Larry Millete Convicted in Maya Millete's Murder, the "Ghost" Sword-Murder Trial of Isaac Apodaca in Grace Jennings's Killing, and a Verdict

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, you're listening to Daily Crime Injustice. I'm Garrett Fisher and it is Monday, July thirteenth, twenty twenty six. Before we start, a word of caution. Today's episode deals with the killing of a young woman and the death of a child. Nothing gratuitous, but if that is not where you are today, take care of yourself and if any of it hits close to home. I will have some resources for you at the end of the show. Here is where things stand. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, thirty year old Isaac Appadaca is on trial for the first degree murder of twenty one year old Grace Jennings, who was stabbed to death with a sword in twenty twenty two. Appadaca has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say he never held the weapon that his girlfriend did, and that he talked her into it. That trial is ongoing.

1:00 In San Diego, a jury has convicted forty four year old Larry Millet a first degree murder in the death of his wife, Maya Millet, who vanished in twenty twenty one and has never been found. And in Lompoc, California, forty year old Ashley Buzzard, charged with murdering her nine year old daughter Melody, was back in court this week. She has pleaded not guilty. Let me start with the case that is actually unfolding in a courtroom right now, because it asks a question the law has always struggled with. If you never touch the weapon, if you're not even in the room when the killing happens, can you still be a murderer. Prosecutors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, say the answer is yes, and they say the man who proves it is named Isaac Appadeka. But I want to start with the victim because she is the reason we are doing this at all. Grace Jennings twenty one years old in October of twenty twenty two. Grace needed a place to stay. That is it, That is the whole tragedy.

2:03 In one sentence, she needed somewhere to go, and someone she knew offered her a spot for the night, and she brought her cats and her belongings, and she walked in the door. She never walked out. Grace was found in a detached garage on a property in Santa Fe. She had been stabbed over and over with a sword, a thirty six inch double handed broadsword, the kind of thing you would see in a museum or a movie. This one came off Amazon, delivered two days before Grace died. Sit with that for a second. Somebody ordered the weapon that would kill her with two day shipping, and it showed up on the doorstep like a phone case or a pair of shoes. The woman who swung that sword is Kiara McCully, Appudeka's girlfriend, and she is not the one on trial this week, because she already pleaded guilty.

2:51 She admitted she killed Grace. As part of her deal, she will serve thirty years, and in exchange, she is testifying against the man prosecutors say is the real author of this whole thing, because here is the state's theory, and it is genuinely one of the darker things I have covered. Prosecutors say Apodaca did not need to hold the sword. He spent months, they say, building a world inside Kiera mccully's head, convincing her that he was part of a secret vigilante group called Ghost, an organization that supposedly existed to hunt down sex traffickers, convincing her that Grace was on a kill list, that if she killed Grace, she would move up the ranks. Unlocked perks matter more.

3:32 Prosecutors even say he convinced her she had dissociative identity disorder, helped her name the personalities and then played into them. Look, I'm gonna be honest with you. When you hear a defense say someone was manipulated, you brace for a stretch. But here it is the prosecution making that argument. They are the ones saying this was a person who got worked on methodically until she would do a thing she never would have done on her own. And then in the hours before Grace died, prosecutors say Appadaca sent texts I will read you the cleaner ones quote, I am just saying swing and don't regret the aim quote, I am not playing games. I am wanting to see you do this. That is not a man losing his temper.

4:19 That is a man giving instructions. And on the day it happened, prosecutors concede Apadaca was not even in the garage. He had gone into the main house, which is exactly the point of the whole case. He built the machine, they say, and then he stepped out of the room and let it run. Now he is pleaded not guilty, and his defense is telling the jury a very different story. They say Appadaka is the gullible one, that it was Kiara who raged, who planned this, who wanted Grace dead out of jealousy, and that Appadaca got swept along. His lawyer has acknowledged some of Apadaca's own statements where and I am quoting the defense here not the best, but argues he was cooperative, did not run and called for help.

