210: Family Nightmare: Did the Step Dad Know? | The Twisted Case of 14-year-old Carly Gregg
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Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise.

We have got the deep dive of all deep dives to go over today. It is a case that so many of you have been requesting that I cover. And at first, I wasn't sure if I was going to cover it because I thought that the trial had happened. So many people had talked about it. I didn't think that anybody really wanted a new deep dive, but you all voted and you wanted it. And it's a wild case because there are so many different layers to it of deception and

Based on reactions and behavior in the courtroom during the trial, people think that there might have been a secret affair going on between this young girl and her stepfather and that he was involved in convincing her to murder her mother. If you haven't guessed by now, it's the case of Carly Gregg. But...

There are a lot of different elements to this than what really just meets the eye at the surface. So we did the deep dive, we did all the research so you don't have to, and we are going to go into everything. That girl knew right from wrong. That girl is not insane. Something was very, very off with Carly. The way she was screaming, the way she looked.

Just after 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, a 911 dispatcher in Brandon, Mississippi, received a truly terrifying 911 call. Most of the location is emergency.

You thought her trying to shoot you? Yeah. What does she have?

14? Okay, ma'am, stay on the phone with me. Just calm down. What's your name?

Okay, just tell me how to hold it. We got everybody hit. What? She killed her mom. She killed her mom? Yeah. Where's the mom at? Where's the mom at?

The man on the phone, Heath Smiley, was frantic.

not only because he had just been shot by his 14-year-old stepdaughter Carly Gregg, but Carly had also shot and killed her mother, 40-year-old Ashley Smiley. So when the police got to the Smiley's home, the whole scene, it was pretty chaotic.

They could hear somebody screaming from inside the house, and when Heath opened the door, he just fell to the ground. Some first responders tried to help him while the police started searching the house, trying to find Carly. Heath let them know that Carly had run out the back door after she had shot him, that she jumped the fence, and then she just

took off and ran away. So the search, of course, expanded, and it was big enough that the police were now using helicopters to search the entire region, and they eventually spotted Carly. She was about a half mile from her house. She was still running, trying to get away, and she even climbed down into a storm drain to try and stop them from catching her.

But that did not stop investigators. They convinced her to come out of this drain. Now, by the time she came out of it, she was completely wet. She was wearing sweatpants. She was wearing a Nirvana t-shirt. But she was surprisingly calm, which is not really something that you would expect from someone who supposedly just killed her mother and shot her stepdad. But either way, she was arrested.

So that's going to be for your right hand. All right. Left hand. All right. Turn them.

Look, I'm gonna show you right there. Alright, you're gonna do the, on the right hand, you're gonna do the palm. Okay? I'm just showing you, and the back of the hand, okay? Alright, then whenever you get through, you're gonna turn it in. Alright? Alright, you're gonna open it, turn it back in. Alright, when you turn it back in, then you're gonna, when you get ready to do this, it's right there. Close this and put that over it, okay?

News of what happened quickly spread through the entire town of Brandon, Mississippi. It's a suburb of Jackson, Mississippi, and it's relatively small with a population of just over 25,000 people. So it really doesn't take much for news of a crime like this one to spread like wildfire in a town like that.

But along with the news of the crime, the gossip was also spreading, because the victim, Ashley Smiley, had been a beloved teacher at a local school called Northwest Rankin. It was the local high school where Ashley taught math and most of her students really enjoyed her class.

She was nice. She was supportive. She even had won Teacher of the Month at one point. So Carly, her daughter, was eventually charged with murdering her mother and with attempting to murder her stepdad. And her trial was just this past September, six months after the murder. And

And to this day, people aren't really sure why she did what she did, which, as you can imagine, is why all of the theories are floating out there and why the rumor mill is like running on overtime. So that's really what I want to explore in today's episode.

I usually don't give away right at the beginning who the killer was, but I actually think that the question in this case isn't so much as a who did it, but more of a why did they do it? What happened to make Carly do something like this? What led up to the crime? Was there something going on inside of this house that other people weren't aware of?

Or was Carly just this secretly very, very evil 14-year-old little girl? So let's dig in. Carly was born in 2009 to Ashley and Kevin Gregg. Ashley and Kevin had been married for four years by the time that Carly was born. And when Carly was around two years old, her mother gave birth to another daughter named Natalie.

However, tragically, Natalie passed away when she was just a little over one year old. And there isn't a lot of information out there about Natalie's death or what exactly caused it. I've seen some speculation that she passed away from something called spinal muscular astrophy, or SMA, and that's because in Ashley's obituary, her family specifically asked for money to be donated to an SMA fund rather than sending flowers.

Now maybe those kinds of charities were just meaningful to Ashley because she cared about them, or maybe they were meaningful because of how Natalie died. I'm not sure. That's just speculation. But I do know that when Natalie passed away, Ashley and Kevin's relationship really started going downhill. Having a sick child can be really rough on any married couple, never mind a child who actually passes away. So they were now beginning to have quite a bit of turmoil in their marriage.

But on top of all of that, Kevin also had his own issues. There was drug abuse, and I've also read in some places that he physically abused Ashley. However, that part is not confirmed.

So when Carly was about four or five years old, her parents ended up divorcing and it hit Carly really hard. And I feel like it would hit any kid really hard, especially that age. And she already had lost her sister and now her parents were splitting up. She's so young. I could see where you start to question your identity, what's normal, what's your routine, all of those things.

And so she really struggled with her parents' split, and she started having symptoms of anxiety around the time that she was just six years old. And it seems like her mom, Ashley, really took Carly's issues seriously. She tried to get her help multiple times throughout her life. Now, Carly mostly lived with her mom, and she would see her dad occasionally on weekends.

But Kevin would fight with Ashley a lot about different custody issues. And actually, they were still having custody issues when Ashley was murdered. But Ashley had a pretty strong argument for why Carly should stay with her. Because Carly just did not like going to her dad's house. Like I mentioned, he had drug problems, and he would allegedly even use drugs around Carly.

I've even heard that he would blow smoke directly into her face. But besides that, when Carly was at his house, he also just wouldn't really interact with her. It was almost like he was too busy, too consumed with other things. It's also been reported that he made Carly drink an entire beer when she was just 12 years old. Now, one year before that alleged beer drinking incident, when Carly was 11 years old, Ashley married Heath Smiley.

