Former mistress Alleigha Botner told an Ohio jury her texts about killing Caleb Flynn’s wife meant divorce pressure, not murder, as phone deletions also surfaced.
Jurors on Day 6 of testimony heard hours of private messages between former “American Idol” contestant Caleb Flynn and Alleigha Botner, the woman he was seeing while still married to Ashley Flynn.
Fox News reported that Botner took the stand emotional and read lines that prosecutors put before the jury as evidence of motive in Ashley’s fatal shooting.
Ashley Flynn was found dead in her Ohio home. Flynn stands accused of fatally shooting her and staging the scene to look like a break-in. A photo caption in the coverage places the killing in February 2026. Ashley worked as a Tipp City Schools substitute teacher and volleyball coach and was a mother of two.
No verdict has been reached. The trial continues.
Botner told the court she wished she had never sent one of the messages.
She read her own text aloud:
"I want to kill her, Caleb."
Flynn’s reply, as she testified, was short:
"That makes two of us."
Those words sat in the middle of a longer stream of messages jurors spent hours hearing. Months before Ashley was killed, Botner said, the pair exchanged talk about wanting his wife dead. On the night before Ashley’s death, the exchange turned toward the next day.
Botner messaged that she had never felt anything as deep with anyone else, that she trusted him with her heart, and that she was terrified. She wrote that they would see if his actions finally matched his words.
Flynn answered that he had never felt anything like it either, that he knew it was real, that he was terrified as well, and that “tomorrow it all starts.”
He also wrote that he had a “pretty massive day tomorrow,” asked her to pray for him, and said he would update her the whole time. Botner told him he was “about to be free.” Flynn closed with, “I choose you... You're more than enough. Good night.”
Defense attorney Emily Smith worked to reframe the same texts. She walked Botner through the meaning of “free,” the talk of leaving Ashley, and the pressure Botner put on Flynn to end the marriage.
Botner acknowledged she had given Flynn four or five separate deadlines to leave his wife. She researched divorce proceedings. She also researched deleting messages and digital evidence, Smith’s questioning brought out.
Asked whether she understood the messages as planning a murder, Botner answered:
"I did not."
She said she understood them as talk about divorce and leaving. On the violent language, she testified she did not believe Flynn meant it literally.
"I don't think he could ever be capable of doing something like that."
Other texts Botner read showed the affair’s volatility. She wrote that she was “so done” with him, that he had “murdered my heart,” that she hoped he was glad he took her virginity and her heart and stomped all over them, and “Enjoy your marriage. I'm done.”
Family-breakdown cases keep landing in courtrooms across the country, including grim episodes like an Australian father who killed his children during a domestic collapse. This Ohio trial is being tried on texts, phone data, and sworn testimony, not on social media slogans.
Botner testified that after Ashley was shot, church staff gathered at Ashley’s parents’ home. Botner went there. Flynn hugged her.
She said he told her:
"It didn't happen the way we thought it would, did it?"
Botner said she questioned him. He described hearing a gunshot, finding blood, and discovering Ashley. She said her suspicion grew.
Flynn became emotional in court as the testimony landed. His attorney, L. Patrick Mulligan, declined to comment while the case is ongoing. Botner could not immediately be reached for comment after she stepped down.
Domestic murder trials often turn on what family members and outsiders heard in the hours after the crime, a pattern seen in other high-profile family cases such as coverage of Patrick Clancy’s account after his children’s deaths. Jurors here are being asked to weigh one witness’s memory of a single sentence against a larger digital trail.
After Botner left the stand, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation Special Agent Joseph Wilhelm began digital forensics testimony on Flynn’s cellphone.
Wilhelm told jurors investigators extracted a full copy of the iPhone after earlier attempts failed. He said the analysis covered browser history, location data, health information, application activity, and other records.
ChatGPT was uninstalled on Feb. 15, he testified. GroupMe and Instagram were removed shortly after 1 a.m. on Feb. 16. No text messages between Flynn and Ashley were found on the device.
Wilhelm also outlined phone location data, Apple Watch activity, AirPods connections, and a timeline leading to the 911 call. Prosecutors indicated they expected to revisit that timeline.
Prosecutors played two AI-created songs recovered from the phone. Wilhelm testified the songs related to Flynn’s relationship with Botner and matched lyrics found in the notes app.
Phone wipes, missing chats, and last-minute app removals are the kind of hard records juries can touch. Soft feelings about an affair are not. When a spouse ends up dead and the scene is accused of being dressed up like a break-in, those records matter more than romance language.
Prosecutors put the “kill her” exchange, the “free” talk, and the “tomorrow it all starts” thread in front of jurors as part of a motive case. The defense used the same witness to say the plan on the table was divorce paperwork and leaving a marriage, not a homicide.
Botner’s own words now cut both ways. She sent the kill message. She also swore she never took it as a murder plot and never believed Flynn could do it.
That is the split the jury has to resolve with the rest of the evidence still coming in. Other American family-violence prosecutions have shown how quickly a murder count can narrow or shift once testimony and deals enter the picture, as in a Kansas City mother whose murder charge was dropped in a plea.
Here, the charge posture in open court remains that Flynn is the accused. Ashley is dead. The children lost their mother. The phone lost apps in the hours around the killing. The mistress says the dark talk was about walking out of a marriage.
Jurors will decide which reading of those texts fits the rest of the proof. High-profile murder juries already draw intense outside noise, including the juror-conduct fight around the Lindsay Clancy case. This panel’s job is narrower: match the messages, the deletions, and the post-shooting remark to the facts in the courtroom.
Marriage vows are not a suggestion, and a dead wife is not a divorce filing. The jury gets the final word on what those texts really meant.
