Caleb Flynn Trial for Ashley Flynn: The Dogs Didn't Bark, Kosowski Verdict Watch in Steven Cozzi Case, Brother Recants in Frostproof

0:03 Calaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is Daily Crime and Justice from Calaroga Media, powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fisher. It's Thursday, September 24th, 2026. In Ohio, the defense in the Caleb Flynn murder trial finally landed a punch. The woman prosecutors say he was having an affair with lost her laptop and her phone about a month before his wife was shot in her bed. In Florida, the surgeon defending himself against a death penalty charge asked a judge for volunteers because he wanted a witness to pick up a roughly 195-pound person and lift them onto a desk.

0:43 He asked one of them whether he exercises. And in Polk County, Florida, a man took the witness stand against his own brother in a trial where the state is asking for a death sentence and took all of it back. He said he had just told investigators whatever they wanted to hear. I also have a correction from yesterday's show, and it matters, so we will get to that first. Let's get into it. Ashley Flynn was 37. She was a middle school volleyball coach and an educator in Tip City, Ohio. She was the mother of two young daughters, and by her own mother's testimony this week, she talked to her mom every day. They were best friends. Early on the morning of February 16th, she was shot twice in the back of the head as she lay in bed in a sleeping position. Prosecutors told the jury she was executed.

1:34 Her daughters were asleep across the hall. Her husband, Caleb Flynn, who is 40, a former music pastor and an American Idol contestant, called 911 and said there had been a break-in. He has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. Now my corrections. Yesterday, I told you an expert was expected to testify that the deadbolt on the garage door had been damaged with tools. That is not what the evidence has turned out to be. And the actual testimony is more damaging than what I described. A senior special agent from Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified that the damage to the garage side door was not consistent with a real forced entry. There were no tool marks. There were no pry marks. The latch and the deadbolt still worked.

2:18 And wood chips were found inside the garage, which is what you would expect if the door was damaged while it was already open. Another investigator put it more simply. He testified he saw no damage at all to the outside of that door. The only damage was on the inside. So I had the mechanism wrong. The state is not arguing somebody pried the door. It is arguing somebody broke it from the inside with the door standing open to make it look like a break-in that never happened. I should have waited for the testimony instead of describing what an opening statement promised. That is on me. Also correcting the record, two misdemeanor intimidation counts were dismissed before this trial started. Flynn is on trial for aggravated murder, two counts of felonious assault, and three counts of tampering with evidence. Now, the rest of the week, because a lot happened, prosecutors have put forward two motives. The first is the affair.

3:11 The second is money. On the affair, the state read the jury a message they say Flynn sent his mistress the night before Ashley died, not months before, the night before. Prosecutors say it read, actions will come tomorrow, February 16th, a day I'll never forget. If the jury accepts that message as authentic and reads it the way the state does, that is about as close to a stated plan as a prosecutor ever gets. On money, Ashley's sister Kayla Keet testified that their father was preparing to hand the family business to his two daughters, 50-50. She said Caleb, who worked for that business as a salesman, was present for those discussions and had seen projections showing he could eventually earn $ 300, 000 or $ 400, 000 a year. A police captain also testified there was a $ 100, 000 life insurance policy on Ashley, with Caleb as the sole beneficiary. Her father, Todd Smith, testified the break-in story never made sense to him. He asked why the family's two dogs did not bark. He said those dogs would start barking if somebody was merely in the cul-de-sac. That detail is going to stay with that jury, not forensics. Dogs. And I want to note something about that family because it is the most human thing in this case. They did not start out against him.

4:29 Keat testified that when he was arrested, she told investigators they had the wrong person. She said she heard rumors of an affair and was angry because she thought it was tarnishing his reputation. Those are people who loved him, saying under oath that they defended him until they could not anymore. Now the defense, which finally has something. A Tip City police captain testified on cross-examination that the woman identified in court as Flynn's mistress, a worship leader at the family's church named Alea Botner, had lost devices before investigators ever got to them. He testified she had taken a trip in January of this year, about a month before the killing, and somehow lost her work computer. Her phone went missing as well. Botner has not been accused of any crime, and I want to be clear about that.

