Sept. 23, 2026
American Idol Murder Trial: Wife’s Family Testifies, “We Loved Caleb So Much, We Didn’t Question Anything”
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RSS Feed It was a shocking day of testimony in the murder trial against former American Idol contestant Caleb Flynn, accused of shooting his wife of 15 years in the head while she was sleeping so he could be with his mistress. Ashley Flynn’s mother, father, sister and brother-in-law described Caleb as a trusted and loved member of the family who they vacationed with and worked alongside for years. They each described feeling shock and disbelief after his arrest, Ashley’s sister even telling FBI agents they had the wrong guy, choosing to believe Caleb’s intruder theory. We also learned that Caleb’s alleged mistress was the main worship leader at their church, and is expected to testify later in the trial.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: It is Wednesday, September 23rd, and the American Idol murder trial continues today after what we saw yesterday, which is something I've never seen before. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. His name is Caleb Flynn. He's accused of killing his wife. Yesterday, we saw... family member after family member of the deceased get up on the stand, robes, they could barely come up with a bad word to say about him. He fooled everybody.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: And I think that is the takeaway for a lot of folks because the man behind the texts we've learned about saying he hated his wife, wanted to kill his wife, was staying up late trying to think of ways to kill her without going to jail was beloved by By her family. Was employed by her family. And anyone who was a fan of American Idol remembered him fondly. This was somebody who everyone thought was one thing, but prosecutors say was a completely other.
00:01:11
Speaker 2: You know they would love to talk-ish about him right now. Robes, to hear them, at least four family members, was it?
00:01:19
Speaker 1: It was Ashley, and that's his wife, who he is accused of killing. It was Ashley's mother, her father, her sister, and her brother-in-law.
00:01:28
Speaker 2: Robes, they all gushed. I'm saying they're not gushing now, but in asking them questions, Robes, it's like they couldn't find, well, I remember this one incident, or I thought this was weird, or.
00:01:42
Speaker 1: Babe, they go way back, too. I mean, the sister, the brother-in-law, they all knew each other in college. Caleb and Ashley met in college. So they have been in each other's lives, in each other's family's lives, in each other's circles for 17 years. And one by one, her family members got up and said, we loved him. It was really remarkable. And look, it began with Jill Smith, Ashley's mom. She met him when they started dating in college at Lee University. She talked about how they vacationed together, had Sunday night pizza together. They were a tight-knit family.
00:02:26
Speaker 2: Robes, to not hear, and please correct me if I'm wrong or point something out to me, I just didn't see anywhere or hear anywhere that there was a radar up about anything with this guy. This is a guy who's now accused of shooting the mother of his two kids while the two kids were in the room next door.
00:02:45
Speaker 1: And kind of using his two daughters as an alibi because he said he heard one of the little girls coughing.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: That guy?
00:02:51
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: That guy is the nicest guy in the world, according to this family.
00:02:54
Speaker 1: Apparently. Listen, so Ashley's sister, she was the one that I was really blown away by. Kayla Cate. And she said she and her sister were best friends. They talked every single day. They tag-teamed life together. That's how she put it. She knew everything about her sister, and she said her sister loved Caleb. She called him her brother. He worked for the family biz, I guess, for the last four years. He was making $ 200, 000 a year and said that they were about to inherit, she and her sister, the family business because her father was about to retire.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: So.
00:03:31
Speaker 1: She said they had all just sat down and talked about how much money that they could be making in the coming years that Caleb was set to make $ 405, like double his money. So this was, they were invested in each other's lives personally and professionally.
00:03:47
Speaker 2: You scratch your head then. Why is he blowing that? Why is he giving that up? He's not going to be able to stay in the family after all this. What was he thinking about?
00:03:57
Speaker 1: Well, that's why he was thinking he couldn't divorce her. Because think about that. He needed to stay in good graces with her family to keep bringing home the check. And maybe even with her out of the way, he'd even be making more money. They couldn't find out that he was divorcing her. Then he'd be cut off. What would he do for a living?
00:04:18
Speaker 2: Babe, I don't know how he's supposed to. His wife dies and he's going to move the other woman into the house? How is he going to be with the other woman? How is this supposed to work?
00:04:29
Speaker 1: Not sure how that was going to all pan out, but it was fascinating to hear her sister say she didn't know. No one knew about the affair, including her sister. But we heard the woman's name, Aaliyah. And here's the deal. When she got interviewed by the FBI four days after her sister's murder, Caleb's arrested immediately. They all think that police have the wrong guy. They're all defending him. So she's sitting down with the FBI being interviewed, and she is insisting, you have the wrong guy. And she was mad about these affair rumors. She believed he was innocent of everything. That's how much they trusted him. Anyway, she went on.
00:05:09
Speaker 2: And one question I want to stop you there. They are still sticking with their theory that somebody else came, broke in, and did this.
00:05:17
Speaker 1: That is what the defense is still sticking with.
00:05:18
Speaker 2: Still sticking with that story. Yes.