And Heath and Carly got along very well. They played video games together, Heath would take her to her karate lessons, her guitar lessons, and really, he would help her and take her anywhere she needed to go or help her with anything that she was involved in. Their relationship was really good. Carly was also an incredibly smart kid. She was a student at the same high school that her mom Ashley taught at, Northwest Rankin High School.

and she did really well there, well enough that she even skipped a grade at one point, which is actually something that doesn't really happen very often, because not only is it incredibly difficult to be intelligent enough to skip a grade, but also it can be incredibly hard on kids to be in a classroom with older students, not your peers, not people your same age. So I think it just goes to show how smart Carly was. They made an exception for her.

they put her a grade ahead. And I mean, she did struggle a little bit socially, but she did have a solid group of friends. She liked to spend all of her free time drawing and writing, but in the months leading up to the crime, Carly started behaving in a way that could be a little bit concerning. She started smoking weed pretty regularly, which I know some people think it isn't all that bad, but she was only 14. And allegedly, she was also dabbling in mushrooms.

And a friend also said that she had tried cocaine a few times. Now, Carly generally did not get into trouble. She was by all accounts a good student. But at some point, and the date of this incident isn't exactly entirely clear, but at some point, Carly brought a knife to school. And she ended up having to spend a semester in an alternative school because of it.

She was also caught cheating on her math test after she stole the answers off of the teacher's desk. So definitely exhibiting some pretty concerning behavior.

And this isn't confirmed, but apparently Carly also had a tattoo, a nipple piercing, and she was sneaking out of the house at night. There were also a lot of rumors that she had a burner phone and that she would use this to secretly text her friends past curfew. Also, she would use it to text a secret boyfriend that she had.

Now, the theories and the rumors and the gossip said it was a burner phone, but I don't know why people called it that because from what I can tell, it was just an old iPad or an old iPod Touch, and she had downloaded an app on it so that she could text her friends from it. Except some reports say that she did have an iPod, which her dad Kevin secretly gave her, and those reports say that she did in fact have a burner phone. So again, not entirely sure what is 100% accurate with that.

But anyway, it's not so important exactly what kind of device she had or what she was using. The whole point in all of this is that she was acting out. She was getting into trouble. And this really wasn't like her. Then there was something that Carly's friends and family members refer to as the big incident. And it happened sometime a few months before the murders. Now what this big incident was, we don't exactly know.

But we do know that on top of the drugs, the piercings, the tattoo, and bringing the knife to school, her mom Ashley found out that Carly was cutting herself. This was in December of 2023. Now Carly claimed that she wasn't trying to end her own life, but she was self-harming. She says that she was using the cutting as a way to cope with her anxiety and her depression.

But still, her mom Ashley was worried enough to get Carly in to see a brand new therapist, a therapist named Rebecca Kirk. So Rebecca diagnosed Carly with major depressive disorder and adjustment disorder. And to get those diagnoses, she had to ask Carly if she ever suffered from any delusions or any hallucinations.

And this will all come into play later, but when she asked her that, Carly said no. She had never experienced anything like that. So now, with the new diagnoses, Carly began taking the medication Zoloft. But it apparently made her feel like a zombie, just not at all like herself.

So she switched over to taking a drug called Lexapro instead. And this was right before the murder. All in all, her new therapist Rebecca and Carly met nine times before Carly killed her mom. In fact, they even had a session the day before the murder happened, back on March 18th. And Rebecca later testified that during this session, Carly seemed very emotionally stable. She did not indicate that our week was negatively affecting her.

Correct. What did you mean by that? Well, anytime that a person's prescription meds change, you need them to be very concerned about side effects, feelings of suicide, things of that sort. And so I wanted to follow up and make sure she wasn't experiencing negative reactions regarding that. You also said that, excuse me,

Can you talk about what that means?

Yes, just kind of basically what we said, you know, that was on the first part of each of my sessions, like she seemed very oriented to time and space and didn't seem to have erratic speech, loud speech, to be overly angry or overly happy, just, you know, a normal situation, observance of her.

And then you go on to say she did not appear melancholy nor zoned out emotionally. Can you talk about what you meant there? Yeah, she had reported several times that, well,

At least one time maybe, but I feel like I maybe wrote it more than once. I'm not sure. But with some of the Zoloft, she felt like a zombie. And so, you know, she didn't actually, she never really appeared that way to me ever. But she had reported it. So I put it in my notes when that had occurred. But I was saying here that I didn't notice any of it as well.

In fact, Rebecca said that Carly never talked about murder or suicide, and she never did or said anything that made Rebecca worry that she would ever hurt anyone. The only thing that was different about her during their last session was that she had recently cut her hair very short.

She had also started wearing black all the time, which isn't automatically a red flag. I mean, Carly was a teenager, so she was also at an age where it's normal to experiment with your personal style, you know, try a lot of different looks. Frankly, even adults sometimes change up their appearance or get dramatic haircuts, and that's all fine. Heck, look at me today. I've changed my hair too. But the only reason that this change stood out and stood out at all was because of what would happen the following day. There

There was one other thing that didn't seem like a big deal in the moment, but later on, looking back on it, it did feel like a clue or a hint that something wasn't right. See, Carly said that she was very interested in reading the book Crime and Punishment.

which coincidentally is a book about a super intelligent guy who comes to the conclusion that some people are so special that they can kill other people for the good of society. And then he goes out and commits a murder. So did Carly think that she was so special that the rules didn't apply to her? I don't know. According to her therapist Rebecca, Carly was very proud of being smart.

Her whole life, that was something that she got praised for all the time. It was a big part of her sense of self-worth as well. So much so that if a teacher or a classmate ever corrected her or made her feel like she wasn't the smartest person in the room, she would take major issue with that. Carly also cared a lot about what her mom Ashley thought of her. Not just whether Ashley thought that she was smart or not, but her entire opinion about her.

She didn't handle it very well whenever her mom would be mad at her. She also had a very good sense of Ashley's mood, and she could tell whenever she was upset or stressed out. Not necessarily upset at Carly, but just in general. And Carly complained that it was like walking on eggshells at home sometimes because she just didn't want to set her mom off.

For example, Carly said that one time when Ashley was grading papers at home for school, she could tell that her mom was really stressed. So Carly offered to help her mom, but her mom snapped at her, and this really upset Carly. So a lot of what Carly worked on with her therapist were conflict resolution skills for when she and her mom would get into these arguments.