5:03 Two people who were both in that orbit, each now pointing at the other as the one who really did this. The jury has to decide who was steering. The trial has been moving fast. Kiara's own mother took the stand. She owned the property, She watched that relationship curdle. She once had to take her daughter to the emergency room bruised head to toe with a broken thumb. And she is the one who testified the sword came from Amazon. She said she used to do medieval reenactments, so she knew exactly how dangerous that blade was. Her worry, she said, was that a pet might get hurt. It never crossed her mind it would be used on a person. Then the medical examiner testified, and I am going to stay on the right side of gravity here because Grace deserves that.

5:48 Doctor Emily Helmrich ruled Grace's death a homicide by sharp force injuries twelve stab wounds, at least eight more in size wounds wounds to her hands, which tells you Grace fought that she knew what was happening. And the examiner testified that none of those wounds would have killed her instantly. It would have taken minutes. That is the detail I cannot shake. This was not fast for Grace. The trial continues this week. Apodaca is presumed innocent and a jury, not me, will decide whether the state has proven he is the architect they say he is. But whatever that verdict turns out to be, I do not want us to lose the person at the center of it. Grace Jennings needed a couch for the night. Nobody was paying attention to how much danger she was walking into. Somebody should have been welcome back. If you have been with us a few weeks, you already know this next name, because back in June we brought you one of the strangest pieces of testimony I have ever described. On this show a San Diego murder trial where the prosecution called spellcap to the stand, actual paid online spellcasters. That was the Larry Millet case, and this week it reached the end of the road. Let me bring you back up to speed and then I will tell you what the jury did. Maya Millet thirty nine years old, a mother in Chula Vista, California. She was last seen alive on

7:21 January seventh, twenty twenty one. In the weeks before she disappeared, Maya had been telling the people closest to her that she was unhappy, that she wanted out of her marriage, that she was afraid of how her husband might react if she asked to leave. Her sister said, Maya told her directly that if anything ever happened to her, look at the husband. Think about how much fear it takes to say that sentence out loud to your own sister. Maya said it, and then she was gone. Her body has never been found, not in five years. And that is what made this case so hard to prosecute, because in most murder trials, the body is the beginning. Here there was not one. So what did the prosecution have.

8:08 They had Larry Milite's own behavior, and they had the spellcasters. This is the part we covered in June. Prosecutors showed the jury messages Larry allegedly sent to online spellcasters before Maya vanished. He was not asking for love or luck. According to the evidence, He was paying people to cast spells to make Maya quote, get sick and stay sick until she supposedly realized she loved him again, to banish everyone from her life except family. He was trying to trap her by magic before prosecutors say he made sure she could not leave any other way. Larry Millett denied all of it. His defense floated the idea that Maya could still be alive out there, somewhere in hiding. The jury did not buy it. They deliberated for less than a day and they came back with a conviction first degree murder. One of the jurors talked afterward, and what she said stuck with me. She said, the prosecution was impressive, the evidence was overwhelming, and quote, we could see what Larry did. Nobody five years and twelve people still saw it clearly. I will give you the honest, unresolved part, because we do not paper over the gaps on this show.

9:23 The jury did not all agree on exactly how Maya was killed. Prosecutors suggested she may have been poisoned, possibly with hemlock. Some jurors thought poison, some thought strangulation. They could not say which. But here is the thing, and it matters. The law did not require them to. They did not have to know the method. They had to know the man, and they did. No sentencing date has been set yet. There is still a separate weapons charged to clean up. Before this is fully closed. Larry Millett is looking at a potential life sentence. But I want to end where this always should end, on Maya, because a verdict is a legal event and it is not the same thing as closure. The police chief in Chula Vista said it plainly. After the verdict, Maya is still out there. She is still missing, and they are going to keep looking until they can bring her home to her family. Maya Millett warned the people who loved her.

10:21 She told them exactly where to look if she disappeared. The least we can do is remember she was right. Welcome back, and this last one is the one I have been carrying since last fall. If you have listened to this show for a while. You remember Melody Buzzard. We covered her disappearance a lot back when she was still a missing child, back when there was still a version of this where she came home a nine year old girl from Lompoc, California, last scene in October of twenty twenty five, after her mother took her on a road trip across the country and came back without her.