00:05:21
Speaker 1: But this was a direct quote from the sister. I don't think I've been more shocked in my life. I kept asking, are you 100% sure? She said she couldn't fathom that Caleb would A, be having an affair on her sister, but B, would have murdered her sister, and then she talked about the woman he was having an affair with, Aaliyah. Everyone knew her. The whole family knew her. You want to know why? Because she was the main worship leader at their church, the church that the entire family attended to. Faith was a huge part of their lives. Caleb was a music pastor at one point in his life, and her father even testified to going on mission trips with Caleb. God, Jesus, Christianity, faith, all a central part of their lives, and this other woman was in their church.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: Again, we've seen this story before. We just have. I do not, okay? Again, he's an innocent man right now. It's just bizarre, babe, to think what was supposed to happen. What was supposed to be the endgame? This was... His life, his six-figure salary, what else could he have done? I don't know what his skill set was. But Robes, this was his, for lack of a better word, his gravy train right now. This family welcomed him in. He earned that place. He earned their trust over 15 plus years.
00:06:49
Speaker 1: Todd Smith, Ashley's father, got up and testified, said he's known Caleb for 17 years. And that's when he said, we vacationed together. We took mission trips together. We worked together. He said, Caleb's work performance was good. He was a good worker. We nicknamed ourselves the a team. Like he was, it wasn't just, this is not just a, a, a 15 year marriage. He was entrenched in her family's lives and they loved him and they trusted him. And I thought it was interesting. Her own father, again, who worked with him every day said he did not notice a change in Ashley and He did not notice a change in Caleb. And this affair apparently had been going on for a year. How remarkable is it that her family members, who have direct and intimate access to not just Ashley, but to him and to their family and to their kids, didn't notice any changed behavior? That's eerie.
00:07:49
Speaker 2: How did he pull this off? Where did this happen? And I keep, as we are recording this, we are watching live. Today's testimony, we'll give you an update on that when the day is done. They still have a lot of police officers and whatnot going through the stand. But Robes, she's going to have to fill in a lot of blanks because she is expected to testify. We don't know when. But Robes, this is a lot of blanks. When was this happening? Where was this happening?
00:08:15
Speaker 1: How?
00:08:15
Speaker 2: That's a good point. And what was your response? What, did you not think he was going to do this? Does she have to get immunity, baby? I'm very curious about that. Why wouldn't she rush out and stop him or try to talk him.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: Out of it? Because some of those texts that we heard the prosecutor read in opening statements certainly were damning. I think this is the gist that I'm getting so far by listening to the testimony of Ashley's own family. They were so religious. they were so Christian, I don't think they believed anyone of faith, and certainly not someone they knew, would be capable of murder. In fact, Todd Smith, Ashley's dad, said, so he was on a snowmobiling trip with buddies in Canada when his daughter was murdered, and when his wife called him, and when he got the news, and He's rushing back, right, trying to get back to his wife. He said he thinks he called her a hundred times trying to check it, making sure what he heard was real and correct because he couldn't get his head around it. And he said he Googled, can a Christian man snap and kill his wife? I thought that was interesting. It wasn't even in their bandwidth to imagine that someone of Caleb's faith someone who they had known for this long, would be capable of murder.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: That Google search says so much about that family. So how lost he was in trying to comprehend. Like he was looking for an answer, a man of faith. He didn't turn to God. He turned to Google. Really, Robes? He was trying to make sense. What an odd... thing to Google, to look up. Surely there's a record of this. This must be a thing. He couldn't find answers. That is such a telling. It's always something. We get somebody's frame of mind in these trials. You hear about these Google searches and things later. that one is telling us how.
00:10:17
Speaker 1: Isn't that wild? And then to hear, I thought something else that stood out because when Ashley's mom took the stand, I think her first hint that maybe something was up was from the daughters from um caleb and ashley's two girls because so she went and got the girls and had them come stay with her because obviously their home is now a crime scene and i'm not really sure where caleb went because she said the day after she didn't hear from him but two days after the murder he came to talk to the girls and i think that was a little she acted it was a little strange that she didn't hear from him the day after Their mom is murdered.
00:10:54
Speaker 2: Your only priority is taking care of the kids.
00:10:56
Speaker 1: Correct. So he came to talk to the girls. She said he took them out on a walk around a pond, I believe. She said when the girls came back, they were nervous. They were jittery. And when she asked them why, they clamped up and just didn't speak. And she was like, you can tell me the truth. And she actually asked Caleb, Caleb, tell your daughters to tell me why they're nervous. And she wasn't allowed to say what they told her because of hearsay. But certainly that was when she first started to get concerned or just saw something that was off, something that was wrong. She saw it in her granddaughter's faces. That speaks volumes.
00:11:36
Speaker 2: There's no chance he's taking the stand, right?
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. This is a guy whoâ think about this. He is trying to pull offâ I mean, look, he's innocent until proven guilty. I should say this. But if he isâ if he did do what he's accused of doing, her sister talked about how he was kind of talking about what role he wanted in the funeral. He asked if he could play the keys. Look, this is an American Idol contestant.
00:11:59
Speaker 2: I don't know.
