Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you ever heard of the Butterball Turkey Helpline?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh? Yeah, have you heard of this?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Yeah, Alex Stone, ABC News is joining us now, Alex
true or false? You've called the Butterball Turkey Helpline before.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I feel like the Butterball Turkey Hotline for any local
reporter is something that you do at the story on
every Thanksgiving. I think I've done it for how many
years I've been doing this, like thirty five years now?
I think every year we've done a Butterball Turkey. But
I'm like, does anybody actually ever call? I mean apparently
they do, but in today's world do they still call?
(00:34):
Or do you do it online?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Well, there are some of these wildest questions that the
Butterball Turkey Helpline has ever received.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
It seems like perfect thing for chat GPT now for
people to ask. But right, good carter Ball Turkey odline.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, you're in that situation. Clearly, you're solving it and
getting it cleared up pretty quickly on the computer right
in front of you. It does circumvent a human in
that situation. But there was one of them that says
somebody wanted to wash their turkey and make sure it
was defrosted at the same time, she explains, so they
(01:09):
told her they wanted to put it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
In a dishwash you that was coming.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Can you believe now again, this is somebody that said
that happened. I'd like to hear that recording. I'd like
to hear that because it's just like, are you making
that up?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's kind of ingenious at the same time though, right
you think about it's going to clean it, don't put
any soap in there, and it'll kind of cook it
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Or like thought, if you run like hot water for
all first time cook turkey preparers, let me just let
me pass this along.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Inside the turkey there is a plastic bag. Take it
out before baking. You're done, and then that's it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I actually yeah, nether parts.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Somebody do that at one point and I'm like, the
turkey tastes like plastic and we've found the bag.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Oh no, Now do you handle any of the cooking
duties Alex for Thanksgiving? Or is it all your wife?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Typically after work, so we have a lot of family.
They all come into town and so I kind of
come home and it's usually about done and ready to go.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Somebody also on this Butterball Hotline said they wanted to
know if the turkey was okay to eat after it
was left outside the thaw and animals had gotten to it.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Oh my god, just go buy a new turkey.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Right. A man ask if the oil from the chainsaw
he cut the turkey with made it inedible.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
These are some of yes, yes it does, some of.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
The questions for the Butterball Hotline. Another one called to
ask the best way to cook a turkey that had
been in the freezer since nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm not kicking it, Go buy a new one.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Questions also about is it okay to slow roast the
turkey over a few days so the house would be
filled with that delicious aroma? How do you do that?
What do you put it on?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
One hundred turkey?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
How does Blade not have one of those plugins turkey
cented plugins?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
By now?
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I think they have turkey candles out there. The turkey
sent it me. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. One
caller didn't have a question, but offered a tip for
getting the bird to fit in any pan. He recommended
wrapping it in a towel and then giving it a
few good stomps to break the bones, abuse it.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
That's the kind of guy that lives in a neighborhood
where people go missing.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Possibly, I guess, but yeah, those are some of the
interesting questions that people have for the butterball. I called
one year when I first kind of started here and
recorded some of it and ended up using a little
bit of it. But the people were not They weren't
amused when I started trying to get a little play
(03:57):
for whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
See, I think it's like a radio prank Tom. But
does anybody actually call them that? I don't know of
anybody who ever has.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, I guess they still get a lot of calls,
you know that. I mean, think about it as as
long as there are you have the ability to dial
a phone number with whatever you're going to have, you know,
the older end, I can't imagine a.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Twenty grandma guessing is not to hop it on chat GPT,
but she'll go on her land line. No.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And the other part is too think about it, Grandma,
who's cooked how many fifty turkeys or whatever, forty turkeys
or whatever the number would be. Come on, She's not
needing any help, That's true.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
They got it all from it doesn't get run over
by rain.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
So talk to us about the this Melody Buzzard. Is
that how you say it?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Buzzard?
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, making your first appearance in court today.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, So Melody is missing. She's nine years old. But
her mom, Ashley, made her first appearance just a little
while ago, about an hour ago, looking very different than
we've ever seen her because she routinely wear wigs and
makeup and in court today no wig and no makeup
and then real short, curly hair. But she is the
mother of a nine year old who has been missing
(05:10):
since early October. And so first of all, in court
today she came in first time we've seen.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Her, Ashley Lynn Buzzard president in custody.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
And she pleaded not guilty to a charge of false imprisonment.
Now this is separate from her missing daughter. She allegedly
held a friend who has become kind of a confidant
during her missing daughter's case against his will last week
and had a box cutter and prevented him from leaving.
So she was arrested for that and she had to
appear today and the judge had based off of that
(05:40):
single charge and not being related to her daughter, that
he had to release her ahead of trial. So she
was granted release and the judge saying that she could
get out of him. You're released on supervised release. But
the bigger picture in this whole thing is, while she's
gonna go free, her daughter has been missing and she's
not helping at all or giving any indication of her
daughter is dead or a live and her daughter hasn't
(06:02):
been seen in over a month. So just rewinded a
little bit. Going October fourteenth, the local school district in
Santa Barbara County, California called the Sheriff's office to ask
for a welfare check because nine year old Melody Buzzard
had not been seen in over a year. And they
originally thought this girl had been missing for over a
year and nobody had noticed it, but they had they've
(06:22):
been able to narrow it down now that on October
seventh of this year that Ashley and Melody the mom,
Ashley the daughter Melody, that they were seen on surveillance
video in Santa Barbara running a car and they went
on a three day road trip to Nebraska and back,
and on that road trip, they took a weird route
back through Kansas, but that they were both wearing wigs,
(06:44):
and that Ashley changed out the rental car's license plates
from California to New York plates. They don't know where
she got these New York plates or where they are now.
