? they're starting to raise and then... Yeah, it definitely could apply to an unwanted pregnancy, but then if you have a child who's born with some very serious health problems and they struggle repeatedly, that could be altruistic, but it could also be unwanted in the sense that the child isn't really welcomed. And by the way, this category gets a little bit into attachment issues.

So I think that's another important component of this is if you look at Ashley's upbringing, I think there's a real argument to be made that she never really bonded with her mother, that there were probably issues around insecure attachment. And when there's a failure to bond with a caregiver, let's say in this case, it's Lori Miranda, who's Ashley's mother, that creates a lot of frustration. that creates a lot of frustration on the part of the mother and the child to some degree. But oftentimes the mother's inability to bond with her child

will be, and for many reasons they're unable to do that. But it really, it's very discouraging to a parent when you can't develop that closeness that you anticipate. And so you have a certain amount of frustration, which then can become rage. The more you try, the less you're able to solve that problem, that can become aggression. That can become rage. It can become anger.

And it's driven by this inability or this failure to bond with the child. And so we know there's – I'm going to refer back. to the article. I'm going to refer to another article here. This is from aggression and violent behavior. The journal is aggression and violent behavior. This is from 2015. It's DeBosca et al. The title of the article is victim, perpetrator, and offense characteristics in philocyte and philocyte. They talk about attachment as being relevant to philocyte and specifically insecure attachment. This is from page 122. Quote, another possible explanation of philocyte has been offered by attachment theory.

Although only one study selected for the current review inquired into attachment patterns and child killers, results indicated that philicidal women tend to be more insecure than mothers without philosophical ideations. They were also more likely to focus on negative emotions and expressed more anger. The increased level of hostile and helpless attachment patterns was predictive of child homicide. Furthermore, hostility was found to manifest itself in the willingness to hurt another person and eventually may evolve into violence. So I think the unwanted child part of this tends to fit well with the research on attachment and specifically in secure attachment. And it's not hard to imagine that Ashley grew up homeless at times.

Yeah. In a violent home, it's not hard to imagine that she had difficulties forming a secure attachment with her mother. Right. And a lot of times attachment patterns become intergenerational. So it's not hard to imagine then that Ashley then struggled to develop a her attachment with her daughter, Melody. Right. And so...

That makes sense. I think it's quite possible that this category that Resnick initially identified of the unwanted child, it's quite possible that that category fits fairly well in this particular instance. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet. and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere.

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That's M-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at mood. And it's not just the variety that makes them stand out.

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They also talk a little bit about this category. I think this is worth reading as well. This is page 101 from infanticide and neonaticide, a review of 40 years of research literature on incidences causes. A large number of infanticide cases do not involve a severe mental illness that precluded the woman from being aware of the wrongfulness of her actions. For example, Bayer et al suggested that all of the 40 infanticidal women in their sample had personal gain for their actions,

that is, they benefited from living their lives unencumbered by an infant. So in other words, they're saying that some of the research supports the idea that not only is there not severe mental illness, but the purpose is because the child is not wanted. The purpose is to live a life unencumbered, to live a life free from the obligations and responsibilities of a child. And that would include, by the way, the financial obligations of race into a child, which we know that actually struggles with. Correct.

That she's had bankruptcies. She's had a lot of financial problems, right? I'm sure she lost child support, you know. So the child is a burden. The child is seen as a burden. Right. Exactly. And the mother, so this would go against the very idea of altruism, right?

opposite of altruism. Right. The idea that some philocides are committed because the mother envisions the child being better off that essentially here. That's not the case, obviously. This is the case of let's get rid of the child to benefit myself or the mother. Yeah. And that this category, by the way, as I mentioned, I think it's consistent with this idea of insecure attachment, which I think is, is, there's a fairly high probability that that's in play.

Yeah. It would make sense. Right. I can't imagine secure attachment and this happening. Yeah. This wouldn't be consistent with secure attachment, for sure. Yeah. I can't think of another case like this.

I think I always have a precedent. for a case, oh, this is like this or and this one's been hard for me. I mean, I just, I don't know what to compare it to. Yeah, it's, it's, this is very unusual. It's a very difficult case to, I think, to discern motive because there's so many possible options. There's so many possible motives you can consider in terms of the research, looking at the research and what the research would suggest and patterns that the research would suggest,

there's no particularly clear category. And again, I think this is why it's really important in this case that presumably a forensic evaluator will, depending on the circumstances, will do an interview or conduct an interview with Ashley and try to kind of, assuming the defense wants that, that they'll kind of do a deep dive and try to figure out some of the motives and they'll get a better picture of her life.

