Former American Idol contestant convicted of murdering Ohio wife
An Ohio pastor and former American Idol contestant has been convicted of murdering his wife after prosecutors presented evidence including messages to a former lover, phone data and alleged efforts to disguise the killing. Caleb Flynn faces life imprisonment without parole and is due to be sentenced on October 5.
Caleb Flynn, an Ohio pastor and former American Idol contestant, has been found guilty of murdering his wife, Ashley Flynn, after a trial featuring evidence from a former lover, police technology records and a song prosecutors said he created about their relationship. Flynn, 40, was convicted on Tuesday of murder and eight other charges, including aggravated murder and tampering with evidence. The jury reached its verdict in less than three hours.
He faces life imprisonment without parole and is scheduled to be sentenced on October 5. Prosecutors said Flynn shot Ashley, 37, twice in the back of the head while she was sleeping at the couple’s home in Tipp City, near Dayton, on February 16. They alleged that he then tried to make the death appear to have been caused by intruders.
The prosecution presented police body-camera footage and data from Flynn’s iPhone and Apple Watch. It also called dozens of witnesses, including Alleigha Botner, a former intern at Flynn’s church who testified that she had an affair with him lasting nearly 18 months. Some of the roughly 100,000 messages exchanged by Flynn and Botner were read in court.
Prosecutors cited messages in which Flynn allegedly wrote that he had stayed awake thinking about ways to kill his wife without going to jail, and another in which he said he wanted her “dead and gone”. Botner told the court she now hated Flynn because she believed he had murdered Ashley. Prosecutors argued Flynn feared losing custody of his daughters, his work at his wife’s family business and his position at the church in a divorce.
They also pointed to conflicting accounts about whether he had gone to the garage, where investigators found the centre console of his truck open. A gun kept there has not been found. Defence lawyer Patrick Mulligan argued that the evidence did not prove Flynn committed the killing and that infidelity alone was not evidence of murder.
Flynn appeared to weep when the verdicts were delivered. He appeared on American Idol in 2013, received a ticket to Hollywood and did not reach the main competition.
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