Ex-‘American Idol’ Singer Texts Mistress “I Want Her Dead”, Then His Wife Is Found Shot

Better being better boo. Dynamic Entry sounds like a fully fleshed out opening act to some sort of theater drama, but it is just a very legal home invasion. It's breaking and entering for the purpose of the law. It's when you have to go through a structure, let's say a house, and clear the house of any threats and/or danger, it's what you see in the movies where the cops are going room to rooms and clear, clear, I mean, it in practice, it's obviously not as simple as it looks even checking into new rooms. Officers are taught to point their eye out for a peek at random levels because people can kind of predict where a head will appear based on, you know, people that are most likely somewhere between five, five, and six for a lot of officers, so then you want to go lower. Sometimes you want to go higher. Sometimes it's a little bit down at the toddler level, but that's not even the most important rule. The more immediate threat rules are, never move past anything that hasn't been cleared, don't give up territory that you've already cleared, meaning the minute that you lose eyes on a room, it is no longer clear, you have to re-clear it. And the obvious things like you can't clear a room without making sure you check behind the doors or the closed cupboards. Interestingly enough, it has actually become a thing for couples now to clear the room. If a partner is traveling, let's say going on a business trip, they will record a video as proof to show that they are completely alone in their hotel room. Some partners find it so comical that they even share it online with TikToks being posted saying things like POV, your boyfriend works out of town and gives you hotel room tours, but it's just him. Is that normal? Is that common? Is that a trend? It seems like it's a kind of common trend for people who travel a lot for work. Where they clear the hotel room. And people say you have to be really good at knowing what you're looking for because sometimes it's not about the hotel room. You think, oh, let's just make sure no one else is on the bed, right? No. It's about making sure, is there a suspicious piece of luggage that you didn't see before? Did he say he ate lunch alone in his hotel room because he was so tired, but then in the reflection, you see in the trash can two things of lunch that have been tossed out because he was eating lunch with him. Some people say it's not really clearing of a hotel room if he doesn't show you the full water closet as well. You need to see the closet, the water closet, which is where the toilet is. You need to see the full bathroom. And then some people say, show me the hallway too. Because what if someone is just standing outside your hotel room door, just waiting for you to clear and send this video? Exactly. People are very serious about it. If you're not going to give us the full tour and show us under the bed as well, then you might as well not even post it. But sometimes when the square footage is just too much ground to cover, there are maybe easier ways to clear the house for your partner to let them know that you are indeed alone. That is exactly what Caleb Flynn does. Caleb sends his girlfriend a video of himself at home alone with his two dogs. He's got these two golden doodles and he wants to show his girlfriend that he's completely alone at home. But what is he going to do? Go room to room? Like, what if someone is just hiding in one of the rooms and then they move out of the room that he's filming in and so on and so forth? This is maybe a more effective method. In one of the videos, Caleb sends, he's recording the family kitchen and he's showing the golden doodle. And you hear Caleb saying, "Hey babe, I wanted to show you that I'm home alone. I'm not sure if you want to see the puppies. But if anybody's listening, I love Alia Botnar. I love her and I'm home alone." He asks his little golden doodle. Do you love Alia? Do you want to see Alia? Please contain your excitement. Oh, there it is. Yeah, you want to see Alia. In another video, Caleb Flynn is filming while loudly asking, "Is anyone here? He has the family dog. Where's Ava and Alissa?" Ava and Alissa are Caleb's two daughters. Then he goes back to screaming, "Hello, I love Alia." In the third video, he's entering the house and saying, "I just got here." And he walks in and he's talking to his daughters, "Hey girls, brush your teeth. Put your jammies on. Love you." I guess it shows his girlfriend that he's either home alone or he's home alone with his two daughters. But what exactly is this video accomplishing? Because again, even if Caleb is just screaming, couldn't someone just be hiding in the bathroom while listening to him scream? Not really in this situation. Because the person that should be hiding is Alia, the person he's sending the videos to. She's not just Caleb's girlfriend. She is his mistress and she wants proof and reassurance that Caleb is not spending time with his own wife, the mother of his two children. Alia says he would send me videos confirming that no one's home. When I would ask if his wife is home, he would go around and walk around the house and say, "No," and he would shout her name, his girls' names, and they wouldn't say anything. Alia says that she would actually request these videos, because I was always insecure about them spending time together when he told me that they never did. By February 16th, 2026, this year. That is no longer going to be a problem for Caleb or Alia. Because by then, Caleb's wife, Ashley Flynn, will be dead. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mingo to support the GoFundMe that directly support Ashley Flynn's two daughters. All funds raised will be managed by Ashley's uncle and will be used for the benefit of Ashley's children. