LETTING out a scream, Ashley Hodo sat bolt upright in bed.
At 10 years old she was used to the same recurring nightmare that plagued her sleep each night.
Melissa Wright was sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempting to murder her daughter[/caption]
“It was the same bad dream every time,” Ashley, 24, from Alabama says.
“I was a toddler, watching my dad Robert snooze on the couch then my mum Melissa Wright picked me up and took me to the kitchen.
“She put me on the benchtop and next, I’d feel pain and terror, before waking in hospital with a nurse looming over me.”
But what Ashley didn’t realise at the time was that these weren’t nightmares, these were memories of a horrific attack she’d suffered at the hands of her mum.
At 14 months she’d suffered third-degree burns to over 30 % of her body, mostly back and arms. She was told by her family that they were the result of a house fire.
However, the reality was that Wright had placed her baby in the oven but she wouldn’t learn the truth until 14 years later when her mum faced parole.
“When I heard my dad’s account of what had happened it matched the nightmares I’d been having all those years,” Ashley says.
“Despite being just 14 months old, I’d somehow remembered parts of that day.”
Ashley’s early childhood was spent in hospital and she had constant skin grafts and surgeries until she was five.
“Every six months or so saline bags were implanted under my burn scars to stretch my new growing skin,” she recalls.
“The pain was awful, but the wonderful nurses lifted my spirits. They let me sit at the nurses’ station with them and play games.
“They were family.”
With her mum in prison and her dad battling with PTSD as a result of the attack, Ashley was sent to live with his sister, her aunt Rhonda and she didn’t see her mum or her half-sister Courtney, two years younger than her.
“My dad visited, but sometimes, seeing me in pain, he cried,” she says
“I’d ask after my mum and why I didn’t live with my dad, but my aunt always told me I was too young to understand.
“Sadly, when I was six, my aunt and dad fell out and I didn’t get to see him anymore.”
And amid the agony of losing her father, Ashley was in endless pain because the horrific burns that patchworked her body had left her with severe scarring.
“I had these bright red angry-looking scars, and I was always in hospital,” she says.
As she got older, Ashley became more inquisitive about why her body was different, the fire and her parents.
“Aunt Rhonda refused to discuss it but she would sometimes tell me my mum was ‘crazy’,” Ashley says.
Ashley had a total of 72 surgeries to save her skin but she says she can feel it tightening as she gets older[/caption]
“It felt like there was a big secret.”
At 15 her last disfiguring tissue expanders were removed – this was Ashley’s 72nd surgery.
A few months later as Ashley focused on yet another recovery Rhonda took Ashley to a meeting with a lawyer out of the blue, the local prosecutor.
“I guessed it was something to do with the fire and my mum but I was totally unprepared for what he said,” she says.
He explained to Ashley that when she was a baby her mum had put her in the oven which is where her burns came from.
“My jaw dropped, I thought I’d heard wrong,” she recalls.
People called me ‘scar face’ and said my mum didn’t want me, the bullying got so bad; I took an overdose of pills
Ashley Hodo
The prosecutor went on to explain that her mum – Melissa Wright had been in prison after pleading guilty to attempted murder in 2003 but there was a parole hearing in two days and it was up to Ashley whether or not her mum got out.
“I was reeling, trying to take it all in,” Ashley says.
“He fanned out photos of a horrifically burned and blistered little girl, it was me.
“I burst into tears, no wonder no one had ever said anything.”
Rhonda showed Ashley the newspaper clippings about her mum’s crime.
The newspaper stories said in June 2002 when she was 14-months Wright removed the racks from the oven and put the grill on.
She turned it to high, over 300 C, then she put Ashley in head first.
Experts and prosecutors argued she was sane, and jealous of the attention Ashley’s dad gave to his daughter.
She admitted attempted murder and in August 2003 was jailed for 25 years when Ashley was just two years old.
“I knew I couldn’t support her parole and thankfully she wasn’t at the hearing,” Ashley says.
“I told the board that I thought Melissa should stay in prison for a few more years and explained that I didn’t trust her around children.
“I said that while I did not hate Melissa, I didn’t love her either.”
Parole was denied, and following the hearing Ashley wrote to her in the hope to learn why she’d hurt her but she never heard back.
Back at school, Ashley faced cruel taunts from her peers who had followed her story in the news.
WHAT COURTNEY SAID ABOUT WRIGHT
At the hearing in 2012, Ashley’s sister Courtney argued their mother is no longer a danger to society.
Courtney told the Montgomery Advertiser: “I went to visit her multiple times.
“She went through classes for mental health. She has been through child-abuse classes.
“She has actually got the help she needs. She is on the right medication to help her with her mental illness.
“I feel like she has changed. When I go visit her, I can actually see the difference in her.”
