Caleb Flynn, a former American Idol contestant, is on trial in Ohio after being charged with murdering his wife and tampering with evidence in a case that turned on the story he told police in the first minutes after the shooting.
In a February 911 call, Flynn said somebody broke into his home and shot Ashley Flynn. He told the dispatcher that his wife had been shot twice in the head, that there was blood everywhere, and that the garage door was wide open. He pleaded for officers to get there immediately at 2:31 a.m.
Police arrived minutes later and searched the home room by room, but they said they found no intruder. Bodycam video later showed officers asking Flynn whether there were any firearms in the house, and he answered that there was a shotgun, a.22, a pellet gun and a handgun in his truck glove box. That gap between what Flynn reported and what officers found is what drove the case forward.
Ashley Flynn, who had been married to Caleb Flynn for almost 16 years, worked as a substitute teacher and a middle school volleyball coach. The couple had two young daughters. Their family home became the center of an investigation that, three days after Ashley Flynn was killed on February 19, drew in federal authorities, according to local police.
On the same day police and prosecutors questioned Flynn's intruder theory, authorities arrested him and charged him with murder. He pleaded not guilty on February 20. A month later, he was indicted for murder, felonious assault, tampering with evidence and intimidation of a victim or witness in a criminal case, and his bond was set at $3.5 million.
Flynn first drew public attention in 2013, when he advanced to the Hollywood round of American Idol. In Ohio, though, the case now turns on a different stage: whether investigators can prove the shooting inside the home was not the work of a stranger, but a crime tied to the man who called 911. That question is what prosecutors have chosen to answer with an indictment, and it is what the court will have to settle next.