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mingo's team of dedicated researchers, and we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at RottenMingoPodcast.com. This episode covers topics like DV, there is brief mention of gun violence, as well as affairs, cheating, and DV in the sense of, a lot of it is toxic, just manipulation and lies. If that is something that is sensitive, please watch with your own discretion. Statements and quotes may be condensed and/or shortened for brevity, and another note to mention that there is only one person that has been found guilty in the murder of Ashley Flynn. Anyone outside of that individual has not been charged nor have they been found guilty, so they are innocent until proven guilty unless they are proven guilty in the court of law. So with that being said, let's get started. One unexpected feeling that people don't prepare you for as a parent, according to people who are parents on Reddit because I'm not a parent, is that you have to get used to sitting there, listening to someone lightier, freaking face when you already know the truth, but they just keep going and going and going, and it's in each feeling because if you're not a parent, it's very quick to call people out, you're like, "I know you're lying. You don't have to lie." But when you're a parent, it's kind of like being a cop. You just want to see where they're going with it. You want to see where they end up. You want to see the journey that they're trying to take you on. There's an incentive to figure out, "Let's just see the full scope of this lie. There's a certain curiosity that comes with this." February 16th, 2026. Just two days after Valentine's Day, it's 2.31 AM, a 911 call comes in in Tip City, Ohio. It's a man named Caleb Flynn, and he is frantically explaining to Dispatch that his wife has been killed. He's screaming, "God, somebody broke into my home, somebody broke into my home and shot my wife. Are they still there? I don't know. I don't know." Caleb Flynn gives the Dispatch their address and is begging them to please hurry, please hurry. What are you seeing? My wife got two shots in the head. There's blood everywhere. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I need you to take a deep breath, okay? Do you still see anybody in the house? No, the door to the garage is wide open, please hurry. Oh my God. My daughters are here. Where's she at? She's in the bed. She's in the bed. Are you with her? I'm in the room. I'm looking at her. Yes. I'm in the bedroom with her right now. My daughter is in their room. So you're not with the children. I was with the children when it happened. Okay, but you're not with them now. The Dispatch is like, "We need to protect the children." No, they're in their room. They're not even awake. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Which obviously Dispatch is just trying to ensure that the children are fine, but Caleb is in Truder Cayman, killed his wife, he's unsure if the intruder is still here, but he hasn't gone to check up on the kids. Are you hearing anything? No. I rubbed her like and said her name and she's not answering. Are you hearing any kind of noise inside the house? No, no, no. Her face is white. Where was she shot at? In the head. In the head. Okay. Is she breathing? No, I don't think so. Ashley, Ashley, baby. No. Oh my God. No, she's not. The juveniles. Are they okay? Have you checked up on them? Tell me. The police are here. The police are here. The first officer to get to the Flynn residence sees Caleb rushing him into the house. He says he also sees two dogs just very excited jumping around barking. And there's just a lot of interesting details about this phone call and this entire situation. An intruder breaks into the Flynn residence in the middle of the night, kills a mother of two, shoots her in the head twice while she's asleep in her bed. The intruder doesn't take anything of value and runs off before they're caught. There's going to be a lot of other details in this case that does make one think, is this the best or the most poorly executed crime? Because no one knows who has motive to do that when one of the first officers arrives. He goes straight to check up on the victim, Caleb's wife, Ashley Flynn. And dispatch has told Caleb to place a towel on the wound where his wife was bleeding, but don't apply pressure. And I guess maybe in panic, or maybe for lack of thinking ability entirely, Caleb decides that he's just going to place a towel over his wife's head because she was shot in the head twice as he mentions multiple times. So the first officer gets there, sees a towel on the victim's head. And he says Caleb told me she had been shot twice. I will. walked over to check on her. Caleb told me that the dispatcher said to put a sheet or towel over the victim's head. The officer removes the towel and he sees, "I could tell that there was significant trauma to the back of her head, which appeared to be a gunshot wound. There was some dry blood around it." So what he notices is really important, they notice that there's not a lot of blood splatter. So that means when an intruder comes in, if Ashley Flynn had gotten up startled, release was in the process of getting up and was shot in the head. There would have been a lot of blood splatter on the walls. However, everything was kind of congregated in the bad, meaning she was likely still asleep with her head on the pillow and she was shot twice. And they have two dogs that are now barking like crazy because the cops are here. He notices, yeah, she looked like she had been asleep when she was shot. The officers clear through the entire Flynn residence. There's nobody else in there but Caleb and his two daughters were asleep in their room as well as the two golden doodles were jumping all over the place. How older are the two daughters? They're 12 and 10. So there are older. And there's confusion of why they didn't wake up. I mean, there's not confusion, but just keep in mind they didn't wake up throughout this entire process. There's also two golden doodles who are jumping all over the place. The officers see that the garage side door is broken. So the Flynn residence, they have a garage and there's a side door. So this is not like the big thing that comes up and down when you press the little button on the garage doors. This is like a regular door that you open and it just leads you directly into the garage, not into the house but into the garage. I don't know a lot of people who use the side door to their garage and I don't think that the Flynn's really