2025 Updates

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1:10Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics including violence, abuse, and murder. This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney and this is Voices for Justice.

1:43Today I'm discussing updates we saw in three cases in 2025. Now, if you're a long-time listener of the show, you know that I've been doing this yearly update episode for quite some time. But in 2025, I did something new. I began covering as many case updates in real time as I could. And you guys really seemed to enjoy that. So I'm going to continue that into 2026. But of course, there were some case updates that I couldn't get to that I want to tell you about today. Two of these cases are solved and one remains unsolved. Those are in the cases of Melody Buzzard, Peyton, Evelyn, and Olivia Decker, and Emily Pike.

2:20These are our 2025 case updates. If you're new to these update episodes, I'm going to give you a brief overview followed by the updates in the case. Let's get started with Melody Buzzard. On Tuesday, October 14, 2025, an administrator from the Lompoc Unified School District in California reported 9-year-old Melody Buzzard's prolonged absence to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office, noting she hadn't picked up classroom assignments for her guided homeschooling program for several weeks. Deputies were then dispatched to the family home for a welfare check. They found Melody's mother, 40-year-old Ashley Buzzard, but her daughter was gone.

3:00Ashley offered no clear explanation for her daughter's whereabouts, immediately shifting the focus of the inquiry from a missing child to a suspicious parent. Initial confusion clouded the timeline. The sheriff's office first stated that they couldn't confirm any sightings of Melody within the past year, with the most recent photograph being two years old. But that window did narrow when investigators confirmed that Ashley had enrolled Melody in person for an independent study program in August 2025. Throughout this entire investigation, Ashley Buzzard was described as consistently uncooperative and actively stonewalling detectives.

3:37She also refused to speak with family, including Melody's half-sister, Karina. This was huge. It was all over the news and people swarmed to this home demanding justice and answers for Melody. One video actually captured Ashley Buzzard in broad daylight systematically ripping down missing posters of her own daughter in front of her home. This pattern of evasion and bizarre hostility forced investigators to scrutinize the one event that held the key to Melody's fate, a mysterious cross-country road trip. It began on October 7, 2025, when Ashley rented a white Chevy Malibu with California license plate 9MNG101 in Lompoc.

4:17And this is where we got the most recent image of Melody. Surveillance images from the rental company showed both Ashley and Melody in what appeared to be wigs, and just the next day, on October 8th, the rental car was observed with a New York license plate, HCG-9677. This plate didn't belong to the vehicle or to Ashley. Investigators quickly concluded that this was either a false or switched plate to avoid detection. But Ashley returned the car alone without Melody, and it had the original California plate. With this information, investigators focused their search on the desolate route taken on October 9th and 10th in 2025.

4:56Areas of interest included Utah, Arizona, and California. But still, Ashley Buzzard was silent. Melody's paternal family and a coalition of concerned community members launched a vocal and desperate campaign to find her. Their public efforts applied mounting pressure on both Ashley and law enforcement, ensuring that the question of Melody's whereabouts would not be ignored. And really, this is a case where we saw this family spring into action. Melody's aunt, Elizabeth Meza, remembered her niece as a happy, loving child, and delivered a message directly to her, quote, We love her, and we just want her home, and she is loved, end quote.

5:35Mesa and other relatives spent their weekends distributing flyers throughout Lompoc and surrounding areas. Melody's paternal grandmother also organized a candlelight vigil, bringing the community together to pray for Melody's safe return. But by the end of October, it became clear that this was not really a search for Melody, but a grim search for evidence. In a coordinated late-night operation, FBI agents and Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office detectives executed a series of high-level search warrants. These warrants were all served at the same time, one at Ashley's home, a storage locker she maintained, and on the white Chevy Malibu that she used for the cross-country trip.

6:15Ashley Buzzard was removed from her home during these searches and moved to an alternate location. But of course, neighbors were still watching everything going on in this house, and one witness reported that they saw agents removing two large yellow bags of evidence from the home. It also appears that they removed carpet and sections of drywall, and that concrete floor of the garage was torn up. It seemed clear that something had happened, and unfortunately, our worst fears were confirmed on December 6th, when Melody's remains were found on a remote stretch of road along State Route 24 in Wayne County, Utah.