And the therapist Rebecca knew that things could be complicated between Carly and her mom. She could just tell by the way that Carly would talk about things. But at the end of the day, Carly loved her mom, and she wanted to do anything and everything that she possibly could to make Ashley happy. So much so that in a way, it was almost like Carly felt Ashley's feelings for her.

So if Ashley was upset, so was Carly. And this all leads up to what actually happened on March 19th. According to Heath, the day started off very normal. Ashley and Carly both went through their usual morning routine. Ashley got ready, she made herself some tea, then she headed to school with Carly. Apparently Carly was feeling a little grumpy or angry that day, and she was having a hard time focusing in class. And then one of Carly's friends went to Ashley with some upsetting news.

Specifically, Ashley learned about Carly's drug use, something that she hadn't known anything about before this point.

Carly was literally smoking a few times a week, every week, all to self-medicate. And Ashley didn't know or suspect anything. Not until one of Carly's friends came forward and said what was going on. And they did that because they were worried that Carly was going down the wrong path. So this friend told her mom Ashley what Carly was doing, and Ashley was obviously very upset. So she and Carly left the school sometime after 3.30 p.m., and they got home around 4 p.m.

Then Carly went out and let her two dogs outside. And while she was busy with the dogs, Ashley went into Carly's room to do, you know, a little nosing around, a little investigating, see if there was anything that she could find and anything to back up what she had heard. Maybe some joints stuck in a drawer or, you know, some loose flakes in a bag, who knows. But she started poking around and

And sure enough, while she was doing that, she found four marijuana vape pens. And each one of them was in its own little box. So when Carly went back inside, she saw and found out what her mom was doing.

So she went to her parents' room, grabbed a gun that Ashley kept under the mattress, and then went back into her own bedroom. Right there, she shot her mother two times in the face and once in the chin. Then after shooting her mom, Carly casually walks back out to the kitchen area, grabs her phone, and she texts her friends. She sends a text that says, I fucked up. I need help. I need help in all caps.

She called one friend, again saying that she fucked up, but she didn't say much else before she hung up the phone.

This friend, however, got on his bike and started trying to get to Carly's house as fast as he could. However, it was a very long ride. Now, in the meantime, Carly called another friend, who we're just going to call B.W. to protect her identity. But when Carly called her, B.W. thought that she seemed scared or sounded almost secretive. Carly wouldn't tell her what happened because she said she just couldn't say it over the phone. She just said there was an emergency.

and that Carly needed her friend B.W. to come over very soon. So B.W. had her dad drive her over to Carly's house. And at around 4.58 p.m., B.W. sent Carly a text message saying that she was outside. Carly then went to the front door to let her friend B.W. inside. And B.W. was surprised to see that Carly seemed really calm and really normal.

And I mean, given how freaked out she had been on the phone, B.W. had been expecting her to be panicking, to be on edge, to be just super agitated. But she wasn't any of those things. She was calm. And instead of acting scared or nervous, she just very casually asked her friend B.W., Are you squeamish around dead bodies? ♪

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So after her friend arrives and after she asks her if she is squeamish around dead bodies, Carly leads BW to her bedroom, where her mom was just lying there, dead on the floor. Then she showed BW all the different other guns that her parents had in the home. They had a BB gun, a shotgun, and she just kind of goes walking her through this and showing her these things.

Then she says that she had three shots for her mom and she has three more for her stepdad. Specifically, two shots for his head and one for his chest. She said that she was going to kill her stepdad right when he got home, which was going to in fact be very soon. She told her friend, you know, you can go wait in the backyard while I do it. And get this...

B.W. listened. She went outside and she waited. Which I don't know what my reaction would be as a friend in that moment, especially given that they're so young. But I can't imagine that if a close friend of mine who acted so nervously on the phone with me, then I get there, she shows me her mom's dead body and tells me she plans on killing her stepdad and says, you know, hey Annie, go wait in the backyard. I can't imagine that I would be like,

I mean, maybe I would if I thought that if I turned against them, I would be so scared that they may kill me too. But also, I believe the friend had a cell phone, so even when they're in the backyard, why not call 911? I don't know. It just kind of...

Feels odd, unless it was again, of course, out of fear for her safety. But in any event, she did it. She sat and she waited outside. And eventually, B.W. heard gunshots. That was right when Heath, the stepfather, got home. He barely opened the door just a few inches before Carly just shoved a gun right in his face and shot him. And that moment led to one of the most insane 911 calls that you will ever hear. Most locations are specific.

What does she have? She ran away. How long has she

14. 14? Okay, ma'am, stay on the phone with me. Just calm down. What's your name? Smiley. Okay, calm down for me. Give me your name again. Smiley. Smiley? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. What's your phone number you're calling me from?

Did she hit you? Yeah, I got hit in the neck a little bit. Okay, so did Greg use your neck? Yes, sir. And what's her name? Carly Greg. Carly Greg. Does she still have a gun on her? I took it from her and she ran. You took it from her and she ran?

Yes, sir. She was screaming something at me. I couldn't understand. I locked the door. She's outside. I don't know what's going on. Which way did she run off to? Which way? Ran into the backyard. Ran into the backyard and went over your fence? Yeah. What is she up...

What is she wearing? Gray shirt and jeans. Gray shirt and jeans. About how tall is she? About 5'2". About 5'2"? What color hair? Brownish. Brownish, just short hair. She opened fire on me. And was just screaming.

Where's the mom?

Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir. Sir.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Sir. Your address is 215, correct? 214. 214. His address is 214. Okay, sir. Where is your wife? She's dead on the floor of my daughter's room.

on the floor in your stepdaughters room. What's your wife's name? Ashley Smiley. Ashley Smiley. Sir, sir, I need you to speak with me, okay? Can you go outside the house and speak to me?

Okay.

Now, was there any problems going on with your, is it your stepdaughter or? It's not stepdaughter. It's her mom. I don't know what's going on. The stepdaughter's in there. It's been a little while trying to work out some nuggets in the middle. I'm not sure if it's...

Okay, and you say your wife has been shot? Okay, I'm gonna let you speak with him, okay? Okay.

