A former Ohio music pastor who once appeared on American Idol has been convicted of murdering his wife.
Caleb Flynn, 40, was found guilty of shooting Ashley Flynn, 37, twice in the back of the head as she slept in their Ohio home on February 16. He then tried to claim that intruders had shot her. Flynn wept in court as the jury returned its verdict after deliberating for less than three hours. He was also convicted on eight other charges, including aggravated murder and tampering with evidence. He faces life in prison without parole.
Closing arguments in Flynn’s trial ended Tuesday after eight days of testimony. During the trial, prosecutors played a song they said Flynn wrote and dedicated to the woman with whom he was having an affair. The prosecution also presented police body-camera footage and activity from Flynn’s iPhone and Apple Watch around the time of the murder, which occurred in Tipp City, a suburb of Dayton. They called dozens of witnesses, including Flynn’s former mistress, Alleigha Botner, 24, whom he met when she was an intern at his church. Some of the roughly 100,000 text messages they exchanged were read aloud in court. The defense called no witnesses.
In one message to Botner in August 2025, Flynn wrote, “I was up until 4am last night crying, literally thinking of ways to kill her and not go to jail.” In another, he wrote, “I just want her dead and gone.” Botner testified that she now hates Flynn “because I believe that he murdered his wife.”
During closing arguments Tuesday, prosecuting attorney Paul Watkins focused heavily on Flynn’s text exchanges, saying they showed the defendant’s hatred for his wife. Watkins said Flynn feared losing custody of his daughters in a divorce, as well as his job with his wife’s family business and his position at the church. Flynn appeared emotional at times, sniffling and wiping tears from his eyes.
Watkins also said that when police arrived at the family home in the early hours of February 16, Flynn told them he had been in his daughters’ bedroom when he heard gunfire. Flynn said he found his wife dead in the bedroom after noticing that the garage side door was open. Watkins said Flynn later told investigators he had not been to the garage, contradicting his earlier statement.
Flynn’s defense lawyer, Patrick Mulligan, told the court that there was no concrete evidence. “Connecting a couple of meaningless dots doesn’t solve the case,” Mulligan said. He argued that the issue was not whether Flynn was a good husband to his wife, a schoolteacher and volleyball coach, and that evidence of infidelity was not evidence of murder. “They can’t find the gun, therefore they blame it on him?” Mulligan asked, referring to the tampering-with-evidence charge Flynn also faced. Flynn’s gun, which had been kept in the console of his truck, has been missing since investigators arrived at the scene and found the truck’s center console open.
Earlier in the trial, Botner testified for two days about her nearly 18-month relationship with Flynn. In addition to reading some of their text messages, she explained the lyrics of an AI-generated song line by line. Video of the jury’s reaction to the song, including what appeared to be laughter, went viral.
Prosecutors also called Joseph Wilhelm, a special agent with Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations, as a witness. He said multiple apps had been uninstalled from Flynn’s phone before his wife’s death, including Instagram and an AI music-generating app. The music app, Wilhelm said, “related to his relationship with Alleigha Botner.”
Flynn appeared in 2013 on the 12th season of American Idol, where he sang before judges Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Randy Jackson. He was featured in televised auditions and received a “golden ticket” to Hollywood, but he never reached the main competition. “Music is all I know, it’s what I live to do and I love to sing, so that’s why I auditioned,” he said in videos shown on the program. “Maybe my wife kinda nudged me a little, too.”
Flynn is scheduled to be sentenced on October 5.