Crime Weekly - S3 Ep230: Crime Weekly News: Ashley Benefield Found Guilty

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

The verdict is in for the trial of Ashley Benefield, and she has been found guilty of murdering her husband, Doug Benefield. Ashley argued she was defending herself when she shot Doug four times, but the jury found there was not enough evidence of her claims. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod 

Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And real quickly before we dive into this week's episode, as you can probably tell, I'm wearing some Crime Weekly merch. Unfortunately, this is our Nashville merch, so you cannot get it unless you attended CrimeCon. Sorry about that, but you know, you had to be there. If you know, you know. I will say there have been some discussions about the future CrimeCons where certain people just can't make it, so maybe we will do a very limited run just for the week of crime con where for some reason you can't make it but you still want the exclusive shirt you can get it online we're talking about that but there's a lot of merch over there right now some new products as well hats t-shirts hoodies

you name it all you gotta do is go to crimeweeklypodcast.com pick yourself up some crime weekly merch uh it's really high quality stuff i I wear it all the time. I know that sounds kind of biased because it's our company, but I will say we were very adamant about getting a higher quality t-shirt because we've seen those cheap ones that you can get. They're crap. We used to have the other ones as well, and they just don't last. These will absolutely last. You will not regret it. And also speaking of Crime Weekly, as we mentioned last week, CrimeCon Cruise locked in November 2nd. If you want to check it out, we've already had, I believe, seven to 10 people book their cruise after we announced that we're going to be there using our code. So if you want to save some money and join us on the cruise,

you can go to CrimeCon.com and check out the CrimeCon cruise. Make sure you use our code CRIMEWEEKLY to save yourself 10%. Anything else you want to plug while I'm going, Stephanie? I sound like a car salesman right now. No, I'm actually just stealing myself for the cruise. That's my main focus now, just mentally preparing so that we can have fun and I don't get scared of falling or being thrown over the edge of the boat. I want to go on the cruise and then I want to have an updated Crime Weekly news as far as your opinions on cruises. Because you were very, you know, adamant about your feelings about it before.

You probably won't change. But I truly, I want to hear your opinions after actually attending a cruise. And not dying. What do you like? Not dying. Coming back on here. Now, if you die, that's not good for the brand it's not good for yeah that means because they're going to be showing clips of you saying cruises are horrible and then proving it yeah so they better keep me safe man they have to keep you safe but no i think it's going to be a great time we'll come back we'll talk about it we'd love to see you guys there it's going to be

a more personal experience a lot less people uh we're going to be speaking multiple days about different topics. We're still working on those topics. But if you want to hear those discussions, you got to be there. Be in Miami, then Jamaica. The other place was Haiti, but we're not sure that's going to happen now with the current circumstances going on over there. No, they changed it, I think. Maybe it's Coco Cay now or something like that.

Yeah, something. It's not Haiti anymore. It's going to be Royal Caribbean. It's going to be great. We hope you guys attend. So with that out of the way, the good stuff, let's talk about this week's episode. And this is something that I wasn't aware of. We're going to be discussing Ashley Benefield. Stephanie, you actually covered this case. You were telling me before we started recording. And she's going to go into more details. But just the

overview. Essentially this week, the trial finally came to a head. It's over now. The verdict is in. Ashley has been found guilty of second-degree manslaughter after killing her estranged husband, Douglas Benefield, back in September of 2020. Again, I'm going to let her go over the details and we'll break down what actually transpired here. Doug and Ashley actually met in 2016, but before that, Ashley Benefield had trained to be a ballerina since the age of eight. She was very passionate about ballet. She dropped out of high school to pursue it.

She ended up graduating from the Maryland Youth Ballet. And basically, it just didn't go the way she wanted it to go. It's very hard to be a professional ballerina. She never achieved the level of success that she desired in the world of ballet. And by the time she was 21, she kind of figured out it wasn't going to happen for her. In 2015, Ashley met former President Donald Trump at one of his campaign events in Florida. She was a big fan of the Donalds. And apparently, he was so impressed with her knowledge of firearms and patriotism and her love for America that he offered her a job on the spot to work at his Sarasota, Florida campaign office.

Now, she definitely did start working for him, and that kind of put her in a political circle that she might not have otherwise been in. So then we're going to come to August 25th, 2016. Ashley was at the Palm Beach home of Ben Carson. You remember who Ben Carson is, right? Yeah, I know who he is. Yeah, of course. So he also ran for president in 2016. He's a doctor and he was actually he served as a secretary of housing and urban development under Donald Trump. By the time Ashley met her future husband, Doug Benefield, at Ben Carson's house, he had withdrawn from the presidential race and put his support behind Trump. And so Ashley went to this dinner at his home with some donors. And I think that it was her intention to raise money for the Trump presidential campaign.