00:12:02
Speaker 1: I guess a musical pastor. I don't know what his exact title was or role, but obviously he has musical talents. He made his way to Hollywood on American Idol and he wanted to perform at his wife's funeral. And this is the wife he is now accused of shooting twice in the head while she was sleeping. So I just, I don't know. He seems to like the spotlight. I wonder if that might make him feel like he could perform his way out of this by taking the stand.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: A defense attorney, excuse me, a prosecutor would eat him up. That would eat him up.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Gross.
00:12:37
Speaker 2: How are you going to explain? None of this makes sense.
00:12:39
Speaker 1: But he fooled an entire family and perhaps maybe even an entire country for a while if he's guilty of this, so why wouldn't he think he could fool a jury of 12?
00:12:49
Speaker 2: Mm-mm. Gross. A prosecutor would eat him up. Were you with the Daughters? Remind us how it was going. What did you talk to them about when you took them on that walk? What happened to your nine millimeter pistol? How familiar were you with it? When have you fired it last? Why were you under the table? When did you last see your wife? Where were you when this rose? I just boom, boom, boom.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: The affair alone would be incredibly difficult to have to testify to.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: How about that? Hello, sir. First question. Why did you write, I can't wait to kill her? What was that text about? Like that simple. Just read your text and say, what did you mean by this?
00:13:28
Speaker 1: He might think he has a good answer for all of it. Who knows?
00:13:31
Speaker 2: I would go through all 100,000.
00:13:33
Speaker 1: I know you would.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: All right.
00:13:34
Speaker 1: When we come back, we're going to tell you who else took the stand, which also went to motive a Captain Tony Smith and a next door neighbor who actually had some very compelling testimony. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. We continue to follow this fascinating trial out of Ohio. A former American Idol contestant accused of killing his wife of 15 years. Her entire family took the stand on Tuesday and talked about a man they loved, a man they trusted, and a man they did not believe initially was capable of of doing what prosecutors said he did to his wife, Ashley, a woman who he praised on video while he was on the American Idol journey saying, she's so pretty, I love my wife, I love my wife. Well, apparently he fell in love with someone else.
00:14:38
Speaker 2: What's the, is it sociopath? You talk about what people are able to, right, appear perfectly normal. Now, how do you make a distinction in cases where he just got Do you have to be in the sociopath category or is just some desperate jerk, right? Some monstrous just asshole who got caught up in something and was desperate and killed his wife. The things you describe about him here. Rose, we listened to a family under oath sitting in the same room as the guy they believe killed their family member. still not able to come up with a bad word about that guy.
00:15:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so it's so funny. I hadn't thought about that, but when you say sociopath, look, from many, many of the stories that I have covered, FBI profilers who deal with this day in and day out will describe somebody very similar to Caleb Flynn in that they're able to, they're very usually very intelligent, talented, charismatic, and they're able to convince other people that they're like them. But the thing that they aren't, That they're missing is a conscience. They just, and everything is self-serving. And so they're very logical and they're strategic and they understand what they need to do to make people feel like they're acting normally, but they're truly acting without a conscience. They're only acting in their own best interest.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: Here's my question. Was that always there? I'm saying, does that always, is that something that develops? Or when we were looking at him on American Idol in season 12, He was that same sociopath.
00:16:12
Speaker 1: Well, think about it. He was gushing about his wife.
00:16:15
Speaker 2: Allegedly, excuse me.
00:16:16
Speaker 1: Right. He was gushing about his wife. He wanted everyone to think what a good husband he was, what a good guy he was.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: Is it possible he was at some point? He was a good dad. He was a good husband.
00:16:27
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just can't find room for somebody who actually is a good guy to choose to murder someone rather than divorce them. That means I care more about what people think of me. So I would rather murder someone and try to pin it on some unknown intruder. Wouldn't even give a shit if someone else actually took the fall for it. And I look like the victim. I look like the grieving widower. And you're constantly thinking about how you want to be viewed and how you want to be portrayed. And all of your choices, all of your actions are solely based on that. They come from that motivation of what you want to get from other people, which is either admiration. Love, sympathy. But to me, if he is guilty of what prosecutors say he's guilty of, he absolutely fits the bill of a sociopath. And that's the bill.
00:17:20
Speaker 2: But does he ever fit the bill of just you're just a selfish and extremely selfish man who came to a point. And whatever this new woman was putting it on you got caught up and got desperate. That's why I was just curious.
00:17:35
Speaker 1: But most people who do that, they'll look back. The wife or whoever the other partner is sees a change. There's a difference. Family members see, wow, he's now withdrawn. He's aloof. He's changed. Or now he's going to the gym more. You see changed behavior when someone suddenly finds someone they want to be with and you notice it. You notice it as a wife. You notice it if you're a close family member who's working with that person each and every day. You see a changed demeanor. They usually withdraw. No, he kept up all the... All the presence of being a great husband, an active family member. So I actually think that is incredibly manipulative that he was able to do all of this and start an affair with someone who he was willing to kill his wife over and no one saw a change in behavior. I think that's exactly a sociopath.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: That is just fascinating.
