A former ballerina was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday in the 2020 shooting death of her estranged husband in Florida.
CBS affiliate WTSP reports that Ashley Benefield was sentenced to 20 years, with credit for time served, followed by 10 years probation. The case, which became known as the “Black Swan murder” trial, garnered national attention, with some comparing Benefield to the protagonist of the 2010 film “Black Swan.”
The former ballerina was found guilty by a jury in July of manslaughter for shooting and killing her husband, Doug Benefield, in September 2020 after an argument.
Ashley Benefield, 32, claimed that she killed her then-58-year-old estranged husband in self defense during an argument at her mother’s home, where she had moved from South Carolina after leaving him. Authorities said she shot him twice.
“I just held the gun like in front of me and I said, stop, and he like turned and he got into this like almost like a fighting stance. He started like moving his arms and his hands around…he started coming towards me and he lunged at me, and I just pulled the trigger,” Ashley Benefield testified at her trial.
The pair had wed after knowing each other for less than two weeks, “48 Hours” reported. At the time of their marriage, Ashley Benefield was 24 and Doug Benefield, a widower whose wife had died about nine months earlier, was 54.
As “48 Hours” reported, the marriage was rocky. There were tensions between Ashley Benefield and Doug Benefield’s teenage daughter, and an attempt to start a ballet company together failed. Ashley Benefield accused her husband of poisoning his first wife, and left him when she was pregnant with their child to stay with her mother, alleging that he was now poisoning her. The claims were investigated by police, and no charges were filed.
Once their child was born in 2018, Ashley Benefield allegedly kept the baby from her husband for six months, until a judge intervened. After this, the pair largely reconciled, and in 2020, they planned to move to Maryland together on Ashley Benefield’s suggestion.
On Sept. 27, 2020, the Benefields were packing a U-Haul truck for the move. Ashley Benefield’s mother, Alicia Byers, took her granddaughter to a park, leaving the couple alone in the house. A neighbor reported hearing sudden screaming and called 911.
Moments later, Ashley Benefield arrived at the home of another neighbor, gun in hand. She reportedly told the neighbor that she had shot her husband in self-defense. The neighbor called 911.
When police and emergency services responded, Doug Benefield was still alive but unable to speak. He died at an area hospital about an hour later.
Investigators determined that Doug Benefield had been shot twice, once in the leg and once in the arm. That second bullet traveled into his chest cavity. The shots had been fired when he was turning away from his wife, investigators determined.
Ashley Benefield’s lawyer, Faith Brown, told police at the time that her client had been planning to leave her husband and had an escape plan, including a safe place to stay, a burner phone and a rental car rented under a different name. Brown told police that Benefield feared her husband “had gotten wind of” the plan.
Ashley Benefield was arrested five weeks after the shooting.
