A chilling letter the ‘Black Swan’ dancer left her husband years before she shot him dead revealed the damaged nature of their relationship.
Ashley Benefield, 33, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the shooting death of her husband, Doug Benefield, 59, in 2020.
The couple met in 2016 and married just 13 days later. They founded the scandal-plagued American National Ballet dance group in 2017, as Ashley, a trained dancer, had always dreamed of starting a dance company.
“They were together all the time,” Eva, 23, Doug’s daughter from a previous marriage, testified during Ashley’s trial in July.
‘They were affectionate, PDA all the time. They never separated,” he added.
‘Black Swan’ dancer Ashley Benefield, 32, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting her husband, Doug Benefield, 59, in 2020.
On September 27, 2020, Ashley ran to a neighbor’s house and told him she shot and killed Doug, whom she married in 2016 after dating for just 13 days.
But problems arose when Ashley became pregnant in August 2017.
After she moved from her home in South Carolina to live with her mother in Florida, the couple never lived together again.
The former dancer returned to South Carolina in September to deliver a shocking four-page letter to Doug, which was shared on the ‘Black Swan Murder’ podcast and presented during his trial.
The chilling message reads: “I can honestly tell you that I am completely heartbroken.
After being married for a year, Doug, a retired naval flight officer, helped Ashley achieve her dream of starting a ballet company, using his own money and contacts.
‘Over the past year, we have had some good times, yes, but you have also shown terrifying and irrational behavior with sudden outbursts of anger and fits of rage, extremely uncontrollable anger.
“This has left me constantly stressed to the point of nausea and scared for my safety.”
Ashley wrote that she always felt nervous around Doug and that he acted as if they were “two very different people.”
“You yell, scream and curse at me, even telling me that we should get a divorce, that you don’t want to see or touch me again, that you don’t love me,” she continued.
Ashley said Doug drove dangerously and “erratically” on several occasions, crashing into trees and violating traffic rules.
She also brought up Doug’s relationship with Eva, saying he yelled at her daughter and her friend, who also lived in the house with them.
‘Now I understand why Eva used to tell me she was afraid of you. “You are possessive and manipulative,” Ashley wrote.
In July of this year, Benefield was convicted of shooting her husband to death after moving his belongings to Maryland, where they planned to reside after the collapse of the American National Ballet.
He said his house in South Carolina was “falling apart” and that Doug, a retired naval flight officer, was not paying his bills, causing the house to be foreclosed.
Towards the end of the note, he wrote: ‘I have overlooked all of these things and more and more this year, because I love you.
‘But even since I discovered I was pregnant, you continue to display psychotic, irrational and insecure behavior that has made me fear for my life, my safety and that of my own child.
‘I have come to look for what belongs to me. Do not harass me or try to follow me, or I will call the police and issue a restraining order against you.’
The couple’s then pioneering dance group was funded entirely by Doug.
Doug Benefield was the one who financed the disastrous dance company, all with the goal of making Ashley’s dream of keeping her ballet experience alive.
He acted as group chief executive, while Ashley took on the role of chief executive.
When the company was born, 48 dancers joined the group, some of them traveling on work visas to Charleston, South Carolina.
Shortly after the company was founded, it was sued by dancers and choreographers who alleged that their contracts had been breached when they were fired just weeks after being hired. The dancers also reported suspicious behavior by their employers.
Sophie Williams, who was 20 at the time, told DailyMail.com that she was suspicious of the company from the beginning, especially when it came to payment.
He recalled a time when he waited outside a small hallway with other American National Ballet dancers in alphabetical order to have their names called.
No one was told why they had to meet there, only that there was a chance to finally receive a paycheck.
When Williams was called to the office, he saw Doug with a briefcase full of cash.
She said, “He started counting bundles of hundreds.”
“You don’t get paid like that in a legitimate ballet company,” he said.
The company collapsed in less than two months. The dancers were left without jobs, without a studio, and with one-year rents in an apartment complex that they couldn’t pay.
Unaccompanied, Doug and Ashley planned to move to Maryland. Doug was shot and killed while they were packing to leave.
Ashley will be sentenced Tuesday and faces up to 30 years in prison, according to alphabet.
She was originally charged with second-degree murder before the charge was reduced to involuntary manslaughter.
He turned himself in to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and told investigators he shot Doug in self-defense during a “domestic argument.”
Ashley will be sentenced Tuesday and could face up to 30 years in prison.
She accused Doug of poisoning her and non-physical domestic violence.
Ashley said Doug constantly brought her teas that she thought contained poison. CBS News reported.
But detectives conducted a five-week investigation and could not find any evidence to support their claims.
Prosecutors argued during this summer’s trial that killing Doug was a last-ditch effort to gain custody of his daughter, who was 2 years old at the time of the shooting.
Eva, Doug’s 23-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, testified: ‘They were affectionate, PDA all the time. They never separated
“This is a case about a woman who, early in her pregnancy, decided she wanted to be a single mother,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell. ‘She didn’t want this child’s father to have visitors.
“This is a long story, it was a custody battle that this mother would win at all costs, and the cost was Doug Benefield’s life.”
Prosecutors stated that Doug was doing everything in his power to rectify his marriage and keep his family together.
