Hi, everyone. I'm Blaine Alexander, and we are talking Dateline. Today I'm here with Andrea Canning. Hi, Andrea.

Hey, Blaine. So this episode is called Deadly Dance. If you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed.

So go there, listen to it, or stream it on Peacock, and then come right back here.

For this talking dateline, we have an extra clip from Andrea's interview with Ashley Benefield's

therapist, Dr. Barbara Russell. But just a quick recap, in 2020, former ballerina Ashley Benefield

claimed that she acted in self-defense after fatally shooting her husband, Doug Benefield.

But when investigators took a closer look into the couple's whirlwind relationship, they learned of abuse allegations, a bitter custody dispute, even in accusation of a previous murder.

To investigators, the tumultuous relationship,

mixed with the physical evidence, pointed to one thing, and that's murder. Okay, Andrea, let's talk

Dateline. Let's do it. So the big question, who is Ashley Benefield? I mean, I think that's the

question from all angles. So she's a former ballerina, a swimsuit model.

She enters Doug Benefield's life, and they get married within 13 days of first meeting.

What makes someone get married after 13 days?

I don't know.

We touched on a little bit of their first encounter where they were at a dinner party. And so I guess Ashley and

Doug, they go outside and he's into guns. She's into guns, apparently. And she has like a gun,

like, you know, tucked in her bra, like a tiny gun. I was like, how did she put that in there?

And she was wearing, you know,

we don't get into all these crazy details in the show, right? But she was wearing one of those

bandage, apparently, dresses. So it's like, how did that, like, fit in there? And then,

not only that, which also didn't make the show, because, you know, for time, I guess she takes

them out to her car. And she's got a, like a semi-automatic weapon in the trunk of her car. She's got a big gun in there, too. So a mutual love of firearms right out of the gate with these two. But they definitely seem to have a lot in common from the get-go. They were military,

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