Caleb Flynn’s former mistress took the stand at his murder trial. Here’s what we learned

As Caleb Flynn’s former lover Alleigha Botner sat on the stand, a prosecutor opened a cardboard box and presented her with a hefty red book to read aloud.

Then he gave her another. And then another.

34 books later, the jury had heard key firsthand evidence about their illicit affair, Flynn’s hatred for his wife, Ashley, and his desire to kill her.

“I was up until 4 a.m. last night crying, literally thinking of ways to kill her and not go to jail,” Flynn wrote in a message to Botner on August 22, 2025.

Those 34 books, organized into three cardboard boxes in court, constituted a transcript of the 107,000 messages Flynn and Botner exchanged during a 1.5-year love affair from 2024 to around early 2026. Botner testified over two days about their relationship, reading snippets from the books that showed in intimate detail affection, jealousy, hatred and violent fantasizing.

Prosecutors say the books show the motive for why Caleb Flynn, a former “American Idol” contestant and church worship leader, murdered his wife in February and staged the crime scene to make it look like she was killed by an intruder.

An affair, a missing gun and 100,000 messages: What we learned on Day 1 of testimony in Caleb Flynn’s trial

Flynn, 40, has pleaded not guilty. His defense has acknowledged he sent the messages and cheated on his wife, but said the prosecution lacks key evidence, such as the murder weapon, to prove he committed a crime.

Here are the key takeaways from Botner’s testimony.

Botner was 21 years old when she met Flynn at their Ohio church in 2022. She was an intern at the time, and he was a volunteer on the worship team, she said. They struck up a romantic relationship in March 2024 and it continued until the following winter, she testified.

Their romance was passionate but messy. They saw each other at least once a week and traveled to nearby cities where no one would recognize them, and they discussed getting married one day, she said. At the same time, she suspected Flynn hacked into her phone and Instagram account during their relationship, although he denied it, Botner testified.

They got matching Harry Potter lightning bolt tattoos , she said. Hers was on her forearm, but his was in his armpit because “he didn’t want Ashley to see,” she testified.

The two exchanged over 100,000 texts during their relationship – about 300 a day – between iMessage, WhatsApp and GroupMe for privacy from others.

In August 2025, Ashley Flynn found out about the affair by seeing their texts during a cruise for their 15-year wedding anniversary. Ashley reached out to Botner for a meeting, but Botner said she was too busy, she testified.

From Ashley Flynn/Facebook

The relationship began to break down after that. Botner repeatedly asked Flynn to leave his wife, but he declined to do so, citing his two daughters, his job working with his in-laws and his reputation. After she set a final deadline in January, she told him to stop contacting her.

“It’s time for me to put my big girl pants on, be strong and officially move on from you and us,” she texted him on January 11.

In scores of texts to Botner, Flynn said that he hated his wife and referred to her by the crude codename “ douche .” Early in their relationship, he said he wished she was dead.

“I just want her dead and gone,” he wrote in early 2025.

He even asked Botner to help.

“What can I do?” Botner wrote on March 24, 2025.

“Kill her,” Flynn responded, referring to his wife.

Later, Flynn even fantasized about killing her himself.

“If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat. That’s how dark and hateful I feel,” he wrote on May 16, 2025.

In one instance, Botner spoke similarly. “I want to kill her, Caleb,” she wrote in a July 2025 text. “That makes two of us,” Flynn responded.

Botner cried in court as she read that text aloud, saying she regretted writing it and “didn’t mean it.”

And in another text from August 2025, she said she just wanted him to divorce her, not kill her.

“I’m not asking that you take her life, obviously, because that’s not what you should do, and I know you actually wouldn’t,” Botner wrote to him. “But to make the divorce happen, it would change everything.”

In a spree of texts to Botner on February 15, Flynn said he was going to tell his wife he planned to leave her and get a divorce the following day.

“It’s kind of crazy. I’m not scared tomorrow. I mean, I’m not looking forward to it, and it’s about to be a crap-fest here moving forward, but I’m not scared of it,” Flynn wrote.

Botner said she was house-sitting at a pastor’s home that night. On the morning of the 16th, she received a message from a church congregant asking if she had heard “about Mrs. Flynn,” and she was sent an article about her death.

“My heart started pounding,” Botner said. “It seemed like too much of a coincidence that the day he’s divorcing her, she’s just dead all of a sudden.”

Hours after Ashley’s death, Flynn and Botner met at his in-laws’ house, where members of their church were gathered. When Botner arrived, Flynn hugged her, she testified.

“It didn’t happen the way we thought it would, did it?” Flynn said, according to her testimony.

