The so-called “Black Swan Killer” was seen sobbing in court Tuesday as she listened to a 911 call made by a neighbor minutes after she killed her ex-husband.
Ashley Benefield, now 32, ran into her neighbor’s home in Bradenton, Florida, on Sept. 27, 2020 after shooting and killing 59-year-old Douglas Benefield, whom she had married in 2016 after dating just 13 days.
“I heard a really loud knock on my door,” neighbor Josh Sant testified Tuesday, as Ashley faces murder charges in the veteran’s death. according to Fox 13. “I was a little surprised.”
He said he opened the door and found Ashley, who told him her husband attacked her and she shot him.
Sant then called 911 and told officers: “She just walked in, her ex-husband attacked her and she said she shot him,” according to an audio recording played in court Tuesday.
Ashley Benefield, 32, was seen crying in court Tuesday as she listened to the 911 call a neighbor made minutes after she killed her ex-husband.
Throughout the phone call, jurors could hear Sant trying to calm Benefield, WFLA reports.
As the audio was played in court, Ashley, a former dancer, was seen crying.
She now claims she was simply acting in self-defense, while her lawyers describe Doug, her daughter’s father, as a domestic abuser.
The couple met at Ben Carson’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2016. She had been campaigning for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
They were married just 13 days later.
In the early days of their relationship, “they were together all the time,” testified Eva, Doug’s 23-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.
“They were very affectionate and showed affection in public all the time. They never separated,” she said.
Within a year of their marriage, Doug, a retired naval flight officer, helped Ashley achieve her dream of founding a ballet company, using his own money and connections.
He acted as CEO of the company, while Ashley took on the role of executive director.
But shortly after its founding, the company was sued by dancers and choreographers who claimed their contracts were breached when they were fired just weeks after being hired.
Ashley shot and killed Doug Benefield (pictured) at his home in Bradenton, Florida, on September 27, 2020.
The two met at a political event in 2016 and married just 13 days later.
Doug also had his vasectomy reversed and Ashley became pregnant three months later.
That’s when everything changed, says Deputy District Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell.
She said Ashley moved from her home in South Carolina to Brandenton to live with her mother when she began experiencing morning sickness and, from that point on, she never lived with Doug again.
“They continued a long-distance relationship when she first moved to Florida and continued to try to stay together and in communication, but around the same time the ballet company collapsed, Ashley Benefield began making complaints against the victim,” O’Donnell told jurors.
She began accusing Doug of poisoning her and non-physical domestic violence.
But Manatee County Sheriff’s Office detectives conducted a five-week investigation and were unable to find any evidence to support her claims of abuse.
Prosecutors now argue that killing Doug was a last-ditch effort to gain custody of their daughter, who was 2 years old at the time of the shooting.
“This is a case of a woman who, early in her pregnancy, decided that she wanted to be a single mother,” O’Donnell argued. “She did not want the father of her child to have visitation rights.”
‘This is a long story, this was a custody battle that this mother would win at any cost, and the cost was Doug Benefield’s life.’
Benefield does not deny killing her ex-husband, but argues she acted in self-defense.
Prosecutors argue that Doug was doing everything he could to repair his marriage and keep his family together.
On the day of Douglas’ death, Ashley was preparing to move with her young daughter to Maryland to live with her mother.
Doug was also planning to move to the Old Line State, but would live separately from his wife and daughter.
He had arrived at Ashley’s home in Bradenton to help them pack when he was shot four times in Ashley’s bedroom.
In a previously submitted motion obtained by Law and Crime, Defense attorneys argue that Doug arrived “happy, hyperactive and lively” but over time became “agitated, sullen and intimidating.”
After verbally abusing his wife, the defense claims, Doug rammed her with a moving box, leaving scrapes.
“Doug Benefield knew full well that day that this relationship was over,” Ashley’s lawyer Neil Taylor argued in court.
She went on to claim that Doug was manipulative and “viewed Ashley Benefield as his property.”
“He was thirty years older than Ashley, was obsessed with her, and managed to successfully portray himself as someone who was not in an effort to win her hand in marriage,” Taylor said of their relationship.
‘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.’
Taylor later told the jury that Doug once fired a gun at the kitchen ceiling in an attempt to get Ashley to stop talking, threw a loaded gun at her, hit her dog in the face, knocking it unconscious, and regularly carried a concealed firearm that was “ready to fire.”
He also claimed that after Ashley and Doug split up, he illegally tracked her, often following her without her consent and even driving from out of state to keep an eye on her.
At least once, Doug allegedly stood in a neighbor’s backyard in the middle of the night so he could see her.
In court on Tuesday, his neighbor Josh Sant recounted how he ran home after the shooting, claiming Doug had been abusive.
Taylor also noted Doug’s “prior marital history of domestic violence,” Law & Crime reports.
He said previous incidents would be backed up by police.
The defense is apparently even planning to call O’Donnell as a witness because she declined to press charges against Doug following Ashley’s previous abuse allegations. Court TV reports.
“Ashley Benefield was afraid of him,” Taylor said of the deceased.
‘Three years before the murder, when he left home, he left her a letter in which he told her how scared he was of all those acts. He feared for her and for her unborn child.’
The defense has even filed documents indicating that they will present evidence that Ashley suffers from “battered spouse syndrome.”
She added: “The only thing that can be established here beyond a reasonable doubt is that Douglas Benefield was a violent abuser, Ashley Benefield’s efforts to subdue him were absolutely consistent with what abused women do, especially when a child is involved, and that Ashley’s response and resort to deadly force were justified under the circumstances.”
Protesters in front of the courthouse on Monday showed their support for the former dancer.
Protesters outside a Florida courthouse on Monday showed their support for the former dancer.
“We’re really standing up for Ashley,” her pastor, Mike Brown, told Fox 13.
“We have a group of domestic violence survivors who are with us, ready to see that justice prevails.”
But before jurors were seated Monday, the defense sought to delay Ashley’s trial for 60 days, arguing that recent court rulings had severely impaired her ability to present an effective defense.
Judge Matt Whyte denied the motion, saying the legal team has more than enough time to prepare in the three and a half years since Ashley was charged.
The team had also previously sought to have second-degree murder charges against Ashley dropped.
But Whyte refused to dismiss the charges at a hearing last year.
In his ruling, Whyte wrote that the evidence “clearly and convincingly proves that the defendant is not entitled to court-ordered immunity from criminal prosecution because the use of deadly force against the victim was not justified.”
Ashley now faces a minimum sentence of 25 years behind bars and a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of Doug’s murder following the two-week trial.
