336: Influencer Found Dead, “Friends” Hold Friend Captive, Melodee Buzzard Update & News Anchor Stabs Mom
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Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serial Asleep.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly, with me, your host, Annie Elise. The true crime bestie, here to hopefully get you through the week. I don't know, this week has been kind of dragging in a way. I feel like the weather has finally turned. It's getting dark super early. I don't know. I'm excited. It's almost the weekend. But anyway, I have a lot of cases that we need to talk about. Not only new cases that are like insane and wild, but a couple of updates in some cases that one case we talked about recently and then one that we haven't talked about for years, but there has finally been some movement. And so I actually really want to start with that. And it's the case of Michael Vaughn.
Now, we previously covered this case a couple of years ago. Michael Vaughn was a five-year-old little boy. He vanished outside of his home in Fruitland, Idaho back on July 27th, 2021. But now, as I said, there has been a major development. On October 31st, the county prosecutor announced that charges are finally officially being filed in connection with Michael's disappearance. Then, after that announcement was made... Days later, it was revealed that 33-year-old Stacey Wondra, who is a boy, Stacey is a guy, he's being charged with first-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping, and destruction of evidence. Now, here's where it gets really disgusting and very twisted. Stacey and his wife, Sarah, were first named as suspects way back in 2022.
after police had received a tip from a roommate that ultimately led the investigators to excavate their backyard while they were searching for Michael's remains, but nothing has really happened since then. Now, both Stacey and Sarah are currently serving prison sentences for completely unrelated charges— However, newly released body cam footage shows Stacey on FaceTime with the investigators during that 2022 excavation and dig, and he was pointing out where he believes Michael's remains could be found. Yet, he continues to deny any sort of involvement in the burial itself, but he does claim that he saw his wife Sarah place Michael's body there. And even worse than that, that little Michael was wrapped in a black or white trash bag.
Now, I could go on and on about this case because it is one that has been highly covered but also is just so disturbing because right when this all happened, it seemed like everyone in the public was blaming the parents. It kind of felt reminiscent a little bit of Summer Wells if you had followed that case at all. But right away when Michael was reported as missing, people were kind of like, oh, what the parents are saying isn't really quite adding up. Nothing's making sense. And it was sad because there was a lot of just like publicization public hatred directed towards the parents. And now this has finally come out. People are kind of like, wow, I can't believe people went so hard at the parents.
This is so sad. And I think it's a good reminder that, and I'm guilty of this myself, I'll be honest, not to always jump to conclusions about things. I never thought Michael's parents were involved from the jump. I truly didn't. But I think that sometimes it's easy to get carried away with what seems to be the not necessarily obvious conclusion, but the more likely before there's any facts or evidence. And so I think this case is unfortunately just a very good reminder of that. But we still don't have a lot of details as to the why, the how, why it took so long to finally get these charges in place. So I'm sure more information is going to surface in the near future. But in the meantime, I will link the deep dive that we did on this case a couple years back if you want to get familiar or if you just want to know what was it that seemed shady that made people look at the parents.
What really happened? How did he go missing? Because again, I could be here for hours and talk about it, but I will link that episode for you just so that you can get fully caught up.
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Chapters
4 chaptersSpeakers
2 identifiedMore from Serialously with Annie Elise
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440: Clancy Hold Out Juror, Sider Family, Teen Killed By Murder-Obsessed Couple & Incest Baby Left on Highway
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437: Lindsay Clancy Copycat, 5 Year Old Saylor Hayes, Kim Zolciak’s Son & D4vd Update
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