5:17 But understand what the defense does with it. The state's case is built substantially on messages. If the other side of that conversation is gone, the defense gets to stand up in closing and ask why investigators built a murder case around one person's phone without ever examining the other persons. That is a real question, and it is exactly the kind of gap defense lawyers live on. Emily Smith has been consistent from the opening. She conceded the affair, she said her client betrayed his wife, and then she told the jury a man can fail as a husband without being a murderer. That is the whole defense in one sentence, and it is a good one. Ashley Flynn was 37. She was planning a Galentine's night for her daughters that week, doing facials and painting nails. The prosecution showed the jury a photograph of her with the girls from that evening.

6:06 Someone has to say her name. When we come back, a surgeon asks the courtroom if anybody works out. Stephen Kazi was 41. He was an attorney in Largo, Florida. In March of 2023, he stepped into the bathroom at his law firm and was never seen again. His body has never been found. Tomasz Kosowski, a 47-year-old plastic surgeon, is on trial for his murder in Pinellas County. He has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent, and the state is seeking the death penalty. He fired his lawyers, waived a jury for both the guilt and penalty phases, and is defending himself in front of Judge Joseph Boulogne.

6:59 For three days, he said almost nothing. Now, he will not stop. Last week, he asked prosecutor Nathan Vonderheide to step into a 39-gallon trash bag to demonstrate whether a body would fit. The judge said no, and Vonderheide declined. But here is what I did not know when we covered that. Vonderheide told the court this week that his co-counsel, Alexandra Spadaro, had gone and tested it herself outside the courtroom. She fit, and the state said its final witness would testify to exactly that. So the prosecutor took the defendant's challenge seriously enough to run the experiment. That is a small thing, and I find it oddly admirable. Then on Tuesday, Kosowski went further. He asked Judge Bologna to let him use volunteers from the courtroom so that a witness could try to lift a person weighing around 195 pounds up onto a desk. He turned to one prospective volunteer and asked whether he exercises. The judge refused. Now, strip away how strange that sounds, because underneath it is the single best argument this man has. The state's theory requires Stephen Causey's body to have been moved. Out of a bathroom stall, into a wagon, across a parking lot, into the bed of a truck. Kasowski is trying to show that one person could not physically do that, or could not do it in the time available, or could not do it without leaving far more evidence than investigators found. That is a legitimate defense. Physical plausibility is fair game, and if

8:33 the state's account requires something a human being cannot easily do, a defendant is entitled to say so. The problem is entirely in the execution. Real defense lawyers make that argument with a biomechanics expert, measurements, and a video exhibit. They do not ask for volunteers from the gallery and inquire about their fitness levels. This is what people mean when they say a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. Not that his ideas are stupid, that he has no idea how to get them in front of the person deciding his life. Meanwhile, the evidence against him has kept coming. Prosecutors have shown what they found in his vehicle when he was arrested, a Guy Fawkes mask, stun guns, brass knuckles, duct tape, and trash bags. Investigators have testified his DNA was in the bathroom at the law firm, Kazi's DNA was in his vehicle, and surveillance video captured his car leaving the office around the time the attorney disappeared. All of that is the state's case.

9:35 None of it has been ruled on. The state is at its last witness. After that, it is Kosowski's turn and nobody outside that courtroom knows whether he intends to put on any defense at all or whether he will testify. He has already said he will present no mitigation if there is a penalty phase. One judge decides whether he is guilty. The same judge decides whether he lives. Stephen Causey went to work. Someone has to say his name. When we come back, a man testifies against his brother in a capital case and takes all of it back.

10:16 Damien Tillman was 23. Kevin Springfield was 30. Brandon Rollins was 27. They were longtime friends from Frost Proof, Florida, a small city southeast of Tampa. On the night of July 17, 2020, the three of them were heading out to go catfishing near Lake Streety. They were ambushed and shot. All three died. Tony Lee Wiggins Jr., known as TJ, is 32. He has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, plus tampering with evidence and being a felon in possession of a weapon. He is presumed innocent, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The trial began this month in Bartow and is expected to run five weeks.

10:58 The state's theory is a grudge over a stolen truck engine. Prosecutors say surveillance video from a Dollar General put Wiggins in the same store as the three men shortly before the killings. That receipts at his trailer tied him to that visit, and that ballistics matched casings at the scene. And the state had something else, an eyewitness. Wiggins' younger brother, William, was in the car that night. He told detectives he watched his brother confront Springfield over the truck engine and then shoot all three men. He said it again to a grand jury, under oath, and he pleaded guilty to accessory charges under an agreement to testify. On Tuesday, he took the stand and he blew the whole thing up.