Botner asked Flynn a lot of questions about how the shooting happened, she testified, telling the court she was “very suspicious.”

Flynn told her he had been sleeping on the couch when he heard a gunshot, saw the garage side door open and found Ashley dead in the bedroom.

“He said he saw blood everywhere. He told me he’ll never forget that sight,” Botner testified.

The testimony contradicted Flynn’s statement to investigators that he was lying down in his daughters’ bedroom when the shooting occurred.

Botner admitted to trying to hide evidence of her affair by deleting messages and lying to the FBI.

After first hearing of Ashley’s death, she said she messaged Flynn and asked him what was going on, whether he was involved and if it was real. He did not respond, and she later deleted the messages, she testified.

“Since there was a murder involved, I knew that they would probably be searching his phone, and if they saw any messages between us anywhere, the affair would be found out,” she said.

In addition, she said she lied to the FBI in her first interview on February 20.

“I was selfishly afraid that my reputation was going to be ruined and that I was going to lose my job,” she testified. “And now that there was a murder attached, I didn’t want to be attached to that in any way.”

She hired an attorney and came clean to the FBI on February 26, she testified.

The defense questioned Botner for about an hour during cross-examination.

For one, Botner said she was not entirely convinced Flynn truly hated his wife.

“I would see text messages on his phone from her saying that she loves him,” she said. Ashley’s seemingly loving nature toward Flynn made Botner think “he was also loving towards her.”

Botner allowed that Flynn “might have been” saying he hated Ashley to make her feel better due to her own insecurity.

In addition, she said, she did not believe Flynn meant it when he said he wanted to kill his wife.

“I didn’t think he could ever be capable of doing something like that,” she said.

Yet in her direct testimony Wednesday, she said she now believed he did it.

“I hate him,” Botner said. “Because I believe that he murdered his wife.”

CNN’s Isa Mudannayake, Tori B. Powell, Andy Rose, Lauren Mascarenhas and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.

当卡莱布·弗林的前情人阿莱娅·博特纳坐在证人席上时，一名检察官打开一个纸箱，递给她一本厚厚的红色书籍，让她大声朗读。

然后他又给了她一个。接着又一个。

34 本书之后，陪审团听取了有关他们婚外情、弗林对妻子阿什利的仇恨以及他想杀死她的一些关键的第一手证据。

“我昨晚哭到凌晨 4 点，真的在想怎么杀了她又不进监狱，”弗林在 2025 年 8 月 22 日发给博特纳的信息中写道。

在法庭上，这 34 本书被装在三个纸箱里，记录了弗林和博特纳在 2024 年至 2026 年初这段长达一年半的恋情中互发的 107,000 条信息。博特纳在两天的庭审中作证，讲述了他们的关系，并朗读了书中的一些片段，这些片段细致地展现了他们之间的爱慕、嫉妒、仇恨和暴力幻想。

检察官表示，这些书籍揭示了前“美国偶像”参赛者、教堂敬拜领袖卡莱布·弗林在二月份谋杀妻子并伪造犯罪现场，使其看起来像是被入侵者杀害的动机。

婚外情、失踪的枪支和10万条短信：我们在卡莱布·弗林案庭审第一天的证词中了解到了什么

40岁的弗林已否认所有指控。他的辩护律师承认他发送了那些短信并对妻子不忠，但表示检方缺乏关键证据，例如凶器，来证明他犯了罪。

以下是博特纳证词的主要内容。

博特纳21岁时在俄亥俄州的一间教堂认识了弗林。她说，当时她是教堂的实习生，弗林是敬拜团队的志愿者。她作证说，他们于2024年3月开始恋爱，这段恋情一直持续到第二年冬天。

他们的恋情热烈却又混乱。她说，他们每周至少见面一次，还会去附近的城市旅行，以免被人认出，而且他们还讨论过将来结婚。与此同时，博特纳作证说，她怀疑弗林在他们交往期间入侵了她的手机和Instagram账户，尽管弗林否认了这一点。

她说，他们纹了相同的哈利·波特闪电图案的纹身。她的纹身在前臂上，而他的纹身在腋下，因为“他不想让阿什利看到”，她作证说。

为了保护隐私，两人在恋爱期间通过 iMessage、WhatsApp 和 GroupMe 等平台互发了超过 10 万条短信（平均每天 300 条）。

2025年8月，阿什利·弗林在庆祝结婚15周年的游轮旅行中，偶然看到了博特纳和阿什利的短信，发现了这段婚外情。阿什利联系博特纳想见面，但博特纳说她太忙了，她作证说。