6:51She was found with multiple bullet wounds to her head. Officials believe Melody was likely killed on or around October 9th, not long after she and Ashley were last seen on surveillance video together. Now, this is obviously a case with a lot of circumstantial evidence, but they were also able to connect Ashley to Melody's murder using ballistics. A casing found near the scene in Utah was entered into a federal database, and it matched to a spent casing found in one of the searches of the buzzard home, as well as another found in the rental car. And finally, on December 23, 2025, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office announced that Ashley Buzzard had been arrested for the first-degree murder of her daughter.

7:33According to reporting by The Independent, those charges included two enhanced charges as well, the use of a firearm during a felony and murder while lying in wait. Today, I am deeply saddened to report to you that the body of Melody Alani Buzzard, the nine-year-old child who went missing from the Lompoc area in October of this year, has been found in a rural area outside of Keynesville in Wayne County, Utah. This morning at approximately 7.51 a.m., members of our sheriff's office and the FBI arrested her mother, Ashley Lynn Buzzard, for her murder. We have recovered a significant amount of evidence that clearly indicates that this heinous crime was committed by Ashley Buzzard, Melody's mother, and the very person upon who she relied upon and trusted the most in this world.

8:36December the 6th, 2025. Members of the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in Utah responded to a call from a man and a woman who were taking photos. This couple had discovered the decomposed body of a deceased person off of the side adjacent to West Caneville Road. Although immediate identification of the deceased person was not possible, it was apparent that the decedent was a female who had died from gunshot wounds to the head. Yesterday, the FBI crime lab notified our agency that DNA analysis had determined that the remains found in Utah were a familial DNA match to Ashley Buzzard. So we have charges, but we still don't have answers.

9:31At this time, they still don't have a clear motive for why Ashley killed Melody, but they do say that it appears she acted alone. Prosecutors added that Ashley Buzzer did this with a high degree of planning, sophistication, and professionalism, as well as a, quote, high degree of cruelty, viciousness, or callousness, end quote. The county district attorney is seeking a sentence of life in prison without parole, and Ashley Buzzard has pleaded not guilty. Ashley appeared in the Santa Barbara County Superior Court on January 7th, 2026. At that time, a date for her preliminary hearing was set for January 21st, 2026.

10:11So while we do have the answers that I think nobody wanted in this case, what will happen to Ashley and why she did this does remain unknown. This episode of Voices for Justice is brought to you by HERS. There's a lot of noise around weight loss right now. Trends, opinions, medications. It's hard to know what's actually right for you. That's why I like HERS. Through HERS, you're connected with a medical provider who determines if treatment is even right for you. Your treatment plan is personalized to support you, and HERS goes beyond medication. They also offer lifestyle and nutrition tips and access to 24-7 support.

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12:46Our next case update is in the case of Peyton, Evelyn, and Olivia Decker. On the evening of Friday, May 30, 2025, 35-year-old Whitney Decker contacted the Wenatchee, Washington Police Department to file what was initially handled as a civil complaint regarding a missed custody exchange. Her ex-husband, 32-year-old Travis Decker, had failed to return their three daughters, Evelyn, age 8, Peyton, age 6, and Olivia, age 5. Whitney Decker expressed immediate concern, noting that this was not like Travis. She also informed officers that Travis was experiencing mental health issues and was living a transient lifestyle out of his truck.

13:26One of the most heart-wrenching parts of this case is that the Wenatchee Police Department did contact the Washington State Patrol to request an Amber Alert, but they declined, stating that the criteria was not met. It wasn't until the following day, Saturday, May 31st, that an endangered missing person alert was issued after detectives provided additional information. And things happened pretty fast. The search for the girls came to a grim end on the afternoon of June 2nd, 2025. A deputy on patrol located Decker's unoccupied white 2017 GMC Sierra pickup in a remote area near the Rock Island campground.

14:03Approximately 100 yards from the vehicle, down a small embankment, they found the bodies of all three girls. Each girl had a plastic bag placed over her head, and evidence at the scene indicated that their wrists were either bound with zip ties or showed marks of having been bound. On the tailgate of Decker's truck, investigators documented what appeared to be two handprints of blood. Obviously, this changed everything. This was no longer a search for a missing father and their children, but instead a manhunt for a suspected triple murder. And investigators knew that this wasn't going to be an easy search for Travis Decker.