11:38 He told the court his attorney had originally indicated that, in addition to what was written in the plea agreement, prosecutors would give him time served on unrelated open cases. He said his attorney later told him that was not so. So he went back to his original story. He said he and his brother were innocent. The prosecutor asked whether the eyewitness account he had given was true. He said no. Asked what parts were not true. He said they were never there. The prosecutor asked again, apparently not believing what he had heard. He repeated it. They were never there. Then the prosecutor reminded him that he had told a grand jury under oath that his brother was the lone shooter and asked whether that testimony had been untruthful. And he said the line that gives this segment its name.

12:27 He said he just told them whatever they wanted to hear. Prosecutors have now said they will not be calling him at all. So let me tell you what just happened to William Wiggins legally because it is severe. A plea agreement is a contract. He got a reduced charge in exchange for truthful testimony. By repudiating that testimony in open court, he has almost certainly breached it, which means the state can move to withdraw the deal and prosecute him on the original charges. He is also now on the record having sworn to two contradictory accounts, one of them to a grand jury. That is the textbook set up for a perjury charge. He has, in the space of about 10 minutes, traded a negotiated resolution for exposure on everything.

13:11 And here's the uncomfortable part, and it is the same thing we talked about with Delphi yesterday. One of those two statements is false. We know that for certain. What we cannot know from outside is which one. Maybe he lied to detectives in 2020 to save himself and is telling the truth now at enormous personal cost. Or maybe he told the truth then and is lying now to protect a brother who is facing execution. Both of those are entirely human and they point in opposite directions. What I keep coming back to is his own phrasing. I just told them whatever they wanted to hear. That is the sentence at the center of every false confession case in this country. And it is also the sentence every guilty man's relative says when he decides to stop cooperating.

13:56 That is why cases built on cooperator testimony are fragile. You are buying words with leniency, and the person selling them knows exactly what the buyer wants. A co-defendant, Mary Whittemore, pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact and has served a four-year sentence. The trial continues without the brother. The state still has its video, its receipts, and its ballistics, and it may not need him. Damian Tillman was 23. Kevin Springfield was 30. Brandon Rollins was 27. They were going fishing on a Friday night. Six years later, there is finally a jury. Someone has to say their names.

14:39 That's the show for Thursday, September 24th. If you listen on Apple, there is a button at the top that says, listen uninterrupted. $ 5 a month, no ads. And it covers thousands of shows from Calaroga Media. Not just this one. 30 days free to try it. If you already subscribe, thank you sincerely. And on Spotify, drop a comment on the Polk County case. A man swore one thing to a grand jury and the opposite in open court. If you were on that jury, how would you decide which version to believe, knowing he had something to gain both times? The state may rest in Largo at any moment, which puts that verdict very close. And five days from now, on September 29th, Lindsay Clancy is back before Judge Sullivan when Plymouth County is expected to say whether it is retrying her. I'm Garrett Fisher. Do better. A few notes on sourcing. A correction from Wednesday's episode. We reported that an expert was expected to testify that the deadbolt on the Flynn garage door had been damaged with tools. Testimony at trial has instead described no tool or pry marks, an intact latch and deadbolt, damage only on the interior of the door, and wood chips inside the garage. We also previously listed two misdemeanor intimidation counts among the charges.

15:59 Those counts were dismissed before trial began. On the Ohio case, Caleb Flynn has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. Evidence described here is the state's case and the trial is ongoing. The woman identified in open court as his mistress has not been charged with or accused of any crime, and the testimony about her missing devices came from a police witness on cross-examination. The message quoted was read to the jury by prosecutors, and the defense disputes the state's reading of it. On the Florida murder trial, Tomasz Kosowski has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. The items and forensic findings described are the state's allegations. A judge who has presided over this case for three years has found him competent to represent himself. On the Polk County case, Tony Wiggins has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent, and nothing his brother said in either version has been established.

16:54 No perjury charge has been filed against William Wiggins, and no court has found that either of his accounts was false. Reporting has differed on which brother Mary Whittemore was involved with. We have described her only as a co-defendant. Her guilty plea and sentence are a matter of record. This episode discusses domestic homicide and the deaths of young people. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available around the clock at 1-800-799-7233.