00:18:27
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about it like that.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: But I've never quite heard something like we heard in court yesterday.
00:18:31
Speaker 1: Right.
00:18:32
Speaker 2: No one could come up with a moment or I remember this and I thought this was odd and.
00:18:36
Speaker 1: It Not one.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
00:18:38
Speaker 1: And they even said like they were with them like the day before this all happened. It's really creepy. Captain Tony Smith took the stand and said that Caleb had a $ 100, 000 life insurance policy on Ashley and he was the sole beneficiary. So that also would go to motive. Something else interesting that came up and don't know what the defense is going to go with on this. But when he was up on the stand, the defense cross-examined him. And by the way, the defense chose not to cross-examine, I think, all of the family members except for the sister. But the cross-examination is where she started talking about, I couldn't fathom that he would do this. I couldn't have been more shocked in my life. So they wanted to play up this notion that even her own sister didn't think he was capable of that. So I understand why they were getting that for the cross. But they cross-examined this police officer and they got him to admit that during their investigation, this mistress lost her laptop during a trip to Florida and dropped her phone in the water. And so they're trying to already start to say something. The defense is working towards something with the mistress already. They're trying to establish something. Obviously that is beyond coincidental. That during the investigation, after he is arrested, the woman he was having an affair with just happened to lose her laptop on a trip to Florida and just happened to drop her phone in the water.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: She's a clumsy one.
00:20:17
Speaker 1: Okay, that's one way to put it. The other interesting witness on the stand was their next door neighbor.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: I know.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: I mean, do they think we're stupid?
00:20:27
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. I guess things can happen. But the two most important pieces. Okay, I just, you don't want to be suggestive. Come on.
00:20:35
Speaker 1: She didn't want the text messages to get out.
00:20:37
Speaker 2: And look, I understand.
00:20:39
Speaker 1: You were having an affair with the man who just police say murdered his wife. For you. And he was telling you that he was going to do it. Yeah, that's a problem.
00:20:47
Speaker 2: What's the response? Don't they have from his phone, right, what that response would be?
00:20:51
Speaker 1: What did she say? She didn't erase any of the evidence, but it made her look really bad that she tried to. Oh, my God. And look, more of that we're expecting to come out in future testimony, but the neighbor, the next-door neighbor to Caleb Flynn and Ashley Flynn, and we were kind of laughing because she looked like, if you looked up, nosy neighbor in the dictionary, it's her picture. She's the woman you want on your neighborhood watch. She is gonna make sure that if anything happened, she notices it. And to that point, yeah, this woman had three motion-activated cameras outside her house. She also has two or three corgis that she says are very vocal. And are in her room with her. So she said that evening and that morning didn't hear a peep from her dogs and not, not nothing got picked up on her three motion activated cameras outside her home. So if there was any movement. going into the Flynn home or leaving the Flynn home from that evening all the way until the morning when he called 911, I believe around 9 a.m., her dogs would have been barking and her cameras would have picked up someone running into or fleeing from that home, which would massively dispel the defense's theory that an intruder came in and killed Ashley.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: That's kind of a big deal.
00:22:20
Speaker 1: It was a big deal.
00:22:22
Speaker 2: Nobody was outside. Nobody came in. Nobody went out. That is what that proves. Now you go into that jury room, Robes, and we talk about beyond reasonable doubt and circumstantial evidence. Robes, that's a pretty good indicator.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: And don't forget the day before you had law enforcement testifying to the infrared or the heat seeking drones. They went to 80 different residences. The canine units tracked the scent from inside and it went just right back into the garage. Like the canines wouldn't leave the property because there was no scent that left the property. So all of those things combined really dispels, oh, but I'm sorry, the door was damaged from the inside rather than the outside. There was no sign of forced entry. I don't know how they're going to try and continue this intruder theory.
00:23:11
Speaker 2: He's not going to get on the stand. He can't get on the stand.
00:23:16
Speaker 1: But if he doesn't get on the stand, what's the defense? I know you don't have to put one on. You can defend solely through cross-examination and throwing or at least suggesting or putting in the juror's mind some doubt or some doubt into the credibility of these witnesses.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: That's the question I forgot to ask you. What? Where has the defense scored a point?
00:23:43
Speaker 1: I would say the only point they scored is getting family members or at least the sister to admit that it was like the most shocking thing she could have ever imagined in that this man that she had known for 17 years could possibly have killed her sister to the point that she told FBI agents they were full of you know what. So that was maybe just the point that if you want, yes, if you want to believe that he couldn't have done this or didn't do this, even her own family members didn't believe it. That's the point he scored. But again, to your point, that could just prove that he's a sociopath. So we shall see. Testimony is going on as we speak. We will continue to keep you updated on it. We've been watching it throughout the day, and there is, I mean, we're still, again, you pointed out we're waiting for the mistress, and we're waiting for the kids.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: What is her name? What should we call her?