But it was here that 24-year-old Ashley Byers met a man who was also in attendance, Doug Benefield. He was 30 years older than her. Now, at the age of 54, Doug had already been married twice. His first marriage ended in divorce just six months after it started. His second marriage had ended just nine months prior to him meeting Ashley. And his wife had unexpectedly passed away. That is why the marriage ended. And this left Doug to raise their 15-year-old daughter, Eva, by himself. So Doug and Ashley, they meet.

They have this whirlwind romance. He was going on a trip somewhere a few days later. They talked the whole time he was away. He was talking to her on the phone. He's like, next time I'm bringing you with me. I mean, they've known each other like five days at this point and they're head over heels in love with each other. They're texting each other and telling each other how important they are to each other. They didn't even know each other. But basically what happened is this just went very, very fast. And by the time

Doug returned from his work trip, he and Ashley had already told each other that they loved each other. And basically, they decided they were going to get married, which they did on September 6th. So basically, this is a very fast whirlwind relationship. These two people with this huge age gap who don't even know each other are in love and they're getting married. And then they opened like a ballet company together. The ballet company ended up going under. There was a lot of controversy with that. The marriage ended up getting very bad as well as things with the ballet company weren't going well. And then Ashley became pregnant with the couple's first child. And while she was pregnant, she actually left Doug in Florida and she moved to South Carolina to live with her mother. And that's when she started making complaints to local authorities that her husband had been

abusing her. Prosecutors allege that she didn't tell Doug when her labor was induced and when she gave birth and she tried to prevent him from seeing their child for the next six months. So obviously there's this huge custody battle happening at this point. Doug claims he was blindsided. He didn't think anything was wrong with Ashley. He was willing to work things out, et cetera, et cetera. Ashley and Doug's 15-year-old daughter, Eva, did not get along. And now all of a sudden, Ashley's saying, you know, there's abuse happening in the marriage. She doesn't want him to see his child, their child together. She's seeing other men, et cetera, et cetera. But then the two started going to therapy. They started trying to work things out. And Doug apparently thought, because he sent an email to his lawyer, that he and Ashley

were going to be OK. They were going to move away together to Maryland. Doug was going to live separately in a different house from Ashley and their child, but they were going to try to work things out and get closer. So Doug drives from Florida to South Carolina, where Ashley's mother lives, and they get a moving truck and they're packing it up because they're going to be moving. Ashley's mother took their child in a stroller for a walk to the park, so she wasn't there. It was just Doug and Ashley. And reportedly, Doug was getting on Ashley's case about how she was loading the moving van and they were fighting. He got in her face. And that's when Ashley retreated inside the house, went into her bedroom and grabbed a gun from a storage container.

Now, according to Ashley, Doug came into the room, followed her, gave her no way to get out of the room, was threatening her, telling her to stop. He advanced towards Ashley, and then she fired four rounds, hitting him twice. She said during the trial that she thought he was going to kill her. Now, the prosecution in this trial has disputed some of her claims. According to the Washington Post, court documents showed that authorities did not find any injuries on Ashley except for a scratch on her right side, which they said appeared to be unrelated to what had happened. According to the medical examiner's analysis of Doug's entry wounds, Doug appeared to be facing away from Ashley when she shot him, not advancing towards her as she claimed. He was also unarmed. Doug had suffered wounds to his right leg, right arm, and right chest area, and he died later that evening. Now, the defense lawyer said that the

prosecution had used faulty witnesses to paint a false motivation for the killing. So basically, the prosecution said that Ashley wanted sole custody of her child. She didn't want Doug to have anything to do with the child. She wanted him out of her life completely, where the defense is saying that Ashley was abused by Doug for years and years, and she tried to get away, and he followed her, and finally, you know, she snapped. She killed him because she was scared he was going to kill her. And at the end of the day, as you said, she was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter, and she faces a maximum sentence of 30 years. Now, there's some people that agree with this. There's some people that agree with the outcome of the trial. There's some people that don't. But where do you stand on it? So I don't know a ton about

the actual case. So I think it would be irresponsible for me to say one way or another. But just based on your brief synopsis, it sounds like you could have a motive there, which would essentially give you potentially premeditation, right? If she went into this situation knowing what she wanted to do because of some outside circumstance, then it could be premeditated. And if that were the case, if they were able to prove that, then it would have been murder. And so I guess you got to break down the different charges and then also the different degrees of those charges because originally she was charged with second degree murder, correct? Yes, yes. For anyone who doesn't know, and I may be talking just

too dumb here where everyone's like, yeah, dude, we get it. But the main difference between murder and manslaughter is premeditation, the intent right beforehand. You can still intend on killing someone, but have no pre-planning of it. It could be in the moment where they usually describe it as a crime of passion. We've given the example before where you walk in on a spouse and they're doing something, they're cheating on you and you end up in that moment killing this person because of what they're doing something, they're cheating on you. And you end up in that moment killing this person because of what they're doing. You didn't have the intention going into the situation of doing that, but because of what you saw in that moment, you not only killed them,