That's all pretty hard to take in and make sense of, I know. But Heath was able to describe everything much more calmly later on. Did you ever get struck by a bullet? Yes, one of them kind of grazed right through this muscle up here. Can you tell us, gentlemen, what did that feel like? I know this sounds weird, but I honestly have never felt it to this day.

When the gun went off in your face, tell the ladies and gentlemen, I mean, was your body in a state of shock? Not at that moment. I was trying to figure out what was going on. Did you see anybody inside your home other than Carly? No. Walk us through. You said that you were able to at some point get the gun from her. Tell us, what is it that you remember after that?

She was screaming out of her mind scared. It was like she had seen a demon or something. She was terrified. And my first thought was there was an intruder somewhere and she thought she was after somebody else. And to be clear, Carly never told you that she thought somebody else was in the house, right? No, that's the feeling that I got.

She was terrified out of her mind. And at that time, you did not yet know that your wife was dead, right? No, not at that time. So Carly's scared. She's screaming when she shoots at you. How many shots went off from that gun? At that time, there was three.

So after all of this, Carly just ran off. First, she went outside and met her friend in the backyard, and then they both took off. They both jumped over the fence, and then Carly ran away before she was eventually found by the police. Now, obviously, Heath survived being shot.

And this is where things get even more strange. A few days after the murder, he was cleaning out the refrigerator with his mother who was there to help. A lot of people had brought him food, which, you know, is a very common thing to do for somebody who's grieving. But Heath had gotten more food than he could realistically eat, so he was now trying to get rid of stuff that had already gone bad. Well, while they were cleaning out the fridge, Heath found one of the security cameras from the house hidden behind a bunch of water bottles.

It was inside the fridge, a security camera. He recognized it as the camera that used to be in their kitchen. He also found another camera in the garage that he thought that the police had taken, but they hadn't. So Heath called the police and turned both cameras over to the police so they could look at it. Now this next part is a little confusing, so let me explain. Some people have speculated that Heath tried to tamper with these cameras. Here's why.

Apparently, the camera in the garage had an SD card, and when Heath found the camera, he moved the footage from the SD card to his computer. So when he called the police and told them about the cameras, they found nothing on that SD card. So it seemed like Heath was maybe trying to hide this footage.

but Heath also gave them the videos that were stored on his computer. And I'm not entirely sure how all this works, but the investigators were able to tell that aside from the video being moved from the SD card to Heath's computer, the footage itself had not been tampered with. Like it hadn't been deleted, it hadn't been edited, nothing like that.

But still, they did investigate him for tampering with evidence, and Heath got a lawyer to protect himself during this investigation and during this incident. But like I said, police ended up determining that Heath wasn't actually tampering with evidence in the end. So

So eventually, police let the whole thing go, and they didn't question him any further. However, this is a very important incident that we will get into later, because some people think that Heath was somehow involved in this crime. So anyway, what the police found on these security cameras was pretty crazy.

especially from the camera that was inside the kitchen. It didn't film either of the shootings. However, it did capture how Carly was acting before and after the murder. You can see Carly and her mom when they first got home from school. Carly opened the kitchen door to let the dogs out into the backyard, and then she went outside.

And we know that's when her mom Ashley found those vape pens in Carly's room. When Carly came back inside, it's like she just instantly knew what her mom was doing, that she was snooping, that she was in her bedroom. So immediately, she walks into her parents' room, gets the gun, and walks over to her room, where she ultimately, we know, shot her mom. And you can actually hear her mom's screams on the security camera footage.

Then afterward, Carly just walked calmly back into the kitchen. She sat on a stool and she started texting like nothing had happened. She even started singing at one point. And some people have speculated that she was singing to cover up her mom's cries for help, that she was trying to like drown it out. And that's because right before she started singing, something that sounded like someone saying help me was audible in the background, which is why she was singing.

which is extremely scary and unnerving, but take a listen. Now one weird thing about this footage was that Carly was hiding something behind her back every time she was in the frame of the camera. It was a gun, almost like she didn't want to be seen and she knew that she was being recorded. And if you think it was weird for her to do that, don't worry, I will come back to it later.

So the security camera in the garage also caught the aftermath of the shooting. And in this footage, you can see where her stepdad arrives home. You can see her going in and out of the car that's parked inside the garage. So there were security cameras that caught a lot of this. So once the police reviewed all of the evidence and had put the case together, they charged Carly as an adult. A

Officially, she was charged with murder, attempted murder of her stepfather, and tampering with evidence because the investigators thought that Carly was the one who unplugged that security camera that was in the kitchen and then hid it in the refrigerator behind all of the water bottles.

And this past August, she was offered a plea deal. Now, at this point, there was no doubt that anybody else but Carly could have murdered her mom. There really just wasn't any question about whether she was the one who did it or not. So she was offered 40 years in prison if she pled guilty. But to a lot of people's surprise, Carly rejected the offer. We're here to file a free trial conference checklist, which means the defendant has rejected any recommendation from the state. For the record, what was the last recommendation of the state of Mississippi?

The state recommended 40 years in the custody of the Department of Corrections and agreed to null price counts two and three of the indictment. But again, there were fines and no contact. All right, Ms. Gregg, did you receive that recommendation of 40 years?

Yes, sir. And it was your choice and your choice alone to reject that recommendation? Yes, Your Honor. At Carly's trial in September of 2024, she pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Her lawyers argued that Carly was suffering from severe mental health issues and didn't fully understand what she was doing when she killed her mom. They

They claimed that Carly was so sensitive to her mom's feelings, to a level that was, you know, unhealthy and unusual, that she would just fly into a full-on panic whenever she thought that her mom was upset with her. She couldn't stand the idea that she had let her mom down, so when she did get into trouble, even over something relatively small or, you know, not a big deal, to Carly, it felt like a full-blown crisis.

And other than the murders, which weird sentence to say, I know, but other than the murders, Carly was a good kid with no prior arrests.

She had no history of violence, and her actions truly shocked everybody who knew her. She wasn't some sort of evil person. According to her lawyers, she just had a mental break, and she snapped because she couldn't handle her mom being mad about those vape pens that she had discovered. They even argued that the fact that Carly didn't remove the camera before the crime happened proves that this was not premeditated. If

If she had been planning on killing her mom and her stepdad, she would have shut the cameras down before the shootings. So to support that theory, they brought in a doctor who examined Carly, a man named Dr. Andrew Clark. He said that Carly had told him that she essentially blacked out during the entire actual murder. She could not remember any of it.

