Alleigha Botner told an Ohio jury she gave former "American Idol" contestant Caleb Flynn an ultimatum to leave his wife, and that months of text messages show he talked repeatedly about wanting Ashley Flynn dead.
Botner returned to the witness stand for a second day Thursday in Miami County Common Pleas Court in Troy, Ohio, walking jurors through a trove of messages she exchanged with Flynn during their affair. Prosecutors say those messages, roughly 107,000 in all, lay out the motive behind the February 16 shooting death of Ashley Flynn, a 37-year-old substitute teacher and volleyball coach in Tipp City, Ohio, who was found dead inside her home with a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
Caleb Flynn, 49, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder and other charges. He claims an intruder broke into the home. Prosecutors say he staged the scene to look like a break-in, and that the evidence tells a different story.
Botner testified that she and Flynn routinely deleted their conversations and that she advised him how to wipe data from his devices "multiple times," including the night before Ashley Flynn was killed. The evening of February 15, Botner used ChatGPT to research whether text messages could be permanently deleted, then sent Flynn screenshots of the results at approximately 5:47 p.m., Fox News Digital reported.
The use of artificial intelligence to research how to destroy evidence adds a disturbing digital layer to a case already saturated with electronic records. In another recent murder case, a Massachusetts teenager's ChatGPT searches about killing family members became central to the prosecution's argument.
Despite the deletions, investigators recovered the messages. Prosecutors presented them to the jury over two days of Botner's testimony, painting a picture of an affair that escalated from frustration to what the state says was a plan.
The messages read aloud in court traced a grim arc. In May 2025, Flynn allegedly wrote to Botner:
"If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat."
Days later, he allegedly followed up: "I hate her, loathe her. I want her dead." By June, the messages grew more explicit. Flynn allegedly told Botner: "Please hire someone to take [her] out. I need you in my life, I need you."
Botner's own messages were not innocent. She became visibly emotional on the stand before reading one aloud, telling the court, "I just wish I didn't say this." The message read: "I want to kill her, Caleb." Flynn's alleged reply: "That makes two of us."
Botner then told jurors she followed up by saying she was "not asking that you take her life, obviously" and that divorce "would change everything." By August, Flynn allegedly wrote that he had been "literally trying to find a way to get rid of her, to be rid of her."
Fox News contributor Josh Ritter, a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, said the messages go well beyond venting.
"He went as far as to saying I literally would kill her. That's far beyond someone voicing their frustrations and venting to a lover."
Botner told the jury she gave Flynn a final deadline: leave Ashley by January 11, or she would end the relationship. Flynn did not leave. Botner cut off communication.
The silence lasted about a month. On February 14, Valentine's Day, and two days before Ashley's death, Flynn reached back out. He told Botner he was "filing from Ashley" and was "actually leaving her this time." Botner resumed contact.
That night, the two discussed his plans for the following day, including telling family about the divorce and obtaining a burner phone. Flynn allegedly wrote: "I think I should pay cash for this so it's not in my bank account."
Shortly after midnight, Flynn sent Botner a message: "It's happening, Ilya." Then: "February 16th day I'll never forget." Botner replied: "You're about to be free." Flynn's response: "I choose you."
The prosecution's case rests heavily on the gap between those late-night messages and what happened the next morning. As prosecutors have laid out in earlier testimony, the digital trail between Flynn and his mistress forms the backbone of the motive argument.
At 7:50 a.m. on the morning of the killing, Botner sent Flynn her burner-phone number and told him to contact her once he obtained his own. She later deleted the message.
Then a fellow church congregant sent Botner a news story about Ashley's death. Botner testified that her "heart started pounding." She said it "just seemed like too much of a coincidence that the day he's divorcing her, she's just dead all of a sudden."
She messaged Flynn directly: "What is going on right now? Were you behind this?" She deleted that message, too.
Botner later saw Flynn at Ashley's parents' home, where family members and church staff had gathered. She testified that the first thing Flynn said to her was:
"It didn't happen the way we thought it would, did it?"
Flynn then told Botner he had been sleeping on the couch, woke to a gunshot, and found "blood everywhere" in Ashley's bedroom. That account tracks with bodycam footage played earlier in the trial, in which Flynn can be heard telling his mother: "She's dead. Mom, she's dead...somebody broke in. Mom, she's dead," the New York Post reported.
Ashley Flynn was found lying in a sleeping position in the marital bed with a gunshot wound to the right side of her head. A spent shell casing lay on the bedroom floor. Her two daughters, ages 10 and 12, were sleeping across the hall.
Flynn's defense hinges on the intruder theory, but the physical evidence introduced so far has not supported it. A police canine handler testified earlier in the trial that his dog found no scent trail of anyone leaving the scene. Only footprints from the handler and the dog were found in the wet ground outside the home.
Investigators have never recovered the weapon prosecutors allege Flynn used. No gunshot residue was found on him. Ritter acknowledged the missing weapon matters but said it cuts both ways.
"In an ideal world, would the prosecution want the murder weapon? Sure. But... it's something that the defense is obviously going to lean into."
Still, Ritter said Botner's testimony delivers something harder to counter than forensic gaps: a motive backed by the defendant's own words across more than 100,000 messages.
"Motive. She provides motive. She gives jurors a reason for why would this man murder his wife."
Botner admitted on the stand that she initially lied to FBI agents who interviewed her days after Ashley's death. She denied the affair. She told jurors she was "selfishly afraid that my reputation was going to be ruined and that I was going to lose my job."
She added: "And now that there was a murder attached, I didn't want to be attached to that in any way."
Botner began cooperating after investigators told her they had found text messages on Ashley Flynn's phone. The source does not specify what those messages contained or whether Botner received any immunity deal in exchange for her testimony.
When prosecutors asked Botner how she feels about Flynn today, she did not hesitate: "I hate him." Asked why, she said: "Because I believe that he murdered his wife."
Prosecutors finished their direct examination of Botner shortly before Thursday's lunch break. The defense cross-examined her that afternoon, and she was dismissed from the stand. Flynn's attorney has not publicly responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Flynn appeared on Season 12 of "American Idol" in 2013 but was eliminated during Hollywood Week, Breitbart reported. His brief television career is now a footnote to a murder trial that has gripped a small Ohio community and left two young girls without their mother.
As juries in high-profile murder cases across the country weigh difficult evidence, the Flynn trial offers its own test: whether 107,000 messages, many the defendant tried to destroy, speak louder than the physical evidence investigators could not find.
When a man spends months telling his mistress he wants his wife dead, and then his wife turns up dead, the jury does not need a philosophy degree to connect the dots. They need the facts. Prosecutors believe they have them.