utilized it either because there is a fridge that blocks the door from the inside of the garage. Okay. So it's like a, you know, a garage fridge and it's blocking the door so they don't come in and out of that door, but someone has broken through that side door, push the refrigerator aside so that they can gain access into the garage where there's two cars parked. Now from there, it appears that they went into the house using the interior garage door that I don't think a lot of people tend to lock so they get inside. The intruder supposedly finds a woman sleeping alone in her bed, shoots her in the head twice before taking off without taking a single thing of value without leaving some sort of note or a clue or anything. They just leave. Caleb explains to the officers that's exactly what happened. I mean, someone broke in while he was asleep in his daughter's room. He was sick. So the two daughters, they're sick. He's sick. He didn't want to get Ashley sick too, so he was sleeping with the girls and he had gone into their room. Well, actually, he had been on the couch is what he's explaining. I was asleep on the couch, but then I heard the dogs rustling around and I thought the dogs were waking up because they heard the girls coughing. So I went to go check up on the girls and then I just fell asleep in the girls room. Then he wakes up at some point to someone breaking in and he hears gunshots. That's when he freaks out and finds that Ashley has been killed. One of the officers who is in charge of watching Caleb monitoring him to make sure that he's safe and okay. She sees him squatting near the dining table, just almost hiding behind the dining chair. He's gripping onto the back of this chair for dear life and he's wailing. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Is she gone? What do I do with my daughters? He calls his mom and he's crying on the phone. Mom, come, come. Ashley is dead. Ashley is dead. At some point he starts snapping at his dog Rosie to stop barking. So he's like, Mom, come. Ashley is dead. Ashley. Rosie. Rosie. And he's like snapping at her to stop barking. She's dead. Someone broke into the house. She's dead. Come. Come. She's gone. She's gone. He shot her. She's gone. I was with the girls. Oh my god. Oh my god. Mommy. Mommy. She's gone. I can't breathe. The girls. They don't know yet. They're still sleeping. They don't know. I don't know what to do. The girls are still sleeping at this door. Yeah. All of these commotions. The girls are in the room sleeping. Yeah. He's not with the girl checking up on them. Make sure they're okay. Well, they did check up on them. They are okay, but they're still asleep. So they let them stay asleep until Ashley's mom could get there so that they had a safe place to go. Instead of just waiting outside the house next to a bunch of squad cars. Okay. Caleb's mom isn't going to come in time to help. His parents live in Minnesota. This is in Ohio. There are multiple states away. The next person he calls is Ashley's mom who lives nearby. Ashley, this is his mother-in-law and her name is Jill. So Ashley's mom is Jill. And Jill has a lot of questions too. Like, what do you mean someone came in and shot my daughter Ashley? I mean, there's a lot of questions a lot of people have actually because none of this makes any sense. There's body cam footage of one officer filling in a new officer. So the original officers that arrive, they're patrol officers. Then the detectives come and they have to fill in the detectives and some of the detectives are getting a little bit confused by the information that they're receiving. Right. So one of the officers is telling the detective. They're explaining that Caleb is informing, you know, that there's kind of weapons in the house and it's a standard question. Obviously, for a case like this, Caleb explains that he has a shotgun. Oh, and he had a nine millimeter handgun that he keeps in the center console of his truck. His truck that's parked in the garage that was broken into and the truck door is open and the center console is open. What? They're saying somebody broke into the garage and the car to grab the gun to use it as a murder weapon? Yeah. And I guess just happened to know that there's a gun there. So the officer is telling the detectives. The center console of the truck's open and that's where he says he keeps his gun. And that gun is amissing. And the bullet casings left in Ashley's room belong to a nine millimeter handgun. The detective has caught on body cam reacting to this information and he is absorbing it and he just looks to the side. It is by definition giving side eye because none of this is making any sense and he asks, who's been shot? The wife. There's this is so bizarre. Yeah. You can find a reddit group for practically anything in life. If you are collecting security envelopes, you know it like when the bank sends you a confidential piece of mail. The envelope itself has some sort of zigzag pattern to prevent people from scanning the letter from the outside or even holding it up to the light to read it. There is a subreddit for people who collect security envelope patterns. So it is no surprise that there are subreddits for affairs. There's our slash infidelity, which is a support group for victims of infidelity. Unfortunately, they have about 76,000 weekly visitors. And that should not be confused with our slash affairs, which has more weekly visitors at 117,000. But this is where people openly discuss having affairs. How to have affairs, the logistics of affairs and provide support to one another by cheating in the audits ways possible. I mean, they're vastly different communities. I didn't know. I thought they were just similar support groups. So why is pro affair a fair? The other ones the victims of the fair. Yeah. What are they talking about in the pro affair? Oh, let me tell you. Okay, so one of the top posts this year for our slash infidelity is things like just found out my wife's affair. Wife of 13 years cheated has been cheated with my best friend. If possible, don't reconcile with your cheating partner. Here's why. Each post is exactly what you imagine people sharing their D day. So I thought that was divorce day, right? D