And of course, none of that will be shared publicly. But there are some other categories of Philicide, by the way, that are interesting to think about too that I didn't talk about. So I talked about kind of the main categories. But I'm just going to read some of these other categories that would be interesting to consider. Some of these we've talked about, altruistic, acute psychosis, postpartum, psychosis, unwanted child, unwanted pregnancy.

There's that one. Angry impulse. So that could be. I wouldn't call it impulsive. They say it was plotted, planned, calculated, and cold-blooded, but angry. Spousal revenge, which is consistent with retaliatory, which I don't necessarily.

Could she be angry? with her father for dying almost for leaving her in this situation? I mean, we know that it was an accident. Well, we don't know, I guess. We've been told it was an accident. We weren't there. The crash, the motorcycle crashed, but could she still say. But I think it's, but it's hard, it would be hard to harm a deceased spouse, right? It would have to be, it would have to be in fantasy, obviously. And I think that's what I think the stronger argument, if you're going to argue that it's some type of spousal revenge or retaliatory, you'd have to say that she is acting that out on her daughter. Yeah. Right. She's angry at her daughter. Right. She's projecting all of that onto melody. Right. Other categories would be of possible thylicide motives or types, social abuse. Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a violent child, negligence or neglect, sadistic punishment, that could be it.

Drug and or alcohol abuse and seizures. So, you know, if you go through each of these types of thylicide and you really kind of drill down a little bit, it seems to me that we would tend to land. I would tend to land more in the arena of maybe psychopathic features because there's a sadistic element here. Yes, very. Driven by some trauma with some mental health issues. So again, now we're kind of pulling together all these categories.

A lot of pieces to this puzzle. Right. We're pulling together all these categories. that with with underlying attachment issues. So it begins, I think it begins with attachment and it begins with perhaps even intergenerational issues around attachment, begins with insecure attachment, and then you see all these other elements play out. And by the way, insecure attachment can also be tied into personality disorders.

So oftentimes children with insecure attachment styles are much, are much more prone to develop personality disorders, which could include such things as Cluster B personalities like Borderline Personality Disorderly Disorder or antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy. Or narcissistic personality disorder. Or narcissistic, right. Yeah, any of those, Cluster B. The argument for the psychopathic category, I think, and I say category, and I'm not diagnosing

here obviously, but the argument is the sadistic nature of this crime. that execution style. I mean, we don't know exactly how that happened, but shooting your daughter in the head. Yeah. Multiple times. Presumably, the, presumably melody sees or knows at some point that her mother's going to do that.

I mean, can you imagine? She's seeing her daughter's reaction to what's about to happen. Right. Can you imagine the horror? I mean, maybe she sedated her. Maybe I don't know. I mean, I hope perhaps that she didn't, have to face the horror of that.

How did she not? I don't know. I think the sadistic nature of this crime and the amount of premeditation and right, even though it was sloppy and a lot of the planning elements weren't worked out very well, which it indicates some mental health issues. And there's probably some, obviously there's some lingering trauma here. Like, I just can't get past how this fits more into that category of male paternal Philicide. Right. That was the first thing you said when you learned this. You're like,

this is something that's usually in paternal filicide, not maternal. This is unusual. Right. It's it's not, it's a very atypical for a mother to murder their nine-year-old daughter with a gun. And so again, like I said, just the horror, just the terror that her daughter must have experience in those last moments of her life is unimaginable, right? And so I keep going back to that element, to that sadistic element of this crime. Now, you could say that perhaps, you know, it's interesting when we did our first show, her sister, her sister said something to the effect of, well, Ashley has no emotion at all, right? There's a quote from her sister basically saying, My sister has no emotion.

She's emotionless. Did she seem hostile towards you? No, she doesn't really have, like, much emotion. Like, very just straight face, like, no emotion at all. Right, and so that would be consistent with this category, too. Yes. this this category of phyllisides with more of a psychopathic feature and that we know a lot of the research by James Blair on psychopathy shows that a lot of psychopaths don't have a moan they're not

capable of experience and emotion in depth they're emotionless to a large degree and so her sister points that out right you have this lack of emotion and you also you have this like if you think about, we talked about this in our first show too, if you think about pulling her from school, right, pulling her from school and not caring, right? Not even making an attempt to make it look like she's doing homework at home or, right? Like, just, just bucking the system. Yes. Entirely. Going against all the social norms for a nine-year-old to be in school and to be learning and interacting with other students, that is also very antisocial.

