Background:
On March 19, 2024, 14-year-old Carly Gregg, student of the year, was arrested for the murder of her mother and the attempted murder of her father.
Carly has been reported to be acting strangely lately by her friends. She was one of the brightest students in her grade, but she had many secrets. Her friends knew Carly had been actively taking drugs, vaping, stealing test answers, self-harming, and talking to people on secret accounts. She had a secret boyfriend and even had a secret iPod for when her parents took her phone.
On the day of the murder, Carly had an argument with one of her friends about the drugs she was taking; the friend felt that if he didn’t tell someone soon, Carly would do something unimaginable. That friend then confronted Carly’s mother, Ashley Smylie, a geometry teacher at their school. He planned for another one of their friends to distract Carly so he could talk to her mom in secret. He tells Ashley during school about her burner phone as well as the vape pens she has been hiding in her room, and on the drive home from school, Ashley confronts her daughter in the car, leading to a heated fight.
The Crime:
As soon as they get home, a camera in the kitchen and living area shows Ashley entering Carly’s room to find the evidence. After seeing four boxes of vape pens, Ashley takes them to her room and returns to Carly’s room to look for more. Through CCTV footage, Carly is seen sneaking into the house, and without making a sound, she walks down the hallway to her mom’s room, where she grabs the 357 magnum weapon Ashley had under her mattress for safety. She conceals the gun behind her back, hiding it from the cameras, and she walks to her room where her mom is. Carly then fires three rounds at her mother. Carly takes her mother’s phone from her pocket, enters her password, opens the messages with her stepfather, and asks him, “When will you be home, honey?” to impersonate her mother.
With her own phone, Carly then texts and calls a few friends, asking for immediate help. She invites them over in a panic, saying that she did something but refusing to tell them what. One of her very worried friends gets driven to Carly’s house, and upon entering, Carly asks her, “Are you squeamish around dead bodies?” Evidence of this is stated on the first day of trial, seen on the Law & Crime Network.
After showing her friend the body, she tells that friend, “I put three in my mom, and I got three more waiting for my stepdad when he gets home.” After seeing her stepfather pull into the driveway, she tells the friend to go into the backyard and wait for her. Carly ambushes Heath Smylie, her stepfather, in an attempt to shoot him. Heath fights back and is grazed by a bullet. He is then able to take the gun from Carly, which leads to her running out the backdoor and telling her friend to run, and they both leave in separate directions.
Heath Smylie walks into Carly’s room to look for her but finds the corpse of his beloved wife instead. The cops are called immediately, and Carly is arrested when she arrives home.
The Trial:
September 20th, Carly Gregg’s trial begins. Without a doubt, Carly killed her mother, but many Edisons found Carly’s trial to be strange when it came to her relationship with her stepfather;. However, she had tried to kill him; he denies that she would ever try to hurt him, that she must’ve thought that he was an intruder and that it must’ve all been just a big misunderstanding. Her father defends her and says Carly is just a young girl who means no harm. He reminisces on their good times together and all the good traits he loves about his stepdaughter. Some were confused as to why he was defending her, but Carly was nonetheless charged with the attempted murder of her father.
The Trial reveals that Carly had taken the camera from the living area/kitchen and placed it in the refrigerator to hide the evidence.
Throughout the days of the trial, Carly’s defense was that she was not in the right mental state on the day of the murder, she was struggling with drugs which led to her being in an out-of-body experience when it happened. When the psychiatrist expert came forward, he stated that Carly spent “60% of her time in a depressed state, about 20% of her time in a hypomanic state, and about 20% in a normal state.” It was confirmed that Carly Gregg is diagnosed with bipolar two disorder and that it is possible from her results that she also has schizophrenia.
Notes Carly wrote in a journal that were revealed during the trial depicted examples of possible schizophrenia. The letters stated, “I think I had a psychotic break earlier; the whole ordeal was quite silly. I spoke to one of the voices in my head.” and “Please help me, Please help me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” “Do I have schizophrenia? Am I having a psychotic break?”. The judge believed the writing in her journal to be fake, though she thought a psychotic person would think similarly.
Other psychiatrists don’t believe she was crazy for many reasons, saying that she had complete control over her actions at the time of the murder. Carly was able to recall details from her “out-of-body” experience where she says she was “blacked out.” Calling her hallucinations “silly” contradicted what people who have hallucinations would say. The state psychiatrist describes that the trial seemed to be mortifying and haunting to them, not “silly.” Because of these reasons, it is concluded Carly is not insane, therefore she was found guilty and charged with the murder of their mother, Ashley Smylie, the attempted murder of her stepfather, Heath Smylie, and tampering with evidence. Now, 15-year-old Carly Gregg has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
