The Ohio murder trial of former “American Idol” contestant and music pastor Caleb Flynn continued Thursday with testimony from the woman who had been having an affair with him.
Alleigha Botner, 24, completed two days on the witness stand by discussing the more than 100,000 text messages she and Flynn, 40, exchanged before his wife, Ashley Flynn, was killed.
Prosecutors allege Flynn shot Ashley twice in the back of the head as she slept in their Tipp City, Ohio, home on Feb. 16. They say he then staged the scene to look like a burglary and called 911, claiming an intruder had committed the killing. The weapon has not been found. Flynn maintains that he was in another room when his wife was murdered.
Flynn also faces charges of tampering with evidence and intimidating a witness. The former season 12 “American Idol” contestant has pleaded not guilty. His 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 interning at his church. She testified about efforts to conceal their communications, acknowledged initially lying to the FBI and explained that 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. In one text dated Aug. 22, 2025, introduced in court Thursday, Flynn wrote that he had remained awake until 4 a.m. “thinking of ways to kill her and not going to jail.” Botner 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 first spoke with the FBI four days after Ashley Flynn’s death, after investigators contacted her following a tip from her aunt.
During her initial 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.
Under questioning, Botner acknowledged that she sometimes doubted whether Flynn truly hated his wife, pointing to affectionate messages exchanged by the couple. She said she believed she had fallen in love with Flynn about a year into their 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 declaring loudly, “I love Alleigha Botner.” Their dog was visible in the frame.
In a Sept. 30, 2025, text, 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 the same.
Botner also issued ultimatums, insisting that Flynn leave his wife. In one message, she wrote, “Until she’s gone, I’m gone.”
During cross-examination by defense attorneys, Botner said she had always meant that Flynn should divorce Ashley when she used that language.
The day before Ashley Flynn was discovered dead, Flynn sent Botner several messages saying he planned to leave his wife the following day and was “not scared.”
Prosecutors also presented messages Botner sent Flynn on the morning of the shooting. “Caleb, what’s going on? Were you involved? Is this real?” she wrote. Flynn did not reply. Botner testified that she deleted the message because she feared police would search his phone and discover the affair.
Later that day, at a gathering for members of Flynn’s church hosted by his in-laws, 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 coincident 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 continue Friday.