She also told him that she was hearing voices in her head right before the crime. But she said that the voices didn't necessarily tell her to do anything bad. So in the end, Dr. Clark diagnosed Carly with bipolar disorder. She told me that

I asked her to estimate over the last five years how much of your time have you spent in any state. What she said to me was over the last five years she thought about 60% of her time in a depressed state, about 20% of her time in a hypomanic state, and about 20% of her time in a normal mood state. So I gave her the diagnosis of bipolar II disorder. What stood out to you in your review of precise medical records?

What really stood out to me was their question about have you ever been up or hyper. And I saw no indication, and this is, I understand this to be a question, really a screening for mania. You're looking to see whether bipolar disorder of some sort might be a problem. And Carly answered yes to that. And I saw no evidence in the records from Precise Clinical that they had followed up on that.

and they ended up not asking her about mania, according to their records, and prescribing her antidepressant medication, which in retrospect might not have been the best choice. Based on your experience and expertise, difficult is it to diagnose mental health issues in teenagers? Well, it can be tricky for a couple of reasons, and one is that a lot of times teenagers are...

if they have a mental health issue, it's just starting to come to fruition at this period of time. It can be a little hard to know. And there's a wide range of kind of normal teenage behavior, and teenagers aren't always terribly forthcoming to an adult. And so you have to establish rapport, often get information from other places, and hopefully the teenager can open up to you. There's some things that are maybe easier to diagnose than others, but it's not always simple.

Based on your experience and expertise, when you are having sessions with teenagers, how confidential are their sessions?

It's mixed. I always start out when I'm meeting with a teenager and talking about confidentiality. And I usually say to them, again, depending on the age, I say, I can give you some privacy. You deserve some privacy. But if issues come up that really affect your health or safety or significantly affect your welfare, we've got to pull your parents in. We've got to let them know. So I think every teenager kind of understands that the really serious stuff, the parent's going to get pulled in.

And what, if any, concerns did Carly already have about having bipolar disorder? So what Carly reported to me was that she had been worried that she might end up like her father and that her mother had especially

between Jan, especially after all this happened in December, that her mother had frequently said to her something like, "You might be, something like you're gonna end up just like your father." And Carly understood her father to have a serious psychiatric illness. So Carly reported to me that she really wasn't worried that she might have a serious psychiatric illness. Did Carly see her father as a successful person? No. Based on your experience and expertise,

What would motivate someone to not be forthcoming with their doctor? So there are probably a number of reasons. I think many teenagers don't really want to go talk to a

psychiatrist or even a therapist, but certainly shame is one. Shame and stigma are big. There are a lot of people that engage in denial, that they just don't want to believe that they have a condition. And they think, they like to think that they can kind of soldier through. And they say to themselves that it's really not that bad.

A lot of teenagers in particular are worried that their parents are going to find out. And it's actually still fairly common for people to be worried that they're going to end up in a psychiatric hospital, especially around things like suicide. I'm talking about suicidal thoughts, but just in general, they worry that you're going to lock me up in a hospital. Based on your experience and expertise, how common is it for people to be afraid of receiving a mental health diagnosis?

I think it can be very difficult for people. I think especially, you know, I mean, depression doesn't quite have that same punch, but bipolar disorder, for example, or certainly anytime you talk about psychosis, I think it's a very big deal for most people to try to come to terms with that because they worry understandably about, you know, what it means, what the future might hold for them. Based on your evaluation of Carly and your interview with her and the records you reviewed,

How could Carly be experiencing these significant symptoms of mental illness but her parents not know when they live with her and see her every day?

So I'll say maybe two things. I think one is, I think many teenagers are pretty good at hiding things from their parents. It's a skill that most teenagers develop. And especially, you know, if a teenager spends a lot of time in their bedroom, for example, they may not see a lot of their parents. And the second thing is, I think Carly has said to me and she has said to others that she's really pretty good at putting on a face.

that she's able to put on a good face even when things are quite difficult. And I think we certainly saw evidence of that in reviewing the records.

He also said that he didn't think that Carly understood right from wrong at the time of the crime, which we all know that that's a huge deal when it comes to somebody offering the insanity defense, right? So instead, Dr. Clark thought that in the lead up to the shooting, Carly was becoming increasingly unstable. She was writing things in her journal like, quote, I don't think I'll make it any longer, and please help me.

And like I mentioned earlier, Carly changed medications right before this shooting. So according to Dr. Clark, that was probably a very bad idea. According to him, part of the problem was that she had been misdiagnosed and the medication that she was taking was either not addressing the root issue or it could have been making it worse.

In addition, she may have been having symptoms of withdrawal from not taking the old, original medication any longer. So he thought that she shouldn't have just quit it cold turkey. However, the prosecution argued that Carly was just this evil, narcissistic person. That she always wanted everybody to know how smart she was, how much better she was than everybody else, and she wanted total control over all situations. So much so, that she would kill over it. And

And even more, that she might have been faking her mental illness altogether. And that maybe her stepdad had something to do with this.

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According to the prosecution in Carly's murder trial, her motive for killing her mother was simply that she was mad at Ashley because Ashley wasn't letting Carly do whatever she wanted to do. Like, she wanted free reign and she didn't get it, so she went straight to murder. Then, there was the question of whether Carly had really been having those hallucinations, or if that was maybe just something that she had said to make herself look innocent after she had been caught.

She had been asked multiple times in the past, as we know, if she had them, and Carly always told her therapist no, adamantly no. She never heard voices. She never had hallucinations. She never had dark thoughts.

She also never reported any serious side effects from switching medications. On top of that, the dosage that she was taking was pretty low, so it was hard to see how she would experience a withdrawal that intense. And just like the defense had tried to use Carly's diary entries to make her look mentally unstable, the prosecution used some other diary entries to support their case.

For example, on March 12th, just a few days before the murder, Carly wrote,

Thank God physical confrontation was not possible. I sound crazy. Now the prosecution called a psychiatrist who basically said, that's not how you talk about it, that's not how you write about it. If you actually were in fact hearing voices, you wouldn't be classifying it that way, you wouldn't be describing it that way. That most people who have hallucinations believe in them and think that they're real, they can't identify that their voice is in their head.

