For the past four years, Ashley Benefield, who was arrested in 2020 on a murder charge connected to her husband’s death, has lived with the media moniker “Black Swan” – a label in stark contrast to the elegance of her former ballet career. Benefield, who admits she shot and killed her husband, denies prosecutors’ claims that she committed murder and says she was forced to defend herself due to his alleged abuse.
The dramatic case has left two children — her own daughter and her late estranged husband's daughter — without their parents, a grim irony in a tale that intertwines ambition, love and violence.
“I just know that there are women all over the country, all over the world, who have gone through or are going through hard situations behind closed doors,” Benefield told “20/20” in an exclusive interview. “I want to do my part to share my story for the other women who either have gone through something like this or will at some point in their lives.”
Doug Benefield’s family disagrees with Ashley’s depiction of her relationship with Doug, insisting he was never abusive toward her.
“Doug didn't verbally abuse her, never physically touched her,” Doug Benefield’s cousin Tommie Benefield told ABC News. “He would be angry, but the anger never came out in inappropriate ways.”
In a new “20/20” episode airing Sept. 13, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET and streaming the next day on Hulu, Ashley Benefield spoke about her relationship with Doug Benefield, their marriage, their ballet company and the day she shot him.
Ashley Benefield exhibited impressive talent in ballet from a young age. She had a brief professional career until an injury in her early 20s led her to retire from dancing.
After her dance career ended, Benefield accepted an invitation to join Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign as a staffer.
While in that role, Benefield attended a fundraiser at retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson’s home, where she met Doug Benefield, a businessman and former Navy flight officer who was 30 years her senior. The two bonded over shared interests in faith, firearms and politics.
“It just seemed like I had met my soulmate. We were the perfect match,” Ashley Benefield told “20/20” Co-Anchor Deborah Roberts about meeting Benefield. “He kind of swept me off my feet. It was a whirlwind.”
The couple married just 13 days after their initial meeting.
This hasty wedding came as a surprise to Doug Benefield’s then 14-year-old-daughter, Eva Benefield, whose mother Renee Benefield, Doug’s first wife, had passed away nine months earlier.
“I stayed pretty open-minded because I trusted my dad so much and he seemed very excited and happy, and I just trusted that it was a good thing, and I also understood that he was grieving differently than me. So, if that meant he wanted someone in his life not to necessarily fill the role of my mom, but just to keep him company, then if that kept him happy, I was happy,” Eva Benefield told ABC News.
Ashley and Doug Benefield established the American National Ballet Company. The company folded within a year, leaving behind a trail of unmet promises to nearly 50 dancers from around the world.
As the ballet company faltered, so did the Benefields’ marriage. Strained relations between Ashley and Eva, combined with mounting financial pressures of the ballet company, led to what Ashley Benefield said was a deteriorating domestic environment.
Ashley claimed Doug “would yell and scream and cuss.”
“It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where things would be happy and OK one moment, and then the next minute he was out of control,” Ashley said.
According to Ashley, Doug’s aggressive behavior escalated; she recalled one moment when they were arguing.
“He pulled the gun out and started waving it around. He threw the gun at me. He said that if I left, he was going to kill himself. I begged him not to. And then he pulled the trigger and the bullet went into the ceiling,” Ashley said.
At a legal hearing for the couple, Doug Benefield was recorded describing the incident. While he doesn't deny the argument or firing his 9-mm., he disputes Ashley's characterization of the fight.
“No, I did not throw the gun at her. I just spun in the chair and threw it against the wall,” Doug Benefield said at the hearing.
During this time, Ashley became pregnant with the couple’s child. Ashley said she was having a very difficult pregnancy, so she relocated to Florida to live with her mother, Alicia. While there, Ashley filed a restraining order against Doug. She gave birth to their child Emerson in early 2018, but Ashley did not notify Doug. He was not present for the birth, and met his child for the first time when she was 6 months old.
Ashley and Doug’s love affair turned into court battles, and allegations of poisoning and abuse.
At another legal hearing, the couple had dueling toxicology experts testify about Ashley’s allegation that Doug poisoned her. The judge ultimately sided with Doug and his expert who challenged the test results presented by Ashley’s side.
“There is not a single scintilla of credible evidence that Ms. Benefield has ever been poisoned,” Judge Diana Moreland said at the hearing.
Ashley eventually moved her belongings out of the couple’s home and began living with her mother in Florida. She also reached out to a domestic violence agency, and connected with a therapist, Barbara Russell, who became a trusted friend and advocate.
“Most incidents of domestic violence are subtle, where the offender uses isolation, financial control, threatening verbal abuse, things that the general public doesn't necessarily see,” Russell told ABC News. “But these are also things that the victim doesn't always know is abuse.”
But prosecutors argued Ashley was never a victim of this kind of abuse. “I feel that Ashley was abusing a system that is designed to help people that are victims. It sets everyone back, and it makes it so much harder for those people that really are victims,” Prosecutor Suzanne O’Donnell said.
Ashley said her relationship with Doug was a confusing back and forth. She claims that although there were times when Doug was volatile and abusive, she tried to make it work.
