‘I Want to Kill Her’: Caleb Flynn’s Mistress Cries on Stand While Reading Texts They Exchanged Before Wife’s Murder

Alleigha Botner, the 24-year-old who began an affair with former American Idol contestant Caleb Flynn in 2024, cried on the stand Thursday as she read texts the pair exchanged in the months ahead of his wife’s murder.

Caleb is accused of killing Ashley Flynn in February. The pair shared two daughters.

CNN’s Jean Casarez reported:

This is motive evidence for the prosecution. They don’t need motive, but this is why they will argue, we believe, in closing arguments, [about] why he killed his wife. And the defense is saying, ‘No, he didn’t. It was someone else.’ And on cross-examination, we see potentially where they are leading in all of that. But the direct examination focused on this relationship. She was having an affair with a married man, two children. They belonged to the same church. He was part of the pastor worship service. So was she. They got to know each other. She knew who the wife was. She knew there were two children being raised in the church. She knew that Ashley taught Bible camp every year, but she still got involved. There were 107,000 texts in the last year between the two of them, and so many of them, Caleb was talking about, ‘I hate my wife. I hate my home life. I hate everything about it. I’ve got to get out. I need to do something. I could just kill her.’ Well, I want you to listen to a text where Alleigha Botner is very emotional base she had to admit something in court today. Something she said while Ashley’s family, her mother, her father, her sister are sitting there watching her.

“I didn’t mean it,” Botner said before reading the next message: “I want to kill her, Caleb.”

Botner was then asked who sent the message before she confirmed she did.

Botner continued, “He said, ‘That makes two of us.'”

Casarez added:

All of these messages were on different platforms, iMessages, GoogleMe, I mean, on and on and on, and they were deleting the messages, she testified, as soon as they would send them sometimes because they didn’t want them, anyone to see them. Well, lo and behold, they deleted them, but they actually transferred some of them to Caleb’s devices at home. And she admitted that Ashley saw some of those messages, and it would have been in the fall time of 2025. And so Ashley contacted her and said, ‘Look, we need to have a sit down. We need to talk.’ She canceled. She said, I’m not meeting with her at all. But then as time went on, there became directives from Alleigha Botner, she admitted it. There were ultimatums, there were time dates. He had to leave his wife. He had to get rid of her. He had to do something.

Botner also testified, “I said on October 23, we can’t be anything unless you leave her.”

Watch the above via CNN.

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