So they wouldn't go into their diary and write about how silly the situation was or joke about it by calling it, you know, quote, the whole ordeal. So according to this psychiatrist, it seemed more likely that Carly was carefully planting clues to make it seem like she was crazy.

I mean, after all, the very first thing she wrote in her journal was, quote, Almost knowing and indicating that she knew whatever pen she put to paper was going to be read by somebody. So...

How can you be fully vulnerable and transparent in what you're putting down on the page if you know and are anticipating that somebody is going to read it in the future, right? And I want to be clear, it's not like there were a ton of diary entries going back years and years and years. Not at all. She only actually had started keeping a journal pretty recently.

which you could argue is something that you would do if you're thinking about committing a murder and you want to make sure that you've planted enough hints to support some sort of insanity defense later on.

The argument was that Carly didn't believe any of the things that she wrote, that she was just doing this because she's so intelligent, she's so smart, that she wanted to lay out this sort of trail for her insanity defense. And in one of Carly's diary entries, she wrote about her core beliefs. They were 1. There is no God. 2. Heaven and hell are false. 3. Love is important. 4.

4. You don't need family. 5. Writing your own destiny. 6. Loving yourself. 7. Having friends is important. 8. Don't belong to anything. 9. Never be alone. 10. Go to your place of comfort often. 11. Sometimes you must blend in, but never forget. 12. It's okay to be evil.

13. Sometimes you must jump into the dark to truly see the light. 14. Privacy is not loneliness. And the final one, number 15, death is inevitable.

Also, based on these entries and assuming that they were real, truthful representations of the way that Carly thought, she seemed to have a fascination with crazy people or crazy characters from different books and different TV shows. An example is Harley Quinn from the Batman comic. She was very fascinated with her, and she wrote about how her favorite parts of movies were the crimes and the death scene.

In one entry, she stabbed a hole in her journal and said that she was being like Tom Riddle, which I had to kind of look into that because I'm not a Harry Potter person. I've never read the book. I've never seen the movies. And if you're not a Harry Potter fan like I'm not, spoiler alert, found this out after my research, Tom Riddle is one of the main villains, and he gets defeated in one of the books where his diary gets stabbed.

So I guess she was like manifesting that or acting like that. I'm not really sure, but there was definitely a parallel there. She also wrote about gaslighting with specific instructions on how to gaslight somebody. She ended that entry with, quote, end quote.

In another entry, she wrote about earth, air, wind, and fire. She wrote, I choose fire. It is powerful, beautiful, and deadly. These are the traits that I desire, so I choose fire.

In another incident, at the beginning of 2024, Carly had a friend who drove over three hours to visit her at her house. The friend's name hasn't been made public, but I'm going to call him T.G. When he arrived at Carly's phone, her father answered the door and said,

which I have to say is kind of a weird thing to say to somebody when somebody has driven three hours to see someone, unless maybe Carly was grounded, she couldn't have visitors, her dad didn't know somebody was coming. But Carly later texted this friend, TG, that her mom, Ashley, was holding her down and preventing her from seeing him. She also said, quote, End quote.

Now, her stepdad Heath has completely denied that story. According to him, Carly just told her parents that she didn't want to see T.G. that day, even though he had traveled the three hours to see her. They knew that he had come a long way to see her, but they also said they weren't going to just force their daughter to be around somebody against her will.

So they made up that story about Carly not being available to explain why T.G. couldn't come in and hang out with Carly. But whatever the story was and whatever the truth was, Carly definitely talked and joked about murdering her parents a lot, even outside of just that text message that she sent to T.G. She talked about it often, but all of her friends just thought that she was making some sort of sick joke. They never thought that she was actually being serious.

But again, there was reason to think that she was serious, or at the very least, that the murder and the attempted murder were thought out and planned. First, the fact that whenever she was in view of the camera on the day of the shooting, she hid the gun behind her back. Now, I told you before, I was going to come back to this detail.

Because if Carly really did have some kind of mental break, and if she didn't know what she was doing, then she wouldn't have been thinking clearly enough to hide the gun behind her back when she was in the view of the camera, right? But clearly, she knew that she was being filmed. So it's like she knew that this was evidence that could be used against her later. So she was thinking, she was planning, she was being logical. But can you do that when you're having a mental break?

I don't know. I'm not a professional. But secondly, after Carly shot her mom, she actually took her mom's phone and texted her stepfather Heath. Now this is where a lot of the speculation and rumors are coming into play. So just want to do a little blanket warning. Do your own research. Form your own opinions. This is all alleged. But she took her mom's phone and she texted her stepdad saying, when will you be home, honey?

She was pretending to be her mom in this text message, and the prosecution argued that this was a tactic from her to try to lure her stepdad Heath home so that she could kill him as well. However, based on something that happened in the trial and a gesture from the stepfather to Carly,

People are suggesting this was not Carly trying to lure him home to kill him. This was her texting her and speaking in code. And I'm going to get to that in a minute here. So the third thing that I wanted to mention is that Carly showed her friend the body. And when she did that, she was cool.

calm, and collected, right? So all of these instances go to point that this wasn't some sort of mental break, that this was calculated, possibly even planned, and that there was, you know, not a mental break. However, at the end of the trial, the defense presented their closing argument and they blamed the murder on Carly's mental health. This is the kid who was compliant with the medication she was put on. However, that medication was

without anyone being able to tell beforehand, caused her symptoms to worsen. And while she was having a state of psychosis and an episode of acute stress on March 19th, she lost herself in what was the perfect storm. I am asking you for those reasons to please find Carly Gregg not guilty by reason of insanity and finally quell this storm for Carly and her family.

No one will understand this case and no one has heard this case the way that you have. Passing judgment on another person is a heavy burden to bear and I'm sorry that it falls on you. Please consider what is at stake in this case for this child and this family before you rush to judgment and render your verdict. Look at those documents. Consider the testimony.

Search your heart for what you know about this child from the picture painted by her of all the people that knew her best. And you tell me, what was the intent? You tell me why someone who intended and had planned to murder someone wouldn't have taken the camera she knew was in the kitchen and was easy to see down before she did anything, especially when she was a genius.

I mean, that's not the actions of a diabolical evil genius. Leaving camera footage up for everyone to see. Crawling through a sewer instead of just running away. Calling friends for help. Friends who could later testify about what happened. Again, I ask you to search your hearts and remember the undisputed truths in this case. Thank you. Then, the prosecution had the chance to offer their take. As Ms. Todd stood before you on...

