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Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Missing Child Mystery: Colby Ryan Joins Ashleigh Banfield to Discuss the Melodee Buzzard Case
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- [00:00]
Colby Ryan
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Ashley Banfield
Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious. As for tonight's episode, I am really glad that you are here because there's a case out of California that has really gotten under my skin and I am dying to know if you guys feel the same way that I do about it. It's about a missing girl and a mom who doesn't seem to care that the rest of us are really upset about it, especially the fact that her family and the police are looking for this little girl. And mom ain't helping. It's giving serious vibes of another story that I began covering over a half decade ago. And here's how that story started. With two children nobody could find and a mother with no explanation. There was a deadline to produce those children, but it came and went with no answers and still no child. When we jumped on this story years ago, the uncooperative mom was named Lori Vallow. There was a boy whom Idaho police were desperate to find. His name was J.J. valo, age 7, whose grandparents hadn't seen him in months. But investigators quickly discovered that JJ's big sister, Tyler Ryan was also missing. A court gave Lori Valo five days to prove that her kids were alive and well. And I do not have to tell you that she didn't and couldn't because they weren't. Valo had taken off to Hawaii with husband number five, Chad Daybell, whom she married two months after the kids were last seen. And two weeks after Daybell's first wife mysteriously died in her bed beside Chad. Lori was out sunning herself by the pool with Chad when police came to Hawaii and approached her with a subpoena. And it was all deliciously captured on body cam.
- [02:09]
Colby Ryan
Do you have any questions regarding that? Any questions? You have any questions for that? No?
- [02:25]
Ashley Banfield
Okay. And if you remember all of this half as well as I do, I am sure that you hoped never to see a story like this again. And yet here we are with a mystery surrounding a nine year old girl named Melody Buzzard of Lompoc, California. That's about 50 miles west of Santa Barbara and about 150 miles west of LA. We have been on Melody's story for over a week now. She was reported missing two weeks ago tomorrow and today it is October 27th. As I'm recording this, school officials were the ones who actually told police that neither she nor her mom had been in to pick up her school assignments. Ashley Buzzard, her mom, had signed her daughter up for Independent Learning in August. Basically homeschooling so when police went to the family's home, they saw Ashley, but they did not see Melody there. They said Ashley had, quote, no verifiable explanation for the little girl's whereabouts. And just like Lori Valo, Ashley Buzzard was stonewalling Melody's extended family members, too. So you should know that Melody's dad died in a motorcycle accident when she was just a baby. And his relatives say that they had not been allowed to see that little girl in years. On Friday, we brought you a potential breakthrough. Police released some surveillance photos of Melody. It was Melody with her mom at a car rental office in California on October 7th. Weirdly, Melody, the police said, appeared to be wearing a wig. Detectives say that both Melody and her mom got in that rental car and drove as far as Nebraska, but that Ashley brought that rental car home three days later with no sign of Melody in it or anywhere else. That was October 10th. Police were brought in by the school district on October 14th. And this mystery also had a deadline. It was reported last week that Ashley, just like Lori Vallow, was given a deadline to produce her daughter this time, 72 hours or else.
- [04:50]
Interviewer
Now, we and a lot of other.
- [04:51]
Ashley Banfield
News outlets reported that detail, but we all later learned that it didn't actually come from the police. That ultimatum didn't come from the police or from the courts. It instead came from child protective services. So I have to be honest with you, it's entirely unclear to me, to my staff on my News Nation show, or do a lot of other journalists what this or else actually meant because last we checked, there was no arrest warrant for Ashley Buzzard and still no trace of Melody and that whole 72 hour business that is long come and gone. I should note that it took weeks to arrest Lori Valo, but Lori had amscrayed to Hawaii. So she's in another state 4,000 miles away. It's a little tougher. Melody's mom, Ashley, she's home. For all we know, she's right there in Lompoc, California. Back in this family home that many years ago was was filthy with a fridge full of rotting food and complaints that she might have actually been feeding the child the rotting food. My guest on this episode lived through every second of that kind of a nightmare and he fears for what might have befallen Melody. Colby Ryan is Lori Valo's eldest and only surviving child who in the months before JJ and Tyler were found, was begging his mother to produce the kids. Tell him, tell the police where JJ and Tylee were. Didn't Work Laurie wouldn't. Colby has since picked himself up out of the emotional ashes of where that family story took us. Multiple murder convictions for his mother and that new husband of hers. And Colby is soldiering on in life without his mother's horrendous baggage to drag him down. He's made that decision. He launched a YouTube channel where he talks openly to his viewers about the personal cost to him and other victims, family members who suffer in the wake of crimes like he has. I talked to Colby Ryan earlier today on my News Nation show on Banfield. And by the way, he's got a YouTube channel called Colby J. Ryan, and.
