By The Daily Wire (World News) | Created at 2026-10-06 00:01:08 | Updated at 2026-10-06 01:11:50
6 hours ago
Former “American Idol” contestant and worship pastor Caleb Flynn was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole for murdering his wife, Ashley, in their Ohio home in February while their two daughters were in the home.
“By the way I don’t plan on coming to see you,” his 12-year-old daughter, Alyssa, wrote in her victim impact statement read in court by Ashley’s mother, Jill Smith.
Flynn, who was convicted last week, maintained his innocence at the sentencing, saying, “I did not kill my wife.” He cried as Ashley’s mother and brother-in-law read his daughters’ letters aloud.
“Dear Daddy, I don’t even know where to start. How can you do such a thing. I looked up to you and loved you with all of my heart,” his daughter Ava wrote.
“Mommy was the perfect person. What did she ever do to make you hate her so much?”
Both girls addressed their father’s affair with his former worship partner, Alleigha Botner. Ava called Botner a “dirty girl,” and Alyssa wrote that he had thrown everything away for a “girl who was half your age.”
Ashley’s sister, Kayla, and her husband, Matt, are raising the two girls along with their own two daughters.
Members of Ashley’s family said in the Ohio courtroom that they had forgiven Flynn and were focused on caring for his daughters.
“I want to show them what a loving honest and faithful father looks like and what a God-centered servant hearted marriage can be,” Matt told Flynn.
In his lengthy statement to the family, Flynn asked Matt to care for his daughters and “love my girls as hard as you know how.”
Flynn’s parents asked the judge for mercy, but Judge Jeannine N. Pratt said he could have ended his marriage without killing Ashley.
“You could have walked away… and left her here on this earth to let her be with the people who need her and love her,” Pratt said. “Instead through your greed, your selfishness and your lust… you took Ashley’s life.”
Pratt also ordered Flynn to pay Ashley’s parents $20,000 in restitution for funeral expenses.