00:24:36
Speaker 1: Well, we actually do have her first name. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, but I can get to it. Her name is Aaliyah. It's A-L-E-I-G-H-A, Aaliyah. I can't think of another way to say it. Aaliyah. Like Lee is sometimes spelled L-E-I-G-H. So Aaliyah. So yes, we're still waiting for her and we are waiting for the kids. But until then, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: It is Wednesday, September 23rd, and the American Idol murder trial continues today after what we saw yesterday, which is something I've never seen before. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. His name is Caleb Flynn. He's accused of killing his wife. Yesterday, we saw... family member after family member of the deceased get up on the stand, robes, they could barely come up with a bad word to say about him. He fooled everybody.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: And I think that is the takeaway for a lot of folks because the man behind the texts we've learned about saying he hated his wife, wanted to kill his wife, was staying up late trying to think of ways to kill her without going to jail was beloved by By her family. Was employed by her family. And anyone who was a fan of American Idol remembered him fondly. This was somebody who everyone thought was one thing, but prosecutors say was a completely other.
00:01:11
Speaker 2: You know they would love to talk-ish about him right now. Robes, to hear them, at least four family members, was it?
00:01:19
Speaker 1: It was Ashley, and that's his wife, who he is accused of killing. It was Ashley's mother, her father, her sister, and her brother-in-law.
00:01:28
Speaker 2: Robes, they all gushed. I'm saying they're not gushing now, but in asking them questions, Robes, it's like they couldn't find, well, I remember this one incident, or I thought this was weird, or.
00:01:42
Speaker 1: Babe, they go way back, too. I mean, the sister, the brother-in-law, they all knew each other in college. Caleb and Ashley met in college. So they have been in each other's lives, in each other's family's lives, in each other's circles for 17 years. And one by one, her family members got up and said, we loved him. It was really remarkable. And look, it began with Jill Smith, Ashley's mom. She met him when they started dating in college at Lee University. She talked about how they vacationed together, had Sunday night pizza together. They were a tight-knit family.
00:02:26
Speaker 2: Robes, to not hear, and please correct me if I'm wrong or point something out to me, I just didn't see anywhere or hear anywhere that there was a radar up about anything with this guy. This is a guy who's now accused of shooting the mother of his two kids while the two kids were in the room next door.
00:02:45
Speaker 1: And kind of using his two daughters as an alibi because he said he heard one of the little girls coughing.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: That guy?
00:02:51
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: That guy is the nicest guy in the world, according to this family.
00:02:54
Speaker 1: Apparently. Listen, so Ashley's sister, she was the one that I was really blown away by. Kayla Cate. And she said she and her sister were best friends. They talked every single day. They tag-teamed life together. That's how she put it. She knew everything about her sister, and she said her sister loved Caleb. She called him her brother. He worked for the family biz, I guess, for the last four years. He was making $ 200, 000 a year and said that they were about to inherit, she and her sister, the family business because her father was about to retire.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: So.
00:03:31
Speaker 1: She said they had all just sat down and talked about how much money that they could be making in the coming years that Caleb was set to make $ 405, like double his money. So this was, they were invested in each other's lives personally and professionally.
00:03:47
Speaker 2: You scratch your head then. Why is he blowing that? Why is he giving that up? He's not going to be able to stay in the family after all this. What was he thinking about?
00:03:57
Speaker 1: Well, that's why he was thinking he couldn't divorce her. Because think about that. He needed to stay in good graces with her family to keep bringing home the check. And maybe even with her out of the way, he'd even be making more money. They couldn't find out that he was divorcing her. Then he'd be cut off. What would he do for a living?
00:04:18
Speaker 2: Babe, I don't know how he's supposed to. His wife dies and he's going to move the other woman into the house? How is he going to be with the other woman? How is this supposed to work?
00:04:29
Speaker 1: Not sure how that was going to all pan out, but it was fascinating to hear her sister say she didn't know. No one knew about the affair, including her sister. But we heard the woman's name, Aaliyah. And here's the deal. When she got interviewed by the FBI four days after her sister's murder, Caleb's arrested immediately. They all think that police have the wrong guy. They're all defending him. So she's sitting down with the FBI being interviewed, and she is insisting, you have the wrong guy. And she was mad about these affair rumors. She believed he was innocent of everything. That's how much they trusted him. Anyway, she went on.
00:05:09
Speaker 2: And one question I want to stop you there. They are still sticking with their theory that somebody else came, broke in, and did this.
00:05:17
Speaker 1: That is what the defense is still sticking with.
00:05:18
Speaker 2: Still sticking with that story. Yes.
00:05:21
Speaker 1: But this was a direct quote from the sister. I don't think I've been more shocked in my life. I kept asking, are you 100% sure? She said she couldn't fathom that Caleb would A, be having an affair on her sister, but B, would have murdered her sister, and then she talked about the woman he was having an affair with, Aaliyah. Everyone knew her. The whole family knew her. You want to know why? Because she was the main worship leader at their church, the church that the entire family attended to. Faith was a huge part of their lives. Caleb was a music pastor at one point in his life, and her father even testified to going on mission trips with Caleb. God, Jesus, Christianity, faith, all a central part of their lives, and this other woman was in their church.