11:04 I have to update you now, and I wish I did not. Melody is not missing anymore. In December, two people taking photographs in a remote part of Wayne County, Utah, found her remains. Investigators say Melody was killed by multiple gunshot wounds to the head. She was nine years old, and her mother, Ashley Buzzard, is now charged with her murder, specifically murder by lying in wait and discharge of a firearm causing death. Ashley has pleaded not guilty, and I want to be careful and clear here. She is presumed innocent and this case has not gone to trial. But I also owe you the facts prosecutors have laid out because you followed this from the beginning. Here is what they say happened on October seventh of last year, Ashley and Melody left California in a rented Chevrolet Malibu. On that trip, investigators say the two of them wore whigs to disguise their appearances, and the license plate on that rental car got illegally swapped out at least once. They believe the pair traveled through Kansas and into Nebraska before turning around, and on October tenth, Ashley came home alone without Melody. It took the school district reporting the girl missing for anyone to start asking where she was. You put those pieces next to a nine year old with gunshot wounds to the head, found hundreds of miles from home, and you understand why this went from a welfare check to a murder charge. Now. The reason Ashley Buzzard is

12:35 back in the headlines this specific week is honestly a strange and small thing, and I have gone back and forth on how to talk about it. A judge has granted her the use of a stress ball in court. That is it. Her defense filed a sealed request for accommodations. The reasoning was redacted, and the judge signed off on letting her hold a stress ball during proceedings under some pretty tight rules, the bailiff holds it before and after it never leaves the courtroom. Her hands have to stay visible at all times. I will be honest with you about why a detail that's small makes headlines. It is because Ashley Buzzard has mostly not been in court at all. She has missed several of her own hearings, her lawyer's citing illness with no further explanation. So a woman who will not show up to face the charge that she murdered her own daughter gets a news cycle over a stress ball. I understand the instinct to be angry at that image. I would just gently point us back to where the anger belongs, not at a foam ball, at the fact that melody is not here. A couple more things you should know. Prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty in this case, and Ashley Buzzard is scheduled to be back in court for her preliminary hearing in September. That is the next real beat, the hearing where a judge decides whether there is enough evidence to send this to trial. We will be there for it.

13:55 No motive has been offered, not one, and maybe that is the hardest part. Of a case like this, we want the why, because the why would let us file it away, tell ourselves it was something specific, something that could not touch our own lives. There is no why here. There is just a nine year old girl named Melody Buzzard who should be finishing fourth grade right now and instead was found in the Utah Desert. Nobody was paying attention to her for weeks. The school had to be the one to ask. Somebody should have been asking sooner, do better. Closing, that is the show for today, before we go, because today was a heavy one. If the Melody Buzzard story, or anything about a child in danger is something you are dealing with in your own life or your own community, you can reach the Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline anytime twenty four to seven at one eight hundred four two two four four five three.

14:52 And if you are struggling yourself, the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is there day or night. Just dial nine eight eight. If today's episode meant something to you, the single best thing you can do is share it. Send it to one person who follows these cases. The way you do that, word of mouth is how this show grows, and it means the world. And if you are listening on Spotify, drop us a comment, tell me what you think. Tell me which of these you want us to stay on. I read them on YouTube. Hit subscribe so you do not miss a day. We will be back tomorrow. Until then, take care of each other. I am Garrett Fischer, and this is Daily Crime and Justice.

15:33 Legal note spoken. Isaac Appadaca has pleaded not guilty and his trial is ongoing. Everything attributed to prosecutors, to the defense, or to witnesses reflects testimony and arguments made in court, not proven fact, and a jury has not reached a verdict. Both sides in that case accuse the other party of being the true manipulator, and we have presented both. Some accounts have described a prior relationship between Race Jennings and the defendant, but Grace's mother disputes that any such relationship existed, and we have left unproven claims about the victim out of our reporting. Trial details are current as of Friday, July tenth, and the trial continues this week. Larry Millet has been convicted of first degree murder. No sentencing date has been set, and jurors did not agree on the exact method by which Maya Millett was killed. Ashley Buzzard has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. Her case has not gone to trial, and details of the road trip have been characterized differently across reporting. Our sources include Court TV, along with local and wire reporting. This has been Daily Crime and Justice