{"id":107456,"date":"2025-12-24T07:14:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T07:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/107456\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T07:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T07:14:14","slug":"california-woman-charged-with-murder-in-her-9-year-old-daughters-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/107456\/","title":{"rendered":"California woman charged with murder in her 9-year-old daughter’s death"},"content":{"rendered":"

A California<\/a> woman has been charged with murder after the remains of her missing 9-year-old daughter were found in Utah, authorities said Tuesday.<\/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. Authorities found 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard\u2019s body Dec. 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. 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. 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 Oct. 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 Oct. 7, driving a rented white 2024 Chevrolet Malibu, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff\u2019s Office. They traveled as far as Nebraska<\/a> with stops in Nevada<\/a>, Arizona and Utah, and a return route included Kansas. Melodee Buzzard was last seen Oct. 9 on video surveillance near the Colorado-Utah line.<\/p>\n

Detectives learned the mother and daughter changed their appearance during travel. 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. 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. Buzzard returned home on Oct. 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 loveable, always smiling and well-behaved. Denes’ son, the child’s father, died when she was 6 months old. 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":107457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7493,57896,7,9,8,10022,1800],"class_list":["post-107456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-ashlee-buzzard","tag-bill-brown","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-melodee-buzzard","tag-santa-barbara-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107456","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=107456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}