00:06:19
Speaker 2: Again, we've seen this story before. We just have. I do not, okay? Again, he's an innocent man right now. It's just bizarre, babe, to think what was supposed to happen. What was supposed to be the endgame? This was... His life, his six-figure salary, what else could he have done? I don't know what his skill set was. But Robes, this was his, for lack of a better word, his gravy train right now. This family welcomed him in. He earned that place. He earned their trust over 15 plus years.
00:06:49
Speaker 1: Todd Smith, Ashley's father, got up and testified, said he's known Caleb for 17 years. And that's when he said, we vacationed together. We took mission trips together. We worked together. He said, Caleb's work performance was good. He was a good worker. We nicknamed ourselves the a team. Like he was, it wasn't just, this is not just a, a, a 15 year marriage. He was entrenched in her family's lives and they loved him and they trusted him. And I thought it was interesting. Her own father, again, who worked with him every day said he did not notice a change in Ashley and He did not notice a change in Caleb. And this affair apparently had been going on for a year. How remarkable is it that her family members, who have direct and intimate access to not just Ashley, but to him and to their family and to their kids, didn't notice any changed behavior? That's eerie.
00:07:49
Speaker 2: How did he pull this off? Where did this happen? And I keep, as we are recording this, we are watching live. Today's testimony, we'll give you an update on that when the day is done. They still have a lot of police officers and whatnot going through the stand. But Robes, she's going to have to fill in a lot of blanks because she is expected to testify. We don't know when. But Robes, this is a lot of blanks. When was this happening? Where was this happening?
00:08:15
Speaker 1: How?
00:08:15
Speaker 2: That's a good point. And what was your response? What, did you not think he was going to do this? Does she have to get immunity, baby? I'm very curious about that. Why wouldn't she rush out and stop him or try to talk him.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: Out of it? Because some of those texts that we heard the prosecutor read in opening statements certainly were damning. I think this is the gist that I'm getting so far by listening to the testimony of Ashley's own family. They were so religious. they were so Christian, I don't think they believed anyone of faith, and certainly not someone they knew, would be capable of murder. In fact, Todd Smith, Ashley's dad, said, so he was on a snowmobiling trip with buddies in Canada when his daughter was murdered, and when his wife called him, and when he got the news, and He's rushing back, right, trying to get back to his wife. He said he thinks he called her a hundred times trying to check it, making sure what he heard was real and correct because he couldn't get his head around it. And he said he Googled, can a Christian man snap and kill his wife? I thought that was interesting. It wasn't even in their bandwidth to imagine that someone of Caleb's faith someone who they had known for this long, would be capable of murder.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: That Google search says so much about that family. So how lost he was in trying to comprehend. Like he was looking for an answer, a man of faith. He didn't turn to God. He turned to Google. Really, Robes? He was trying to make sense. What an odd... thing to Google, to look up. Surely there's a record of this. This must be a thing. He couldn't find answers. That is such a telling. It's always something. We get somebody's frame of mind in these trials. You hear about these Google searches and things later. that one is telling us how.
00:10:17
Speaker 1: Isn't that wild? And then to hear, I thought something else that stood out because when Ashley's mom took the stand, I think her first hint that maybe something was up was from the daughters from um caleb and ashley's two girls because so she went and got the girls and had them come stay with her because obviously their home is now a crime scene and i'm not really sure where caleb went because she said the day after she didn't hear from him but two days after the murder he came to talk to the girls and i think that was a little she acted it was a little strange that she didn't hear from him the day after Their mom is murdered.
00:10:54
Speaker 2: Your only priority is taking care of the kids.
00:10:56
Speaker 1: Correct. So he came to talk to the girls. She said he took them out on a walk around a pond, I believe. She said when the girls came back, they were nervous. They were jittery. And when she asked them why, they clamped up and just didn't speak. And she was like, you can tell me the truth. And she actually asked Caleb, Caleb, tell your daughters to tell me why they're nervous. And she wasn't allowed to say what they told her because of hearsay. But certainly that was when she first started to get concerned or just saw something that was off, something that was wrong. She saw it in her granddaughter's faces. That speaks volumes.
00:11:36
Speaker 2: There's no chance he's taking the stand, right?
00:11:39
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. This is a guy whoâ think about this. He is trying to pull offâ I mean, look, he's innocent until proven guilty. I should say this. But if he isâ if he did do what he's accused of doing, her sister talked about how he was kind of talking about what role he wanted in the funeral. He asked if he could play the keys. Look, this is an American Idol contestant.
00:11:59
Speaker 2: I don't know.
00:12:02
Speaker 1: I guess a musical pastor. I don't know what his exact title was or role, but obviously he has musical talents. He made his way to Hollywood on American Idol and he wanted to perform at his wife's funeral. And this is the wife he is now accused of shooting twice in the head while she was sleeping. So I just, I don't know. He seems to like the spotlight. I wonder if that might make him feel like he could perform his way out of this by taking the stand.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: A defense attorney, excuse me, a prosecutor would eat him up. That would eat him up.