Like not caring whatsoever about her daughter's well-being or about the fact that she's, you know, that she should be in school. Not caring about her daughter's welfare. Obviously, if you've decided to murder your daughter, you don't care about her welfare, but the point is there's something very antisocial about all that.

The lack of emotion, breaking, you know, bucking the system, breaking the rules about school. not caring about it, right? Defiance to the rules a little bit. Yeah, defiance. I'm not even going to worry about picking up her school work. This is none of your business. It's a defiance to social norms and to the rule set for her and children in school.

This feels like a mother who doesn't want her child around that she, because of her own traumas and her own insecure attachments and her own frustrations around her ability to bomb with her mother, her inability to become, which maybe I'm wrong about that, but it's, it seems like there's issues with her mother, probably, attachment with her mother. This seems like someone who, for those reasons, that really is indifferent to her child's welfare. And I think there's, you have, in particular, you have this, because of these potential attachment failures, you really have this inability to bond.

Right. And if you don't have that capacity, if you don't feel close to your daughter, then what? I mean, if you don't feel close to your daughter, I mean, most mothers that might struggle with this, they're not going to murder them. No, you know, ask somebody else to take care of them. I think that's where we were all going. You know, the hope was maybe there was a handoff. Or better, or like, worst case scenario.

hand your child over to CPS or to the state to care for like don't murder your child in what world do you think that's a good solution to this problem and in this and then in this way putting on wigs and going on a cross-country and again that that speaks state road trip that speaks to some of the sadistic component too because like in domestic violence cases where where homicide occurs quite often or more than you'd expect, you know, a typical response might be, well, if you're having these marital problems, just get a divorce. You don't, why kill her?

And the answer is because there's something retaliatory about it. True. And so it's the same situation here. Right. It seems like an easy answer to say, well, just hand her off to the state, right? Like, let her live. But that would suggest that there's more.

There's more of an emotional component to this crime than we're aware of. You're exactly right. That's what we always say. What's wrong with divorce? Why not get a divorce when we hear about, you know, spousal homicides all the time. Just get divorce. It's a similar dynamic. Just give her to CPS.

Just walk away. Give her to a grandparent. But she doesn't. So, right, there's something more emotional to this. Right. That would go to retaliatory. Right. Why does she want to harm her daughter?

Again, I think that would go back to maybe that would tie into some of her own traumas, that she's maybe perhaps because of her childhood traumas, she is projecting all of her anger and all of her hurt and her wounds from childhood onto her daughter. And by murdering her somehow, she feels like maybe she can get a clean slate. Maybe she can, right, I don't know, she can pick up from her past or somehow erase her past in such a way that that trauma is gone. It's gone. Like her child becomes the embodiment of all of her past pains and wounds and hurts.

And by murdering her, she clings to this fantasy that perhaps that means she can start over. Well, thank you for your analysis tonight. I know that many of us are, it's not just me left in shock, disbelief, heartache after that press conference and listening to Sheriff Bill Brown with the Santa County Sheriff's Department share the fate of Melody Buzzard. So, thank you. I did have a final thought, by the way, and that is, some people, a lot of times people ask me, were there any red flags? And I've identified quite a few of those potentially. Right. But there's another red flag in here that I think a lot of people aren't aware of. And that is that Ashley did have previous self-harming attempts. And that doesn't necessarily mean, that doesn't mean it, there's no direct correlation between self-harming and later violent behavior towards other.

people. However, there is research consistent with the idea that someone who engages in self-harming behavior, which is a form of aggression directed inward towards yourself, is more likely to engage in violent behavior towards other people, which essentially is aggression directed outward. So if you're willing to direct aggression towards yourself in such a violent fashion, you're also more likely to direct that aggression outward in the form of potential homicide or murder. There's research supporting this idea, by the way. So that in and of itself wouldn't necessarily be indicative of what occurred here of philicide, but when combined with all these other elements,

with the lack of emotion, with some of the antisocial qualities that we've talked about with the attachment issues, right? When you start pulling these all together, you start developing, I think, a coherent picture of how this could happen. So I wanted to mention that piece because I think that's an important piece here. And it's also worth mentioning, by the way,

if a mother is willing to self-harm, which she did in 2021-ish, she was hospitalized for that. She's also saying she doesn't really care if her daughter is left alone in the world. I know. Right? Like that's part of this.

Yes. She's showing indifference to her daughter back then. True. Right. And so in some ways, that becomes a precursor to what we're seeing now. It's just, I don't think you could, it would be very hard.

hard to predict this level of violence occurring down the road. Right. That is not this. That is never that. Yeah. However, now that we're looking back on this in hindsight, like when you start putting all these pieces together, I think it starts adding up and it makes worse sense.

