A child is missing and her mother isn’t cooperating. What may happen next?

By Eric Levenson, CNN

(CNN) — Nine-year-old Melodee Buzzard has been missing for over a month after she was last seen with her mother wearing wigs on a cross-country road trip.

The mother, Ashlee Buzzard, returned to their California home without Melodee, did not report her daughter missing and has declined to cooperate with law enforcement, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.

The FBI has joined in the search for Melodee, and the case has drawn widespread attention well outside of southern California. In all, the set of circumstances has raised serious red flags about Melodee’s well-being and about potential criminal wrongdoing for Buzzard.

Still, investigators have not charged Buzzard with a crime related to Melodee’s disappearance.

So, what gives?

“It’s just not, ‘A kid’s missing. They haven’t been seen. Let’s arrest the mother,’” CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson said of how law enforcement operates. “What are the specific factual circumstances that would make the mother responsible?”

“In any case, you need probable cause,” he added. “Is there reason to believe that a crime was committed and the subject of the person being arrested committed it?”

CNN spoke to several legal experts and re-examined other high-profile missing children cases to better understand the potential path forward in Melodee’s case.

The sheriff’s office, with assistance from the FBI, has been searching for Melodee and has publicly released some information from the “critical” time period of the road trip from October 7 to 10. Still, investigators may have more evidence that has not been released to the public, making it difficult to speculate on the case.

“What they’re waiting for is evidence if she should be charged, and if so, with what,” Los Angeles’ Loyola Law School Professor Laurie Levenson said. “This one is still kind of a mystery. We know something is amiss: All of the wigs, the travel, the concerns that people are showing. I think those are legitimate that something is amiss, but we just don’t know what it is.”

Melodee went missing last month

The search for Melodee Buzzard began on October 14 when a school administrator reported the girl had been absent for a prolonged period of time.

Officers searched the home, but Melodee was nowhere to be found, officials said. Her mother could not provide a “reasonable” explanation for her whereabouts and “has been uncooperative” with investigators, the sheriff’s office said.

The investigation into Melodee’s whereabouts has focused on her and her mother’s movements during a 1,000-mile road trip from their home in Lompoc, California, to Nebraska. On October 7, Ashlee Buzzard left California with Melodee, driving a rented white 2024 Chevrolet Malibu, and returned three days later without the girl. That period is now a “critical” time frame for investigators, the sheriff’s office said.

Surveillance footage from a rental car business in Lompoc showed the mother-daughter pair wearing wigs on October 7, the sheriff’s office said. Further, the rental car’s license plate was changed midway through the trip in what the sheriff’s office said is believed to be an attempt “to avoid detection.”

“Investigators also believe that Ashlee swapped wigs throughout the trip, changing to a darker wig that is similar in color and style to the one Melodee was seen wearing,” the sheriff’s office said in a November 6 statement. “This change in appearance is believed to have been intentional to avoid recognition during travel.”

On November 7, the sheriff’s office announced Ashlee Buzzard was arrested on a felony false imprisonment charge related to an adult male victim. Authorities alleged she used a box cutter and “prevented a victim from leaving a location against their will.”

The alleged victim in the case posted a statement on social media – which he later removed – saying he went to Buzzard’s house to offer help finding Melodee. He said Buzzard “became visibly distressed after sharing information she appeared to regret disclosing.”

She pleaded not guilty and was released from custody with GPS monitoring. A preliminary court hearing is expected Wednesday.

CNN has reached out to her attorney for comment. The Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment on the search for Melodee.

Family members said they had lost touch with Melodee and Ashlee Buzzard in recent years. Melodee’s father died from a motorcycle crash when the girl was only 6 months old, CNN affiliate KSBY reported.

The next steps in the investigation

Investigators are likely to continue tracing the steps of the road trip as they search for physical evidence, digital communications and witnesses, legal experts told CNN.

“What they’re doing is what they should be doing,” CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller explained. “They are taking their time. They are being meticulous. They are building the pieces of a case that may come together if and when they do have evidence to arrest her.”

As for Buzzard, her uncooperative stance may be frustrating for investigators, but the Fifth Amendment guarantees everyone the right to silence in an interrogation.

“There is no legal imperative at all, under any circumstance, no matter how bad things might look for you in public opinion, for you to say anything,” Jackson said.

Other missing children cases

In two high-profile cases involving missing children, the parents were initially charged with lesser counts as investigators continued to search for more evidence.

Florida mother Casey Anthony, for one, was initially charged with child neglect, providing false statements to police and obstruction in July 2008 in the disappearance of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee Anthony. The child had last been seen a month earlier and was reported missing by her grandparents.

Months later, in October of that year, Anthony was indicted on a first-degree murder charge. The decomposed body of her daughter was found in December 2008.

A jury ultimately acquitted her of murder but convicted her on four counts of providing false information to police.

Or consider the case of the Idaho mother Lori Vallow Daybell.

Her children, JJ and Tylee, were last seen in September 2019, and relatives raised concerns about their whereabouts two months later. In February 2020, Vallow Daybell was arrested in Hawaii on suspicion of two felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of dependent children.

The children’s bodies were found in June 2020, and Vallow Daybell and her husband, Chad Daybell, were then indicted on murder charges in May 2021. Both were later convicted of murder in the children’s deaths.

How Melodee’s case will play out remains a mystery. In the near term, investigators’ focus will remain on finding her and her well-being.

“There are so many open questions at this point,” Levenson said. “Right now, I think the priority is probably less the charges and more finding the kid.”

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CNN’s Elizabeth Wolfe, Holly Yan, Michelle Watson and Jean Casarez contributed to this report.