Glammed Up for Court… After Cutting Melodee’s Face Out of Posters?! | The Ashlee Buzzard Meltdown

Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield

True Crime

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A shocking new twist has emerged in the disappearance of nine-year-old Melodee Buzzard, and it is one of the strangest details in this case yet. Investigators say a private investigator working with Melodee’s family learned that Ashlee Buzzard was seen cutting her daughter’s face out of several missing posters and placing the cut-out photos inside her home. The investigator described it as looking almost like an altar, raising even more questions about what Ashlee knows and why she is behaving this way. At the same time, Ashlee showed up to court in full glam and a curly wig, completely made up, while refusing to answer anything about Melodee’s whereabouts. She is still facing a charge of falsely imprisoning the man she allegedly told about Melodee, and she continues to stay silent as the search for her daughter stretches into its sixth week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everyone. I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious. And I think you're going to notice a change in the podcast as my partner, Atlas, is no longer with us. I know he was a big part of this production. We had our Atlas cam,
0:24.0	and I know so many of you used to love seeing him in the studio. He was at my feet, not just in
0:30.1	the studio, at all times, and I am feeling a massive void. I'm not going to lie, but I just wanted
0:36.1	to let you know. I have a little tribute here in the
0:39.4	studio to Atlas, his collar and his leash, his water bowl, which was always here in the studio,
0:46.2	and a couple of his favorite Mother Hubbard crunchies. He loved those. I'm not, I'm not
0:53.7	advertising for them. It's not a sponsorship.
0:55.9	They were just his favorite little milk bones. And so I have two of them here. But I just want to
1:01.5	let you know that's why you're not going to see Atlas on the Atlas cam for the podcast.
1:05.0	But I'm going to get straight to work because I know you're here for, you know, our true crime
1:09.2	community. I don't know if you have an X, an X that you'd like to erase from your camera rule,
1:17.3	or maybe a former friend who burns just so badly, you still can't look at old photos without
1:21.8	wanting to crop them out.
1:23.6	But leave it to Ashley Buzzard out in Lompoc, California, to take that coping mechanism and twist it into something so strange, so disturbing, you almost can't believe it's real.
1:37.2	Ashley is the mother of nine-year-old Melody Buzzard, that little girl who's not been seen now in 41 days, and I'm recording this
1:44.3	on November the 19th. 41 days of silence, 41 days of questions, 41 days of a community
1:51.5	wondering if melody is safe, 41 days of wondering if melody is alive. And during that entire
1:58.7	time, Ashley has stonewalled the investigators. She's had her home
2:04.2	and her rental car and her storage unit rated by the feds. She's been charged with falsely imprisoning,
2:11.3	the very acquaintance who was trying to help her find her missing daughter. And I've got an
2:15.7	update on that case. Wow, just a second from now, I'm going to
2:19.1	bring you just a real bizarro twist. You won't believe how she showed up for court this morning.
	...

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