← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Melodee Buzzard’s Mom Arrested, But Not for Her Daughter’s Disappearance?
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Oh, oh, oh.
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O'Reilly.
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Check engine ABS or maintenance light on. Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE Certified Master Technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today. Oh, oh, oh.
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O'Reilly Auto Parts. Hey, everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead serious. It finally happened. It finally happened. I have been waiting for this for like at least two weeks, but closer to a month. The mother of Melody Buzzard has finally been arrested. I know, I kind of thought it was going to happen a long time ago, but finally it happened. Today I'm recording this November 7th. It was like a scene kind of like out of a movie. Suddenly the front yard was swarming with cops, right? And they get her in cuffs. But as it turns out, it's not for the missing daughter. The arrest is not because her 9 year old girl hasn't been seen by anyone for over a month and she's stonewalling the cops. It's something else entirely. They blocked the road in front of her house. All these FBI officers and local sheriffs and police officers show up, they go into her house, they search the house again. They come out of the house with evidence bags again. She's barefoot. I mean, no time for shoes. But it's not for the missing girl. I'm about to tell you everything that happened. And thank God for the neighbors because they are keeping a very close eye on this lady. At least they have been. Now she's got new neighbors in the county lockup. But we also got something else. New video. And by the way, it is the first time that we are seeing Melody and her mom, Ashley Buzzard, reacting on video together. First time we're seeing it, we've seen little snapshots that the, you know, sheriff's department or the FBI have parsed out to us in this case. Have you seen this girl? Have you seen this mom? Look at the wigs. But now they're releasing the video of when Ashley Buzzard took took Melody Buzzard to a car rental agency in California and then took off on a three day road trip all the way to Nebraska and back. Problem is, when she got back, Melody wasn't with her and she won't say where she is. So just when you think you know what's coming next, something comes completely out of left field. Although honestly, not exactly left field. It's kind of more like the parking Lot on the other side of the fence. And so it was this afternoon in the Melody Buzzard mystery, that nine year old California girl who's not been seen for a month now. Wow. Was there ever action and more action in her front yard today than that yard has seen in years. And I'm going to show it all to you. If you followed the coverage of the case, you may have thought, as I did, that it was only a matter of time before Melody's mom, Ashley was going to be taken away in handcuffs. She has stonewalled police and FBI at every single turn. And once she even ripped down her own daughter's missing person posters on her own yard. Her every move has been tracked by plainclothes officers. Right. Investigators who did an hours long search of the family's home in the town of Lompoc. That was a week ago yesterday. So what happened today? Like why all of a sudden the. The Rambo stuff, Right? It was like I told you, like a movie. Half dozen police cruisers swoop in and they bust Melody's mom, right? And Ashley's taken away in cuffs, in bare feet, and still wearing the same wig that she had on earlier this week when we saw her with moving boxes. Remember that moving boxes are delivered to her house and she's walking with these flattened moving boxes to put them into the garage. Why? What are you doing with the moving boxes? Ashley Buzzard, your daughter's missing. P.S. why do you have moving boxes? So we have video from a side angle that is exclusive, by the way, shot by a neighbor who has been watching Ashley Buzzard almost as closely as the feds have been. But then came the surprise again. Not arrested for anything connected to her daughter's missing persons case. So why six cop cars, right? Why lead her away without even letting her get her shoes? Apparently for very good reason. She was arrested, ready for false imprisonment. Well, I did not see that coming. Nope. I did not expect that she was falsely imprisoning someone because we've been worried about the child not being there, not being falsely imprisoned. We were hoping maybe she was being falsely imprisoned, but that she was in there and alive. And eventually the door would open and. And little Melody Buzzard would come out. Not the case. False imprisonment. It turns out the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office said, and I will quote them, detectives learned of a recent incident where Ashley