Hey, everyone back to crime weekly news.

I'm Derek Levaser.

And I'm Stephanie Harlow.

And how was your Thanksgiving?

I was good. It was exhausting. I'm exhausted. I stabbed myself. That does not surprise me. Yeah, it was just, it was like a knife in the dishwasher and I went to go put something else in the dishwasher and it just went blop, right into my hand. And then they were like, is that why you get the bandage on your hand? I just noticed that. They were like, go to urgent care. You need stitch. And I'm like, I'm not getting no stitches. Stitches hurt more than the stab. So I'm all set. I'm going to bandage it up and it will heal. I put some glue on it. We're good. Well, I'm glad you're alive. Yeah. Never know. Never know if you're going to show up. I don't think. well god willing you're going to still be with us i had a great thanksgiving i hope you guys all did as well i got a lot of the comments from you guys as far as what your favorite dishes are it made me really hungry and also i gained about eight pounds this week so that's awesome that's just fake weight yeah that's why i keep telling myself i'm wearing this i'm wearing this sweatshirt because it's you know it's slimming it's just fake weight just fake weight that's going to go away on its own for sure. Yeah, you just got to give a time. Okay, so unfortunately, fortunately, we're happy to be back with you guys, but usually that's because we're talking about news that's not good. And this week, we're covering the disappearance of nine-year-old Melody Buzzard from Lompoc, California, a case that's left

investigators searching for answers and a community searching for hope. Melody was last seen on

October 9th during a cross-country trip with her mother, Ashley Buzzard, who later returned home

and has refused to cooperate with law enforcement ever since. Surveillance footage shows both

mother and daughter wearing wigs and using what authorities

believe were fake license plates to avoid detection.

Now, weeks later, Ashley's been arrested in a separate incident and released under GPS

monitoring, but still isn't saying where her daughter is.

It's a deeply troubling story that raises serious questions about mental health, parental custody, and how a child could simply vanish despite so many red flags. Yeah, this case is crazy. And I don't know how I feel about it. And a lot of the times with these cases, all the time, I'm not going to lie, I will go based on like what my gut is telling me. My brain's a pattern recognition

machine. We've done so many cases, not just here in Crime Weekly, but on my channel, you have

detective perspective. We're always kind of looking into true crime. You sort of see things,

you know, repeats, patterns, behavior, repeating. And I don't know what to think about this case. In my personal opinion, Melody is okay. She's alive. I hope. Really? Uh-huh. We'll see. I can't wait to hear what you say because you're not familiar with this. I'm not. You talk to me about it. You've sent me some info on it, but I'm going along for the ride with everybody who hasn't heard about this

case yet. So I really am looking forward to hearing what your take is on it. So basically,

Melody, who's nine years old, she was reported missing on October 14, 2025, and a school official

flagged Melody's prolonged absence after she failed to appear for weeks. And I guess that

Ashley, Melody's mother,

was doing a sort of like hybrid homeschooling kind of thing. And that's why it took weeks for the

school to flag her absence and to notice that something was going on. Although, in my opinion,

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