Monday in her opening statement and told you this is not a case about who did it. And in fact, all of the evidence that you've seen tells you exactly that. It's not a case about who did it. You haven't seen one shred of evidence in this case that what happened on March 19th, 2024 was caused by anyone other than Carly Madison Gray. The defense also told you during opening statements that

on Monday that the state wants you to leave your common sense at the door. That they want you to tie it up in a bucket and leave it at the door. Ladies and gentlemen, all we want you to do in this case is use your common sense. And in fact, that's what Judge Arthur just instructed you to do in the very first jury instruction. And I want to talk about a few of these jury instructions with you real quick. But in jury instruction number one, which you'll have back in the room with you,

On the second page, he instructs you, Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of the state, all we want you to do is to go back there and use your good common sense and your sound, honest judgment. And again, I don't believe that you've heard one shred of evidence throughout this entire week that the person who shot Ashley Smiley was in fact Carly Madison Gregg. The person who shot and attempted to kill Heath Smiley was Carly Madison Gregg.

And the person who took down the camera from the kitchen and hid it in the refrigerator behind some water bottles was Carly Madison Gregg. Now, Judge Arthur also read you the elements of the crimes. And again, you'll have this information back there with you in the jury instructions. It's jury instruction number eight.

I kind of want to go down because as a simple person myself, I like to kind of have a road map as to where I'm going. So I like to be able to look at things and see them on paper and that's exactly what these jury instructions provide you. Kind of a road map to help guide you in your deliberations. So I want to talk about count one which is the first degree murder. And there's three elements here that it has listed. And

And the very first one says that on about the 19th day of March 2024 in Rankin County, Mississippi. That's the first thing you have to find.

ladies and gentlemen all the testimony has been that this happened on march 19 2024. you heard from uh deputy hunter lewis who was the the first deputy who arrived on the scene there that he was called out that day that he received a call from dispatch um to respond to 214 ashton way which is in the farmington station subdivision off of old fannin road and you heard um

Mr. Kevin Collins, the 911 dispatcher who told you that the call out came on that day at that time about 5 o'clock in the afternoon and you heard them tell you that obviously Farmington Station is located in Rankin County, Mississippi.

So there's no question as to that first part of the element there. As to number two, that the defendant Carly Madison Gregg did willfully, feloniously, and without authority of law kill and murder Ashley Smiley, a human being.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, you heard from Mr. Cliff Dunlap, the deputy coroner, who told you that the manner and cause of death in this case was found to be three gunshot wounds to the head, and it was found to be homicide, and that the victim was indeed identified as Ms. Ashley Smiley.

The last part there is that she did it with deliberate design to affect the death of Ashley Smiley, the victim. Ladies and gentlemen, I would submit to you that in the state of Mississippi, when it talks about deliberate design, that it's simply talking about an intent to kill. An intent to kill the victim, Ashley Smiley. That she did this with an intent to kill. And I would further submit to you that the use of a deadly weapon is an intent to kill.

Whenever you aim a deadly weapon, a pistol, a .357 revolver at someone's head and you shoot three times, that's certainly an intent to kill.

The jury only deliberated for a few hours, and on Friday, September 20, 2024, they found Carly guilty of all of the charges. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The defense immediately filed a motion for a new trial because they claimed that Carly didn't receive a fair and impartial trial. They also said that they found new evidence that could prove that she was in fact innocent.

or, at the very least, introduce some reasonable doubt. And that evidence included an absolutely wild interview that her biological dad gave. I love Carly, and I would love to have tried to help her the best I could. I kept screaming in my head, you know,

Why couldn't you just have called me? Kevin Gregg is Carly Gregg's biological father. He says it's hard to find one word to describe how he felt when he found out what happened inside of his ex-wife's home March 19th. Ashamed, embarrassed, angry, upset, very sad.

I loved her too. You know, we were married for almost a decade. Greg and Ashley Smiley married in 2005. They later had Carly. According to her father, Carly was an ordinary kid during her early years. You know, we had really enjoyed ourselves and she was a wonderful child and she was obviously multi-talented, gifted. You know, we loved each other. We loved that girl. He says when he and Ashley split, Carly had a tough time. Right before she turned four is when she separated from me and Ashley.

She had suicidal ideation on record in Warren County. Greg says he's still in the state of shock knowing his daughter killed the woman who gave birth to her. That girl knew right from wrong. That girl is not insane. That was a very dumb defense, if you ask me. But I wasn't involved. Nobody ever called me.

- Carly and her father's mental state were both a part of that defense. Greg admits that he suffers from a mental illness and hasn't always stayed on the straight and narrow. - Now, yes, previously in my life, I did a lot of drugs. Yes, and I admit them.

With Carly's attorneys possibly appealing the decision, Greg believes only one tactic will help his daughter in the future. I don't think anything's going to help Carly unless she wants to use the truth and rehabilitation and remorse, you know, as, you know, defense tactics, you know. He now hopes to help Carly in the best way he can while she adapts to her new normal as she spends the rest of her life behind bars.

I don't want to judge her. I hope she finds Jesus. I hope she can reconcile with what she did. Now, on its own, that clip might not sound, you know, like a game changer. But according to a news reporter, in an unaired portion of this interview, her biological father, Kevin, claimed that Carly went to therapy when she was little because she had been having hallucinations. She was hearing things as well, so she went to therapy.

Now, that's huge, right? Because it was proof that Carly really had been hearing voices, and for a very long time before the actual murder took place. Except, it was also complete bullshit.

because some people with the court actually looked at a transcript of the entire interview, including those parts that had not aired, and there was nothing in there about her hearing voices as a child or needing some type of special therapy. The rumors were all made up. There was nothing there.

So the judge denied her request for a retrial. But even without a retrial, there are a lot of questions today about whether justice was served and whether it's actually right to put her in prison. Some people agree with the prosecution. They think that Carly was genuinely an evil person.

She was incredibly smart. She enjoyed manipulating people. She was planting things in her diary. And maybe the reason her parents had so many cameras inside the house was because Carly was a lot to handle, that they had to, you know, keep an eye on her. And to support this theory, there's the fact that Carly was all over the place during the trial.

