Caught On Camera: The Secret Inside Carly's Room

Let me take you back to a cold day in March 2024. Picture a mother—Ashley Smylie, a high school math teacher—getting news no parent wants to hear: something disturbing is happening in her own home. A concerned student, who’s also a close friend of her daughter Carly, pulls her aside with a gut-wrenching revelation. What Ashley found that day would set off a chain of events no one could have seen coming, but trust me, this story’s about to take a dark and shocking turn.

It all began on March 19th, 2024. Only hours before she was due to come home that evening, forty-year-old Ashley Smylie stood having a very difficult conversation. In front of her was not only a student of Northwest Rankin High school in Mississippi, the very same high school that Ashley worked as a math teacher at, but he was also one of her daughter’s good friends.

This fellow student, full of concern over Ashley’s daughter Carly Gregg, then proceeded to tell Ashley what he’d seen inside Carly’s room. Ashley, then shocked and more than likely in complete disbelief, kept what she’d learned to herself until she got home from school that very same evening. Then she went into Carly’s room, only to discover that everything she had heard that day had been the truth.

Inside Carly’s room was an extensive stash of marijuana, vape pens, and several burner phones. After seeing this same hoard of questionable items for himself, her friend had become so concerned for Carly’s safety that he felt like he had to share it with Ashley.

Mental Health Struggles and Disturbing Behavior

Carly, now only fifteen years old, had long suffered with her mental health. She was known to have frequent bouts of depression, but, maybe more alarmingly, she was also known to complain about hearing voices. According to some accounts, she’d received treatment for these auditory hallucinations as a child and had even gone to equine-assisted therapy, where specialists try to help people work through their trauma with horses and horseback riding.

According to other sources, when Ashley questioned Carly over the stash in her room that day, Carly was on new medication that had left her feeling, in her own words, “numb.” Caught off guard and with her secrets now out in the open, Carly took matters into her own hands.

In nanny-cam-like footage, video surveillance of the inside of the house showed Carly walking around, being especially cautious to never turn her back to the cameras themselves. She knew the cameras were on and recording. Why she was doing this remained a mystery until Carly stormed into her mother’s room and did something shocking.

A Shocking Turn of Events

Hidden behind Carly’s back that evening was a gun, and when she burst into Ashley’s room, Carly opened fire. The footage then captures the shocking sound of three gunshots followed by the haunting screams of Ashley. It turned out that even though at least one of those shots had hit Ashley directly in the face, she didn’t die instantly.

While her mother lay bleeding out and succumbing to her injuries, Carly can be seen returning to the kitchen, the gun still hidden behind her back. She then swipes up her mother’s phone and begins to lay the trap for her next victim. Ashley and Kevin Gregg, Carly’s biological father, had been divorced for some time now, but Ashley and Carly both shared a home with Ashley’s new husband and Carly’s stepfather, Heath Smylie.

Heath was currently at work, but Carly knew that she would be caught the moment Heath came home and discovered what she had done. The footage then shows Carly perched on a stool in the kitchen, pretending to be her mother as she sends Heath messages from Ashley’s phone.

“When will you be home, honey?” the text read, but Heath had no idea that it was actually Carly on the other end or what awaited him in his own home.

In the meantime, while Carly waited for Heath to get back from work, she did the unthinkable yet again. She lured a friend to the house, claiming that there was an emergency. The friend arrived, only to be met with Carly at the door, asking her if she was “squeamish around dead bodies.”

“My mom is in there,” she went on to explain.

It’s unclear if that friend believed Carly’s claims at the time, but she did manage to make it away from the scene unharmed. The same, however, could not be said for Heath Smylie himself.

As Heath arrived home, he found nothing unusual. Everything seemed quiet at first until he got to the front door and all hell broke loose.

The “gun went off in my face before the door was open,” he later said, explaining what happened to him next. As soon as Heath had the door open just a fraction, Carly pounced. Heath was luckier than his wife Ashley had been only an hour or two before him. Instead of hitting him in the head or the face, Heath was shot in the shoulder. This gave him the opportunity to fight back and defend himself. He was still injured and ambushed, but he managed to wrestle the gun out of Carly’s hands and stop the attack.

The Aftermath: Arrest, Trial, and Family Reactions

Now that she had lost the advantage of surprise, Carly fled the scene. Footage from outside the home shows her running away towards the street, while inside, Heath gathered his senses. In a few short moments, he’d had a look around and figured out what had happened.

“She killed her mom,” he told the 911 operator as he fought back tears.

Dispatchers then sent law enforcement, who managed to find and arrest Carly a short distance away from her home. Almost unbelievably, Heath later stood by Carly in court. Instead of turning on her for killing his wife and her own mother, Heath testified that to him Carly had only ever been a “sweet little girl.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Clark also addressed the courts and corroborated Heath’s testimony. He claimed that Carly’s mental health had severely declined because of the medication that she was on, and she had been at an all-time low on the day of the shooting.

In court, Carly faced charges of murder, attempted murder, and tampering with evidence. She faced a potential sentence of life in prison but had already turned down a plea deal where she would receive a lesser sentence. Instead, she chose to argue that she was not guilty by reason of insanity.

However, the jury disagreed with her claims that she was insane the evening that she killed her mother. On September 20th, 2024, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but her defense lawyers immediately put in an appeal.

Her lawyers also argue that Carly is too young to fully understand the charges against her or to make an educated decision on whether to take a plea deal or not. We will have to wait to see how the results of Carly’s appeals pan out, but one person who believes that justice was actually served that day was Carly’s very own biological father, Kevin Gregg.