A California woman has been charged with murder after the remains of her missing 9-year-old daughter were found in Utah, local authorities said yesterday.<\/p>\n
Ashlee Buzzard, 40, was arrested Tuesday after bullet cartridges found near her daughter’s body were linked to a used cartridge case found in her home, said Santa Barbara County\u2019s Sheriff-Coroner Bill Brown. <\/p>\n
Authorities found 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard\u2019s body December 6 in a rural area of Utah after a man and woman taking photos off of State Route 24 reported they had discovered remains.<\/p>\n
Officers could not immediately identify her but concluded she died from gunshot wounds to the head, Brown said. <\/p>\n
The FBI’s DNA analysis of the body found a familial DNA match to Buzzard.<\/p>\n
Detectives also found similar ammunition in a car Buzzard had rented, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Buzzard is being held without bail at the Northern Branch Jail in Santa Barbara, Brown said.<\/p>\n
Online jail records did not list a court date or attorney who could speak on Buzzard\u2019s behalf. <\/p>\n
The public defender\u2019s office represented her in another case in November but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
A school administrator reported Melodee Buzzard’s prolonged absence October 14. Deputies went to the family’s residence in Lompoc, but Buzzard would not say where her daughter was.<\/p>\n
Buzzard left California with her daughter on October 7, driving a rented white 2024 Chevrolet Malibu, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff\u2019s Office. <\/p>\n
They travelled as far as Nebraska with stops in Nevada, Arizona and Utah, and a return route included Kansas. Melodee Buzzard was last seen October 9 on video surveillance near the Colorado-Utah line.<\/p>\n
Detectives learned the mother and daughter changed their appearance during travel. <\/p>\n
Video from the rental car office in Lompoc shows the child wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a wig that was darker and straighter than her natural hair, police said. <\/p>\n
The video shows her mother wearing a long, curly-haired wig.<\/p>\n
Buzzard swapped wigs throughout the trip and changed the license plate of the rental car to avoid detection, police said. <\/p>\n
Buzzard returned home on October 10 but her daughter was not with her, the sheriff\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n
Brown said the crime was \u201ccalculated, cold-blooded\u201d and premeditated, though a motive has not been determined.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we stand together in grief, but also with resolve,\u201d Brown said. \u201cMelodee deserved a far better life than she had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials said the weapon has not been found, and the case remains under investigation.<\/p>\n
Lilly Denes told the Los Angeles Times that her granddaughter was lovable, always smiling and well-behaved. <\/p>\n
Denes’ son, the child’s father, died when she was 6 months old. <\/p>\n
A detective told Denes on the phone Tuesday that authorities had \u201cfound the baby and the baby is with her dad,” Denes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew he was telling me that the baby is dead,” Denes said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A California woman has been charged with murder after the remains of her missing 9-year-old daughter were found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-200850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}