As the December sun set over central Utah’s sandstone peaks, a couple ventured down a nondescript dirt road to snap photos against the backdrop of a red rock vista. Instead, they stumbled across a grisly discovery among smattered shrubs and parched soil: the decomposed remains of a little girl.
When sheriff’s deputies arrived in the sparsely populated stretch of Caineville, it was clear they would be investigating a homicide. The unidentifiable girl had died from gunshot wounds to her head, authorities later said.
Unbeknownst to investigators at the time, they had before them the remains of 9-year-old California girl Melodee Buzzard, whose confounding disappearance during a road trip with her mother had mobilized a vast network of local, state and federal investigators who searched for two months across eight states. An image of her cheeky smile and cascade of ringlet curls had been projected across the nation by media, law enforcement and the concerned public.
Ultimately, it would take two more weeks before they determined all signs pointed to a suspect whom Melodee “trusted the most in this world,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff-Coroner Bill Brown said.
Melodee’s mother, Ashlee Buzzard, was arrested Tuesday and charged with first-degree murder in her daughter’s killing, which a criminal complaint said was carried out with exceptional “cruelty” and “viciousness.” She is scheduled to appear in court Friday morning.
Investigators said they were stymied by “deliberate efforts” to hide the truth – clumsy disguises, swapped license plates and suspicious driving – and an uncooperative mother who could never provide a reasonable explanation for Melodee’s whereabouts. CNN is working to determine whether Buzzard has retained an attorney.
Here’s how investigators say they finally pieced together DNA, ballistics and a multi-state web of leads to connect Melodee’s mother to her killing.
A home without Melodee
The universe where Melodee lived with her mother was small. It revolved around a single-story home that looked like any other in their Lompoc, California, neighborhood, where the streets bore whimsical names like “Stardust Road,” “Pluto Avenue” and “Solar Way.”
Many of Melodee’s extended relatives had not seen her for years. They had lost contact with the mother and child after Melodee’s father died in a motorcycle accident when she was a baby, her aunt, Lizabeth Meza, told NewsNation.
It was not her family that reported her missing in October, but a concerned school administrator.
On October 14, Melodee’s school asked the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office to do a welfare check on the child due to her “prolonged absence,” according to a timeline from investigators.
School employees had not seen Melodee since August, when Buzzard enrolled her in a study program that would allow her to attend school remotely, according to the sheriff’s office and Lompoc Unified School District. This school sighting helped detectives narrow their search early in the investigation, when the previous sighting of Melodee was sometime last year.
Officers arrived at the Buzzard family home on October 14 but only found Ashlee Buzzard, who had “no verifiable explanation for Melodee’s whereabouts,” the sheriff’s office said.
When they searched the home, Melodee was nowhere to be found.
Unraveling a winding multi-state road trip
The next day, investigators executed a search warrant on the Buzzard home and uncovered information that would dramatically narrow their search window.
Buzzard had recently rented a car at a local rental agency, where surveillance cameras captured Buzzard and Melodee disguised in wigs, the sheriff’s office said. Images released to the public show Buzzard in thick golden curls and Melodee with a hoodie pulled over thick bangs.
Ashlee and Melodee Buzzard are shown in a surveillance video where investigators believe they are wearing wigs. – Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office
As they drove, Buzzard swapped the car license plate, put on a new wig, and backed the car into gas stations in an apparent attempt to avoid surveillance cameras, Brown alleged, citing evidence gathered by investigators, including surveillance footage.
Melodee was last seen on video with Ashlee on October 9 near the Colorado and Utah state line. Detectives now believe Melodee was killed shortly after this sighting, the sheriff said.
Buzzard returned to their Lompoc home the next day without Melodee, the sheriff’s office said.
FBI agents and sheriff’s deputies executed another search warrant on October 30 at Buzzard’s home, a storage unit she had rented and the rental vehicle, the sheriff said.
A spent bullet casing was found inside the home, and a similar round of live ammunition was found in the car, the sheriff said. The expended casing was submitted to a national ballistic imaging database, called NIBIN, run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
As Buzzard remained uncooperative, officers surveilled the mother “around-the-clock,” while others spent weeks painstakingly following promising leads, the sheriff said.
The sheriff’s office continuously updated the public and asked for their help submitting tips, walking a thin line as they tried to share as much information as possible without compromising their efforts.
All the while, officers were “hoping against hope that she would be safely found,” Brown said.
A crucial backroad discovery
Despite the relentless search for Melodee, the discovery of her remains was an unlikely accident.
Her body was found in the rural community of Caineville, Utah, where a handful of homes are separated by long stretches of land and wrinkled stone outcroppings. And the couple who mistakenly found her had pulled off a state highway onto an easily missed dirt road.
Until the December 8 discovery, the case had appeared to stall and detectives lacked definitive evidence to charge Buzzard in her daughter’s disappearance. But the remains – later identified as Melodee – and items left at the scene provided key links to Buzzard, the sheriff said.
After the unidentified body was found, a lab in Utah analyzed items left at the scene, according to the sheriff in Wayne County.
“In less than 24 hours, the Crime Lab obtained confirmation that the Wayne County case was connected to the Santa Barbara case,” Sheriff Micah Gulley said in a statement.
Cartridge cases found at the scene were flagged in the NIBIN database as linked to the single cartridge that was found at Buzzard’s home, the sheriff said. Prosecutors later wrote that Buzzard allegedly killed Melodee using a 9mm gun.
It wasn’t until December 22 that an FBI Crime Lab was able to determine that the remains from Utah were a “familial DNA match” to Buzzard, and investigators got a warrant to arrest Buzzard on suspicion of murder.
“We have recovered a significant amount of evidence that clearly indicates that this heinous crime was committed by Ashlee Buzzard,” Brown announced after Buzzard’s Tuesday arrest.
Buzzard was formally charged on Christmas Eve and is being held without bail. In a criminal complaint, prosecutors accused her of “lying in wait” to kill Melodee as the child was “particularly vulnerable.”
Though investigators believe the killing was planned before they embarked on the road trip, they have still not located a weapon or been able to pinpoint a motive.
Brown said Tuesday that the “ruthlessness” of the killing and the degree of alleged premeditation are difficult to understand.
“This level of criminal activity is particularly shocking given the calculated, cold-blooded and criminally sophisticated premeditation and heartlessness that went into planning it,” he said.
Mapping Buzzard’s movements across states required coordination from more than a dozen agencies, including FBI field offices in seven cities, FBI Special Agent in Charge Patrick Grandy said.
But as the case goes to trial, the FBI will continue to assist local law enforcement through lab analysis and by pursuing remaining leads. Grandy encouraged the public to keep reaching out with information that may help investigators.
The sheriff said the mother has remained uncooperative after her arrest, adding “there was no change in her attitude and her demeanor.”
While the remains offered a breakthrough in the case, they also delivered a heartbreaking blow to the investigators who had dedicated months to recovering the lost child, Grandy said.
“We were all hoping to find Melodee alive, as you undoubtedly were as well,” Grandy said to reporters. Brown added that his agency has been “deeply affected” by the case.
The sheriff took a moment during Tuesday’s news conference to speak directly to Melodee’s family, who he said endured “unimaginable pain throughout this ordeal.”
“Their strength, their patience and their steadfast hope have been evident from the very beginning,” Brown said. “No family should ever have to experience this kind of loss, and our hearts are with them today and will be with them in the difficult days ahead.”
He later added, “May God bless the innocent soul of Melodee Elani Buzzard, who we will never, ever forget.”
CNN’s Josh Campbell and Michelle Watson contributed to this report.
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