Performative “Wife Guy” Made AI Love Songs for His Mistress, Played In Court for His Wife’s Murder

Limerence is being infatuated and obsessed with someone, where reciprocation is uncertain. You ponder, fantasize, and interpret every interaction. It’s not a medical diagnosis or an excuse. It can determine how you feel, but you’re still in control of your actions. Some people on TikTok have used limerence to explain the bizarre text messages between Caleb Flynn and his mistress, Alleigha Botner. But I don’t think anything can explain the god awful AI song played in the courtroom. Caleb is on trial for the murder of his wife, Ashley. And while her loved ones sit there, a song he created for his mistress echoes through the courtroom. “We were friends on the surface, but deep down inside you were always my love~” He tells her: “It’s your song and these are my words to you.” All while, according to the messages, the two of them talked in depth about how much they hate Calebs wife, the mother of their children, and how much they want her dead. Full show notes available at RottenMangoPodcast.com

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• 1:27Speaker 02

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• 1:31Speaker 01

  Limerence has been a trending word recently, and a lot of people bring it up in the context of somebody having an affair, cheating on their spouse or their partner. Limerence, by definition, is a state of mental being, like being infatuated and obsessed with someone, where that feeling being reciprocated is uncertain. It's up in the air. It's not just like, oh, I'm obsessed with my girlfriend or my wife, which these days is also an alarming statement. It's more like, oh, I'm obsessed and infatuated with this person, and I am unsure if they feel the same way about me, so much so that I enter into this obsessive state where I ponder, fantasize, I try to interpret every single interaction that I've ever had with them, and it's a mixture of being in the honeymoon phase with someone, where you idolize

• 2:16Speaker 01

  them, and you can't even imagine that their farts stink. It must smell like peonies. But it's very different from the process of falling in love, because limerence is all about the uncertainty. Once that uncertainty is gone, then usually the person that has this infatuation, this obsession, they don't feel those things anymore.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  They snap out of it, they start falling out of it, and they move on. The psychologist who coined the term limerence says, "It's above all else, a mental activity. It's an interpretation of events, rather than the events itself." Side note, limerence is a psychological concept, but it's not like a medical diagnosis or any sort of disorder. Some researchers believe there is a connection between being in a limerence state frequently and other disorders that are attached to obsession and attachment disorders, but it's not a diagnosis. The book Love and Limerence, written by said psychologist, articulates the different stages of limerence, and they say, "Well, first is the infatuation stage. You're idolizing them, and you're putting LO. That's the shorthand."

• 3:18Speaker 01

  So they don't say "the person that you love." They say "limerence object." Because the person that you are infatuated with is nothing but an object in your mind.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  So the limerence object, you put them on a pedestal, and then it's the crystallization process, where you have these obsessive, anxious, intrusive feelings that start popping up. And then finally, you get to the end stage, deterioration, which is when the big fall off the pedestal occurs and the feelings die off. There's a few ways that you can get out of a limerence stage. It's you have starvation, constant rejection, no interactions to overanalyze and obsess over, pretty much no contact. Feelings can fade and dissipate through one to three years, so it still takes a while. Or there's consummation, which is the feelings are reciprocated, and now the feelings start falling away. Reality sets in, the obsession falls off the pedestal, you're not into it anymore. Or the third one is transference.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  The limerence transfers to somebody new, and you start the process all over again, but with a new LO. It's profound infatuation, but a lot worse. Dorothy Tenoff, the psychologist who coined the term, she says, "An attraction pattern of falling madly in love, based on the idealization of a person which you don't have a relationship with. Often, it's someone unavailable, and then becoming lovesick because you're not getting reciprocated." A survey showed about 1,500 randomly selected citizens, more than half of them reported experiencing limerence at some point in their lives. It's cognitively the same state a lot of people enter when they're, when they start dating someone, and they don't know if that other person likes them back. But they're not really in this, like, you know, when you first start talking to someone,

• 4:59Speaker 01

  you're not in an open communication stage yet, so you can't just ask like, "Hey, how do you feel about me?" You're still kind of testing out the waters, but instead of just enjoying that, you become so fixated, it's all you can think about all day long. It's considered extremely problematic, mainly when it impairs your ability to function, it invades your life, and it also means, some people just seek out this stage. They don't like forming relationships beyond this stage, so you crave limerence the most, and you want this obsessive stage, because it's a lot of strong feelings that you almost get addicted to.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  So does that happen to people who's in the relationship a lot, or more people have it when they're single?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  A lot of people who have it are single, but they attach their LO to people who are not single. And those are people who are finding themselves in patterns of limerence, because they are seeking people who are unavailable to them.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Ah, I see, that's why there's people like, oh, some people only like someone who's taken.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yes, but, I mean, that doesn't mean everyone who likes someone taken is in a state of limerence, and we can excuse it. It's just certain people, they like to feel this almost like pain of rejection. It's, it's like, pretty painful for the person involved.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Like, the person that is feeling the limerence. Yeah. But there are lots of people who, when you go on like the r slash adultery forums, or the r slash infidelity forums, people say that they found out that their partner is cheating, and their partner is telling them that they were in a state of limerence. And it's like a very strange thing where, okay, well, should you stick around and wait for the limerence to fade, or is this not excuse enough? And it's just a whole conversation. But one person who has dealt with it for the past decade of their lives, they stay in a constant state of limerence with different LOs for just a decade. They write, "When I finally get them for real, I quickly lose interest after a few months, unless the relationship stays chaotic."