- [07:14]
Interviewer
The link is in the description in this podcast.
- [07:16]
Ashley Banfield
But I really wanted to talk to him about this Melody Buzzard missing person's case. Right. I wanted to know from his perspective as a guy who's lived through it, what parallels he sees to his mother Lori Vallow's case and the case of his missing siblings, and whether this particular case gives him any kind of gut feeling. Here's our conversation.
- [07:38]
Interviewer
It's good to have you on. I've been thinking a lot about you as I've been covering this Melody Buzzard story, and I just wanted to get your take on what you think of the development so far.
- [07:49]
Colby Ryan
Well, first of all, it's. It's heartbreaking. And when you see things like this, when you, when it comes to children, it's always extra scary. And, you know, the similarities immediately ring to me. Where a parent should be able to show you their child within a couple of seconds or know where they are at all times. The fearful thing is seeing them for a short amount of time and then them disappearing and all the families wondering, you know, just the similarities are scary. I will personally tell you that. I hope that that is not the case. I never want to see what happened to my family repeated, but it's hard to hear it because there's, for me personally, just too many similarities.
- [08:34]
Interviewer
Do you have a gut instinct on what's happening in the Melody Buzzard story?
- [08:42]
Colby Ryan
I'll tell you that as a parent myself, I could tell you where my kids are 24 7. No matter what's going on, I know where they are at all times, even if they're at school. And it should be very easy to be able to tell anybody where your children are. So I don't have a gut feeling, but I do feel uneasy about it.
- [09:06]
Interviewer
Yeah, I've had a bad feeling since day one. I thought there's just no way that a mom wouldn't just put people at ease over something as important as a little girl. Here's where I'm confused. It doesn't feel to me, at least, that it's being considered an emergency by the police. And I'm wondering if you got that feeling when you and Kay Woodcock were trying desperately to get the police to pay attention to Lori Valo, your mom, and find out where your siblings were.
- [09:40]
Colby Ryan
Yeah, I think the police. It was hard for our case because we had you get so many new departments involved. Right. It's Arizona, it's Idaho, it's. It's all over the place. And then they're looking for Lori and Chad. So, yeah, there is urgency. You need to have urgency for a child like this. But I understand that in some circumstances, the police hand could be tied in some ways. But when it comes to children, I think the priority goes to a very high level. And it has to because their safety is important. And, you know, the police are. Sometimes they're just tied and they can't do something about it.
- [10:16]
Ashley Banfield
So.
- [10:17]
Interviewer
You know what? That is a really good point, and I want you to just pull on that thread a little for me because you've mentioned in the past that when kids are taken out of the system, like this little girl was taken out of the school system and they were homeschooling. Now, the school system did its level best, Right. They didn't come and pick up assignments for a few weeks, and they reported it. But it really complicates the process when the child isn't doing what every other child is doing.
- [10:47]
Colby Ryan
Right, Exactly. And, you know, especially if a parent takes their kid out of school or moves or whatever the case is when they go somewhere else, you don't know. The teachers aren't going to know who they are. They're not going to know that they're missing from another place. Right. So it's. It's complicated. But now that everyone's looking and trying to figure out what's going on with her, it just makes it even more confusing because it really ultimately comes down to where is she and why is the mom not speaking on it? Like, why would that be a hard thing to produce your child?
- [11:19]
Interviewer
Were you surprised at all that? I mean, for me, I just don't understand why they haven't broken down the door. I always feel as though if there's a child missing, worried relatives, and an intransigent mother who has been caught in the past in a circumstance where her home was so derelict and the food was rotting and the grandmother thought the rotting food was being served to the child. There's a background, there's a history. Why aren't they breaking down the door considering this to be an exigent circumstance? Are you feeling the same way?
- [11:55]
Colby Ryan
What I'll tell you is, I mean, obviously the human in you agrees 100%. You have to also just look at, I think, what is the legality of all. I don't know that answer. In my case, we already were told that they were missing. And then it's just this wide search of so many people getting involved and that's when you're. You're holding out hope and you're always, as a family member, going to hold out hope that it's not the worst case scenario. But we have our own version of justice versus what justice looks like in the actual justice system. And I think it can be different for us as the public versus what they have to do to get to those answers.