but the intention behind what you were doing, your actions was to kill them. And therefore you could have second degree murder or manslaughter. The main difference, and I'm not a lawyer by any means, with first degree versus second degree is malice aforethought, which essentially is the idea that you're coming in there with the intent on killing them. Now, I know that kind of sounds similar to murder and manslaughter. What I mean by that is you can go into a situation where your actions are reckless and the actions that you're carrying out could potentially kill someone, but you're not carrying out those actions with the intent on killing someone. So I guess the argument here for the defense would be, yes, she acted reckless. Yes, her actions could have resulted in death, which it did, but her intent in that

moment was not to kill, but intent instead to defend or to deter this person from hurting her. So they're not getting her off completely by saying, yes, this was self-defense, which it sounds like that was her argument initially. This was a tumultuous relationship. It was violent in nature and she had no way to retreat. So therefore her actions were one of self-defense and she shouldn't be charged with anything. The jury is essentially saying, not so fast. You went into the situation, you grabbed a firearm, you knew what you could do with that firearm. You shot him four times, which even if your intent wasn't to kill him, you had to have known that your actions could result in death or serious bodily harm.

So therefore they found her guilty of second degree manslaughter. From what you're telling me, it sounds like they could have got the second degree murder, but without knowing the specifics of the case, I would imagine it was something where the prosecution just wasn't able to get there as far as proof beyond a reasonable doubt that this woman went into the situation with the intent on killing Douglas and therefore they dropped it down to the manslaughter charge. But like you said, she can still serve up to 30 years. So although it's a manslaughter charge, it sounds to me like the article that we're referring to right here from the Washington Post that the family of Douglas is happy with the outcome. They're satisfied with it. They don't seem upset. I'm sure they would have loved the murder charge, but it seems like from what they're saying here, justice was served. That's one of

their quotes. Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a lot to this case, obviously, that we can't talk about in a quick crime weekly news. But I think there's a lot to and it Ashley did that kind of solidified that she was trying to keep her child away from her father. So there's definitely a lot of context and gray areas to this case. At the end of the day, do I think that she had no other choice but to shoot him? No, I do not believe that. And I think the jury made the right decision. I think that manslaughter is probably for me, manslaughter feels more like something that you can hand down to a defendant and still, you know, look at yourself in the mirror

and sleep at night because there's always going to be that small chance that there was a lot of abuse happening. And I mean, Doug had admitted to being violent in the past. He'd admitted to pulling a gun and shooting the ceiling to try and make Ashley be quiet during an argument. He admitted to punching a hole in the wall. He accidentally hit his dog while he was doing that. There were things that happened to show that he wasn't completely innocent. But did she feel she had no other choice, which is what her and her defense team were going for, self-defense,

Florida stand your ground law, et cetera, et cetera. And I misspoke earlier because it's been so long since I covered this case. She left South Carolina and moved to her mother's house in Florida. Doug then went to Florida to help her move, you know, pack up the U-Haul and everything. And that's why this crime happened in Florida and was tried in a Florida courtroom. So which is advantageous for her, advantageous for her considering the gun and the laws. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it's it's it's one of those things where I think you make a great point as far as there's motive there that could be intent. And I also think the fact that she shot him four times instead of just once or twice. And it doesn't seem likely to me that Doug, knowing that Ashley's mother is taking a quick walk with their daughter and she's going to be back, you know, any minute that he'd be like, this is a really great time to kill her right now.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it doesn't sound great on the surface. I am glad to see that she's being held accountable for her actions. Some may argue not not enough. I think ultimately we're going to we're going to see how this works out with a judge, because whether it's manslaughter or murder, if she ends up getting the maximum sentence of 30 years, how old did you say she is right now? Well, she was in her mid twenties in 2020 when this happened. So she's probably still in her twenties, not even 30 yet. And so even if she gets the max, she'll still have quite a long life to live. Yeah. Yeah. But still that's 30 years could be, and she won't serve 30

years. I was just going to say that. Yeah. There's no way she might serve. She might serve half of that. It's not a federal offense. So she doesn't have to do she doesn't have to do 80 percent. So we'll see how it plays out. But I would strongly recommend I'm going to have to do it myself. Head on over to Stephanie's channel. She covered this case in its entirety more extensively. So if you want a little bit more of the background, if you hadn't heard of this story before, now's a great time to head on over to her channel. Check it out and catch yourself up on it. And then maybe this trial will make a lot more sense to you like it will to me. Anything else to add before we wrap this one up? Nope. That's it. All right, guys, as always, we appreciate you guys being here. Everyone stay safe out there. We're going to be coming to you later this week on audio and on video with a new series. Do you want to tell them about it? Do you want to mention, can we at least say the name? No, they can find out soon. They can find out? Yeah.

Okay. It's going to be the case. Can't say it. It's going to be part one. Redacted. Redacted. It's a different style case than we've done before. And from what I've seen from the script initially going into this, it's kind of stylized a little

different than what we've done in the past as well. So I'm really looking forward to it. We hope you guys are as well. We will see you later this week. Everyone stay safe. Have a good night. Bye.