I Choose You: The Caleb Flynn Case

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[Music]

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Ashley Flynn, she kept notes on her phone about school registration, laundry, appointments,

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and even one about teaching her two girls how to pray.

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In September of 2023, she wrote one about her marriage,

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and she said in that note that she hoped Jesus would intervene.

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Her husband led the worship at their church, and he once even made it to Hollywood week

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on American Idol.

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[Music]

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[Music]

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Caleb Flynn is sitting down for one of those American Idol interviews.

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Those little packages they cut into the show so that you feel like

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you know somebody before they even sing a note, and he's a worship pastor from Ohio.

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This is season 12, and at one point he tells them he's kind of a crybaby.

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Then he says Ashley, his wife, is the one who encouraged him to try out,

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and he says he loves his wife more than anything.

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He made it all the way to Hollywood week before they cut him.

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Tip City is a little town north of Dayton, and that's where Ashley grew up.

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After high school, she went down to Lee University, a Christian school in Tennessee,

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and that's where she met a music ministry student from a small Minnesota town called Braum,

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and his name was Caleb Flynn.

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They got married in 2010 and they had two girls.

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Ashley taught Bible classes for life-wise academy and subbed in the Tip City schools,

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and she coached seventh grade volleyball, and also by the way,

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volunteered at her church, Christian Life Center.

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She had a lot going on.

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She kept notes on her phone to keep track of it all,

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and if you scroll through them, you'd find things like school registration and laundry

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and appointments, and one note about teaching her girls how to pray.

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Caleb started out leading worship at a church in Vandalia, Ohio,

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and later the family moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina,

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where Caleb ran worship at a church called Free Chapel, and he stayed there about six years.

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They moved back home in 2021.

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Caleb went to work as a sales VP for Ashley's family's company,

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making about $200,000 a year, and he also led the worship at Christian Life Center,

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which was Ashley's church.

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The church brought on a young intern near the end of 2022.

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Her name was Alia Botner, and she was in her early 20s.

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Caleb, by the way, at this time was about 36.

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Ashley knew that her marriage was in trouble.

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She wrote a note on her phone in September of 2023,

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saying the marriage had no intimacy, and no respect, no fondness, and no appreciation.

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And she wrote that she hoped Jesus would intervene.

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Alia told the jury later on, it started small, with Caleb asking if he could come over for a hug.

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Caleb was apparently a "where's my hug at?" kind of guy,

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and then he told her that he had feelings for her.

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She said that in May of 2024, it turned sexual.

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When Ashley went away to teach Bible camp, Caleb and Alia spent those nights together.

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They called it "marriage weeks."

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They gave it a name.

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They deleted stuff whenever they would get nervous, and they still averaged about 300 messages a day.

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You end up with about 107,000 messages, and that's a lot of messages.

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The messages got ugly. In May of 2025, Caleb wrote that if he could kill Ashley and not go to hell,

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he'd do it in a heartbeat.

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Months before the killing, he told her he'd stayed up until 4am, thinking of ways to kill Ashley

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without going to jail.

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Alia said some pretty ugly things too, including one saying that she wanted to kill Ashley.

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The Flens took a 15th anniversary cruise that was August 2025, and that's where Ashley found

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the messages. She found out about the relationship. Ashley reached out to Alia herself and asked to meet.

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Alia told the jury that she never went because she couldn't face her.

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Alia kept pushing. It's all right there in the text messages if you go through them,

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where she'd give him a deadline, and he'd miss it.

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And they'd fall out and then get right back to texting until the last deadline passed in January,

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and they stopped talking completely.

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Alia told the jury that on Valentine's Day, she told Caleb that she had a date with another guy,

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and she said that same day, Caleb told her that he'd already asked Ashley for a divorce.

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That same week, Ashley was excited about throwing a gallon times get together for her daughters.

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Alia opens chat GPT on the evening of February 15th and asks whether messages can be permanently

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deleted, and she texts Caleb screenshots of the answer. Caleb, by the way, has been sick. He saw a

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doctor and he came home with a steroid, prescription, and an inhaler, and he's been saying the cough is

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why he isn't sleeping in bed with Ashley. Ashley's phone gets put on the charger at around 11.20.

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Caleb texts Alia shortly after midnight. He writes, "It's happening." Later, he sends February 16th.

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"Day I'll never forget." He also writes, "I choose you."

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You can follow the rest of the night on Caleb's devices. Somewhere before the 911 call, chat GPT

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and group me come off his iPhone. His Apple Watch logs some steps at around 120. The watch starts

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moving again at 218. It counts 105 steps. His AirPods connect, and the sound on his phone

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keeps flipping back and forth between the AirPods and the speaker for several minutes.

