A former American Idol contestant and Ohio pastor, Caleb Flynn, has been found guilty of murdering his wife, Ashley Flynn, after a trial that featured evidence from his former lover, thousands of text messages and a song prosecutors said he wrote about their affair.
Flynn, 40, was convicted on Tuesday of murder and eight other charges, including aggravated murder and tampering with evidence, after a jury deliberated for less than three hours.
He faces life imprisonment without parole and is due to be sentenced on October 5.
Flynn wept in court as the verdicts were delivered, BBC News reported Tuesday evening.
Prosecutors said Flynn shot his 37-year-old wife twice in the back of the head while she was sleeping at their home in Tipp City, a suburb of Dayton, on 16 February.
He then allegedly tried to make the killing appear to have been carried out by intruders.
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👉 JOIN WHATSAPP CHANNELThe prosecution presented police body-camera footage and data from Flynn’s iPhone and Apple Watch from around the time of the killing.
Prosecutors also called dozens of witnesses, including Alleigha Botner, a former intern at Flynn’s church who had an affair with him.
Botner testified about her nearly 18-month relationship with Flynn and some of the roughly 100,000 text messages they exchanged were read in court.
In one message to Botner in August 2025, Flynn wrote: “I was up until 4am last night crying, literally thinking of ways to kill her and not go to jail.”
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In another message, he wrote: “I just want her dead and gone.”
Botner told the court that she now hates Flynn “because I believe that he murdered his wife”.
Prosecutors said Flynn was afraid of losing custody of his daughters in a divorce, as well as his jobs at his wife’s family business and at the church.
They also pointed to what they described as inconsistencies in Flynn’s account of the night of the killing.
Prosecuting attorney Paul Watkins said Flynn told police that he had been in his daughters’ bedroom when he heard gunfire and later found his wife dead in their bedroom after noticing that the garage side door was open.
Watkins said Flynn later told investigators he had not been to the garage, contradicting his earlier statement.
Flynn’s defence argued that prosecutors had not presented concrete evidence proving he committed the murder.
His lawyer, Patrick Mulligan, said: “Connecting a couple of meaningless dots doesn’t solve the case.”
Mulligan also argued that evidence of Flynn’s infidelity did not establish that he had murdered his wife.
“They can’t find the gun, therefore they blame it on him?” he said, referring to the tampering-with-evidence charge.
The gun Flynn kept in the console of his truck has not been found. Investigators discovered the truck’s centre console open after arriving at the scene.
Prosecutors also presented evidence concerning music Flynn allegedly created about his relationship with Botner.
During the trial, a song that prosecutors said Flynn wrote and dedicated to Botner was played in court. Botner explained its lyrics line by line while testifying.
The prosecution also called Joseph Wilhelm, a special agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, who said several applications had been uninstalled from Flynn’s phone before his wife’s death.
Among them was an AI music-generating application which Wilhelm said “related to his relationship with Alleigha Botner”.
The jury’s reaction to the song, including what appeared to be laughter, later circulated widely online.
Flynn’s case also attracted attention because of his earlier appearance on American Idol.
He appeared on the 12th series of the programme in 2013, performing before judges Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Randy Jackson.
He received a “golden ticket” to Hollywood during the televised auditions but did not reach the main competition.
In footage shown on the programme, Flynn said: “Music is all I know, it’s what I live to do and I love to sing, so that’s why I auditioned.”
“Maybe my wife kinda nudged me a little, too,” he added.
Ashley Flynn was a schoolteacher and volleyball coach.
Caleb Flynn is due to be sentenced on 5 October.
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