day is actually discovery day. That's the term of when you found out about the affair, when they discover their partner is cheating on them, breaking their illusions of a normal healthy life, just shattering everything, shattering their trust, and then their recovery journey thus far. The comments are filled with supportive comments, encouraging them to keep going to therapy, file for divorce. Don't internalize the cheating because nothing is wrong with you. Cheaters don't cheat because you are lacking something. It's very normal, healthy community things that probably helped a lot of people during dark times. Meanwhile, on our slash adultery, the top post this year are lessons learned by an aging adulter. The lessons are interesting. I guess if you want to call it insightful, sure. This is a man. He's a married man and he recommends hiring a sex worker first before you have a full blown affair because you need to see if you can handle the emotions of cheating by physically cheating first. And also he, there's there's a lot of conversations on our slash adultery that affairs are not cheap. If you want to be a cheap scape, the affairs are not for you. So that's great. And also to know that if you're cheating on your wife with another married woman, quote, if a woman wants a mediocre sexual experience, she's most likely going to pursue that at home. So if you're having an affair with another married woman, you're going to need to bring your A game to the bed. Yeah, because she can get boring intimacy from her husband. So what is she getting it from you then, right? That's the thought, I guess. And another one that is just titled, this is a post on our slash adultery. I did it. And just someone celebrating how they finally cheated, writing that after doing it, quote, I just lay there after content. Maybe a bit confused. Why? I mean, I guess I was overwhelmed and yeah, it's just so good. The top comment on that post reads, welcome to the dark side. Another post reads, does anyone else have one night stands as well as affairs? Another is, I've been married for just shy of 20 years. During that time, I've had a few long term affairs. I've also had some several one night stands with different men. But for me, there is nothing that compares to the excitement of sex with a new partner. I enjoy all the excitement and fidelity brings it. Never goes away. I've become an expert acting normally around my husband when I've had sex with another man just a few hours before. So that's great. They also share very scandalous stories of how one time there was one woman who met up with a married man in a hotel room. They were about to get it on. And he whipped out these two objects. to toys, that he said he stole from his wife's drawer and wanted to use it on her, his mistress. She declined using the objects, but still they were intimate, and people in the comments were calling out the husband for being gross, which is indeed true. But I think everyone's gross in that situation, and I just want to bleach my eyeballs. But that is not even the worst of the subreddits. There is another one called R/TheOtherWomen/Man. It is so fascinating, so each subreddit has their own community guidelines that moderators will ban you for if you break them. And we were like sitting on the dining room table, I was with another RM researcher, and we're like, what are these slaying terms? What's happening? So for R/TheOtherWomen, the other man, the rules for the community are, one, quote, "Would you tell the wife or similar posts are not allowed?" They say, "We have many years of experiencing affairs. The betrayed spouse, they call them BS, the BS, usually doesn't want to hear from the OW, other woman, or OM, other man, and almost always blames them for the affair." Rule number two for the subreddit, better yet, no discussions of the BS at all. Three, this is a support sub, those who are critical negative or trolling will be banned or removed. They clarified that this is a support sub for single men or women, so single people that are having affairs with a married person, so they're not looking for married people who are having affairs with other married people. It's like such a niche subreddit. Six, account history, you will be banned if you are anti-infidelity, considering how many people do you need? So this is pro affair, it's not that you found out you're the other woman and now you need recovery or support. No. This is pro, go for it. Yeah. I think the most, I don't even know if I can call them normal, I was trying to understand because it does directly tie into this case of some of the thoughts of these text messages that we're going to go through because I just couldn't wrap my mind around them, but some of the more normal posts on this subreddit where people who thought that the person that they fell in love with was leaving their partner, turned out to be a ruse, turned out to be a lie, but then they still stick around for five years. There are lots of people who, I mean, it's just a weird energy on this subreddit. Some of the posts are very angry at the innocent spouses who are being betrayed. Some of the posts feel like this is the best relationship and they love dating married people because it's low commitment on their end. It's just very bizarre. Yeah. So this is kind of like a safe space for the cheaters, I guess. They have their shorthand lingo, like I said, WP means wayward partner, that's the person that's cheating, or sometimes they just call it mm, which I think is their married man. BS stands for Betrayed Spouse, AP is a fair partner. You get the mistress, the other man, you also have a cake eater, which I thought that was an inappropriate term, which in hindsight, they're all kind of inappropriate, but a cake eater is a cheating spouse who doesn't want a divorce. It's actually quite happy at home, it's not miserable, so they have DB and cake eater. DB insinuates that it's a dead bedroom, apparently that's the number one reason that people say their married partner is the married man, whatever is cheating with them for is because they claim they have a dead bedroom, which means they haven't had any intimacy. And by any intimacy, we also fell down another rabbit