14:39Authorities emphasized that Decker was well-versed in wilderness survival and capable of surviving for, quote, days or even weeks in the wilderness on his own and with very little equipment, end quote. Essentially, they're dealing with a veteran who has elite survival skills and some mental instability. But luckily, the scale of the response was immediate and extensive. They had the Sheriff's Office out there, the U.S. Marshal Service, U.S. Border Patrol, the FBI, the Washington State Patrol, and the Washington National Guard. The most significant development during the active search phase occurred on June 10, 2025.

15:16A tip from hikers reported a lone, ill-prepared hiker who seemed to be avoiding others. A helicopter was dispatched to the area, and they saw a lone, off-trail hiker near Colchuck Lake, but he immediately ran out of sight. At this point, they prompted the public to lock their doors and vehicles and report any suspicious activity. Of course, as these things go, as they're looking for Travis, they're also doing the investigation in the background. To be honest, I really don't want to get into all the grim details of how these girls died, but through the use of DNA technology, they were able to link Travis directly to the girls' murders.

15:52They also uncovered digital evidence suggesting that the crime was premeditated. An examination of Decker's electronic devices revealed that he'd performed several Google searches in the days before the murders, including, quote, how does a person move to Canada, end quote, and, quote, how to relocate to Canada, end quote. This leads investigators to believe that he was planning to flee after murdering the girls. And then finally, after nearly four months of intense searching, Travis Decker was found. On September 18th, 2025, his remains were found in a remote, heavily wooded area on Grindstone Mountain, less than a mile from the original crime scene at Rock Island Campground.

16:35And one of the biggest questions in this case is how did they find Travis? While it seems that the nearly four-month stalemate was not broken by a chance sighting, but by a modern investigative technique, operational psychology, after exhausting conventional search methods with the dogs, they had ATVs, they had horses, they pulled out all the stops in this, and eventually they brought in a specialist to build a behavioral profile based on the evidence. The profile accurately depicted that Decker had fled to a steep, treacherous terrain that was considered unsafe for searchers to access from below.

17:08Acting on this intelligence, teams including a U.S. Customs and Border Protection K-9 unit with a dog trained in human remains detection implemented a top-down strategy to access the dangerous area, but due to the condition of Travis's remains, a definitive cause of death could not be determined. But this did officially close a dark chapter for this county, concluding one of the most exhaustive and heartbreaking manhunts in the region's history. Now, it's absolutely worth noting that the community rallied in support of the victim's family and in shared mourning. At a public memorial, hundreds gathered to honor the girls.

17:45Attendees were asked to wear purple, pink, or green, the girls' favorite colors. They also rallied behind Whitney Decker. Many contributed to a GoFundMe campaign that raised over$1.2 million to help her navigate the aftermath of the tragedy. And this case has become a catalyst for advocacy. Lawmakers and child safety advocates gathered to call for stronger protective laws, specifically highlighting Caden's Law, a federal act designed to improve child safety and custody cases that has not been adopted in Washington state. The case also reignited the broader public debate over the criteria for issuing Amber Alerts, with many people questioning the initial decision to decline an alert for Peyton, Evelyn, and Olivia.

18:26The tragic journey of the Decker sisters, from a missed visitation to a national manhunt and a call for change, has left an indelible legacy, a solemn reminder of the systematic failures the case exposed, from the initial alert controversy to the clear gaps in mental health resources for those in crisis, which continued to echo long after the search concluded. You know what they say, early bird gets the ultimate 30A vacation rental. Wait, they don't say that? They do now. Book early and save over$530 on select homes for week-long stays with That's the way to 30A. It's tax season, and at LifeLock, we know you're tired of numbers.

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19:4514-year-old Emily Pike, a member of the San Carlos Apache tribe, was not simply a victim of a single horrific crime. Her death was the culmination of a cascading series of institutional failures. Caught between her home on a vast reservation and a state-licensed group home in the city of Mesa, Arizona, she was let down by the very systems meant to protect her. Now, to fully comprehend the scope of the tragedy that befell Emily Pike, it's essential to understand the context of the year leading up to her disappearance. The events of 2023 reveal a series of systematic breakdowns and unheeded cries for help that placed her in a perilous situation long before she vanished for the last time.