And she had lost Melody a couple of times, I believe. There were two people who housed Melody temporary. melody temporarily too. Again, that's not that. But when we're looking at the final horrendous act, we look back at these other things. Right, exactly. Could this have been prevented?

I mean, there were definitely some red flags. But I don't think anyone could have ever predicted this, ever. Not at this level. Not even I, you know, I immediately did start to lose hope. when law enforcement stopped talking and asking for the public's help and time went on, I certainly lost hope. I was with you. I don't think he was going to be found alive, but never did I ever.

I thought maybe there was a handoff or maybe another abuser or maybe somebody she hired or maybe abandonment. Yeah. never gunshot wounds to the head by her own mother right this level of violence and sadistic behavior it's it's it was right it it's it's atypical and it's unimaginable and you know the defiance of her arrest they had to pry open the door they had to pry open the door and when they got in and the video of her walking and handcuffs and her high-heel booties, sort of like standing tall, leading the way. There was an air of defiance to her as she marched off in the handcuffs. Well, and there was.

And then to learn that she was still not cooperating. That was a question by a reporter. No, she is not talking. She is not cooperating still. And there was a lack of cooperation in the past with the false imprisonment. Correct. Issues, right? Correct.

She's always had kind of this defiant oppositional attitude towards law enforcement. And obviously that's a bad sign too. Yeah. Yeah. So rest in peace, validity. She was a beautiful girl with a beautiful smile. Many people asking too also why there weren't any older photos of her, the last one being about when she's six or seven.

And I think that shows another red flag. to that someone didn't care enough to. Right. Take photos of her life as she grew up. Right. Exactly. And that would show this, that would show this potential projection of all her hurt and anger from her childhood

onto her daughter and this inability to bomb with her because of that. Because of her struggles with her mother and her childhood or homelessness, she just couldn't connect. with her daughter. And it seems like, by the way, that much of her history with her daughter showed that struggle. One last question. Actually, why? She allegedly told Tyler the man that she was charged, the charges haven't dropped. But the man she was charged with false imprisonment against the victim. Charges now drop. but she allegedly told Tyler about dropping melody off with somebody else. It's clearly a made-up story.

I mean, just as that goes just like hiding a bit of it and thinking she could get away with this or is this? Yeah. I mean, like the whole trip. Well, while the trip is a reenactment of her nine-year-old, her own nine-year-old journey with her mother. hiding wigs yeah it's also a part of this trip is to throw people off her trail right it's to confuse people pushing the license plate the license plate and also if you're going to you know if you're going to murder someone it's it's it's pretty devious to to do that in such a way that year, Israel Keys did this. Israel Keys would travel all the time, right, to throw people off the

trail so they couldn't figure out where he was. If you're going to murder someone, do it on a 3,000 mile trip around the country where law enforcement will have to get, like you're going through different jurisdictions. And while law enforcement may believe that something happened, a murder happened somewhere, like where? Where? Where? They did. They said, thank you to the FBI, who helped us in San Francisco, who helped us in Denver,

who helped us in Las Vegas, who helped us in Utah, who helped us in Kansas City. Thank you to the St. George Police Department. I mean, right, they were naming multi-states and multi-cities who had to help and come together. But at the end of the day, if it wasn't for the people who found it. the body. I know. If the people who were taking pictures, apparently, I don't. Can you imagine being those two out, taking beautiful photos, beautiful landscape?

I understand what photographers would be out there. But it's very rural, unincorporated, you know, off the beaten track. People in Utah saying in the chat, I've never even heard of this place. Yeah. You know? Right. Yeah. Can you imagine those too?

they didn't find the body, I'm not sure we would be talking about this, right? And so, so I think that's part of it. This was a ruse to throw law enforcement off the trail. And so that's, I think that's consistent with what she told Tyler. That makes sense. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yes, helping us all sort of maybe think about a few other things. And of course, we don't know her motive. We don't know why. But it's definitely given us some things to think about and maybe hopefully try to understand what's hidden. Yeah. I think maybe this discussion will help people hone in a little bit on possible motive. I think that just the research on philocyte and the different types and can be helpful. But at the end of the day, I think

there have, we need to know more. If I were going to really get to Motive, I would need to do a really in-depth interview with Ashley at some point in testing and a full forensic evaluation to figure it out. Right, which is what. So this is scratching the surface, but I think probably

we'll get us somewhat close to Motiv. Thank you everyone for being here. And we'll see you next day. Okay. Good night. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in. ORA actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off.

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