Day two of the trial of accused teenage murder suspect Carly Madison Gregg is underway with her stepfather taking the stand.
Heath Smylie, who recounted the March 19, 2024, incident that left his wife dead and himself shot in the shoulder, was listed on the defense’s witness list and underwent hours of direct examination and cross-examination on Tuesday morning at the Rankin County Circuit Court. Here’s what we learned.
Stepfather: Something ‘was wrong’ with Carly
Heath recalled the deadly day and exactly what happened from his vantage point in front of jurors and a packed courtroom, as the case against Carly has now picked up not only statewide but national attention.
Heath said March 19 started as it normally did with him, his wife Ashley, and Carly getting ready for the day. After Ashley made tea and left with Carly to go to school at Northwest Rankin High School – where Ashley worked as a math teacher and Carly attended as a ninth-grade student – Heath left a few moments later to go to his workplace as a physical therapist, less than five miles from the family’s Brandon home.
As was usual, Ashley and Carly made it back to the house that afternoon at 3:54 p.m. before Heath got off. Text messages from Ashley’s phone to Heath began about her plans to go to the grocery store but those plans were later rescinded, and a message at 4:14 p.m. went to Heath reading, “Are you almost home, honey?” While Heath said the message was not far off from what she might send, it was not a normal message he received daily from his wife. Throughout this week’s trial, Carly has been accused of being the one to send it.
When Heath got home at 5:03 p.m., camera footage from the garage presented in court on Tuesday showed Heath getting out of his truck and walking into the home. Gunshots could then be heard with Heath seeming to scream, “Stop it, Carly.” The footage did not pick up the shooting itself, but Heath described it to those inside the courtroom.
“Everything seemed pretty normal, and I came on in. 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,” Heath said, noting when he took off his shoes when he walked into the home and then had to open a second door to get to the kitchen and the rest of the house.
“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.”
While Heath did admit Carly shot at him and he was grazed in the trapezoid by the bullet before wrangling the gun away from her, he said the person he was looking at was not his normal stepdaughter.
“She was screaming out of her mind scared. It was like she had seen a demon or something,” Heath recounted. “She was terrified. My first thought was there was an intruder somewhere and she thought she was after someone else.”
As Carly blitzed out the backdoor and could be seen on the garage camera leaving the scene with an unidentified person following her, Heath forayed the rest of the home and found Ashley dead from three gunshot wounds to the head. He called 911 and that’s when officers were dispatched to the home. Carly was found shortly after, sitting in a field, and was taken into custody without incident.
Carly has since been charged as an adult with counts of murder, attempted murder, and tampering with evidence. A juvenile who was a friend of Carly’s was allegedly invited to the home and shown the dead body of Ashley before Heath got home.
Heath claimed under oath he had no idea about the friend being at the scene until after the fact. It has since been confirmed by sources that the other person on the footage chasing after Carly was the same friend.
The camera in the fridge
While law enforcement cracked down on getting Carly into custody on March 19, Heath asserted they eventually cracked down on him as well.
Apparently, law enforcement did not initially pull the footage from the garage camera. Heath said he was trying to help and did so himself on either March 20 or March 21 and offered it to police but was threatened with being charged with witness tampering.
“I was just trying to be helpful at that point and figure out what had happened and why,” Heath said, adding that’s when he began to taper his open line of communication with investigators and hired an attorney. “The cops had insinuated I tampered with evidence. They held my license for several days and would not bring it back.”
A separate, inside security camera that Heath said he saw plugged in the day before his wife’s murder was missing throughout the bulk of the investigation. Heath told the prosecution on Tuesday that it was later found inside his refrigerator when he and his mother were going through food that had been brought over by neighbors in the aftermath of the incident.
Heath said he immediately called law enforcement and gave them consent to search the camera for information. It’s still unclear if any incriminating evidence was found on the footage, or if the cooler temperatures of the refrigerator harmed the memory card.
Carly lived in a gun-friendly home
Heath made no secret of the number of guns their home had leading up to the incident. In addition to the .357 Magnum Carly is alleged to have killed her mother with and tried to kill her stepfather with, Heath said an unloaded shotgun and an unloaded AR were kept inside a closet. He said there was also a Glock locked in a safe and a BB gun somewhere inside the house, as well.
The gun Carly allegedly used was usually stored in a cubby underneath Ashley’s side of the bed as she was “terrified” of her ex-husband and Carly’s biological father, according to Heath.
While Heath discussed guns nonchalantly and monotonously on Tuesday, he asserted that Carly had never shown an interest in them. He and Ashley, who would often go shooting together, had even encouraged Carly to join them but she “was never interested.”
Carly’s troubled past
The alleged murder was Carly’s first run-in with the law that we know of but not her first time getting into trouble. According to Heath, Carly had previously been sent to an alternative school for bringing a Swiss army knife to class. She had also been reprimanded for taking pictures of a teacher’s answer sheet, even though she objectively is an overachieving student. When Carly was 13, she scored a 30 on the ACT.
Heath testified Carly was only “calculated” when it came to her boyfriends but was mostly a “sweet little girl” to him and her mother. Of course, he did say punishment spurred from the aforementioned incidents, but he never saw her become violent, enraged, or angry. The emotion Heath and Ashley were most concerned about was sadness.
“There were not really any problems other than I think at times, she was depressed,” Heath said. “You know, she’s a teenage girl. Maybe, she would get emotional some, but we got her to a clinic in Madison and let her talk to a therapist.”
While that therapist put Carly on anxiety and depression medications Heath could not recall the names of, substances also began to creep into Carly’s life. According to police, vape boxes were found in Carly’s room and she tested positive for marijuana when being booked into jail after her arrest.
Heath claimed he had no idea Carly was smoking. However, he blamed her biological father for forcing her to be exposed and sometimes consume substances.
“Every drug I can think of it sounds like he tried them or was doing them regularly. He was constantly doing drugs in front of her, blowing smoke in her face,” Heath said, even though he’s never met the father. “It sounds like he sat her down and made her drink an entire beer when he was 12.”
Carly’s father has had an extensive history of drug abuse, according to Heath.
Heath also admitted that Carly and her mother had been at odds in the past over Ashley taking her phone away as a form of punishment. Carly was caught in one instance using an iPod or iPad (the term was used interchangeably in court) to log on to social media and contact friends.
Carly and Heath still talk every day
Toward the end of his time on the stand, Heath said he and Carly had talked every day since 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.
“I think we’re good. We talk just about every day now. I don’t always get off work in time to catch her on a phone call, but we text some back and forth over the app that’s allowed, and we talk over the video chat thing that’s allowed through the jail on weekends,” he said. “We’re good.”
Heath went on to assert that his stepdaughter has returned to normal, reiterating his belief that Carly did not recognize him at the time of the incident.
“I still to this day don’t even think she recognized me,” he said. “Something was off.”
When asked by the prosecution, Heath said neither he nor Ashley were ever scared of Carly. To this day, he said he’s still not scared of his stepdaughter.
How Carly reacted
Throughout Heath’s testimony, Carly showed a range of emotions. From occasional tears when Heath was discussing Ashley to smiles when Heath was discussing his relationship with Carly and some of the stories that featured boyfriends of her past, the defendant was all over the place all while dressed in a uniform similar to that of a schoolgirl’s. She was even caught yawning at times.
Carly’s attorneys are planning to plead insanity after twice refusing the state’s plea deal of 40 years in prison going into the trial. The trial, presided over by Judge Dewey Arthur, will continue throughout the week. It can be watched in real-time here.
