![\"Melodee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/x3osnsevj3o58wnj.jpg\")
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SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KTTV) – Melodee Buzzard<\/a>, the missing<\/a> 9-year-old California girl, has been found dead in Utah.<\/p>\n What we know:<\/p>\n Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced on Tuesday, December 23 that Buzzard’s body was found in Wayne County, Utah<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the wake of the 9-year-old girl’s death, Buzzard’s mother, Ashlee Buzzard, has since been detained by FBI and Santa Barbara County deputies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brown acknowledged that the 9-year-old girl’s death is going to be complicated to investigate.<\/p>\n “Maternal filicide is rare and always difficult to comprehend,” the Santa Barbara County Sheriff said. “This level of criminal activity is particularly shocking given the calculated cold-blooded and criminally sophisticated premeditation and heartlessness that went into planning it and the ruthlessness that went in to actually committing the crime.”<\/p>\n The backstory:<\/p>\n Prior to the news of her death, Melodee Buzzard was last seen on October 9 near the Colorado-Utah border in the middle of a family trip<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the time of the 9-year-old’s disappearance, Melodee was allegedly taken by her mother, who was also accused of driving a Cherovet Malibu with a fake New York license plate.<\/p>\n Prior to Tuesday’s news, Ashell Buzzard was arrested for an unrelated crime. During the earlier stages of the investigation over Melodee’s disappearance, an Oct. 7 surveillance footage shared by a car rental facility in Lompoc showed the mother-and-daughter duo wearing wigs. The two allegedly switched them out over the course of the road trip, authorities said during the early stages of the investigation.<\/p>\n The Source: This report used information provided by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office and mentioned previous FOX 11 reports.<\/p>\n California<\/a>Missing Persons<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Instastories<\/a>Utah<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KTTV) – Melodee Buzzard, the missing 9-year-old California girl, has been found dead in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1184,7,9,8,2042,2444,3247,100,425,1181,16073],"class_list":["post-107449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-instastories","tag-missing-persons","tag-news","tag-series","tag-us","tag-ut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}