00:12:37
Speaker 1: Gross.
00:12:37
Speaker 2: How are you going to explain? None of this makes sense.
00:12:39
Speaker 1: But he fooled an entire family and perhaps maybe even an entire country for a while if he's guilty of this, so why wouldn't he think he could fool a jury of 12?
00:12:49
Speaker 2: Mm-mm. Gross. A prosecutor would eat him up. Were you with the Daughters? Remind us how it was going. What did you talk to them about when you took them on that walk? What happened to your nine millimeter pistol? How familiar were you with it? When have you fired it last? Why were you under the table? When did you last see your wife? Where were you when this rose? I just boom, boom, boom.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: The affair alone would be incredibly difficult to have to testify to.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: How about that? Hello, sir. First question. Why did you write, I can't wait to kill her? What was that text about? Like that simple. Just read your text and say, what did you mean by this?
00:13:28
Speaker 1: He might think he has a good answer for all of it. Who knows?
00:13:31
Speaker 2: I would go through all 100,000.
00:13:33
Speaker 1: I know you would.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: All right.
00:13:34
Speaker 1: When we come back, we're going to tell you who else took the stand, which also went to motive a Captain Tony Smith and a next door neighbor who actually had some very compelling testimony. Welcome back, everyone, to Amy and TJ. We continue to follow this fascinating trial out of Ohio. A former American Idol contestant accused of killing his wife of 15 years. Her entire family took the stand on Tuesday and talked about a man they loved, a man they trusted, and a man they did not believe initially was capable of of doing what prosecutors said he did to his wife, Ashley, a woman who he praised on video while he was on the American Idol journey saying, she's so pretty, I love my wife, I love my wife. Well, apparently he fell in love with someone else.
00:14:38
Speaker 2: What's the, is it sociopath? You talk about what people are able to, right, appear perfectly normal. Now, how do you make a distinction in cases where he just got Do you have to be in the sociopath category or is just some desperate jerk, right? Some monstrous just asshole who got caught up in something and was desperate and killed his wife. The things you describe about him here. Rose, we listened to a family under oath sitting in the same room as the guy they believe killed their family member. still not able to come up with a bad word about that guy.
00:15:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so it's so funny. I hadn't thought about that, but when you say sociopath, look, from many, many of the stories that I have covered, FBI profilers who deal with this day in and day out will describe somebody very similar to Caleb Flynn in that they're able to, they're very usually very intelligent, talented, charismatic, and they're able to convince other people that they're like them. But the thing that they aren't, That they're missing is a conscience. They just, and everything is self-serving. And so they're very logical and they're strategic and they understand what they need to do to make people feel like they're acting normally, but they're truly acting without a conscience. They're only acting in their own best interest.
00:16:00
Speaker 2: Here's my question. Was that always there? I'm saying, does that always, is that something that develops? Or when we were looking at him on American Idol in season 12, He was that same sociopath.
00:16:12
Speaker 1: Well, think about it. He was gushing about his wife.
00:16:15
Speaker 2: Allegedly, excuse me.
00:16:16
Speaker 1: Right. He was gushing about his wife. He wanted everyone to think what a good husband he was, what a good guy he was.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: Is it possible he was at some point? He was a good dad. He was a good husband.
00:16:27
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just can't find room for somebody who actually is a good guy to choose to murder someone rather than divorce them. That means I care more about what people think of me. So I would rather murder someone and try to pin it on some unknown intruder. Wouldn't even give a shit if someone else actually took the fall for it. And I look like the victim. I look like the grieving widower. And you're constantly thinking about how you want to be viewed and how you want to be portrayed. And all of your choices, all of your actions are solely based on that. They come from that motivation of what you want to get from other people, which is either admiration. Love, sympathy. But to me, if he is guilty of what prosecutors say he's guilty of, he absolutely fits the bill of a sociopath. And that's the bill.
00:17:20
Speaker 2: But does he ever fit the bill of just you're just a selfish and extremely selfish man who came to a point. And whatever this new woman was putting it on you got caught up and got desperate. That's why I was just curious.
00:17:35
Speaker 1: But most people who do that, they'll look back. The wife or whoever the other partner is sees a change. There's a difference. Family members see, wow, he's now withdrawn. He's aloof. He's changed. Or now he's going to the gym more. You see changed behavior when someone suddenly finds someone they want to be with and you notice it. You notice it as a wife. You notice it if you're a close family member who's working with that person each and every day. You see a changed demeanor. They usually withdraw. No, he kept up all the... All the presence of being a great husband, an active family member. So I actually think that is incredibly manipulative that he was able to do all of this and start an affair with someone who he was willing to kill his wife over and no one saw a change in behavior. I think that's exactly a sociopath.
00:18:26
Speaker 2: That is just fascinating.
00:18:27
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about it like that.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: But I've never quite heard something like we heard in court yesterday.
00:18:31
Speaker 1: Right.
00:18:32
Speaker 2: No one could come up with a moment or I remember this and I thought this was odd and.