prevented a victim from leaving a location against their will. They won't even say his or her will, just their will. And they won't say who the victim is and they won't say exactly when or where this allegedly happened. They insist, quote, it is not connected to the ongoing search for Melody. Yeah, I didn't have that on my bingo card either. But they also say this, and this is curious that they can't give any more specifics away because it would, quote, impede the ongoing investigation. So it's not connected to the ongoing investigation, but telling you about it would impede the ongoing. You can make of it what you will. I am thoroughly flummoxed by that. But we do know that the police thought this was big and serious because they shut down the entire road in front of Ashley's house to make this arrest. And multiple officers were in and out of that house carrying, one of them at least carrying paper bags as he left. Don't forget, this has already happened. Right. They already did an hours long search carrying evidence bags out. Usually how it works is the cops have to write out a specific list on the warrant right handed to a judge. This is what we think we're going to find. This is what we want to investigate when we get in there. Judge, please let us into this citizen's house. Right. And so they went and they searched and they brought things out. But when they were in there, it is entirely possible they saw some things, but they're not on the warrant so they can't take them. It's very frustrating. I know, I get it. But look, it's all about your rights. You know, you have to have rights. You don't want a Gestapo nation where boot, you know, boot strappers can just walk in and, and grab you and your family and hood you and throw you in the gulag and take all your stuff. We have rights. So it's frustrating for police, but when they see something in the search, they go back to the judge and they say, hey, judge, I want another warrant. And this has to be really serious because the judge is like, look, you already been in this person's house and if they're innocent is bad. So my guess is they got the other warrant for the stuff that they saw that they couldn't take and that's why they were carting stuff out today as well as Ashley. That's an arrest warrant. That's different than a search warrant. But for now, Ashley Buzzard is being held at the county jail in Santa Barbara and they set her bail pretty high. Hundred thousand dollars. I don't have a spare hundo laying around. I don't know about you, but that's pretty hard to make bail, right? You got to make 10% of it usually find your bail bondsman. I don't know who would do that for her, right? I don't think she's got anybody helping her out right now because the family, any family she's got. It's a bit weird. Melody, the child's father, is dead. And that family, his family, she's completely cut them off. Her family, early in this disappearance, wanted to find little Melody, but then suddenly they were like, tick a lock, man. They weren't talking at all. And I got really sus about Melody's mom because she was hanging up on reporters and stuff. And it's like, if you're. If your granddaughter's missing, where are you in the effort to find her, right? What are you doing to help find your missing granddaughter? Or do you know something? Why are you stonewalling? Right? This is your daughter acting insanely erratic and you're not doing anything about this. Grandma, get off the pot, you know? But Grandma didn't. So maybe she knows something and maybe grandma will go get a bail bondsman. I don't know. 100 grand sitting in the pokey for what we know tonight. As of right now, again, November 7th is when I'm recording this. She ain't making bond. Earlier tonight, though, I spoke with Melody's father's cousin. Her name is Vanjie Ruiz. And boy, the news of Ashley's arrest was big, big. Here's what she had to say.
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Knowing that she was arrested means that something. It was a bad outcome. It was going to be a bad outcome. It means that they found something bad. It means that they had probable cause to arrest her. So just knowing that she was arrested just broke my heart. I just felt. I just felt really sad about the whole situation, like what she could have done with her and what could have happened. And there was a lot of things just going through my mind. Then I started searching all the news, all the news clips that were being posted, and I started just reading everything and listening to everything. And I found out that her arrest had nothing to do with the case. And that just gave me a lot of hope. It made me feel so much better. Then I started thinking, okay, then what could they have arrested her for? And I called my husband. I was like, maybe they just arrested her because they saw her with the boxes and she was trying to flee, and they. They try to grab her on anything they could just to keep her. To keep her in this area and arrest her and ask her questions.
