Carly Gregg guilty of killing her mother

Brandon, Mississippi

I watched the entire trial and read everything i could about this case. Carly Gregg is a teenage girl accused and found guilty of murdering her mother Ashley Smylie and attempted murder of her stepfather, Heath Smylie.

Carly grew up with her mother Ashley Smylie and her father Kevin Gregg married in 2005 but later divorced. Little is known of the biological father, except that, Ashley and Carly allegedly did not like him very much. Carly’s defense accused Kevin of being addicted to drugs, being abusive, and mentally ill. Kevin admits that he was a former drug addict and that he continues to suffer from bi-polar disorder. He does, however, refute the claim that he was ever abusive towards Carly. He did have visitation right and Carly went to her father’s place once in a while. At the time the shooting took place, Ashley was allegedly in the process of obtaining full custody of her daughter Carly.

Ashley was a math teacher at a high school and later met Heath Smylie, who is a physical therapist assistant. They married in 2019 and Heath had a good relationship with his stepdaughter. The family lived in Mississippi with their two lovely golden retrievers dogs. Carly had a decent childhood with her mother who was supportive of her daughter and wanted what was best for Carly, like any mother. Carly also had good grades at school, she loved school and was considered to be a very smart teenage girl. Carly was allegedly suffering from mental illness, or so the defense claim. They use that particular reason to plead for insanity, as the reason to why Carly shot her parents.

On March 19th 2024, Carly and Ashley arrived from school. On the video surveillance footage, you can see Carly putting her school bag on a kitchen chair, then taking the dogs out in the backyard. During that time, Ashley Smylie searched Carly’s room to look for evidence of her smoking marijuana and found vape pens. Apparently a friend of Carly at school had warned Ashley about Carly doing drugs and having burner phones. As the mother searched Gregg’s room, the teenager came back inside with the dogs. She then wondered where her mother was, looking unsure. You can see her hesitating and walking toward her bedroom, then walking back to her parents room to take her mother’s .357 Magnum. Carly walked back to her own bedroom where her mother was searching her room for evidence of drugs. She shot her mom, 40-year-old high school math teacher Ashley Smylie, 3 times, in the family’s home. Chilling home surveillance footage shown in court captured the teenager walking around the house with a gun behind her back, and then the sound of gunshots followed by loud screams.

Right after she killed her mother, Carly walks into the kitchen, with her hand behind her back, sits down on a bar stool and texts her step-father from her mothers phone, asking when he would be home. When Heath arrived home, Carly then fired three shots at her stepfather, who was able to wrestle for the weapon and take it away from Carly. She was found not long after, about half a mile away from the home and brought back to the house, to be arrested for the murder of her mother and attempted murder of her stepfather.

As you watch the trial, you can’t help but find Mr. Smylie kind of acting strangely on the stand. He closes his eyes a lot during questioning, speaks with a very low, dull, monotone tone, when asked questions about the incident. He seems to be avoiding eye contact with the prosecution and did not appear to be very cooperative with them. It could just be assumptions, and him wanting to block himself from the pain of the situation, but he did not appear to be very sad that his wife had passed away. One would think that he would be mad at Carly for what happened and trying to kill him as well, but he was there to support his 15 years old teenage daughter. When talking about his stepdaughter, you could see his face lighting up, as he was talking about her. He was seen smiling and not having an ounce of sadness for Ashley, or anger for Carly. This led people to assume that maybe something might have been going on between the stepdad and stepdaughter. Could it be that maybe they liked each other more than a simple stepdaughter/stepfather relationship ? Are we, the public, reading too much into it and Heath simply is just a very nice human being that forgave the horrible crime her step daughter committed ?

His attitude toward his stepdaughter, his support of her, his strange smiles, laugh, and glances at Carly, led a lot of people to believe that something was really off with the stepfather. He mentioned that he and Carly, still talked and texted everyday since she was arrested as he asked his attorney to get a no-contact order between the two rescinded. Their conversations have mostly been conducted over the phone as Carly has been in solitary confinement at the Rankin County Jail. To this day, he said he’s still not scared of his stepdaughter. Heath’s mother was by his side as well as Ashley’s parents who were to assist the trial and also show support for their granddaughter. 

Carly was offered a plea deal of 40 years before the trial began, which she rejected. She could’ve been out of prison at the age of 55, but was found guilty and sentenced by the jury, of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. Instewad, she will remain in prison for the rest of her life. It is unimaginable to think that, as a 15 year old, your whole life has basically ended. She will never have the chance to experience having a boyfriend, prom, a job, a house, car, children. However long she lives, she will spend the rest of it, incarcerated.

I do think that she deserves what she got. Let it serve as an example that you cannot just shoot people and kill them without consequences. A lot of people found the verdict to be unfair, but forget that Ashley Smylie unfairly lost her life to her own daughter, whom she gave birth to 14 years prior. It’s unthinkable that, because a parent cares and loves their child and what is best for them, they end up dead because they are trying to protect their daughter from doing something really wrong at their age. 14 years old is not an appropriate age to do drugs and process burner phones. We live in a world where thankfully, there are consequences for our actions and some people have to learn this the hard way. Now Carly’s life is pretty much over as well, at the age of 15 years old. It was a harsh sentence, but it was totally appropriate in my opinion, considering what this teenage girl did. She will have the rest of her life to think about what she did and I hope that she will learn from it and become a better person. It was not insanity and not a mistake either.

The prosecution did an amazing job at representing Ashley and Heath and a spectacular one, during the closing argument. The jury got it right and did an excellent job, so did the judge. Do you think the sentence was too harsh ?