00:18:36
Speaker 1: It Not one.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
00:18:38
Speaker 1: And they even said like they were with them like the day before this all happened. It's really creepy. Captain Tony Smith took the stand and said that Caleb had a $ 100, 000 life insurance policy on Ashley and he was the sole beneficiary. So that also would go to motive. Something else interesting that came up and don't know what the defense is going to go with on this. But when he was up on the stand, the defense cross-examined him. And by the way, the defense chose not to cross-examine, I think, all of the family members except for the sister. But the cross-examination is where she started talking about, I couldn't fathom that he would do this. I couldn't have been more shocked in my life. So they wanted to play up this notion that even her own sister didn't think he was capable of that. So I understand why they were getting that for the cross. But they cross-examined this police officer and they got him to admit that during their investigation, this mistress lost her laptop during a trip to Florida and dropped her phone in the water. And so they're trying to already start to say something. The defense is working towards something with the mistress already. They're trying to establish something. Obviously that is beyond coincidental. That during the investigation, after he is arrested, the woman he was having an affair with just happened to lose her laptop on a trip to Florida and just happened to drop her phone in the water.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: She's a clumsy one.
00:20:17
Speaker 1: Okay, that's one way to put it. The other interesting witness on the stand was their next door neighbor.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: I know.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: I mean, do they think we're stupid?
00:20:27
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. I guess things can happen. But the two most important pieces. Okay, I just, you don't want to be suggestive. Come on.
00:20:35
Speaker 1: She didn't want the text messages to get out.
00:20:37
Speaker 2: And look, I understand.
00:20:39
Speaker 1: You were having an affair with the man who just police say murdered his wife. For you. And he was telling you that he was going to do it. Yeah, that's a problem.
00:20:47
Speaker 2: What's the response? Don't they have from his phone, right, what that response would be?
00:20:51
Speaker 1: What did she say? She didn't erase any of the evidence, but it made her look really bad that she tried to. Oh, my God. And look, more of that we're expecting to come out in future testimony, but the neighbor, the next-door neighbor to Caleb Flynn and Ashley Flynn, and we were kind of laughing because she looked like, if you looked up, nosy neighbor in the dictionary, it's her picture. She's the woman you want on your neighborhood watch. She is gonna make sure that if anything happened, she notices it. And to that point, yeah, this woman had three motion-activated cameras outside her house. She also has two or three corgis that she says are very vocal. And are in her room with her. So she said that evening and that morning didn't hear a peep from her dogs and not, not nothing got picked up on her three motion activated cameras outside her home. So if there was any movement. going into the Flynn home or leaving the Flynn home from that evening all the way until the morning when he called 911, I believe around 9 a.m., her dogs would have been barking and her cameras would have picked up someone running into or fleeing from that home, which would massively dispel the defense's theory that an intruder came in and killed Ashley.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: That's kind of a big deal.
00:22:20
Speaker 1: It was a big deal.
00:22:22
Speaker 2: Nobody was outside. Nobody came in. Nobody went out. That is what that proves. Now you go into that jury room, Robes, and we talk about beyond reasonable doubt and circumstantial evidence. Robes, that's a pretty good indicator.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: And don't forget the day before you had law enforcement testifying to the infrared or the heat seeking drones. They went to 80 different residences. The canine units tracked the scent from inside and it went just right back into the garage. Like the canines wouldn't leave the property because there was no scent that left the property. So all of those things combined really dispels, oh, but I'm sorry, the door was damaged from the inside rather than the outside. There was no sign of forced entry. I don't know how they're going to try and continue this intruder theory.
00:23:11
Speaker 2: He's not going to get on the stand. He can't get on the stand.
00:23:16
Speaker 1: But if he doesn't get on the stand, what's the defense? I know you don't have to put one on. You can defend solely through cross-examination and throwing or at least suggesting or putting in the juror's mind some doubt or some doubt into the credibility of these witnesses.
00:23:36
Speaker 2: That's the question I forgot to ask you. What? Where has the defense scored a point?
00:23:43
Speaker 1: I would say the only point they scored is getting family members or at least the sister to admit that it was like the most shocking thing she could have ever imagined in that this man that she had known for 17 years could possibly have killed her sister to the point that she told FBI agents they were full of you know what. So that was maybe just the point that if you want, yes, if you want to believe that he couldn't have done this or didn't do this, even her own family members didn't believe it. That's the point he scored. But again, to your point, that could just prove that he's a sociopath. So we shall see. Testimony is going on as we speak. We will continue to keep you updated on it. We've been watching it throughout the day, and there is, I mean, we're still, again, you pointed out we're waiting for the mistress, and we're waiting for the kids.
00:24:35
Speaker 2: What is her name? What should we call her?
00:24:36
Speaker 1: Well, we actually do have her first name. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, but I can get to it. Her name is Aaliyah. It's A-L-E-I-G-H-A, Aaliyah. I can't think of another way to say it. Aaliyah. Like Lee is sometimes spelled L-E-I-G-H. So Aaliyah. So yes, we're still waiting for her and we are waiting for the kids. But until then, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robach alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk soon.