20:26In 2023, a 911 call from a remote area of the San Carlos Reservation reported that Emily had been sexually assaulted. And this response really did highlight the jurisdictional and resource challenges facing tribal law enforcement. Instead of a police officer, the tribe's Fish and Game Department was dispatched. The San Carlos Apache police chief later explained to state legislators that his 22 officers were busy covering the 1.8 million acre reservation. A family member Emily accused was arrested but was later released without being charged. The Bureau of Indian Affairs closed the case due to insufficient evidence.

21:05Following the incident, Emily was taken into the custody of San Carlos Apache Social Services and placed into the Sacred Journey group home in Mesa. Uprooted and traumatized, Emily's placement in the group home initiated a pattern of desperate behavior. Between September and November 2023, she attempted suicide and ran away from the facility multiple times. Mesa police body camera footage from these incidents captured some of these moments. She repeatedly told officers that the group home was not her home, and that she felt like she was being punished. During one incident on Halloween 2023, a group home employee noted to police that Emily was boy crazy, and had run off with a group of three guys.

21:48Each time, she was returned to the facility. But on January 27th, 2025, Emily ran away from the Mesa group home for the last time. She snuck out of her bedroom window, on which the alarm had been disabled. Her last known location was near the intersection of Mesa Drive and McKellips Road. That night, the group home informed the Mesa police of Emily's disappearance. The following day, her tribe was informed. And a week later, the San Carlos Apache Social Services finally notified Emily's family that she was missing. San Carlos Attorney General Alex Ritchie explained that her tribal caseworker did not immediately consider her disappearance an emergency, citing her past history of running away and returning.

22:31This critical misjudgment cost precious time and momentum in the search efforts. Then, on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2025, the search came to a horrific end. Emily's remains were discovered in trash bags just off US-60 near milepost 277 in a remote area outside of Globe, Arizona. Two weeks later, the remains were positively identified as Emily Pike. The Gila County Sheriff's Office officially launched a murder investigation. Her family's grief was compounded by a shocking breach of protocol and communication, one of the most controversial pieces of this case. Emily's mother, Stephanie Dosella, learned of her daughter's murder not from law enforcement, but after seeing photos of the garbage bags containing human remains that were leaked from an officer and posted on social media.

23:23Police didn't call Stephanie Docella. She called them after viewing the photos. Now, as you guys know, this happened in my state, and I can tell you firsthand that this caused outrage. On March 6, 2025, hundreds of people gathered for a candlelight vigil in Mesa, holding signs that read, Justice for Emily Pike, and No More Stolen Sisters. The community's collective grief and demand for answers marked the beginning of a long and painful fight for justice. With Emily Pike's death officially ruled a homicide, a multi-agency task force was formed to untangle the complex case. The investigation, led by the Gila County Sheriff's Office, moved forward with critical forensic analysis and public appeals for information, but the path to identifying her killer or killers would prove to be fraught with challenges, including the spread of dangerous misinformation.

24:17On July 1, 2025, the Pinal County Medical Examiner's Office released the official cause of death as homicidal violence with blunt head trauma. A forensic pathologist and former Pinal County Chief Medical Examiner explained the significance of the findings, noting that, quote,

24:40End quote. The fact that Emily's remains were dismembered added another layer of complexity, but unfortunately, we don't know a lot about the investigation into Emily's murder. One of the only things that we do know is that investigators confirm that search warrants were served on a residential structure, a vehicle, and a storage trailer. To encourage public assistance, the reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction was increased to a total of$200 ,000. However, as we see, as the investigation continued, it was hampered by the spread of false information. In September 2025, the San Carlos Apache Police Department was forced to publicly dispel rumors circulating on social media that an arrest had been made.

25:24As the criminal investigation continued for months without an arrest, Emily's family expanded their fight for justice to include holding the institutions responsible for her care legally and systematically accountable. Their actions brought intense scrutiny upon the child welfare system and the group home where Emily spent her final months. They were demanding answers not only about who killed her, but why she was so vulnerable in the first place. Then, on August 5th, 2025, Emily's biological father, Jensen Pike, filed a wrongful death complaint with the state. The complaint, which is part of a lawsuit against Sacred Journey, the operator of the Mesa Group Home, alleges that the facility's negligent actions and inactions contributed directly to her death.