The Ohio murder trial of former “American Idol” contestant and music pastor Caleb Flynn continued Thursday with testimony from the woman who was having an affair with him.
Alleigha Botner, 24, completed two days on the witness stand by discussing more than 100,000 text messages exchanged with Flynn, 40, before his wife, Ashley Flynn, was killed.
Prosecutors allege Flynn shot Ashley twice in the back of the head as she slept in their bed on Feb. 16. They say he then staged their Tipp City, Ohio, home to look as though it had been burglarized before calling 911 and blaming an intruder. The firearm used in the killing has not been found. Flynn maintains he was in another room when his wife was murdered.
Flynn also faces charges of tampering with evidence and intimidating a witness. He appeared on season 12 of “American Idol” and has pleaded not guilty to every charge. His defense attorneys argue that investigators rushed to blame him and that intense media coverage has distorted the case.
Botner described an approximately 18-month sexual relationship with Flynn, whom she met while working as an intern at his church. She testified about efforts to conceal their messages, acknowledged initially lying to the FBI and said she lost her phone and work laptop only weeks before Ashley Flynn’s death. Asked how she feels about Flynn now, Botner replied, “I hate him.”
Botner said Flynn frequently made hostile remarks about his wife. Prosecutors presented a text he sent her on Aug. 22, 2025, in which he wrote that he had stayed awake until 4 a.m. “thinking of ways to kill her and not going to jail.” Botner said she urged him to pursue a divorce instead.
“I’m not asking that you take her life, obviously, because that’s not what you should do, and I know you actually wouldn’t,” Botner wrote. “But to make the divorce happen, it would change everything.”
Botner did not contact the FBI until four days after Ashley Flynn’s death. Agents approached her after receiving a tip from her aunt.
During her first FBI interview, Botner said she did not believe Flynn had killed his wife. In a second interview, however, she told agents that she did believe he was responsible, saying the circumstances were “way too much of a coincidence,” she testified Thursday.
Botner also told jurors there were “a lot of times” when she doubted whether Flynn truly hated his wife, pointing to affectionate messages exchanged by the couple. She said she believed she was in love with Flynn about a year into the affair and resented Ashley for the attention Flynn gave her, including during an argument around Valentine’s Day.
Prosecutors played a video in court Wednesday showing Flynn filming the home he shared with Ashley while loudly declaring, “I love Alleigha Botner.” Their dog could be seen in the frame.
In a Sept. 30, 2025, message, Flynn told Botner he was prepared to give up his “daughters, a quarter-million-dollar salary job, a place to live, possibly a church I serve at, public shame and humiliation, and way more” to be with her. He then sarcastically described unfollowing a man on social media as a “big sacrifice” and asked Botner to do so.
Botner issued several ultimatums demanding that Flynn leave his wife. In one message, she wrote, “Until she’s gone, I’m gone.”
During cross-examination, defense attorneys questioned Botner about the messages. She testified that by “gone,” she had always meant divorce.
The day before Ashley Flynn was found dead, Flynn sent Botner a series of messages saying he planned to leave his wife the following day and that he was “not scared.”
Prosecutors also presented messages Botner sent Flynn on the morning of the killing. “Caleb, what’s going on? Were you involved? Is this real?” she wrote. Flynn did not respond, and Botner said she deleted the message because she feared police might search his phone and discover their affair.
Later that day, during a gathering for members of Flynn’s church at his in-laws’ home, Flynn told Botner that his wife had been shot by an intruder.
“My heart started pounding, and in my mind, it just seemed like too much of a coincidence that, the day he’s divorcing her, she’s just dead all of a sudden,” Botner testified Wednesday about learning of Ashley Flynn’s death.
The trial is scheduled to resume Friday.