“They accused me of lying about being in a house fire,” she says.
“People called me ‘scar face’ and said my mum didn’t want me, the bullying got so bad; I took an overdose of pills.
“I’d suffered depression and anxiety for years, but now it was much worse.”
Struggling to cope, Rhonda sent Ashely two to live with her dad.
“It was weird at first we were like strangers,” she says.
“Dad was a plumber and handyman and to keep my mind busy, he took me on jobs.
“We bonded as I learned to tile, lay carpets, and fix up a house.
“One day, he talked about what had happened.
“He told me that mum had been ‘acting strange’ beforehand and saying ‘crazy things about Jesus’ and that he’d thought about leaving with my sister and I.”
Her dad went on to explain that he’d given the girls a bath before falling asleep on the sofa.
He woke to the sound of his daughters screaming and discovered Ashley in the oven.
He explained that he’d scooped her out of the oven where her skin was peeling off and drove her to the hospital as fast as he could.
“Afterwards, dad had been diagnosed with PTSD which is why he’d been unable to look after me,” she says.
As Ashley got older she went on to become a paediatrician having been inspired by the care she’d received as a child.
After meeting her boyfriend she fell pregnant with twins with her then boyfriend but tragically, her babies, Mason and Alana, were stillborn.
“I was devastated, why was my life so hard?” Ashley says.
After splitting from the father of her twins, she went on to meet her now husband Anthony Hodo.
In May 2021 Anthony and Ashley welcomed a baby boy, Brooklyn* and their daughter, Kaden*, followed in March 2022.
Five months later Ashley’s dad passed away, aged 65.
“It was yet another blow, but with study and two babies to look after I just had to battle through my grief,” Ashley says.
That same year she wrote to her biological mum Wright twice more, and when Ashley was pregnant again she finally received a reply.
“I was hoping for a meaningful explanation, a heartfelt apology but I didn’t get it,” she says.
“She told me she’d tried so hard to be the perfect mother. What she’d done fell a long way short of simply failing to be a perfect mother.
“She asked for photos of me and the kids and a second chance to be a mum to me and a grandmother to my children.
“She joked how my kids would know their “gangsta granny” and how, when she was released, she wanted to move close to me, build our relationship and go shopping together.
“There was no taking responsibility for what she’d done.
“Bizarrely, she thought we’d have this amazing mother-daughter relationship.
“She was deluded and there was no way she was coming anywhere near my children.
“I concluded she must have been crazy when she put me in the oven, I think prison was wrong place for her and she would be better in a secure mental unit.”
On June 21st, 2023, Ashley and Anthony had a little girl, Jaylee.
“A month-and-a-day later I woke up to find her struggling to breathe,” Ashley says.
“And then her breathing stopped.
“Frantically, I did CPR.
“For 30 desperate minutes I fought to keep my baby alive, massaging her tiny chest and blowing little breaths into her.
“But I couldn’t save her, she was too perfect for this world.
“She’d swallowed amniotic fluid at birth which caused intestinal pneumonia.
“I was completely overwhelmed when we laid my baby to rest.
I often wonder why I’ve been given such a load to carry and I still get those nightmare
Ashley Hodo
“I’d been through so much, yet, somehow, I was still here and I had two other children who needed me and I knew I had to carry on for them but it wasn’t easy.”
In December last year the couple welcomed another little girl, Mariah and the following month she received an unexpected call from Wright.
“She told me she wanted to see how me and the children were doing, I told her we were doing fine but didn’t share any details,” she says.
“Talking about her eventual release, she said she wanted to come and live with me and that we could go shopping together.
“It was like she was playing some bizarre fantasy video in her head where she was a good mother.
“I told her that wouldn’t be happening and that’s when she turned nasty and told me she wished I had died, so I hung up.”
Recently, Ashley called Tutwiler Prison, where Wright is currently serving her sentence to find out the latest on her release date.
To Ashley’s horror she learned Wright was being released to a halfway house in Birmingham, Alabama, in April 2026.
Inmates can serve out the last part of their sentence there and be helped with training, educations and finding work.
She will be out in the community before her sentence ends and she’s officially released in 2027.
“I’m not worried about my own safety, but I am concerned about her being around kids again,” she says.
“I often wonder why I’ve been given such a load to carry and I still get those nightmares.
“Lately my scars have tightened, the skin pulls when I pick the kids up, it’ll tear soon and I’ll need more surgery.
“I’ve faced worse.
“I’m the girl in the oven, but I’m much more than that.
“I’m a wife, a mother, a grieving parent and a science graduate.
“I counsel kids with burns and I’m a survivor.”
*Names have been changed
Ashley is now a mum herself but she sadly lost three of her children[/caption]
Her mum is now up for release and Ashley worries about her children’s safety[/caption]
