MIAMI COUNTY — Faith, family and an affair.
That’s what was at the center of testimony Tuesday morning in Caleb Flynn’s murder trial in Miami County.
Flynn is accused of shooting and killing his wife, Ashley, in their Tipp City home in February.
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The couple’s two daughters were sleeping.
Flynn said an intruder broke in, shot his wife and escaped, but he’s on trial for the murder.
News Center 7’s John Bedell has been following this case since February.
We’ve gotten statements from the family before, but this is the first time we’ve heard them.
Inside a third-floor courtroom, we heard from Ashley’s parents, her sister and brother-in-law, who now has custody of the Flynn children.
“Her whole life we just had a wonderful relationship,” said Jill Smith, Ashley Flynn’s mom. “She was an excellent daughter.”
“We were best friends, talked every day, and carpooled together, just tag-teamed life,” said Kayla Keyt, Ashley Flynn’s sister.
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The family testified about the middle-of-the-night phone calls they got the night of the murder, where they found out about Ashley’s death.
“Caleb said, ‘she’s gone.’ I said, ‘who, what do you mean? Who’s gone?’ he said, ‘Ashley, she gone.’ and I said, ‘what do you mean?’ he said, ‘someone broke in and shot her,” Jill Smith said.
Kayla Keyt testified about the moments in her own home, where she watched Caleb tell his daughters about their mother’s death.
“And they were crawling all over him, sobbing,” Kayla Keyt said. “It was one of the moments I’ll never forget.”
The defense also asked Kayla Keyt about Caleb’s affair with a woman who was the main worship leader at the Flynn’s church.
She sang with Caleb at the church and she’s been identified in open court as Alleigha Botner.
“When did you find out that there was an affair going on?” Patrick Mulligan, Caleb Flynn’s attorney, asked.
“That morning that I got interviewed by the FBI,” Kayla Keyt replied.
Keyt said that was the morning after police arrested Caleb for his wife’s murder.
She also testified how Ashley and Caleb’s daughters reacted to the news of their father’s mistress.
“They were shocked,” she said. “They were upset for their mommy because they said, she loved daddy more than anyone else in life so why did daddy not love her as much? And so, but when we told them who it was, the oldest said, ‘I’m not surprised.’”
Due to common court rules, of her family, only Ashley’s father could be in the courtroom before his testimony.
Now that they’ve testified and have been released from the witness list, her entire family can be in the courtroom for the rest of the trial.
“I always say if God gave two perfect daughters, I had both of them,” said Todd Smith, Ashley’s dad.
Ashley’s mother was the first to get the news about her daughter’s murder in a middle-of-the-night phone call from Caleb Flynn.
She continued her testimony on Tuesday about the moments between hanging up the phone and going to the Flynn home.
“I started getting really dizzy so I laid down on the bathroom floor, and I can remember that the tile was so cold until I could get up,” she said.
She also testified she was worried about her granddaughters, Caleb and Ashley’s two children, who were sleeping during the murder after they returned from a walk with Caleb.
It was three days after their mother’s death.
“Did you see the girls after the walk?” asked Bailey Arnett, Miami County Assistant Prosecutor.
“Yes,” Jill Smith said.
“How did they appear?” Arnett asked.
“Nervous,” she said.
Jill Smith testified that she asked her granddaughter why she was nervous and as they got ready to take the girls to a foster agency in Miami County, where detectives and children’s services were going to question the Flynn girls.
Prosecutors then asked, without saying what her granddaughter said.
“What did you do next?” Arnett asked.
“I marched her down to her dad and said, ‘she’s afraid to tell the truth, tell her to tell the truth,’” Ashley’s mom said.
“What did he say?” Arnett asked.
“Of course, baby, you’re supposed to tell the truth,” her mom said.
Ashley’s sister testified about Caleb telling her that someone broke into the home and shot Ashley.
“I just remember being like, how did you not see the intruder running out of Ashley’s room,” Kayla Keyt said.
She said Caleb said he was sleeping on the couch the night of the murder because of a bad cough and woke up when he heard one of their two dogs’ collars shaking.
He thought one of the girls had woken up and needed something. He went to their room when he heard a loud noise that almost paralyzed him before he ran to check on Ashley.
“I remember thinking that, like it just didn’t make sense that Ashley herself was targeted, and then we said, was anything taken? And he’s like, ‘no.’ So it was, it was just, we could not wrap our heads around it,” Ashley’s sister said.
We also heard more than one of Ashley’s family members testify they had doubts about the break-in story Caleb gave police, including one detail about the Flynn’s two dogs.
Prosecutors asked Ashley’s family about the Flynn’s two dogs.
Ashley’s dad said he wondered about the pair of goldendoodles.
“You could be in the cul-de-sac and almost they were starting to bark,” he said. “And I thought how in that world did that happen and those dogs not go bananas?”
As he expressed during testimony, his initial doubt about his son-in-law’s story.
“It just didn’t make sense,” Todd Smith said. “Nothing of that made sense to me. And then I even googled, I said, ‘Can a Christian man snap and shoot his wife and kill his wife?’”
Mr. Smith then testified he called his wife and told her this really doesn’t look good on Caleb and she told him not to even go there.
He said he had to “suppress it and truly forgive” because his wife’s well-being was “worth way more than any feeling or thoughts that I had. I didn’t want to put her through anything else, so I was sorry I even said it to her.”
There were a total of 16 witnesses on the stand during the Caleb Flynn murder trial on Tuesday.
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