“Have you ever seen a dead body?”
That was the chilling question Carly Gregg, then 14, asked her friend after she shot and killed her mother and high school teacher Ashley Smylie in their Mississippi home earlier this year.
Carly told her friend to come over and claimed it was an “emergency” before explaining the dire situation, telling her friend, “My mom’s in there.”
In the week-long murder trial, the jury heard how the teen shot and killed Smylie, 40, with a . 357 magnum on March 19 when they returned home from Northwest Rankin High School, where Carly’s mother was a math teacher.
Prosecutors told the court that Smylie was shot because her daughter discovered her “secret life” with drugs. They portrayed Carly as a dangerous killer with “throwaway phones”, hidden vape pens containing cannabis and a history of cheating and self-harming at school.
Carly then called her stepfather, Heath Smylie, over to the house pretending to be her mother and texted him, “When are you coming home honey?”
When Heath later arrived home, Carly shot Heath in the shoulder and Heath then disarmed her and was arrested shortly afterwards.
The teenager’s defense team argued that he had serious mental health issues and that on March 19, he “went into a psychotic state during an acute stress attack and lost control of himself in a perfect storm.”
In chilling video footage shown in court, the teenager is seen hiding something behind his back and moments later walking towards a back bedroom, with three gunshots heard and his mother screaming.
Now, after just four days of testimony, the jury deliberated for two hours Friday, finding the teenager guilty of killing his mother, attempting to kill his stepfather and tampering with evidence.
The young girl, who is only 15 years old, will spend the rest of her life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A Deadly Secret
Prosecutors said Carly killed her mother after the teen’s friend exposed her “secret life” of drugs on the day of the incident.
“According to a friend of his, he was very concerned about Carly smoking pot, he was very concerned about her getting high, and he was very concerned about her having these disposable phones, [Carly’s] “Her mother had no knowledge of this, she felt compelled to tell Ms. Ashley Smylie that day,” Rankin County Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Newman said in her opening statement Monday.
According to WLBT, Ashley Smylie found vape pens when she searched Carly’s room just before she was shot to death.
Psychiatrist Dr Andrew Clark told the hearing that the teenager had been experiencing a mental health crisis that day, with severe mood swings exacerbated by the medication he was taking, hearing voices and experiencing dissociative problems.
“And then her mother finds out that she’s smoking marijuana,” Clark said. “For Carly in particular, she really values her mother’s approval, so for her, it was a crisis.”
“By January 2024, she was suffering from mood issues, eating disorder issues, cutting herself, hearing voices and difficulty sleeping,” Clark added.
He said he was given a new medication on March 12, a few days before the attack, and that it made his symptoms worse.
Prosecutors also presented the jury with a journal in which Carly kept a written list of five “beliefs,” including “There is no God,” “It’s OK to be bad” and “You don’t need family.”
The journal was evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist, who described the entries as “extremely alarming”.
The defense team argued that the diaries painted a portrait of a mentally ill child, repeatedly describing in detail how difficult the boy was.
Heartbreaking new video shows moments before and after murder
Security camera footage from the home shows Carly walking around the house and shooting Smylie three times, who died after being shot in the face.
The young girl, wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, is seen walking around the house and appears to be holding what is later determined to be a .357 Magnum handgun behind her, positions herself towards the camera and then slides out of the room.
After Carly disappears, three gunshots and a woman’s screams are heard.
Seconds after the incident, the young girl returns to the kitchen, hides the gun behind her back, climbs onto a stool at the counter and grabs her mother’s phone, with her mother’s two dogs walking around nearby.
Prosecutors alleged at the trial that Carly used her mother’s phone to text her stepfather and try to lure him home.
He also texted one of his friends, BW, telling her to come over because there was an “emergency”.
When her friend arrived, Carly allegedly asked him, “Have you ever seen a dead body before?” and then led him to her mother’s body and told him her stepfather was next.
Video from the garage about an hour later shows Carly shooting her stepfather and then allegedly struggling with him over the gun before running away.
Carly broke down in tears when she saw bodycam footage of the moment officers arrived at the courthouse and saw her stepfather crying as he said his wife had died.
“He killed his mother!” Heath can be heard telling officers: “She tried to shoot me!”
When Carly’s stepfather Heath took the stand this week, he said the teenager had no memory of the incident.
“I’ve never seen anyone like him before, not even in movies, he wasn’t himself and I don’t think he even recognised me,” Heath said.
He said he remembered Carly as a “sweet little girl” but that day she looked “like she saw a demon or something”.
Heath also recalled the horror of finding his wife dead.
“He was laying on his back, his arms were here and his face was covered by a towel,” she testified. “I knew he had been shot, there was blood, I’m not sure exactly where, on the right side of his face.
“When I opened the kitchen door, before the door was opened three or four inches, the gun went straight at my face,” he said. “The gun went straight at my face. It went off twice more, but after the first shot, my hand was on the gun and I turned it away from Carly.”
Despite this, Heath said he sees Carly every day and their relationship is “good”.
At closing on Friday, State’s Attorney Michael Smith said Carly “knows the difference between right and wrong.”
“There is no doubt that he was the one who killed Carly Madison Gregg’s mother, Ashley Smylie,” he told the court. “There is no doubt that he tried to kill Heath Smylie, he pointed the gun at his head and fired, hitting him in the shoulder. And there is no doubt that he was the one who hid the camera and thereby obscured the evidence.”
“We want you to go back there and find him guilty of all three because he was not crazy when this happened. He knew exactly what he was doing and he knew the difference between right and wrong.”
But the defense asked the jury to find him not guilty by reason of insanity.
“This was not a bad child. This was not an angry child. This was not a child who had hatred in his heart for his mother or his stepfather, in fact it was the opposite. This was a child who had significant mental health issues,” defence lawyer Bridget Todd told the court. “The same mental health issues that run in his family and that we know are hereditary.”
“This was a child who was compliant with the medication he was given, but that medication caused his symptoms to worsen without warning,” he continued. “And on March 19, he lost control in a perfect storm when he experienced a psychotic state during an acute stress attack.”
Experts testified Thursday that Carly was fit to stand trial and did not meet the state’s mental health standard. But that contradicted testimony Wednesday from a psychiatrist who said Carly did not remember shooting her mother.
What’s Carly’s next step?
Before the trial, the young girl was offered a 40-year sentence but she refused. Instead, her team put forward a mental illness defense. But it wasn’t enough.
Carly sobbed in court on Friday after the jury found her guilty of all three offences.
After only another hour of deliberation, the jury sentenced the 15-year-old defendant to life in prison.
He will spend the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole.