Original subtitles

[news]ú Just into the newsroom,

@ a pregnant woman is missing in Benton County.

@ I went back to my mom's toúsee if Lucy had dropped her off

and she wasn't there.

Instead of pulling into the HandyMart,

that pickup makes a turn and keeps on driving.

[Randy] But she never missed Halloween Trick-or-Treating.

That's when we knew something was not right.

Joshua is starting to consider the possibility,

Lucy wants his fiancé for some reason

other than a job offer.

@ And to whoever's got her,ú just please let her go.

[chilling music]

@ [reporter] Coming up on your 5NEWS at noon,

@ new developments in the searchú for a pregnant woman missing

and possibly abducted from Benton County.

[narrator] Ashley Bush Boone's partner, Josh Willis,

makes an appeal on 5NEWS.

Ashley, who is 31 weeks pregnant, is missing.

@ I went back to my mom's toúsee if Lucy had dropped her off

and she wasn't there.

So I come flying back down here

@ to see if they happened to turn around.

[narrator] The last time Josh saw heavily pregnant Ashley,

he'd arranged to pick her up from this gas station

as a halfway point,

after meeting with a potential employer,

a woman named Lucy.

I got a message from her

@ saying that they were gonnaú be here in like 12 minutes,

@that they were leaving Gravette.

I told her, "Okay, I'll be right there."

When I saw them pull up,

I couldn't tell if Ashley was moving or not.

I thought they lookedú at me, so I was waving.

@ When Lucy turned right onú 43 and was going past me,

I hollered at her.

She looked at me,ú looked away, and took off.

@ So I jumped in the car andú was trying to chase them.

[narrator]ú A few yards from her fiancé,

at the very spot they'd agreed to meet

so he could drive her home.

Why doesn't Ashley get out of the tan pickup?

Josh is concerned.

@ I think after a few minutes and him calling her

and her phone going straight to voicemail

and she's not getting back with him,

I think that panic starts to set in.

I'm actually extremely worried for her

@ besides being the high-risk pregnancy right now

with the gestational hypertension

@ or high blood pressure.

Ashley doesn't have her medication.

@[narrator] When Josh sees Ashley being driven away,

he phones her father.

@ We get a phone call from Josh, and he's like,

@ do you know where Ashley is?

And we're like, Ashley's with you.

And he's like, no, she went on that interview,

and I haven't seen her.

He never could figure out which way they went.

They were supposed to go pick up the kids after her interview

and come to our house.

But she never missed Halloween Trick-or-Treating.

That's when we knew something was not right,

because she wouldn't have missed that for nothing.

I think from the very first moment,

we always just tried to have hope,

tried to rationalize what was going on

@and where she was and why sheú wasn't contacting anyone.

@ There's a lot of stuff beingú said on Facebook right now

that I'm a suspect.

@I just want everybody to knowúout there I am not a suspect.

I loved Ashley with everything I had.

@ We've been together for almost three years.

@ We went to school together.

[narrator] CCTV appears to back up Josh's account.

And Ashley's family are adamant she hasn't run away.

They say she'd never leave her children behind.

As far as a mom goes, she was all about her kids.

I mean, whatever they wanted to do, she did it.

[Lainey] Ashley and her first husband, Chris,

they lost a daughter.

She was named Ivy.

I believe she was a month or two old.

She passed away from health complications.

No mother ever wants to lose a child,

but it really took a toll on her emotionally, mentally.

I think it was a big part in why her marriage

ultimately ended.

[narrator] Reuniting with her high school sweetheart, Josh,

Ashley has a fresh start.

The couple get engaged, set up a home together,

and eagerly await the arrival of their baby daughter.

Yeah, I think at this point, you know,

she's living a really good life.

She's with someone that she's engaged to.

She's a mother of three.

[narrator] The couple learns they're expecting another girl

and decide to name her Valkyrie.

Valkyrie, if I'm not mistaken,

was from one of her favourite movies or video games.

She was very excited to have a little girl

and be able to use the name that she loved.

I think she was the sole provider

@ financially in the house at the time.

[Randy] Trying to find something when you're in that...

...state of your pregnancy was almost impossible.

She was grasping for straws,

trying to find what she could

to make a buck or make money for her family.

So, Ashley looking for work-from-home opportunities,

she turns to Facebook,

putting out that she's looking for anything out there

that is local.

Well, someone named Lucy contacts her,

letting her know that she has

a local work-from-home opportunity.

[narrator] Ashley is looking for the job

at around 30 weeks into pregnancy

and agrees to meet with Lucy in person

to discuss things further.

@ They meet, at Gravette,ú Arkansas Public Library,

small town, Western Benton County.

But Ashley brings her fiance, Josh Willis, with her.

So if you're Ashley,

you're excited about the opportunity

@and this person is offering toúmeet you in a public location,

@ and she's not objecting toú you bringing your fiance.

Joshua had had some reservations initially,

in terms of perhaps maybe things weren't completely

what they seemed.

I started getting suspicious about her,

@because one, why would you textú somebody that late at night

@that you're gonna pick 'em up.

You're talking to a woman who is offering

to do these nice things for you,

offering to go out of their way to help you out

so you can help your family out.

So I don't think that she thought maybe

there was anything truly alarming

about this Lucy person.

Joshua is startingú to consider the possibility,

which is increasingly strong,

@ that Lucy wants his fiancee for some reason

@ other than a job offer.

I think those little, maybe, bubbles of concern

or bubbles of unease would have just burst at that point.

[narrator] Two days before his news appeal,

at around 6:30 p.m.

on October 31, Josh calls police.

[narrator] Josh's concern for Ashley has turned to fear.

@ And to whoever's got her,ú just please let her go.

We don't have much.

We've got-all we've got is our family.

That's all we've got. We just want her home.

Her family's pleading for her return.

It's just absolutely heartbreaking.

@If it's not the husband wantingú to get rid of his wife,

@ or his fiance, which clearly isn't the case here,

then I thinkú they started looking, OK,

@what would be another motive?

@ I would never do anything toú harm her at all, whatsoever.

@ I'm not that type of guy.

I just want-- I just want her back.

@We were actually talking aboutú getting married in June.

[narrator] While police search for Ashley,

her family joins the effort.

@ We blasted the internet,

you know, Facebook

and all the different things that the kids are on,

TikTok, whatever.

And before the day was over, it was all over the internet.

Have you seen this girl?

The Benton CountyúSheriff's Office says detectives

have been searching nonstop for Ashley

@since she was reported missing.

[Randy] Your head's all over the place.

You're trying to rationalize what's going on, you know?

She always returned our phone calls.

Didn't matter if she was mad or what was going on.

And she just didn't. It was just...

phone silence.

Around the same time that Ashley has gone missing

and her friends and her family

are frantically looking for her,

emergency responders are getting a phone call

about another woman who has called them

and said that she's basically had a miscarriage.

[narrator] The woman who has had a miscarriage asks paramedics

to meet her at a gas station

just across the state line from Arkansas in Missouri.

Now once first responders arrive there, they say

that they see this woman who has this baby

and the baby's not breathing.

So they start CPR on the baby right away.

They can't revive the baby, who is a female baby,

who is clearly no longer alive, who appears to be stillbirth.

[narrator] With the newborn baby confirmed to be dead,

medics call the local coroner.

[William] They reached out to me.

@ So once I got a little bitú of information from them,

the mother and father's names,

they informed me that

she was going to goú in their private vehicle

@to Joplin Hospital themselves.

And so what ends up happening is emergency responders,

basically, you know, the baby's transported

to the funeral home,

and this woman is all upset.

[narrator] The next day, the woman called Amber,

and her husband meet with the coroner

to make funeral arrangements.

They walked in, introduced themselves.

She was walking very slowly.

She was holding on to her stomach,

very much played the role of a grieving mother.

She was crying.

My secretary is also a retired minister.

And she met with them, prayed for them,

We gave them a little stuffed teddy bear,

just trying everything we could to console them on this loss

that she had mentioned that she had miscarried

several times before,

and they were looking so forward to this baby.

They gave her the name of Dakota.

They didn't have a lot of family that lived here.

So her mother had come into town,

and so they wanted to have just a small service

the following day in our chapel.

[narrator] It's only after meeting with the couple

that the coroner learns about the missing pregnant mom,

Ashley.

I had heard it on the news

that there was a missing woman out of Arkansas.

And if anybody had any information

or anything like that, it was down in Maysville, Arkansas.

It's now been two days since pregnant mom,

Ashley Boone Bush, was last seen

near the HandyMart in Maysville.

@ Come to find out also today,

@ the company that Ashleyú was supposed to work for

doesn't even know the lady she was with.

They are based out of New Jersey.

The representative of the company

does some research and says, I'm sorry to tell you

that there's nobody by the name of Lucy

who works in this office.

We have no record of her.

It's like worst case scenario was starting to build here.

We were basically just listening to the news

and waiting for reports to come in on her missing,

you know, hoping that somebody had seen her somewhere,

that she had showed up at someone's house

or someone got a phone call, someone seen Ashley.

So we were keeping hope, but it was fading.

@ [narrator] On November 1st,ú Ashley's phone is found.

Josh actually goes and he's searching

because he has the Find My Friend phone app.

He knows the approximate location of where it's at

and he's searching the road, the ditches,

and he does find it laying there.

He calls police and they come out to this rural area.

He told me thatú they were gonna go back

@ to his, to the office, toú their forensic department

to do a deeper search into the phone.

We had federal, local, state law enforcement

all working togetherú and they wanted my help

@with signing off on subpoenas and things like that

@ to get location informationú from cell phone carriers

@ and internet-based things toú try to help locate Ashley.

We started to get some more information

about she'd been communicating with

this Lucy person over Facebook.

[narrator]ú Detectives review the chats

@ and uncover Lucy's full name is Lucy Barrow.

She had actually conversed with

multiple different pregnant women

through this Facebook account

and had set up some meetings

to meet up with these women before Ashley.

So now you have someone

who has created these Facebook profiles,

who's gone on and responded to other people's post

in a deceptive manner,

who does not work for the company that she says she is.

So I think what it's saying is,

this is somebody's plan they put into motion.

They wanted to find somebody who was pregnant.

And I'm imagining if you're Joshua,

you're thinking that this person is targeting Ashley.

Through Facebook, there was another woman that came up

and said that she was fixing to meet with her,

or she almost did, and she had a bad feeling.

Police look into the IP address behind that account,

and it comes back to a home over the state line in Missouri,

and his name is Jamie Waterman.

[narrator] The IP address and police records

reveal Jamie Waterman as a 42-year-old man

who lives with his wife

just 25 miles away from Ashley's house

in a town called Pineville.

They had Ashley's phone pinging

near the Waterman residence

across the state line in Missouri.

And so when we got a cell tower hits,

we were fairly confident, at least suspicious,

that the Waterman residence was involved.

[narrator] Police visit the home

of husband and wife Amber and Jamie Waterman

in Pineville, Missouri.

@[Joshua] Our investigators just did a knock and talk,

@knocked on the door and said,ú hey, can we visit with you?

@We're looking for this woman. Have you seen her?

@ Have you heard from her?ú Do you know who she is?

And they, of course, told the police,

@ you know, we don't know who this person is.

[Jo] They're asking questions, and they're saying,

hey, do you know anyone named Lucy?

Well, she's telling investigators,

I do know someone named Lucy Burrows.

I used to work with her a long time ago at Walmart,

but I haven't seen or talked to her in quite a while.

They had a conversation with Amber, her husband Jamie,

asked if they could look around the property.

They said, sure.

It was late at night at that point, it was dark.

[narrator] As they're walking around,

something catches their eye,

a tan-coloured pickup truck.

The truck that Josh had described to them

that his fiance was in

is sitting in that driveway.

They're starting to kind of get a picture of,

hey, there may be something here to look at.

[Joshua] They had looked inside with a flashlight,

saw what they thought was blood.

Now we've got another piece of information.

We've got some blood that's been seen.

Well, whenever you find blood inside of a pickup

and it's in several places, police are gonna ask questions.

And so they did ask her, "Why is this here?"

Well, she tells them that, you know,

she recently had a miscarriage and that's what that was from.

I think they sort of get the idea

that they may be being deceived,

but I don't think at that point

there's enough information for them

to really kind of run with anything just yet.

[narrator] Detectives take the truck as potential evidence

and leave to get a search warrant

for the Waterman's property.

Take it back to the Sheriff's office

where it can be inside of a garage

in a controlled environment

where they can do a more thorough search, right,

and photograph it in detail and fingerprints and all that.

@ [narrator] In the meantime, detectives dig

into the Waterman's background.

[Joshua] It's not a typical type of relationship.

There had been some problems.

He had moved out, was living in Grove, Oklahoma,

had been there for a period of time.

She wanted to reconcile.

[narrator] Hoping to win Jamie back,

Amber lets him know that she's expecting his child.

She had been telling him that she was pregnant

and been telling her family and friends she was pregnant.

They're picking out names together

and they're making plans as a family.

[narrator] Then on Halloween, Amber calls Jamie

while he's at work with horrible news.

She called and said that she just lost a baby.

That she had also miscarried.

He's heartbroken, right?

He's learned that he was going to have a baby

and then lost the baby, comes home.

@ The husband got her andú the baby and headed out,

@ called 911 from the vehicle.

[Joshua] Had the paramedics meet them at a gas station.

The umbilical cord was just sort of stuffed

in the front of her sweatpants,

and the baby was dead.

It was very strange.

And then Amber just goes home, doesn't go to the hospital,

doesn't want to have paramedics check her out,

anything like that.

[Joni] She refuses an exam.

She doesn't want to go in the helicopter.

She doesn't want to go get any kind of treatment.

I think that would be very unusual for first responders

to have that scenario happen.

Of course, I'm thinking like, "Yeah, that's

extraordinarily strange.

"Why was there not

you know, something else looked into at that point?"

[narrator] The next morning,

investigators reach out to the coroner

and learn about the Waterman's funeral

scheduled for that afternoon,

and that Amber made a special request.

She didn't want a very long service,

but she needed to have that closure

of being able to see the baby.

And then she wanted us to cremate

so she would be able to keep the ashes at home with her.

[narrator] Detectives believe the couple

is trying to destroy evidence of a murder.

[Joshua] And I'm at that point worried.

They asked me, should I try to get a hair

for a DNA comparison.

And I said, I want you to take that baby,

drive straight to Little Rock to the Arkansas State Crime Lab.

[narrator] Before the coroner

can hand the baby to authorities,

he needs more evidence.

So the funeral goes ahead,

and the two coroners meet with Jamie and Amber afterwards.

She wanted to know why Daniel,

@ the other coroner, was here.

And I just mentioned that we feel at this point,

it might be in everybody's best interest

that we go ahead and do an autopsy on Little Dakota.

@ Well, Amber Waterman, herúdemeanour changes immediately.

@ So does Jamie Waterman's.

Amber Waterman is only asking about, well,

@ what are they going toú do during this autopsy?

Are they going to take DNA?

[William] I said, oh, absolutely.

I said, that's just standard procedure anymore

that that is done.

Well, the minute that I relate that to her,

Jamie immediately got up off the couch and ran out the door.

And we knew at that point

that the pieces of the puzzle had come together

that there was a lot more to this.

@ I said, "Okay, get that baby to our crime lab

@ so we can have our people

@ do the medical examination, the autopsy,

@ we can collect the evidenceú that we need to collect,

do DNA comparison,ú all that kind of stuff."

[narrator] As investigators await

the baby's autopsy results,

they receive findings from an examination

of the tan truck seized from the Waterman property.

[Joshua] There was, you know, there was blood everywhere.

Evidence of a gunshot, right?

There's a bullet hole, at least one bullet hole

in the truck itself.

So we know a gun was fired in there.

Amber and Jamie were priority suspects at that point.

We had gathered enough information at that point,

we knew Ashley had been near the residence.

We knew Amber had set up this Facebook page.

We knew there was blood in the truck, right?

They have sort of become the targets

of the investigation at that point.

[narrator] Investigators head to the Waterman's home

for a second time.

And they're interviewing Amber and Jamie

more or less simultaneously, right?

two different teams of people.

She says she doesn't-- she doesn't know

this Ashley person.

She ultimately says, well,

I do have a friend named Lucy.

As luck would have it, Lucy showed up

asking to borrow my truck.

I let her.

[narrator] Detectives interviewed Jamie

separately from Amber.

[Joshua] Who's driving the bus here?

We don't know, right?

Are they working as a team?

Is Amber operating under some sort of duress?

Jamie's making her do these things, right?

[Jo] That's where he comes clean

about what he says happened.

Now, he minimizes his involvement in it,

but he does tell a story to investigators,

letting them know that

Amber had told him

that a person named Lucy may have killed Ashley Bush.

[narrator] Jamie says Amber made a shocking confession

after the first police visit.

Amber told me that there was this dead woman here

that her friend Lucy had killed her there on our property,

and she didn't know why that had happened,

but we better get rid of the body

or we're going to be in trouble.

And so I said, OK.

[Joni] It's hard to think about why would you go along with it?

Why would you not call the police?

And I think in some respects,

the only answer is at that point in time,

that he was soú shocked and so concerned

@ about what this is goingú to mean for his family,

that he kind of went on autopilot

and just let her tell him what to do.

He says that Amber showed him Ashley Bush's body,

which was laying next to a boat that was next to their home,

and it was covered by a tarp.

He told investigators

that they unwrapped her body from the tarp,

and on their property,

they had a burn pile made.

And they placed her body on top of the burn pile

and set it on fire.

And then he says that Amber took a water hose

and put that out,

and then they drug the body from the burn pit

and put it in the back of his pickup.

And drove it not far from where their property is located.

[narrator] Amber is taken into custody,

but Jamie agrees to cooperate with investigators.

Jamie agreed to take the investigators to the body,

so they went up the road.

I mean, it wasn't far, maybe a mile up the road.

They drove him up there.

He sort of pointed she's she's over there, right.

@ [news] 5NEWS starts with breaking news.

@ The sheriff's confirms that Bush and her baby

were both found dead

@ in two separate locations in McDonald County,

@ the baby found yesterdayú Ashley's body found today.

[Lainey] The only information that we had

was that she had been found deceased.

We were told

@ that remains had been found

@ and that everything lined up to it being her,

@ but then obviously theyústill had to conduct forensics

and confirm for sure.

[Randy] A news break comes up.

@And the Benton County Sheriff and the prosecutor

come across the screen and say that Ashley has been found...

dead.

You sit there and look at each other

and you can't even believe--

Is this real?

Is this actually happening?

Prosecutor] With sad news, we report something.

@ Over my career, this is oneú of the most horrific cases

that I have beenú personally involved with.

@ It's-- It's devastating.

It's a day that will be permanently etched

in my life forever.

@ [news] Amber Waterman hasú officially been charged

with kidnapping resulting in death

and her husband, Jamie Waterman,ú with accessory after the fact

to kidnapping resulting in death.

@ Prosecutors say these actionsú resulted in Bush's death.

The indictment alleges that Amber Waterman

kidnapped Ashley Bush

@ in order to claim her unborn baby as her own.

[narrator] Prosecutors believe Amber devised the plan

to cover up her fake pregnancy and win her husband back.

Even though fetal abduction is rare,

there are some commonalities that we see in these cases.

The evidence suggests most of the time

that the perpetrator is really seeing the child also

as a means to an end.

And most often, the end is

keeping that relationship together

that she has with her husband or with her boyfriend.

It's a way to kind of solidify that relationship,

bind it by parenthood and to keep that relationship intact.

[Joshua] And he may not have actually known.

He's not a bright individual.

He seems to have believed that she was pregnant,

despite the fact that due to a separation,

the math didn't work,

despite the fact that he had a procedure

that made him not capable of fathering children.

The couple arrested inú the kidnapping and death

of a pregnant mother from Benton County

@ have now been indicted on federal charges.

@[reporter 2] Amber is chargedúwith one count of kidnapping

resulting in death, and Jamie is charged

as an accessory.

[reporter 3] Investigators say 33-year-old Ashley Bush

was kidnapped, murdered,

and had her baby cut from her womb a week ago Monday.

She was lured by Amber Waterman,

who she knew as Lucy,úaccording to court documents.

@ Absolutely shocked thatú this is how it turned out.

It's one of the hardest things for me to wrap my mind around.

It's not fair.

@ They were both innocent, but that, I mean,

@ that's an unborn child thatú cannot fend for herself,

can't process it.

[news]ú US attorneys in Missouri

will be handling the federal charges.

@ Amber Waterman is facing capital murder charges

@ and a count of kidnappingú in Benton County as well.

@ She's scheduled to appear in court next Monday

@ on those state charges.

Because it crossed state lines,

some of the crime happened in Missouri, some in Arkansas.

The Missouri was a federal case.

Well, Arkansas wanted their shot at Amber Waterman.

They wanted to put her on trial.

They wanted to put her in front of a jury.

[Joshua] And the family told us,

we want this case prosecuted in Benton County, Arkansas

because we live here.

@ And we want the possibility of the death penalty.

We just at least want somebody to have the option.

@ You don't always know how toú feel about the death penalty

till it's staring you in the face.

If there's anything that deserves a death penalty,

pretty sure that does it.

@ New at four, Amber Waterman,

@ the woman who was accusedú of killing Ashley Bush

and her unborn baby back in 2022,

is pleading guilty to two federal charges

@ in federal court today.

[narrator] It takes almost two years for the federal case

against Amber Waterman to be resolved.

On the 15th of October, 2024,

she receives two consecutive life sentences.

Judge Stephen Boe ultimately sentenced Waterman

to two counts of life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

[Joshua] We met with the family.

Family was was not pleased with that.

And they said we still want a jury

to have the option

to send her to death.

@[news] And the fight isn't over for Ashley's family

as this case still needs to unfold

at the state level in Arkansas.

As we move forward, we will search

and we will seek the maximum of justice for the next stage

of where our fight will take us.

[narrator] Jamie Waterman also pleads guilty.

And in June 2025 is sentenced.

The case that began nearly three years ago

now finally comes to a close for Jamie Waterman's piece

in this crime.

According to court documents filed today

in the Western District of Missouri this morning,

Waterman has been sentenced to six years

and three months in federal prison.

I think he got off too easy.

Jamie Waterman from the beginning

was telling investigators that he didn't know

what Amber Waterman was going to do.

He didn't know her plan to get the baby.

He wasn't purvey to any of it

is what he was telling investigators.

Now he did come clean about his involvement

in burning the body and moving it,

but as far as leading up to Ashley Bush's murder

and what happened or the plan to get her baby,

he's telling investigators that he didn't know any of it.

[news] While Jamie's case is now closed,

Amber is still awaiting trial in the Benton County Jail

on state capital murder and kidnapping charges.