hole, which it means, okay, you would think any intimacy means zero intimacy, but they were saying like, Oh, birthdays, holidays and anniversaries don't count. So like that is obligatory, and then anything outside of that, if you're not getting anything, that's basically a dead bedroom. And I'm like, these people don't need therapy, sorry, they need therapy, cake eater. You want to eat your cake too, right? Yeah, they're happy at home, they have a great intimate life with their partner, but they also want variety and they want to have an affair. And once their partner finds out about the affair, they do not want to get a divorce, but they also don't really want to stop cheating either. So that seems like the worst kind, the worst offender. One popular post, and this is just the energy of a lot of the people on this subreddit, so just keep in mind, and this energy is going to flow throughout the entire episode. But one very popular post on the subreddit reads, they never choose the other woman. And this is, I guess, the other woman reacting to wives saying things like this, because wives in society will say, well, they never choose the other woman, right? And the other woman, this is the post, they write, they already chose us, as in they literally chose a relationship with us and would have continued in that relationship for an unforeseeable future. There are women here who were with their mm for eight years, et cetera. That's a whole ass relationship, ma'am. Two, they generally aren't choosing their wife over the other woman, they're choosing their life over the other woman. So wife, kids, family, history, employment, social circle, status, et cetera, choosing said life and its obligations over a new life with the other woman, doesn't negate their love for us or the significance of the relationship we shared. They go into like a full blown rant about how hating the other woman is misogynistic amongst other things, and they end it with, they never choose the other woman, but it's the very fact that they choose us, that keeps you stalking the subreddit each and every day. You can call us a low-hanging fruit, but the man you chose to marry was desperate to gobble us up, nom, nom, nom. What in the gobbly duke is going on, everyone needs to calm down. One person comes, so there was like a war that was happening. There was like an anti-infidelity, I think there was like a subreddit for a lot of betrayed spouses, and a lot of them would repose the other woman posts to just see like, oh, look at these other women that are so shameless, they genuinely don't care about sleeping with a married man. And now the other women are hitting back, saying, well, you can't keep your husband happy. One person comments in reference to that subreddit of scorned partners talking about the subreddit. Yeah, they're all fighting. And the comment basically is along the lines of, the wives or losers will not subreddit because their mother husbands are cheating and fucking us on their birthdays. And I'm just like, I think everyone needs to start journaling again, okay? And I guess in some cases, praying, like maybe everyone should go to church, unless you are Caleb Flynn and Alia Botner. Alia Botner is a worship leader at Christian Life Center in Ohio. It's, I wouldn't go and call it a mega church. I think mega churches would require tens of thousands of people in attendance every single week, but it is a pretty big worship center with around 2,000 seats. Alia Botner starts working as an intern at CLC under the worship leader, Zach Nelson. And she described her role as, I mean, I would just kind of follow him around. He would teach me how to be the best worship leader I could be. So that's when she's 20. She starts interning within like the year she becomes a worship leader, what's a worship leader? Basically, you're in charge of the set list, you're like the concert organizer. So the songs that are played, if there's a specific kind of event, the set list of the songs, have to kind of match the message of that sermon. So you're kind of organizing and then you have to lead the development program that helps coach vocalist and band members into becoming the best at their skill that they can be. You have to get volunteer worship people. So you have people in the congregation that sing a little, you got to be like, can you please sing this Sunday? And then next Sunday, you got to find someone else because not everyone wants to do this every Sunday because then you have rehearsals and you got to practice and then you got to get a drummer and then you got to make sure the sound people are on stage. And there's a camera crew because most of these churches nowadays, they post on YouTube. And she's introduced through this method to a man named Caleb Flynn. He's much older than her. He's like 36 when they meet and she's around 2021. And this guy sings a lot. She's 21. Yeah. So they start the affair when she's 22 and he's almost 40. 36. Oh, so it's been like four years ongoing? Will they have an affair that lasts about two years? It starts in 2024 but they meet in 2022. And for two years, they claim that the is a professional dynamic. Yeah. So Caleb Flynn sings a lot. He's pretty mediocre at singing. I think he's okay. And I see he works in the church or he's just no, so he was, he tried to apply to be on American Idol. We're going to get into all of that later. He used to be a pastor in South Carolina. And he moved back to Ohio with his family, Ashley, his wife and his two daughters. And now he's no longer a pastor. He works for a construction business that Ashley's father owns. But he's still be singing. And he loves singing. So he's on the volunteer worship team. But it's just a volunteer role. His main occupation is Todd Smith carpeting. Todd Smith is his father-in-law. So he works for Todd Smith, literally, yeah, yeah. And for two years from 2022 to 2024, nothing happens. They're on stage singing together, and they have a very professional relationship. So they say, until an iPhone game ruins it all, March 3rd, 2024, the third of every month. This is a very big deal. This is, you will remember the third of every month by the end of this case. He goes on to write a song about the