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In another super annoying move. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office is not Releasing Ashley Buzzard's mugshot. Look, it's weird. Every jurisdiction's a little different. Some jurisdictions don't release them at all. They make it really hard. You can FOIA them, you know, public information request, which, which I've done. It takes time and they can say no. And for whatever reason, they've determined that it is not helpful to the case and they won't be releasing that publicly. Watch this space, though, because I figure sooner rather than later, we're going to get it right. I'm wondering if she's going to be wearing that wig because when they arrested her, she was wearing the same wig that she was wearing when she was wandering around with her purse on her shoulder and her fancy boots moving the, the moving boxes from her house to her garage. I typically don't dress up and put a purse on my shoulder to move moving boxes between my house and garage, but she didn't really. She didn't leave the property. So why was she dressed up? Because today she went out barefoot. No purse. They got her quick. Anyway, I kind of want to know what happened when she got to the lockup because I'm old enough to know what Phil Spector looked like in all of his mug shots. And it was like, Lindsay, you got to show the little. The mug shots of Phil Spector over the years in court. He just came in, he came in these insane wigs, giant, huge afros and then little page boy, 1960s blonde dues. And it was crazy the way he showed up for court. But then he got his mug shots and he was full balding. You don't typically get to wear your wig in jail. Typically that's taken off you along with all your piercings and your jewelry and everything else you got. And then you get your prison scrubs and you get photographed and off you go to the pokey. So I want to know what the wigs are all about and what's under them. Maybe that will be in the mug shot. So again, watch this space like, and subscribe and all the rest. Because if you subscribe and I drop this on a real short, you'll get, you know, a ping and you'll see it. So one thing I will give the sheriff in this is that they did something today I really appreciated. They finally released video surveillance video of that now very familiar visit that Ashley Buzzard made a car rental office back on October 7 with her child in hand. Right? Ashley in a crazy ass wig again, has her daughter Melody hood up wearing what looked like a straightened brown wig that's what the cops think. They think it's a brown wig and they have good reason to. I'll tell you why in a minute. But you saw pictures and still shots before of them. Now you get to see the video right here they are interacting with each other at the counter. It's the first time you're seeing movement between these two. What's really interesting here is that the investigators now say that Ashley swapped out her wigs multiple times during her three day road trip with her daughter. Okay. They say that she left on the road trip wearing this one, the, the long curly one that you see in the video. But they say when she came back to California, she was wearing a wig that the deputies say looked just like her daughter's. That's upsetting on a lot of counts. So for one thing, did she get rid of her daughter and then just use the wig? Maybe there's an innocent explanation, I don't know. The other thing is, I couldn't tell personally from the hoodie photo that Melody was wearing a wig because she's got brown hair. And in her older pictures from years ago, which is the most recent picture anyone has of her, sadly, she's got very, very curly hair. But that can be straightened, Right. When you're nine years old, you could still use a straightener. Maybe she straightened a shorter haircut, I don't know. But the police seem to think that it's a wig. Maybe because they saw Ashley wearing a straightened dark wig that's the same length coming back. Or maybe, and this is where my mind is going, maybe they have other photos along the way where the hood is not up and the hairdo changes for little Melody because they seem damn sure that the kid is wearing a wig. And I couldn't be damn sure who from the videos and the photos that we've seen. So watch this space again, because the police keep this in the public eye. They're still looking for a live child. Right. They're going to keep this in the public eye by doling out little bits and pieces of information and photographs and videos to us, the press, to keep us interested and to keep you engaged. That's usually the strategy for trying to find a child or a missing person. I can tell you this, the police have said that the last time that Melody was seen alive with her mother was on 9 October, two days after she left California with her mom. And it wasn't in Nebraska. Right. They said the trip went all the way to Nebraska and came back via Kansas. But what the Police say is that they saw Melody and Ashley together, and they're a little bit koi on this one near the Utah, Colorado border. And they actually said, in the area of. I know a border to be, you're either on one side or another, you're either a little pregnant or you're either pregnant or not. Not a little pregnant, but in the area of the Utah, Colorado border. So my feeling is they may have a picture, and maybe that's where they can see that Melody's wearing different hair, and maybe it's obvious that it's a wig. Like I said, I am waiting for that information. But as far as switching wigs goes, that was not the only thing that Ashley Buzzard was switching on this road trip. Police say that she also switched the license plates on the rental car. Again, Melody's last scene with Mom, October 9th, near the Colorado, Utah border. But mom returns to California the next day without Melody and had swapped plates from California to New York back to California. So she leaves with California plates, switches the plates to New York plates on the same rental car. And they said, I'm sorry, neither that car nor that woman is connected to the New York plates that she swapped onto the car, but she swaps the plates back to California when she's arriving back in California. And we all kind of have a feeling as to why, because there's plate readers out there. Maybe she's not so discombobulated that she knows about plate readers and she doesn't want to be tracked on her way to Nebraska and back. Right where she got New York plates. It's a good one. Did she have them when she left California? Did she steal them off of other vehicles that she came in contact with on the road trip? It's interesting that they were New York plates, right? How'd she get them? Where are they now? I feel like they're in one of those evidence bags, right? Or maybe she tossed them out once she got back to the rental agency. Or maybe even along the way, maybe she tossed the New York plates out, but they have her. They have that car with those plates, and they know it's her, and they know it's that rental car. So I am fascinated by what. What evidence they've got, what photos do they have? What did they see? Or is it a witness who said, oh, no, I saw them. I saw this pair. I noticed the crazy hair on this lady. But they were in a car that said New York. Yeah, it was a Malibu. Yeah, it was that rental carpet. It was said New York. The Plate said New York. I looked. I was interested. It could be that. That could be it. We don't know. But what happened between the last time police have a beat on melody, October 9th, and the day that her mom came home alone without her, October 10, the next day. What happened between those two days is a big mystery, as big as it has ever, ever been. So the big question now remains. Will Ashley Buzzard talk now that she has at least one charge hanging over her head? Is that charge gonna stick? You know what they do typically when you're trying to get information out of someone, you start loading up the charges and you do what's called the squeeze, right? You squeeze them so that you can get information. Like, you don't want to spend 35 years in prison, do you? Here's the charge. Here's the evidence. We have to support the charge. Either talk or you're going away. You talk and we'll pull these back. I mean, that's typically how the negotiations work when you're trying to find a kid, when you're trying to find a person. Sometimes they even negotiate like that when you're trying to find a body. Because if you find the body, who cares about the other charges? Earlier on my News Nation show, Shout Out News Nation. I'm on Monday to Friday, 10pm Eastern. I had a chance to talk with one of the finest legal minds in California or any other state in the union and a real friend of my show as well, Mark Garagos. I had a lot of questions for Mark because he's from California and God knows he's done cases like this before. So here's our conversation. Mark Garagos, what do you make of these developments and that arrest today?
