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Closing arguments began Tuesday morning in the so-called “Black Swan” murder trial, involving a Florida ballerina accused of killing her husband, who appeared to all to be the ideal mate—but was violent and abusive in private, according to defense attorneys.
In a Florida court on Friday, Ashley Benefield, 33, testified that she had been “living a nightmare,” and said she was “scared to death” of hubby Doug, who had carved out a successful post-military career as a technology consultant. Charged with second-degree murder, Ashley insisted on the stand that she had acted in self-defense, saying, “I thought he was going to kill me.”
To the contrary, Assistant State Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell told jurors that Ashley simply couldn’t bear the idea of sharing their 2-year-old daughter with the man she married just 13 days after meeting him in August 2016 while campaigning for then-presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“This was a custody battle that this mother was going to win at all costs,” O’Donnell said. “The cost was the life of Doug Benefield, and that is murder.”
The case has been dubbed the “Black Swan’ murder because of Benefield’s career. Black Swan was a 2010 film about a psychologically disturbed ballet dancer, starring Natalie Portman, the title of which the media adopted as shorthand for the Benefield case.
To Ashley, the salacious nature of the media coverage has been slanted against her from the get-go.
“‘Black Swan’ has a catchy ring and it sensationalizes my life and my situation,” she told ABC News before the start of the trial. “It’s sad to me that people who don’t even know me have this idea of a monster when they think of me.”
On Monday, the defense rested its case after calling its final witnesses: a real estate broker helping Doug search for a new home, a sheriff’s investigator and psychologist Jason Quintal, a marriage counselor the couple had been seeing to try and work out their issues.
Doug, according to Quintal, was “someone who was domineering, and the terminology that I would use at times would be super-controlling,” he said on the stand. At the same time, he “was very dedicated to wanting the relationship to work… despite conversations with some of the disparaging things that Ashley had said to him.”
When Doug was shot dead, the two had been planning a move from Manatee County, Florida, to Maryland, where Ashley had inherited a property, but they were going to live separately.
However, Ashley had already “decided she wanted to be a single mother,” and “she would stop at nothing to attain that goal,” according to O’Donnell, who argued, “When there was no other option, she shoots him and kills him and claims self-defense.”
On Sept. 27, 2020, Doug was helping Ashley load a U-Haul in anticipation of the move north when, the defense claims, Doug hit her on the side of her head and blocked the door when she tried to get away.
“He stopped me, he grabbed me by the hand and yanked me back,” Ashley testified. “He said, ‘Where the f**k are you going?’”
When Ashley broke free, she ran to another room and grabbed her gun. She claimed on the stand that Doug started toward her again, and that’s when she began firing.
“I started pulling the trigger,” Ashley said in court. “He kept coming at me.”
O’Donnell, for her part, told the jury that Ashley’s injuries were nothing more than surface scratches, and that “Doug Benefield was not coming at her at the time the fatal shot was fired.”
Doug, a devout Christian and former US Navy pilot who died five days short of his 59th birthday, “was generous to a fault and never gave up on people,” his September 2020 obituary read. “He touched countless lives, bringing the rich joy of this life to those he cherished as his friends. He brought out the best in people and made you feel special just being around him. He was handsome, strong, and gentle. He had great taste and somehow touched every area of your life making it richer and better.”
Doug’s family has strongly disputed Ashley’s version of events. In an interview aired Monday night on NewsNation, his brother Tommie called Ashley “a performance artist,” claiming she had turned in an Oscar-worthy turn on the stand. And Doug’s daughter from a previous marriage told “20/20” that Ashley wasn’t trying to defend herself, but rather, “clearly wanted to take my dad’s life away and ruin her own child’s life and ruin my life.”