third of every month. March 2024, Alia says Caleb starts trying to play iPhone games with her. And she explains, so I just got not a five month long relationship in January. I always noticed that during that relationship, because the guy I was dating was on the worship team. Caleb was always very distant whenever I was around him, or whenever he would serve on the worship team. He was always super extroverted with everybody else. but was always distant towards me and this guy whenever I was with him. And so after we broke up, I noticed Caleb was starting to come into my life a little bit more and become more friendly again and he started texting me more. It would start with just eye-message games. So we were sending friendly text messages and it turned into texting every day. And in my heart, I never thought it would be anything more than that. - What does that mean, King? - Well, you know, you can barely, like, chest, and you send a link or candy crush and you play with each other. I see, that's very, that's weird. - That's very bizarre, very bizarre. And she says, but towards the end of that month, March of 2024, Caleb would ask to, like, it started with small things. So Caleb would ask to go over to Alia Botner's house just to give her a hug. - Oh, that's crazy. - So he would go over and they would hug. - Oh, that's crazy. - And then he would leave. - That's freaking crazy behavior. That's high school crush, like dating situation. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's like, that's already illegal. - Yeah. - How is that even, how did he start with that? That's crazy. - So he, I don't know with the exact text message of like why he wants to go over, but I can imagine it's probably in the vein of, you just give me so much comfort. Being in your presence gives me comfort because that's how they talk to each other. But that's just speculation on my end. And so he would come over to her house, but by the end of the month, you know, after a month of hugs, Alia says, Caleb expressed that he had feelings for me, which is just freaking swell, right? And it's how both of them end up getting intimate at Alia's apartment. As well as some of their favorite spots apparently is the parking lot at Chipotle, where they would scurry into Caleb's truck like two little rats digging through the Chipotle dumpster, just frallicking around and sin. The affair ramps up rather quickly from there. One text message from Alia to Caleb reads, "I love you so much and I would never do anything to hurt you. There's no way in hell that I could see somebody else." Like I said, it makes me want to throw up and die, just thinking about someone else. I only want you and I meant it when I said, we need to find a way because I'm hopeless and lifeless without you. I don't have purpose without you. All I can see and want is you. Please find a way. Please, I can't deal with this pain anymore. It's reminiscent of a lot of posts on the R/ the other woman subreddit. The text messages between Caleb and his mistress Alia are just really difficult to read. There is a lot of jealousy angst in the mixed. For example, Valentine's Day of last year. Valentine's Day of 2025. Alia messages Caleb. Again, this is a married man, a husband with two children and all of them go to the same church. - Oh, they see the whole, she sees the whole family every Sunday, type of thing. - Yes. And she's the worship leader. And in fact, Ashley's family is fourth generation at CLC. - And the parents go there. - Yeah. - Oh my god. - And Alia botnar, text Caleb, sweetheart, I love you. I also want you to know I'm feeling a little in my head about Ashley. Have you said anything to her today? Because it's Valentine's Day. Have you, has she wished you a happy Valentine's Day? Please be honest. Are you going to be home at all before you leave and will you be seeing her? Have her parents mentioned anything about rescheduling date night? Has she said anything at all? I want you to know that I might be checking on Instagram periodically today, just in case you post or something. I just need to. It doesn't mean I'm getting Instagram back. I just need to see if she posts anything about you for my peace of mind. Goodness, I've stalked both of your Instagrams and you both used to post each other all the time for Valentine's Day. I trust you, but it's like how you wanna see if anyone has messaged me on Instagram and such? Like I love you and I have the best morning with you. I can't wait to text you all day and we'll send you a selfie every hour if you do the same. Ultimately, Caleb is the worst person in the equation as he's letting someone, another woman, the other woman to be exact. Talk about his wife in this manner. I mean, he's entertaining this relationship and these types of conversations, but it's also just very wild to see these types of messages be publicized. At another point, you can see Alia desperately trying to take Caleb's attention away from his wife and kids by being a damsel and distress, if you will. And this is not me ever at any point saying that Alia's behavior is worse than Caleb's. Caleb is ultimately the faulty party for allowing it to become this way. But I think there is this very bizarre mutual hatred for Ashley and because Ashley is now dead, it does raise netizens' suspicion that maybe there is more than one individual involved. Has anyone been charged other than Caleb Flynn for Ashley's murder? No, but I guess people are just, after reading these text messages, having them right out in court, a lot of netizens feel like this is very weird. Are we sure the investigation was handled the best that it could have been? Interesting. Because there are some weird things happening. (gentle music) There's one message where Alia is house sitting and she's telling Caleb that she hates being alone, especially in this big house, and she texts him, "I'm just scared, someone's snuck in here while I was gone "and is hiding in a room or is staring at me "through the big windows or something, "just scared when I have to be alone like this. "You know how I am, I know it sounds so silly." He says, "No, it's not. "He tells her to be careful in alert, "but Alia informs him, you don't understand. "He's