Your support helps us to tell the story
“Have you ever seen a dead body?”
It’s the chilling question then 14-year-old Carly Gregg asked her friend after she shot and killed her mother, high school teacher Ashley Smylie, inside their Mississippi home earlier this year.
Carly told the friend to come over, claiming there was an “emergency” before revealing the horrifying situation, telling the friend: “My mom is in there.”
During the week-long murder trial, jurors heard how the teenager shot Smylie, 40, to death with a .357 magnum on March 19 when they got home from Carly’s school, Northwest Rankin High School, where her mom was a math teacher.
Prosecutors told the court that the shooting was carried out because Smylie had discovered her daughter’s “secret life” with drugs. They painted Carly as a dangerous killer who had “burner phones,” hidden vape pens containing marijuana, and a history of cheating at school and self-harm.
Carly then lured her stepfather Heath Smylie home by texting him pretending to be her mother, writing: “When will you be home honey?”
When Heath later arrived at the house, Carly shot him in the shoulder before he overpowered her and she was arrested a short time later.
The teen’s defense team argued she was experiencing significant mental health issues and that while she was having a “state of psychosis in an episode of acute stress on March 19, she lost herself in what was the perfect storm.”
Harrowing video footage was played in court that appeared to show the teen hiding something behind her back just moments before walking to a back bedroom where the sounds of three apparent gunshots and her mother screaming could be heard.
Now, after just four days of testimony, a jury deliberated for two hours on Friday before finding the teen guilty of killing her mother, guilty of attempting to kill her stepfather and guilty of tampering with evidence.
At just 15 years old, she will spend the rest of her life in prison without parole.
A Deadly Secret
Prosecutors say Carly killed her mother after the teen’s friend revealed Carly’s “secret life” with drugs on the day of the shooting.
“From the testimony of a friend, he was so worried about Carly’s use of smoking marijuana, so worried about her being high, and so worried about her having these burner phones, that [Carly’s] mom didn’t know about, that he felt compelled to tell Miss Ashley Smylie that day,” Rankin County Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Newman said Monday during opening statements.
Ashley Smylie searched Carly’s room and discovered vape pens just moments before she was shot and killed, according to WLBT.
Psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Clark testified during the trial that the teen was facing a mental health crisis that day and that her significant mood swings were made worse by her medications as she was hearing voices and having dissociative problems.
“And then, her mother finds out she’s smoking marijuana,” Clark said. “For Carly, in particular, she so cared about her mother’s approval, so for her, this was a crisis.”
“She was having mood issues, eating disorder issues, cutting herself, hearing voices and sleeping difficulty all leading up to January of 2024,” Clark added.
On March 12, just days before the shooting, she had been put on new medication, which she said made her symptoms worse.
Prosecutors also presented a journal to the jury in which Carly kept a written list of five “beliefs,” including “there is no God,” “it’s okay to be evil,” and “you don’t need family.”
The journal was evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist, who called the entries “highly concerning.”
Her defense team argued that the journals paint a picture of a mentally unwell child who had repeatedly detailed just how much she was struggling.
Harrowing new video shows moments before and after killing
Carly was captured on home surveillance footage walking around the house before allegedly firing three shots at Smylie, who died from a gunshot wound to the face.
Wearing a Nirvana t-shirt, the teen is seen wandering around the house and appears to be holding something behind her back, later identified as a .357 Magnum handgun, as she positions herself facing the camera and then slides out of the room.
After Carly disappears from view, three apparent gunshots and a woman’s screams are heard.
The teen returns to the kitchen seconds after the shooting, hiding the weapon behind her back as she slides onto a stool at the counter and grabs her mother’s phone as her two dogs hovered near her.
Prosecutors alleged during the trial that this is when Carly used her mother’s phone to text her stepfather and lure him to the house.
She also texted one of her friends, BW, to come over claiming that there was an “emergency.”
Once the friend arrived, Carly allegedly asked her “if she had ever seen a dead body before” before leading her to her mother’s body and saying her stepfather was next.
Nearly an hour later, video from the garage showed Carly running away after she allegedly shot her stepfather and struggled with him over the gun.
Carly broke down in tears when bodycam footage was shown in court of deputies arriving to find her crying stepfather saying his wife was dead.
“She killed her mom!” Heath is heard telling the authorities: “She tried to shoot me!”
When Carly’s stepfather Heath took the stand this week, he said the teen had no recollection of the shooting.
“I never seen anybody like that, even in movies, she was not herself and I do not believe she even recognized me,” Heath said.
He said he remembered Carly as a “sweet little girl,” but that day it looked as if “she had seen a demon or something.”
Heath also recalled the horror of finding his wife dead.
“She was laying on her back with her arms over here and a towel covering her face,” he testified. “I knew that she had been shot, there was blood around, I’m not sure exactly where, on the right side of her face.
“When I opened the door to the kitchen, the gun went off in my face before the door was three or four inches wide open,” he said. “The gun flashed in my face. It went off two more times, but my hand was on the gun after the first shot, and I twisted it from Carly.”
Despite this, Heath said he and Carly still talk daily and their relationship is “good.”
In closing on Friday, State Attorney Michael Smith said Carly “knew the difference between right and wrong.”
“There’s no doubt that Carly Madison Gregg is the one who killed her mom, Ashley Smylie,” he told the court. “There’s no doubt that she attempted to kill Heath Smylie when she aimed the gun right at his head and shot and hit him in the shoulder. And there’s no doubt that she’s the one who hid the camera, thus tampering with evidence.”
“We would ask that you go back there and find her guilty of all three because she was not insane at the time that this happened. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she knew the difference between right and wrong.”
However, the defense urged the jury to find her not guilty by reason of insanity.
“This was not a bad kid. This was not a kid who was enraged. This is not a kid who had hatred in her heart for her mother or her stepfather, in fact, it was the exact opposite. This was a kid who was experiencing significant mental health issues,” defense attorney Bridget Todd told the court. “The same mental health issues that ran in her family that we know are hereditary.”
“This is a kid who was compliant with the medication she was put on, however, that medication without them being able to tell beforehand, caused her symptoms to worsen,” she continued. “And while she was having a state of psychosis in an episode of acute stress on March 19, she lost herself in what was the perfect storm.”
Experts testified on Thursday and deemed Carly competent to stand trial and that she doesn’t meet the state’s standard for insanity. However, this contradicted the testimony given Wednesday from a psychiatrist who said Carly didn’t remember shooting her mother.
What’s next for Carly?
Prior to the trial, the teen was offered a plea deal of 40 years in prison, but turned it down. Instead, her team pursued an insanity defense. But it wasn’t enough.
Carly sobbed in court on Friday when the jury found her guilty on all three counts.
After just an hour more of deliberation, the jury sentenced the 15-year-old to prison.
She will spend the rest of her life behind bars, without parole.
