Former ballerina Ashley Benefield admits executing her wealthy hubby Douglas, saying she did so because she was terrified he would kill her.
Multiple authorities found no evidence of abuse.
Instead, prosecutors are hammering away on the theory that Benefield, 32, wanted to be a single mother to the couple’s young daughter, now 6.
And so she shot her estranged husband in the back.
Benefield is now on trial for second-degree murder in Bradenton, Florida in a widely watched trial that has featured gavel-to-gavel coverage.
“This case is about a woman who very early on in her pregnancy decided she wanted to be a single mother,” Assistant State Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell argued last week. “She would stop at nothing to obtain that goal.
“And she did not want the father of this child to have any visitation.”
Her lawyer, Neil Taylor, however, told jurors: “She was in fear for her life when she was forced to shoot him. Thirty years older than Ashley, he was obsessed with her.
Taylor added: “Despite promoting himself as a religious, honourable, and decent human being, Benefield was a manipulative, cunning, and abusive man who insisted, absolutely insisted, on control.”
The story is a tale packed with twists and turns, glamour, big money and politics. Court TV has dubbed it the Black Swan Murder Trial after the 2010 thriller featuring Natalie Portman as a troubled ballerina.
Benefield was a 24-year-old ballet dancer when she met her future husband, 54, a Navy veteran and tech consultant. The May-December duo met at a Republican party fundraiser in Palm Beach.
They married 13 days later.
He had the money and she had the ambition to fulfill her dream of founding a ballet company, The American National Ballet.
“All within a year of being married, they have done a vasectomy reversal, gotten pregnant, started a ballet and the ballet has crumbled,” O’Donnell said in her opening statements.
Ashley moved from South Carolina to move in with her mother in Florida. That was August 2017.
“They continued a long-distance relationship when she first moved to Florida and continued trying to keep together and communicate, but about the same time as the ballet collapses, Ashley Benefield starts complaints against the victim,” O’Donnell told jurors.
Ashley began accusing her hubby of emotional abuse, claimed he tried to kill her and did not notify him when their child was born. He later discovered there was a restraining order against him.
After a long court fight, he was granted visitation with his daughter in July 2018. By 2020, Ashley had planned to relocate with her daughter to Maryland.
On Sept. 27, 2020, he came by to help his estranged wife pack.
Cops arrived to find Doug shot to death on a bedroom floor. Three bullets had been parked in him. She told cops it was self-defence.
But detectives found zero evidence to support her claim. He had been shot in the back.
Ultimately, Doug was killed over custody and Ashley wanted to “win at all costs,” prosecutors say. Her lawyer claimed he was “disturbed” stalker.
On Thursday, prosecutors rested their case after only three days of testimony. Then, on Friday, Ashley Benefield took the stand, claiming she asked Doug to leave and that he hit her.
She told the court: “I was scared to death. I thought he was going to kill me. There was nowhere to go. I was trapped.”
Then, running to her room, she grabbed a gun and shot him.
“His face was red,” she said. “The veins were bulging in his neck. The way he was looking at me, it didn’t even look like Doug. His eyes we’re black.”
She added: “He started coming towards me and then he lunged at me and I started pulling the trigger. And he just kept coming. And I remember trying to move to get away from him, but he kept coming at me.”
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