confused, what do you mean? "I get scared to the point where it's crippling. "I hate being alone more than anything in this world." He asks her, "What can I do to help? "Seriously, my fear keeps me awake at night "when I'm alone." He's like, "I know, you've told me about this "and I know that's why you put the blanket over your head "or you at the house right now?" Yeah, dot, dot, dot. And she says, "Do you feel protective over me at all anymore? "Never mind." And he says, "Always, dot, dot, dot." A fair text messages are always very uncomfortable to read and it's clearly not just one-sided with Alia to Caleb. For example, February 11th, 2025, just three days before Valentine's Day last year, Caleb sends a text message to his mistress, "Why can't it be you? "Why can't I have met you and married you "and had kids with you?" Which side note, she would have been a child at that point. Spent a lack of happiness with you. Which sounds like a very miserable love letter. I think he meant to write, "spent a life of happiness with you." But it's a lack of happiness. So maybe he did mean that, I have no clue. But he gets a simple response, Alia responds, "Oh, lover." He continues his depraved thoughts. "I want to take my girls and run away and never come back." Alia responds, "I have the same gut-reging thoughts "when I see families, happy couples, et cetera. "It's honestly the worst. "It makes me want to isolate myself. "Seeing all these people have what I want with you, "please, baby, I would do this in a heartbeat, "freaking leave it all. "My love for you compares to no other woman's love "for a man, I'd do anything." In earlier messages, Caleb sends Alia, this very heartfelt introspective, completely normal text message. He's talking to his mistress about his wife and his marriage, and he says, "I need her to die. "To cheat again, to leave, I need you." Sorry, I'm short, I hate douche. He's referring to his wife. I hate douche, I want to be with my girls, but I don't want to be anywhere near her, because when I hate her and too, I know it hurts you, because I hate her. You know I hate talking about her. He caused the wife douche? Yeah, we're gonna get into it. There's a lot of nicknames, both of them call her. When was this, I want her to die, message sent? It's periodically from 2024, all the way until 2026, and it's from both parties. Alia responds, "What do you want me to do?" He says, "Merry me," and she says, "Ah!" Caleb responds, "Kill douche." In a later message, Caleb texts his mistress, Alia. "I want her dead and gone." And Alia, talking about Caleb's wife, Ashley, she responds, "I've never wished that upon someone, but have more than ever with her. This affirms me so much. I love you, Caleb. I just want you all to myself, I want all of you, and not have to worry about sneaking around." Alia tells Caleb, "A soulmate is irreplaceable. Don't you agree, and no one feel that?" Caleb texts her back, "You know, I don't deal with what ifs. I deal with reality, and the reality is, you're only 23 years old with everything ahead of you, and so, regardless of how recent us was, the reality is, unless we figure out a way to make douche disappear, you need to move on, and you have every opportunity to do that." Alia tells Caleb, "We need to find a way. I want to show you what a real marriage can be. Do she needs to go?" Caleb responds to her, "I would literally have a smile on my face the whole time. Please take her out." And all these texts messages are being read out in court by Alia Botner, the mistress, because Caleb Flynn is on trial for the murder of his wife. Caleb Flynn is originally brought into the interrogation room after Ashley Flynn is found dead in her bed. Investigators have yet to find the home intruder who came in and broke through the side door of the garage, which, even that was puzzling because investigators soon realized, in fact, one SWAT commander, who has been a SWAT commander for 10 years doing, I mean, he SWATs houses. They literally break and enter legally. That's what they do. Without people's consent, they do home invasions. His workday consists of conducting legal home invasions. He says the damage on that door is bizarre. Basically, there's no really impact damage. There's no shoe or boot because, you know, when someone's ramming into the door to get it open, that's what they do. And with those doors, you see like these mini explosions. You're gonna see wood chips. It's gonna look like something just blew up in there. None of that. In fact, the door was most like Unlocked when it was broken into oh So the door just looked like it was open yeah So this home intruder is perhaps the biggest idiot in the world and the door is unlocked But they still try to ram it open instead of just twisting the handle and unlocking the door So they think most of that damage was done when it was unlocked Interesting it's just the oddest way for a door to be broken into and instead of bringing their own gun The home intruder appears to have somehow known that there is a gun in one of the two cars parked in the garage That is most likely unlocked and inside the garage There's the Ford F-150 which is Caleb's truck and then a minivan But they go directly into the truck into the center console get this 9mm gun then they break into the house They go and they make sure that none of the dogs wake up or start barking and these dogs are a little bit crazy They cross the fingers interior doors unlocked they get into Ashley's room shoot Ashley twice in her sleep And then leave without leaving a trail so the murder weapon is gone from the scene gone And they take nothing and they vanish by the time that Caleb wakes up to call line on what Caleb tells Investigators that there is no one on this planet though that has problems with Ashley like he doesn't get it This is more akin to an assassination. This is not a home invasion gone wrong This is not a robbery gone wrong burglary gone wrong This is someone wanted Ashley dead and they pulled off this great big old crime to get it done But why I mean it doesn't even make any sense and Caleb's like no it doesn't because no one hates Ashley like everyone on this planet loves Ashley Quote she was the nicest person in