Ashley Benefield, the 32-year-old former ballerina accused of murdering her husband, was found guilty of manslaughter.
The verdict was announced in a Manatee County, Fla. courtroom on Tuesday, July 30. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date.
Benefield was originally charged with second-degree murder, but was convicted of the lesser crime. The judge remanded her to the custody of the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and revoked her $100,000 bond, per NBC News.
The case was dubbed the “Black Swan Murder Trial” based on the 2010 film Black Swan starring Natalie Portman as a ballerina in the midst of a psychological unraveling.
Benefield was accused of fatally shooting her husband, 58-year-old Doug Benefield, in her mother’s Lakewood Ranch home in September 2020.
Prosecutors said that Ashley killed her estranged husband because she wanted sole custody of their young daughter and didn’t want him in their lives anymore.
“This case is about a woman who very early on in her pregnancy decided she wanted to be a single mother,” Assistant State Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell told the jury in her opening statement, according to The Post and Courier. “And she did not want the father of this child to have any visitation [and] … she would stop at nothing to obtain that goal.”
Her defense attorney argued that Ashley killed the former Navy veteran in self-defense.
Ashley Benefield.
Mike Lang/USATNSYNDICATION
“Thirty years older than Ashley, he was obsessed with her and he successfully portrayed himself as he was not in an effort to win her hand in marriage,” defense attorney Neil Taylor said, per WFLA. “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.”
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The two met at a Republican party fundraiser in 2016 when Ashley was a 24-year-old ballet dancer and Doug was a 54-year-old Navy veteran and technology consultant. They married just 13 days later and Ashley became pregnant with Doug’s child.
But things soon began to deteriorate.
Ashley Benefield.
According to prosecutors, Ashley wanted to rid herself of Doug, and to that end, she accused him of emotional abuse and claimed he’d tried to poison her with heavy metals, Fox 13 reports. Prosecutors said she didn’t notify Doug after their child was born, and that he only found out when she filed a restraining order against him.
The two battled for visitation rights before Doug was granted visitation with his daughter in July of 2018.
On Sept. 27, 2020, Doug came by Ashley’s mother’s home to help Ashley pack for her and her daughter’s move to Maryland, where Doug also planned to relocate.
Soon after, police responded to a 911 call and found Doug fatally shot on a bedroom floor, bleeding in three places. Ashley told police her husband had tried to attack her and she had shot him in self-defense.