But before she returned the rental car, the California plates
were back on it. But when she returned the car
to Santa Barbara, Melody was gone and they don't know
where Melody is. On October fourteenth, deputies went to the
(07:05):
family home after the school district called and no sign
of the little girl. Raquel Zick is with the Santa
Barbara County Sheriff's Office. Deputies did contact the mom at
the residence, but she was unable to give us a
verifiable or reasonable explanation as to where Melody was, so
they executed a search war they have found no signs
of the girl. They have since tracked down the Melody
(07:26):
was last seen alive on surveillance video on October ninth
on that road trip on the Colorado side of the
Colorado Utah border. And today, guys, there's a big FBI
search underway over numerous states looking for Melody. There is
no evidence that she is dead or alive. They just
they see nothing. And Bill Garcia is a private investigator
(07:46):
searching for Melody on the father's side of the family,
and he's retracing the steps right now. He's at the
Colorado Utah border today, and he says he doesn't see anything.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I don't see any of the signs that would indicate
Melody's life life was taken and that she may be
anywhere near this area.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So the nine year old could be anywhere at this point,
I mean really anywhere in the world. And investigators say
mom is totally uncooperative. They have no indication of what
happened to Melody on the road trip or why they
were wearing wigs or switching license plates. Lily Dennis is
Melody's paternal grandma, and she was outside court. This is
about ten minutes ago, outside of that court here.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
I don't think I can speak to you.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I would punch her.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I don't care they put me in jail, but I
want to know where my granddaughter is.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And Melody's dad died years ago in a motorcycle accident.
But today Ashley Buzzer, she's been released from custody on
that false imprisonment charge. She's got to wear a GPS
monitor so they'll know where she is. But where the
nine year old is? She's been missing for over a
month and there is no indication of what happened to her.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Well, if the mom's being this uncooperative, if you will,
and you know, doesn't want to give any information, well
why would you be withholding that right now if there
wasn't Yeah, there's definitely something the fary is happening here,
because why else would you just say I'm not going
to cooperate?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And why were they wearing wigs and change out the
license license?
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I mean? And none of it makes any sense. Mom
has according to those around her, she's had a mental
health issue for many years, So none of it makes
any sense. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Oh I thought you were going to say, I'm just
I have this look on my face and I am
shaking my head because my heart tells me that child
has probably been sold. She's not dead, that this woman's
not bright enough to have killed her, hid the body
and not left forensic evidence. I'm scared that she changed
her appearance, sex changed her appearance, went somewhere and sold
this little girl.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, yeah, they don't know. Oh, and by the way.
The last photo they have of her now, the surveillance
video of the rental car agency with the last photo
that they've been working off of is from two years ago,
when she was seven years old. That's last time she
had her picture taken. She was homeschooled, never around any friends.
I didn't have a friend group. Family members were never
allowed to see her. So they're working off of a
photo of I mean, a kid changes a lot from
(09:58):
seven years old to nine years old. They don't even
know what she looks like.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Why wouldn't they just grab a still from where? Did
she have a wig on? In the in the the
the video where they were renting the vehicle, she had
a Yeah, she had a wig on her. So it's
not accurate, Okay.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, I mean you can only see a little tiny
bit of the face. But when they went and rented
that car, yeah, wig on and uh that's all purpose up.
That's all she knew.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Enough to disguise herself and the child. She's completely competent
to stand trial and face whatever penalty the Lull can
throw at her for following something.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I mean, to get her with something. They got to
have proof.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, got a crime, but you know, as we always say,
it's not a crime to go missing, even if you're
a child. And and they don't have any indication. They
kind of got her last week and the judge released
her today, but that again totally unrelated and he had
to do based on that charge because she's not charging
anything on on this yet. But it seems like something
went on, but they don't know what it is yet
(10:53):
because they haven't found a body, they haven't found any
evidence or anything. They haven't found any evidence that she
was sold or is with somebody. They just don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, it definitely feels like this is not going to
turn out. Uh you know, well if you will, unfortunately
is the way that this feels like. But then again too,
if the mom's not cooperating and you know, they just
have no leads and they can't get her with anything, right,
I mean they got to have actual.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
People to get her thing. Yeah, well what do you
get her on if you if they don't know if
she's alive or dead. You can't get her for murder.
You can't kidnap, Yeah, and she's not kidnapping her own daughter,
So they got to figure it out what it is.
But the FBI they're leading because now it's so many
states of trying to get police departments together. They're re
going along the route that they went on. They're asking
(11:42):
anybody who may have seen mom and daughter, even if
it looked totally normal, just to tell them where they
were and what it looked like, and where they wearing
wigs and and all of that, because they just do
not understand this, and they've been investigating this now for
four or five weeks.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Crazy. Obviously, we'll keep an eye on this. Alec Stone,
ABC News out of Los Angeles. Alex, if later tonight
you smell something and it's coming from your east, it's
probably me as in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It's I know you're gonna say it was turkey from
what we were talking about before. Well, I can't wait
to smell your turkey.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
I I don't know that we can put that over
the airways.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I get the dump button.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, I think we're all right, Alex, thanks very much,
appreciate a great flight. Thanks men. See