“I didn't want to have a failed marriage,” Ashley Benefield said. “I really put it on me that I could figure it out, that I could be there for him, that if I just loved him enough in the right way, that things would change.”
Doug’s family said he also expressed a desire to repair his relationship with Ashley.
“His strong belief was that he's supposed to be a great husband, he's supposed to rescue this woman, that she's redeemable,” Tommie Benefield said. “All along Doug would tell everyone who knew him, ‘I believe I can make this work.’”
After four years of ups and downs, with both Ashley and Doug living separately, the two were preparing to move to Maryland independently while co-parenting Emerson together.
On Sept. 27, 2020, as the Benefields were packing for their move at Ashley’s mother’s home while their daughter and her mother were out of the house, Ashley alleged an altercation between her and Doug escalated.
Ashley claimed that Doug became physically aggressive, bumping into her with a moving box and scraping her side. Ashley claims she tried to leave the home and Doug refused to let her leave, hitting her on the side of her head telling her she’s “f---ing done.”
“I thought he was going to kill me,” Ashley Benefield recalled about that moment.
Ashley retrieved her gun, but she claims Doug lunged toward her and she shot at him four times, hitting him twice.
Neighbors, who had heard the gunshots, reported they witnessed Ashley fleeing the scene in distress.
Emergency responders found Doug Benefield with fatal gunshot wounds, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Two starkly different portraits of Ashley Benefield then emerged: One of a murderer and one of a victim.
“I don't know how to convince people,” Ashley Benefield said in her interview with “20/20.” “I know that it's the last thing that I wanted. I was terrified. It all happened very quickly. I don't know why people haven't wanted to believe me. I feel like from Day One, he always told me that nobody would ever believe me. I apparently cry at the wrong times and don't cry when I should. I've been criticized by so many people and so many things. They don't like the way I talk or the way I blink or the way I wear my hair, and for whatever reason, they've just decided that they don't want to believe me.”
Doug Benefield’s family does not believe Ashley’s version of what happened that night.
“No one in any way believed the story of Doug attacking Ashley and her shooting him out of fear,” Doug Benefield’s cousin, Tommie Benefield, said. “Doug still loved Ashley in spite of what she did to him. In spite of all the accusations.”
After investigating the crime scene and the medical examiner’s report detailing Doug’s injuries, law enforcement also had questions about Ashley’s version of events. Suzanne O’Donnell and Rebecca Freel, prosecutors on the case who spoke with “20/20,” questioned the presence of two firearms in the nearly empty home and expressed skepticism about the self-defense claim based on the physical evidence.
“We found that suspicious that someone would have two guns readily accessible in an empty room when everything else is in a U-Haul truck,” O’Donnell told ABC News.
According to the Medical Examiner’s report, the fatal gunshot entered the right side of Doug Benefield’s chest, which investigators believed contradicted Ashley’s story of self-defense.
“If someone were coming at you or attacking you, the entrance wound to the fatal shot would not be in the side,” O’Donnell said.
Prosecutors also pointed to forensic evidence at the scene to support their theory that Doug was not lunging toward Ashley when she fired the gun.
“There was no stippling on Doug's shirt. That told us that the barrel of the gun was at least 3 to 7 feet away, and that's the barrel of the gun, not even her body. So they were not in a combat, life or death situation where they were locked together,” O’Donnell said.
Ashley was charged with second-degree murder. She pleaded not guilty.
The case has highlighted the ongoing family court disputes over custody of their daughter and, according to prosecutors, revealed that a psychological evaluation, conducted in connection with the pending dispute and which was completed just before their planned move, could have exposed Ashley’s true intentions.
Prosecutors argued that the evaluation would have shown that Ashley had no intention of reconciling with Doug, despite telling him otherwise. They contended that the impending move to Maryland was part of Ashley’s strategy to gain control over their child’s future.
Ashley’s legal team sought to dismiss the criminal charges under Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law and was granted a hearing before a judge.
Doug Benefield’s family attended the hearing, continuing to reject Ashley’s version of the night of the shooting.
“The story they've made up is implausible as everything else she ever made up about Doug and their relationship,” Tommie Benefield said.
The court ultimately denied Ashley’s motion, with the judge ruling that the state had shown the shooting was not justifiable self-defense.
Ashley Benefield then headed to trial.
After a six-day trial, a jury convicted Ashley Benefield of the lesser charge of manslaughter. She was immediately taken into custody, leaving behind her 6-year-old daughter, Emerson.
Ashley’s supporters lamented what they saw as a miscarriage of justice. Ashley’s mother, Alicia Byers, asserted that Ashley’s actions were a desperate response to a life-threatening situation.
“If she hadn't had her gun that night, I know, without a shadow of a doubt, my daughter would be dead. I am sure of it,” Byers said.
The trial's outcome was a sobering end to a tumultuous story, leaving both Emerson and Eva to navigate life without their parents.
"I hope one day me and Emerson will be able to have a relationship where she can come to me with any questions, " Eva Benefield told “20/20.”
Ashley Benefield is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 22 and faces up to 30 years in prison.
Ashley’s legal team has filed several motions requesting a new trial and claiming prosecutorial and juror misconduct. A hearing on these issues has been scheduled for September 16. The prosecution denies those claims.