the world. That is one time that I do think Caleb is telling the truth because everyone has the same thing to say about Ashley He says everybody loves her. I mean we stick to ourselves. We do our own thing. We go to church He clarifies because you know there was confusion about how he knew that Ashley had been shot twice Because we shot in the head and it's really difficult to see how many times someone is shot when there's that much damage And he says well actually he heard two gunshots. That's how he knew he says, you know I froze for a little bit. I was in the girls room. He hears the gunshots. I froze for a little bit I don't know how long it was and then I ran in there They keep asking like how long did you freeze? I don't know two three minutes maybe five I don't know my phone was in the living room is pitch black. I was gonna find it. Yeah What is he talking about? Yeah, which is so odd because the investigators are trying to clarify it It only makes it more puzzling because he says he froze in the daughter's room when he hears the gunshots But then later it sounds like he's saying that he froze in the room with Ashley like he saw Ashley He was shaking her legs to get her awake She's not responding turns on the light sees that she has blood everywhere and then he freezes like that's what it sounds like He's saying but then later he's like no, it just took me two to three two to five minutes or I don't know how long to get my phone because my phone was in the dark It's just the story is bizarre and none of the data matches up But more on that later and the investigators asking him just because we are trying to be as there as possible and get justice Can we see your phone and the text messages that you have with Ashley? And he's like that right away. Yeah, this is pretty yeah right away To see not understand Before this all happened. He's gonna be the prime suspect and when The police start investigating him and when did he realize oh wait, why are you looking at me? It was pretty immediate I don't think there was any sort of run around on this one I think the police did I mean they did grid searches of the house in the backyard They tried to do their best in terms of looking for an intruder But I'm pretty sure every single law enforcement officer in that room in that house was like I don't think there is an intruder They got neighbor neighbor's ring footage. There was no intruder found. They talked to people. They can't visit the area They didn't see any sort of sign of any intruder And I think they knew that they weren't going to right was murder weapon found eventually or no to this day has not been found That is a weird so that's one of the aspects of why I think a lot of the focus has been on Alia botnar the mistress as well because people are and these are all speculations people think that maybe this is a two person crime Especially judging based off of the text messages alone which again is not evidentiary value in someone committing a heinous crime but Yeah, the investigators asked to see Caleb's messages with his wife Ashley and When they go to his eye message and they click on Ashley's name the entire chat is completely empty Just devoid of any text message, which it's like oh, do you just not talk to your wife right Caleb explains well That's a thing I'd delete text messages all the time because she sends me like a million pictures and it takes up my storage Oh, okay, it doesn't look like you've got any chat history with her She isn't texting me today and she sent me Valentine's day picks last night, which I deleted Gotcha The investigators ask because they're gonna search Ashley's phone, you know, they're not just gonna go through her phone They're gonna get a search warrant. So they're gonna find things even if it's been deleted and of course on top of that They're gonna go and they're gonna ask people about the marriage the relationship You know, would you say there's any big arguments because we don't want you to say oh no our marriage was perfect But you know everybody argues the officers trying to give him an out of like hey just tell us if you had relationship problems now rather than later Caleb says I mean the last argument that we had was Friday The girls we're gonna have a sleepover at Nana and Papa's house. So Ashley's parents house and The oldest had lied the week prior so she was gonna lose her sleepover So we argued should it be the Nana and Papa sleepover or her friends next sleepover that she's gonna lose So ended up being that she didn't get to sleep over at Nana and Papa's on Friday So we went and got her so she came home with us, but I don't know if anyone saw us arguing about that But that was our last argument. He said the daughter lied last week. Yeah Yeah coming from the yeah The investigator clearly tells Caleb that that's not the type of things that he's looking for He's not looking for regular relationship arguments and fights, you know, because again Once he gets Ashley's phone data are there going to be things in Ashley's phone that Caleb can clarify for them now You can tell the investigators now rather than later because that's gonna be a lot better for you Caleb says with his full chest There would be nothing just there would be nothing and on her phone my phone He reassures investigators. There is just nothing on Ashley's phone or his phone That would be alarming at all So what I don't understand this he not know that all the messages are there that can be pulled do you think he genuinely doesn't know that? Yeah, I think he also gets away with lies for so long and he believes he's Untouchable in that regard like people just believe him Is the feeling that I get? Interesting. Yeah I've never watched a true crime video. There's no hug The investigation works what yeah And so with that I leave you with the first half of part one the second half is going to be up as as soon as I can edit it and we're going to go through more text messages the 15-year anniversary Creatures that becomes a massive point of contention as well as later we're going to go through just everybody's testimonies including Ashley's parents how they found out and It gets rough stay tuned stay safe and I'll see you in the next one