The "Black Swan Ballerina Murder"

Red Collar

Catherine Townsend

History, Red Collar, Con Artist, Investigation, American Greed, Society & Culture, Blood Money, Love Detective, White Collar Crime, Catherine Townsend, Hell And Gone, True Crime, Fraud, Murder, Documentary, Red Collar Crime, White Collar, Red Collar Diaries

4.6 • 604 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When 24-year-old gun-toting ballerina Ashley met 54-year-old entrepreneur Doug Benefield, it seemed like love at first sight. But after Doug was fatally shot investigators wondered: Was Ashley Benefield a victim of domestic violence, or a cold-blooded manipulative killer?

Transcript

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0:00.0	On September 27, 2020, 28-year-old Ashley Benefield, who described herself as a retired professional ballerina and former swimsuit model, ran to a neighbor's house near her home in Lakewood Ranch, Florida.
0:17.4	She told the neighbor that her husband, 58-year-old Doug Benefield, was dead, and that Doug had attacked her and that she had shot him in self-defense.
0:27.0	Police rushed to that scene and very quickly they knew two things. One, that Doug had been shot. Two, the person who shot him was his estranged wife, Ashley Benefield. Everything else about what happened,
0:40.5	from the beginning of Ashley and Doug's relationship, to who they were individually and as a couple,
0:45.6	to what really happened on the day Doug was shot. Everything would be contested. Police learned that
0:52.6	Ashley had been planning to leave Doug that day. She had been
0:56.1	living with her mother, Alicia. She and her mom had been packing a U-Haul, and then Ashley asked her
1:01.9	mother, Alicia, to take her and Doug's daughter, Emerson, to a nearby park. Then Doug showed up.
1:08.9	At around 7 p.m., they started to argue. According to Ashley, the fight turned physical when Doug hit her in the face. She said after that she ran to her bedroom where she had a gun. She said she warned Doug to stay back, but he ran toward her and she fired. You can hear Ashley on the 911 call crying in the background.
1:33.0	Doug had been shot in his leg and right arm.
1:36.5	The bullet from his right arm traveled into his chest.
1:40.7	Doug was still breathing when the EMTs got there,
1:43.5	but he died an hour later in the hospital.
1:46.7	Police talked to Ashley's mom, Alicia. She told detectives Ashley was the victim of domestic abuse.
1:53.6	But forensic testing showed something that early on seemed to challenge Ashley's version of events.
2:00.1	Doug Benefield had been shot in the back of the head.
2:03.5	So right away, police are wondering,
2:06.0	if he was really looking at her and launching forward like she claimed,
2:10.0	why would Ashley kill her husband?
2:12.8	Depending on who you asked,
2:14.8	Doug was either an abusive, obsessive husband
2:17.0	or someone who had been
	...

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