This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brewste, Stacey Cole, and Todd Michaels.

We are talking to the Melody Buzzard case first this morning, a missing nine-year-old, a mother in handcuffs,

in arrest, it raises far more questions, and it actually answers.

Nine-year-old Melody Buzzard disappeared after that cross-country trip with her mother, Ashley Buzzard,

the trip that Ashley is saying nothing about as to why she went on it or where her daughter went.

Surveillance footage shows wigs, rental car, and a quiet return home without melody.

Now we're weeks into this, and Ashley has finally been arrested,

but on felony false imprisonment charges that authorities say is not connected to her daughter's disappearance.

Okay.

So what's really going on here?

Was this a strategic arrest, a way to keep her in custody while the investigation unfolds,

or something darker tied to what happened on that trip?

It helps make sense of it, defense attorney.

Bob Mata is with us, host of the podcast Defense Diaries.

We're breaking down what the charges mean here,

what it doesn't, and whether law enforcement's careful wording on this hints that something

much bigger is going on behind the scenes. Let's start with this, Bob, on this, the charge

itself that everybody is talking about, that she's been arrested on. False imprisonment

and apparently not directly connected to Melody. What does that legally entail and what does it tell

you from a defense attorney standpoint? Well, I mean, the charge itself is pretty basic. It's

essentially that you're keeping somebody against their will. Like if I were to lock you in a room and you felt as if you weren't allowed to leave that room, that's false imprisonment.

So, you know, the charge itself is unusual because we don't know really any of the facts.

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