来自 Ashley Flynn/Facebook

此后，两人的关系开始破裂。博特纳多次要求弗林离开他的妻子，但弗林拒绝了，理由是他有两个女儿、在岳父岳母家工作以及他的名誉。一月份，博特纳设定了最后期限，并要求弗林停止与她联系。

“是时候让我振作起来，坚强起来，正式地和你以及我们分开了，”她在 1 月 11 日发短信告诉他。

在发给博特纳的数十条短信中，弗林表示他恨他的妻子，并用粗俗的代号“混蛋”称呼她。在他们交往初期，他就说过希望她去死。

“我只想让她死而复生，”他在 2025 年初写道。

他甚至还请求博特纳帮忙。

“我能做什么？”博特纳于2025年3月24日写道。

“杀了她，”弗林回答道，他指的是他的妻子。

后来，弗林甚至幻想过亲自杀死她。

“如果我真的可以杀了她而不下地狱，我会毫不犹豫地这么做。我内心充满了黑暗和仇恨，”他在2025年5月16日写道。

博特纳也曾说过类似的话。她在2025年7月的一条短信中写道：“我想杀了她，卡莱布。”弗林回复说：“我也是。”

博特纳在法庭上大声朗读那条短信时哭了起来，她说她后悔写了那条短信，“我不是那个意思”。

在 2025 年 8 月的另一条短信中，她说她只想让他和她离婚，而不是杀了她。

“我当然不是要你夺走她的生命，因为你不应该那样做，而且我知道你实际上也不会那样做，”博特纳写信告诉他。“但要促成离婚，一切都会改变。”

2月15日，弗林向博特纳发了一系列短信，称他打算第二天告诉妻子他计划离开她并离婚。

“这有点疯狂。我并不害怕明天。我的意思是，我并不期待明天，而且接下来的日子肯定会很糟糕，但我并不害怕，”弗林写道。

博特纳说，那天晚上她在一位牧师家帮忙看房子。16日早上，她收到一位教会成员发来的信息，询问她是否听说过“弗林夫人的事”，随后她又收到一篇关于弗林夫人去世的文章。

“我的心跳开始加速，”博特纳说。“他跟她离婚的那天，她就突然去世了，这似乎太巧合了。”

阿什利去世几个小时后，弗林和博特纳在他岳父母家见面，当时他们教会的成员都聚集在那里。博特纳作证说，博特纳到达时，弗林拥抱了她。

根据弗林的证词，她说：“事情的发展并没有像我们预想的那样，对吧？”

博特纳向弗林询问了很多关于枪击事件如何发生的问题，她作证说，她当时“非常怀疑”。

弗林告诉她，他当时正在沙发上睡觉，突然听到一声枪响，看到车库侧门打开，然后发现艾什莉死在卧室里。

“他说他看到到处都是血。他告诉我他永远不会忘记那一幕，”博特纳作证说。

证词与弗林向调查人员所作的陈述相矛盾，弗林称枪击发生时他正躺在女儿们的卧室里。

博特纳承认她试图通过删除短信和向联邦调查局撒谎来掩盖她婚外情的证据。

她作证说，在得知阿什利的死讯后，她给弗林发了信息，询问发生了什么事，他是否参与其中，以及这件事是否属实。弗林没有回复，之后她删除了这些信息。

“因为牵涉到谋杀案，我知道他们很可能会搜查他的手机，如果他们发现我们之间的任何信息，这段婚外情就会被发现，”她说。

此外，她还表示，她在 2 月 20 日的第一次 FBI 讯问中撒了谎。

她作证说：“我当时很自私，害怕我的名誉受损，害怕丢掉工作。现在又牵扯到一起谋杀案，我不想以任何方式与此扯上关系。”

她作证说，她聘请了律师，并于2月26日向联邦调查局坦白了一切。

在交叉询问环节，辩方对博特纳进行了大约一个小时的质询。

首先，博特纳表示，她并不完全相信弗林真的恨他的妻子。

“我看到他手机上有她发来的短信，说她爱他，”她说。阿什利对弗林看似充满爱意的态度让博特纳认为“弗林也同样爱着她”。

博特纳承认，弗林“可能”是为了让缺乏安全感的阿什利感觉好一些，才说他讨厌阿什利。

此外，她还说，她不相信弗林说他想杀死妻子时是认真的。

“我没想到他会做出这样的事，”她说。

然而，在周三的直接证词中，她说她现在相信是他做的。

“我恨他，”博特纳说，“因为我相信他谋杀了他的妻子。”

CNN 的 Isa Mudannayake、Tori B. Powell、Andy Rose、Lauren Mascarenhas 和 Elise Hammond 对本报道亦有贡献。