The ballerina known as the ‘Black Swan’ on trial for murdering her allegedly abusive husband has slammed her nickname and claims she is the victim. Ashley Benefield, now 32, ran to her neighbor’s home in Bradenton, Florida on September 27, 2020 after she shot and killed Doug Benefield, 59, who she married in 2016 after dating for just 13 days.
Ahead of her trial, Ashley sat down with ABC News and explained why she dislikes her ‘catchy’ nickname ‘Black Swan’- based on the 2010 thriller movie starring Natalie Portman. ‘Black swan has a catchy ring and it sensationalizes my life and my situation. It’s sad to me that people who don’t even know me have this idea of a monster when they think of me,’ she said.
Ashley, who shares a child with Doug, also insisted that she was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband. ‘There are women all over the country, all over the world, who have gone through or are going through hard situations behind closed doors,’ Ashley said.
Ashley met Doug- a recently-widowed father- at Ben Carson’s home in Palm Beach, Florida in August 2016 when she was 24 and he was 54. She had been campaigning for then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. They got married just 13 days later and soon after, launched the American National Ballet, a dance company based in Charleston, South Carolina.
In the early days of their relationship, ‘They were just with each other all the time,’ Doug’s 23-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, Eva, testified. ‘They were lovey dovey, PDA all the time. They never left each other’s side,’ she said.
After being married for one year, Doug, a retired Naval flight officer, helped Ashley achieve her dream of starting a ballet company, using his own money and contacts. He acted as the CEO of the company, while Ashley took on the role as executive director.
But, shortly after the company’s founding, it was sued by dancers and choreographers who alleged their contracts were breached when they were fired just weeks after their hiring. Doug also reversed his vasectomy, and Ashley became pregnant three months later with their daughter Emerson, now six-years-old.
That is when everything changed, Assistant State Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell claimed in court. She said Ashley moved from their home in South Carolina to Florida to live with her mother as she started to experience morning sickness, and from that point on, she never lived with Doug again.
‘They continued a long-distance relationship when she first moved to Florida and continued trying to keep together and communication, but about the same time as the ballet [company] collapses, Ashley Benefield starts complaining against the victim,’ O’Donnell told jurors.
She began accusing Doug of poisoning her and of non-physical domestic violence. Ashley said that Doug would constantly bring her teas that she thought contained poison, CBS News reported. But detectives from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office conducted a five-week investigation and were unable to find any evidence to support her claims of abuse.
Prosecutors now argue that killing Doug was a last-ditch effort to gain custody of their daughter, who was 2 years old at the time of the shooting. ‘This is a case about a woman who, early on in her pregnancy, decided she wanted to be a single mother,’ O’Donnell argued. ‘She did not want the father of this child to have any visitation.’
This is a long story, this was a custody battle this mother would win at all costs, and the cost was the life of Doug Benefield.’ The prosecutors argued that Doug was doing everything in his power to rectify their marriage and keep their family together.
On the day of his death, Doug arrived at Ashley’s home to help her and their daughter pack when he was shot four times in Ashley’s bedroom. She then ran to her neighbor and told them about the shooting.
On Tuesday, Ashley was seen sobbing while her neighbor’s 911 call played from the day Doug was murdered. ‘I heard a very loud pounding on my door,’ neighbor Josh Sant testified, according to Fox 13. ‘It kind of startled me.’
He said he opened the door to find Ashley, who told him that her husband attacked her and she shot him. Sant then called 911, telling officers, ‘She just came over, her estranged husband attacked her and she said she shot him,’ according to an audio recording played in court.
In a previously-filed motion obtained by Law & Crime, defense attorneys argued that Doug arrived ‘happy, hyper and animated,’ but eventually became ‘agitated, sullen and intimidating.’ After verbally insulting his wife, the defense claims, Doug rammed her with a moving box, leaving abrasions.
‘Doug Benefield knew full well on that day that this relationship was over,’ Ashley’s attorney, Neil Taylor, argued in court. He went on to claim that Doug was manipulative and ‘viewed Ashley Benefield as his property.’
‘Despite promoting himself as a religious, honorable and decent human being, Benefield was a manipulative, cunning and abusive man who insisted, absolutely insisted on control,’ Taylor added. He went on to tell the jury that Doug once fired a handgun into a kitchen ceiling in an attempt to get Ashley to stop talking, threw a loaded gun at her, punched their dog in the face – knocking it unconscious, and regularly carried a concealed firearm that was ‘ready to fire.’
He also claimed that after Ashley and Doug were separated, he illegally tracked her, often following without her consent and even driving from out of state to keep tabs on her. At least once, Doug allegedly stood in a neighbor’s backyard in the middle of the night to get a glimpse of her.
Outside of the Florida courthouse on Monday, protesters showed their support for the former ballerina. ‘We really are standing for Ashley,’ her pastor, Mike Brown, told Fox 13. ‘We have a group of domestic violence survivors who are standing with us, ready to see justice prevail.’
Ashley now faces a minimum sentence of 25 years behind bars and a maximum sentence of life in prison if found guilty of Doug’s murder following the two-week-long trial. ‘It’s a horrible reality. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. Emerson’s already been through a lot,’ Ashley told ABC News. ‘I can’t imagine how this would affect her if things were to go poorly at trial.’