- [12:38]
Interviewer
Also wanted to ask you about this whole difference between the 72 hour ultimatum that was handed to Melody's mother, Ashley Buzzard. 72 hours produced the Children or else and the orels. I just don't know what that or else is. Originally we thought she'd be hauled off to the county jail. The ultimatum for your mom was 72 hours or we'll put you in cuffs. And ultimately they chased her to Hawaii and they put her in cuffs. Do you have any thoughts on this very unusual CPS process?
- [13:10]
Colby Ryan
I don't know how the CPS worked exactly. I mean, I know in our case that they did go get Lori and she needed that because she did have an ultimatum, she had a deadline, she needed to meet it and she didn't. And the only reason she did it is because she literally couldn't. Now, in this case, you want to hope and pray that that's not the same thing. You hope and pray that this is not the same scenario and that there is something else going on. And, you know, to all of her family members, I would be the same way. You hold that hope to the very end and you keep praying that it's not the worst case. So I don't know too much about the CPS system though, to be honest with you.
- [13:49]
Interviewer
Yeah, I'm just sort of flummoxed and bewildered by it because I thought you give someone an ultimatum and there's a consequence, but I just don't see that playing out, certainly not publicly. If it is playing out, they're holding their cards very close to their chest, which makes me fear there's more to this investigation. Than just a missing child. And God forbid it is a murder investigation, we don't know that to be true. Your thoughts on the process your mom was going through when she was saying to you, don't worry about it, the kids are safe and happy, when in fact the children had already died. Was she lying to you or was she lying to herself and believing her lies herself?
- [14:39]
Colby Ryan
That's a great question. I think honestly she was lying to herself. I don't think she fully believes in her own story, but I think that that is a her protecting herself from the reality of what she's done. And I don't think she's changed in a very long time. So, you know, when it comes to her specifically, she's a very, very different person. And I'm sure anybody who's watched her or listened to her speak, you can tell she's a very, very difficult person and you know, she's dealing with the consequences. But she thinks she's being wronged. Right? She thinks that she did nothing wrong and, and in her mind she's never, she loves her kids and so she, she has this very special case, in my opinion. But it's unfortunate because I've seen some other cases like this where the parent can't produce their child. And you know, there's always something going on mentally with the parent that I've noticed. So it's, it's scary. You don't want anything to happen to children like this.
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Interviewer
Well, and we've heard from the extended family that Ashley Buzzard, Melody's mother, has had some severe mental challenges in the past. Whether that's still ongoing, it does sound like it from the descriptions, but we aren't being told any diagnosis. What advice do you have for the extended family members of Melody Buzzard who are desperate to see that little girl?
- [15:59]
Colby Ryan
You hold out hope no matter what. In as bad as you think it could be, as scary as it is, as many questions, as much as you go back and forth in a 24 hour period, you hold out hope and you pray and you don't give it up. And until you know what has happened, you hold out hope. That is my advice because you don't want to make the scenario in your head. But I don't know if people realize what a prison it is to be scared for someone you love who, especially a child who can't take care of themselves. But honestly, you just hope and you pray. That's my advice.
- [16:37]
Interviewer
Well, conversely, what's your advice for the police in Lompoc, California, who are presumably spearheading this search.
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Colby Ryan
I mean, I'm sure they understand that this is a nine year old girl and, you know, you have to take it seriously. But I don't know what their process is and I don't know what it takes to get all that legal stuff done. I'm not educated in that. But, you know, you have to hope that they continue to continue investigating and hopefully find her as soon as possible.
- [17:12]
Interviewer
Colby, how are you processing everything that happened with your mom?
- [17:19]
Colby Ryan
Yeah, it took a long time. Years of trials, years of pain, and, you know, now I'm in a place where after it's all kind of settled down, I've been able to refocus on my family, focus on my personal healing and growth and, you know, trying to make the best of what life is. You still have a life to live after tragedy and, you know, try to help inspire as many people as I can and, and hopefully be able to give some positive message in all of this darkness. Because most people see the darkness, they see the headline, they see what this is, but there can be a life after all of it. So for me, it's just been focusing on my family healing and trying to help others when I can.
- [18:05]
Interviewer
Listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you joining me on this topic. I sure hope we have a conversation in the future that's a positive one about Melody Busby, and I really hope it's not the gut feeling that we have. Colby, Ryan, thank you so much for this.
- [18:19]
Colby Ryan
Yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate you.
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Ashley Banfield
So here we are again. Another mother, another missing child, and a deadline that has come and gone. We have seen how the story can end, and nobody wants to believe that it's happening all over again. If Melody Buzzard is alive, she deserves to be found. And if Melody Buzzard is not alive, she deserves justice. So we are staying on this case until we get answers. I'm Ashley Banfield, and remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead seriously.