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Well, it was interesting that they went out of their way to say or put out that it was not in connection with the disappearance of her daughter. That tells me that somebody saw this, came forward, made an accusation, and I'm going to guess that even though the arrest was not for the disappearance, I'm the cynical type and I'm going to just wildly speculate that they used the arrest and $100,000 arrest warrant or bond amount so that they could hold her and see if they could get her talk about the disappearance.
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That's what I thought. But they should have arrested her long ago for not producing the little girl. I feel like, you know, this little girl's been gone for a month, and I feel if the squeeze play was their angle here, why didn't they do it sooner?
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I just don't think they have enough right now. I, once again, I'll wildly speculate. A lot of times these things have to do with an absent or a non custodial parent, that there is some kind of friction, that there is some kind of a domestic issue. I mean, they always look for. Law enforcement always looks for where is the father, where is some other relative. And that's what they focus on, you know, taking somebody and using wigs and going through all of the machinations of disguising yourself to take her to someplace near the border and then come back. Looks like she's got a confederate or somebody who is working with her.
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So what do you make of the moving boxes, do you think? No, I hear you. I hear you totally. But I'm wondering about the moving boxes because when I saw that on Wednesday, two days ago, I thought, oh, that can't be good. Look, we could all have boxes for different reasons. But seeing moving boxes all flattened as though they had just been delivered, would that make police nervous enough to say, find something, get something to hold this woman before she disappears in the middle of the night, like, you know, Brian Laundrie?
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Well, I think that. I think exactly what happened. I don't know that anything untoward happened in everybody, I'm sure, hopes that nothing untoward happened with the little girl. However, you can construct a scenario. And I've seen this exact scenario. I mean, that's why it's not my imagination as much as just kind of PTSD from a prior number of cases I've had. They took that. She could have taken the little girl disguised, handed her off to somebody else for the time being, gone back, she was going to move and then she was going to reconnect with the little girl. And the moving boxes were just because she was going to move to another location, wherever she's got her little girl and whoever is holding her. That to me is, if you're hoping for a happy ending, that's the best thing you can hope for.
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Yeah, I just cannot imagine a mother who stonewalls non stone stop cps, police officers, sheriff's department, visitors and the FBI until, you know, ends up in handcuffs, barefoot, being led to a cruiser. Let me go back to the false imprisonment charge for a moment because I was all sorts of danger. Go ahead.
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Right. I was just going to say you. I can, I can think of a. It's not an innocent explanation, but I can think of a, an explanation that she has got some kind of fear or she's trying, she's in some kind of a situation. Where she needs to secrete her daughter away, and she doesn't want to engage and she doesn't want to do anything else to give anybody any clues. And by the way, it appears, at least from what I've heard or what I've read, that there isn't any kind of a custodial order that would prevent her from doing this. So if that's what it is, and if that's driving her or the motivation, there isn't necessarily anything illegal about anything that she's done.