[narrator] While Amber is already serving

a federal life sentence,

she could still face the death penalty in Arkansas

if prosecutors there choose to pursue it.

Randy looked at me and he just said,

"Josh, you've always been honest with me.

What are the odds that Amber Waterman

is ever actually executed?"

And I said, "Really, really low.

And almost certainly never in your lifetime."

We decided to go ahead and let the death penalty go if she...

told us exactly what happened on record

and she plead guilty to what she did.

[narrator] Amber meets with investigators

at the Benton County Sheriff's Office.

[news] In the recorded sit down interview

obtained by 5NEWS,ú Waterman tells prosecutors

she createdú a fake Facebook profile

using the name Lucy

@ to connect with pregnant women

and later asked for their child.

She admits she lied to her husband Jamie

and her family, claiming she was pregnant

and near her due date.

[Joshua] She really tried to say that she didn't

plan this thing in advance.

It was a spur of the moment decision.

And I think that's baloney.

I don't-- I don't believe that.

I think she set out to commit that murder and

that if another woman had met up with her

before delivering their baby,

then we'd have a different victim.

@ [news] Waterman says while driving with Ashley

at that meeting, under the guiseú of a fake job in Bella Vista,

she became angry,ú comparing Ashley's life,

her family, and her stability to her own,

including Waterman's husband, Jamie,

who she says had been cheating on her.

[Joshua] She told us where she shot her.

I had always believed that she didn't

kill Ashley on her property, that she killed her

somewhere in between the gas station and there.

That was that was correct.

@ [news] After the shooting, Waterman claims

she attempted to give Ashley CPR,

a statement officersú dispute during the interview

@ after Ashley's Waterman admits

@ she removed the unborn child at her home.

@ You couldn't dream this up,

that somebody would do such a horrific thing.

[Lainey] It really just takes a shell of a human

to be able to carry out what Amber and Jamie did.

@ I mean, psychologically, mentally, there's--

you just-you have to be insane,

@ for lack of a better word.

[William] Do I think she's crazy? Absolutely.

But she was smart enough to cover it up.

She's a monster.

It's just hard to comprehend that,

that somebody is that sick.

[Randy] You know, there's only so much you can believe,

but we still wanted her to have to say it, you know.

And whether it's true, whether it's not true, I don't know.

There's only two people that know that's left,

and that's her and God.

@[news] Well, hey, thank you forú joining us here on 5NEWS+.

We have breaking news just coming down

in the Amber Waterman murder case.

[reporter 2] Yes, just moments ago,

Amber Waterman changed her not guilty plea

@ in the death of Ashley Bush

@ and her unborn baby to guilty.

@ Which means that this caseú will be over in that form.

There will be no death penalty to face,

but she will serve life sentences.

We knew that Amber was never gonna

@step foot out of a prison again,

and so there was relief in knowing that

and knowing that my family

would be able to take back a little bit

@ of what was taken from us

@to be able to make this decisionú to end things on our terms.

[Jo] Ashley Bush's dad was asked,

where would you like her to be?

Do you-which prison would you prefer?

And his answer to that was, whichever one's worse.

[Joshua] What result could there be that would make anybody

feel good about anything.

You know, Ashley, this young mother, and her baby,

I mean, Ashley left other children behind, right?

And her life is taken in an extraordinarily violent way

by an uncaring...

evil person

that, frankly, I'm excited for people to forget about.

Yeah, I hope people remember Ashley.

Amber Waterman is meaningless and should be forgotten

and should die alone in prison.

I don't think a day goes by where I don't miss her

and think about her, especially being a mother myself.

She's just a constant reminder for me

to never take a day for granted.

[Randy] When something like that happens to your family,

you're wanting to make it not be in vain.

If there's things that we can take

from what happened to Ashley and save one person,

at least her life wasn't for nothing.

Her life wasn't for nothing as far as our love and our family

and her children go, but for other people.