She would be smiling, she would be joking with her attorney, but then she would just be staring off into space just completely emotionless. Then she would be crying at the most random times. And whenever Carly was crying, it never seemed like actual tears were coming out of her eyes. So this has led some people to think that the tears were all an act and that she was faking it. She also would seem the most interested in the trial whenever somebody was talking about how smart she was.

During these times, she was smiling, she was acting very happy, acting very alert. She was also very interested in hearing the defense's psychiatrist talk about her mental health diagnoses. Some have speculated that that was because Carly was obsessed with wanting to seem different, to seem evil, or like something was wrong with her.

you know, being like a total teenage edgelord. I don't know. But then again, there are a lot of people who think that Carly genuinely has mental health issues and that they caused her to snap. And some of these people think that Carly shouldn't even be in prison because what she really needs is treatment in a mental health facility. But now let's get to the stepdad. Because the biggest theory going around is that Carly and her stepdad Heath planned the murders together.

See, during the trial, people noticed that Carly seemed to almost get giddy whenever Heath was mentioned. Like a schoolgirl, a schoolgirl with a crush. It was a little bizarre. Heath was also smiling a lot and treating Carly in a kind of like chummy way.

He testified that even though she literally tried to kill him, he wasn't scared of Carly, and he thought that she was, quote, just a sweet little girl, end quote. Heath also stayed in contact with Carly while she was in jail. Originally, a judge had put in a no-contact order between the two of them, but Heath hired a lawyer to fight the ruling. He won, and he talked to Carly nearly every day.

And at one point during the trial, Heath mouthed over to Carly the words, I love you, which many people thought was just beyond strange. It looked truly, who knows what the context was, but watching it back, it looked like an exchange between two lovers. And not saying that they were lovers, but I'm just saying it definitely looked like that. He looked at her in a very loving way and mouthed, I love you, and she smiles back at him in a giddy way, which...

again I've never been in that position but if my dad was mouthing I love you just to be supportive of me in a moment like that I can't imagine I would like smile and be giddy like a little squirrel I would kind of just be like I love you too or thank you or something like that but it went viral immediately it was very off-putting to a lot of people so all of this behavior has now led people to believe that Heath may have either been sexually abusing Carly or that they were in a relationship

because we know that she did supposedly have a secret boyfriend that she would text with on her burner phone, that she couldn't talk with him publicly. So people are asking, was that boyfriend Heath, the stepdad? In fact, there has been talk that Carly told her friends that her father was abusing her, and many people thought that she meant her stepdad Heath. Except when the police looked into these allegations, they cleared Heath entirely,

and it sounds like maybe she was accusing her biological dad, not Heath. I'm not sure. But either way, when Heath was called to testify in Carly's trial, he seemed unemotional, almost like he didn't even care that his wife had been brutally murdered. And like I mentioned, I even heard speculation that that text message that Carly sent when she said, are you coming home, honey, was all code to let Heath know that it was okay for him to come home.

Especially because Heath actually replied to that text message saying, no, I'll be at work for a little bit. He showed up at the same time that he always came home, despite texting back saying, no, I'm going to be at work for a little bit. So people find his text response to be a little bit suspicious. Also, during Heath's testimony, he claimed that

that he knew Carly had sent that text message, but couldn't exactly say why. He just said that something about the text seemed off, according to him. Now, of course, the big problem with this theory is that Carly did, in fact, shoot Heath when he got home, but she hit him in the shoulder, which is not a fatal location.

I don't know how likely it is that she would be such a good shooter that she would know exactly where to hit him without killing him, but the theory is that's exactly what she did. And get this, when she was arrested, the very first thing she asked was whether or not Heath was okay. There was also a random letter from somebody inside Carly's diary.

It was written in green ink, and the handwriting was not Carly's. And there is absolutely literally no evidence to prove this at all, I just want to be clear, but some people think that it was some sort of love letter to Carly from Heath. Then going back to the security camera.

People still think it's incredibly suspicious that Heath moved footage from the garage security camera to his computer before giving it to the police, especially because that's footage that he was on. Even though police cleared him of tampering with evidence, some people think that Heath was trying to delete something from that garage security camera footage. But what people think he was trying to delete, I'm not entirely sure.

Now, I'm not saying that this is the most airtight theory out there. Of course not. But there are plenty of people out there who think that the two of them planned this murder, thinking that Carly would get away with it by reason of insanity, that they could be together, and then that they could get Ashley's life insurance policy. And I mean, in the interest of fairness, I should mention that Carly's grandparents were also at the trial.

She smiled at them a bunch of times, just like she did with Heath, and they smiled back at her. So does that behavior automatically mean that she was in some sort of inappropriate relationship with her stepdad? No, but people do think that there is some smoke, and, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. Again, just theories and speculation. But it also seems like, in general, Carly's family supports her.

they seem to think that Carly did in fact have a mental breakdown, so it was only natural and normal for them to be there and support her and have empathy for her. Also, despite the fact that she did something terrible, it can be really difficult for a parent to just stop loving a child.

And even though Heath wasn't her biological father, they seemed to have a good relationship before all of this. So maybe Heath just understands that Carly is a teenager, quite possibly with very serious mental health issues, and that's the end of it. And maybe he just wants to be a good stepdad in, frankly, a very seriously messed up situation where it can be difficult to know what the right move is. But I want to hear what you guys think. Do

Do you think that Carly had a mental breakdown? Is she an evil person, an intelligent master manipulator? Was her stepdad Heath somehow involved?

What do you think? I have a feeling that more will come out about this case in the future, but right now Carly is being held at a youthful offender unit at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. She will eventually, though, be transferred to an adult prison. But I think there are still so many unanswered questions about this case, and it'll be interesting to see if she ever does any prison interviews, or if, you know, any more information gets released about what really happened and why it really happened.

But let me know what you guys think. I'm curious to know your thoughts. So let me know either in the Spotify Q&A section or in the Apple podcast review section. But again, thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode with me. Don't forget, if you're not following the podcast yet, it takes two seconds. It's totally free. Just go on, you know, the top or bottom corner of whatever podcast app you're listening on. Make sure that you're following it. That way you will get updates when I upload new episodes, new trial updates, new headline highlights episodes, all of the things. So you won't miss any episodes.

And until the next one, be nice, don't kill anyone, don't join any cults, and stay safe. Alright, bye guys.