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Well, the, you know, CPS came along weeks ago and said 72 hours produced the child, but it wasn't the police. Like in Lori Valo's case, the police said produced the children, and then when she didn't, they arrested her. They chased her to Hawaii and they arrested her. That did not happen in this case, which surprises me. But I want to ask you about that false imprisonment charge, because I was gaming all kinds of scenarios. Was the false imprisonment someone, like you said, coming out of the woodwork saying, I've seen that crazy lady on tv and this is what happened to me. Was it possibly false imprisonment of Melody that maybe they saw somewhere along that road trip, or maybe could it have been the police who were in her home and she barred them from leaving with some envelopes or evidence? Is it any. Is that possible, any of those scenarios?
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Anything is. A lot of judges tell me when you ask the question, is it possible? And they say, objection, speculation. Sustained. Anything is possible. Look, anything is possible. What is most likely? I always talk about bell curves. And the most likely scenario. The most likely scenario is that somebody came forward and said that she did something like this to. To me or something in connection with the investigation. She wouldn't let me leave, and I wanted to leave. They used that as a pretext to try to arrest her at this point, because they didn't have, and they still don't have at least what's been reported a crime here. And if they don't have a crime, they can't just arrest her to sweat her, I think is what the expression is. But they could arrest her if they had an independent crime in order to try to out figure, figure out or get her to talk. Once she was in custody, I learned.
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Something new every day. Sweating them out. Quick question about the mugshot, and I only have 20 seconds left. But they didn't release a mug shot with this lady, and the bail's at 100,000. I don't know that false imprisonment is typically $100,000 bail, but she does seem like the kind that's a flight risk. Weigh in on both of those. The mug shot and the bail amount.
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I think the mug shot will come out. Somebody will make a public records request if the media hasn't done it already, and then usually that gets complied with. The bail amount is a. Or can be according to schedule. I haven't looked at the Santa Barbara schedule, bail schedule, but for most felonies, 50 or $100,000 would not be out of line.
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So the mystery is going to continue until Ashley Buzzard makes her first appearance. Because there's going to have to be some kind of probable cause hearing, something to, you know, lay out to the judge why they're holding her. Right. Habeas corpus means you gotta let me know why you're holding me or you gotta legally be holding me. And so hopefully we'll get a little bit more information from whatever affidavits end up being filed. Because I want to know who exactly is it who said I wasn't allowed to leave of my own volition? And that woman, Ashley Buzzard, held me back from leaving because that's kidnapping. That's false imprisonment. FYI, you should know this. I will never Forget learning this. O.J. simpson went to prison for nine years for kidnapping, Right. And robbery. Robbery as well, of a. You know, sports memorabilia. But the kidnapping legally was defined as having moved these guys from one side of the hotel room to the other side of the hotel room at gunpoint, under duress, moving them against their will to. To the other side of the hotel room. That's where kidnapping kicked in. And I'm like, what? I thought you had to, like, hold them for a certain amount of time. Nope. You prevent somebody from leaving, and that's kidnapping. False imprisonment. You move somebody against their will from one spot to another spot, even within the same room. That's what O.J. simpson got clipped for. So I keep thinking there could be a small potatoes kind of scenario that they've been able to actually hold her on. And I mentioned it to Mark, but I still keep thinking, like, what if the cops are going to take something out of her house and she bars them from getting through the door? You can't take that. You can't leave. Bam. That's false imprisonment. Now that's pushing it, right? Because you're a cop with a gun. But if you needed to hold her on something, that's why I asked him, could it be a cop? What about Melody? Is it possible they have evidence somewhere along this trip that. That Ashley held her daughter Melody against her will? Do they he. Did they hear something? Did they see something? Did they have video of something? That's a harder one, right? Because your child is your child. And like, who doesn't say you're grounded, you're being held against your will, right? That's a little harder. But locking a child up in some way, that's different. Do they have evidence of that somewhere along that trip? Or is it really someone who came forward and said, jesus, I've seen this story. That lunatic did that to me, came out of the woodwork. Who knows? I thought of a lot of different ways they could have held Ashley Buzzard. Like, how about produce the children or we're going to arrest you just like they did Lori Valo. That would have been easy. They didn't do that. They had some random false imprisonment reason. Okay, you got her. I hope the squeeze play works. I hope sweating her out works. I hope we find that little girl and I hope we find her alive. Like I said, subscribe so that when I get these updates and they come fast and fur serious, I may drop them as little shorts. And I do want you to be able to be informed just when it happens. So subscribe. And then, by the way, by product, you get all the other stuff too. I'm Ashley Banfield. Thank you so much for listening and watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead seriously.