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And then the phone unlocks, and Caleb calls for help at 231 in the morning.

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Caleb told the dispatcher that somebody broke into the house and shot his wife.

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Officers found Ashley in bed shot twice behind her right ear. She was 37. Her birthday was

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eight days away, and her girls were asleep in the house. On the bodycam video, you hear Caleb sobbing

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and fighting to breathe, and he throws up. In outside, he says the girls are still sleeping and they

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don't know. Caleb told the police that he'd been on the bottom bunk in his daughter's room because

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the cough. And he heard a shot, and he said that he found a side garage door open and the handgun

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that he kept in his truck's console was gone. A state crime scene agent went over that garage door,

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and the handle was broken. And the dead bolt and the soft wood of the frame had no damage from

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anybody forcing their way in, so his conclusion was that somebody staged it. It was also a fridge

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right up against that door, so if you came in that way, you'd have to push really hard to get that

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fridge out of the way. At trial, the defense asked the lead detective if anybody ever weighed it.

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Nobody had, and really somebody should have. Seems like pretty important information.

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The Flynn's had a security camera that could have caught an intruder in the garage. It went offline

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January 26, and nobody knows why. Police arrested Caleb on February 19, before any lab results

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even came back. Investigators brought in an ATF dog and searched the woods in the storm drains,

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and they put vehicles up on lifts to look underneath. They gun, never turned up. Nobody knows where it

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went. Well, Caleb knows where it went, but nobody else. If you were on that jury, you listened to

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Alia read her own texts out loud for two days, and you heard Ashley's sisters say the girls were

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heartbroken when they found out about the affair. The cough that Caleb had came back up. The jury

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saw crime scene photos of the girl's room, and the bottom bunk was piled with stuff. An investigator

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said that it looked like you could only fit a small child on it. And Alia testified that Caleb told her

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that he'd been on the couch, not on that bottom bunk. Caleb's attorneys pointed out that nobody found

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the gun, and there was no gunshot residue evidence, and no eyewitness, and no confession.

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The prosecutor told the jury in his closing that Caleb said he was sleeping, and his devices say

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that he was awake and moving. The defense rested without calling a single witness, and Caleb never

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testified. The jury got the case on a Tuesday, September 29th. They needed about two hours. They came

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back guilty on all counts. Aggravated murder included, and Caleb cried while the verdicts were read.

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Caleb was back in court that Thursday for a short hearing, and when the judge asked if he had any

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questions, his voice cracked, and he started crying again. Ashley's family was there on Monday for

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the synancing. Ashley's sister told Caleb, "I do forgive you." Ashley's brother-in-law read a letter

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from one of the girls. "Mommy was the perfect person," she wrote. Caleb sobbed, sitting there in his

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orange jumpsuit. Ashley's mom read a letter from one of the girls, too. It said that Caleb had the

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best life ever, and he decided to throw it away for a girl who was half his age. Then it said,

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"And by the way, I don't plan on coming to see you." Caleb read a statement, and he said he failed

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his vows to Ashley. And then he said, "As I stand here before God, who is my ultimate judge, I am not

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lying when I say I did not kill my wife." The judge in the case called his actions a borne, and gave

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him life without parole. The gun and the tampering counts stack on more prison time. His lawyer says

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that they will appeal. Ashley's family is raising the girls now. After the verdict, the prosecutor said

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it was time for everyone to focus on Ashley, and her family asked that you remember Ashley for how she

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lived. Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, binge-able true crime stories. Hello, I'm Joe, I'm the host,

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and this might be the earliest I've ever covered a case, just the fresh off of a guilty verdict and

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sentencing for Caleb Flynn on this one. And the reason that I covered this one is because of the

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overwhelming messages and emails that I've received about this case. So many of you want to

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me to talk about it to cover it here on the podcast. So this one jumped the line, this case that

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jumped ahead of all the other ones that were there. So this information is fresh, brand new, hot off

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the presses. Unless of course you're listening to this podcast episode like two years later, which

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is the weird thing about podcasts, by the way. I considered at one point having like 30 or 40 episodes

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only, and if I upload episode 41, I go back and delete the oldest one so that it's only like the

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most current 30 or 40 ones going. And then I was like, you know what, that's a lot of work. I'm not

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going to do that. So now we've got hundreds and hundreds of episodes for you to go back and listen to.

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By the way, if you're a new listener to this podcast, welcome, please subscribe and go to 10minute

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going to do it. That's your episode for today. Thank you again for listening to 10 minute murder. See