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  So these individuals will also seek out people who constantly have affairs or cheat on them, because they want to be uncertain about whether or not this person still likes them.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  So what do you do if someone, that's who they're attracted to, or that's all they want? Is there things that they can do to fix that, or?

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, usually therapy.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, lots of therapy. One person asks for advice on the Limerence subreddit. "I'm a married man, and I've developed strong feelings for a female coworker who is also married. Our interactions have been on and off. Sometimes we talk quite normally and have good conversations. Sometimes she initiates conversations herself, and sometimes we barely acknowledge each other for days. When she talks to me, I feel genuinely happy. When she doesn't talk to me, especially when she talks normally to other people but barely acknowledges me, I feel rejected, angry, and sometimes genuinely low. I start wondering if I did something wrong. The inconsistency has made me obsess over her behavior." So like, this is where it's a little bit different. Some people chase married women and men because they want to feel superior, they want to feel like, ooh, I'm the one that took you away from your partner, because I'm that

• 8:03Speaker 01

  much better, and like, usually that's a huge sign of insecurity, and something is wrong with your brain. But in this situation, it doesn't seem completely aligned. This is more so like, I don't know why, I'm just obsessed over the fact that like, some days they talk to me, and some days they don't, and it infiltrates my life. They say, "I've started analyzing ridiculous things, like how quickly she replies to Teams messages, whether she leaves me unread, whether she's online but hasn't opened my message, whether she greets me, her tone, emojis, facial expressions."

• 8:35Speaker 01

  He states

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Middle school behavior.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, he states in the Reddit, like, I don't want to pursue an affair. I don't, and I also don't want to be rude or hostile towards her. Like, he just says, I just want a professional, respectful relationship without constantly analyzing or craving her attention, and he doesn't even know how this happened. He says it feels debilitating, but he just doesn't get it. Some people on TikTok have been using limerence to explain the bizarre text messages shared between Caleb Flynn and his mistress, Aaliyah Botner. And by explain, I don't mean excuse. Some sort of explanation, I think people are looking for, for their very bizarre conversations.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Meaning they both, the people are saying that they both have that, or?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, people are saying, like, this feels like a state of limerence. Other people are saying, it feels like one of them is narcissistic and the other one is in a state of limerence. And people are debating who's in limerence and who's not in limerence, or are they both in limerence?

• 9:30Speaker 02

  I see.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  It's not an excuse, but I think people just want some sort of explanation because their conversations, their text messages that are being read out in court are so beyond bizarre. I mean, some people believe that this must be a pure case of limerence. Because what else could explain these types of messages? But that's the text messages. I don't think anything can explain the god awful song that is played in court during the trial. People always say, I would plead guilty just so nobody reads my text messages in court. They could not waterboard this information out of me. And most times, that is a very dramatic statement, but maybe not without reason. Caleb Flynn is on trial for the murder of his wife, Ashley Flynn.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  And while Caleb, his family, his attorneys, Ashley, her family, her loved ones, her supporters are all sitting in this courtroom in front of the prosecutors, the judge, the defense team, the jurors, members of the media, as well as a giant camera livestreaming the entire trial online in front of everyone. A song is played in this otherwise very silent courtroom. And it's just like echoing off the walls. The tune, the rhythm of the song is reminiscent of a pop-inspired worship song. I feel like you know exactly the tone, like, the vibe that I'm talking about. The lyrics are not of faith in any way, but a snippet of the lyrics are, we were just friends, or that's what we said. Early mornings, late nights, jokes in our head.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  The first time I saw you, the room disappeared. Love at first sight, even though I was scared. Now the third of every month hits me like rain. An anniversary carved into pain. Candles burn out, I still can't move on. Life lost its meaning the moment you were gone. If the stars had aligned just a moment more, we would be old on a porch, counting dreams, not closed doors. Still see your smile in the back of my mind, still reach for your hand. We were friends on the surface, but deep down inside you, were always my love. I love my best friend. It's hard to pinpoint the worst part of the song. It could be that there are two different versions of the song.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  It's the same lyrics, but one version of the song is in a more upbeat worship call to action tune, a little bit more pop. The second version is a little bit more depressing and sad, and you want to stare out the window of the car while it rains outside. At least that's what it's trying to be. Is that what makes it so bad? Or could it be the fact that it's AI? Caleb Flynn has used god knows how much water to create not only one, but two songs that nobody asked for.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Oh, so it's not him singing?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  No, but it sounds like him.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  But he didn't sing.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  He just used his voice.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Or maybe it's the fact that the song is being played out in court, and every single person in the puce, family members of Ashley Flynn, family and friends of the victim are being subjected to listening to every verse and every chorus of one of the worst written, weirdly produced songs. At one point, as the camera pans the audience in the courtroom, it appears like many people are trying their best not to burst out laughing. It's just ridiculous. The whole situation is ridiculous if it weren't so evil. Or maybe the worst part about this song is the fact that Caleb Flynn wrote and created it for his mistress, Aaliyah Botner. He tells her, it's your song, and these are my words to you. While the two of them talk in depth about how much they hate Caleb Flynn's wife, Ashley, the mother of their children, and they want Ashley Flynn dead.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  This is part two of the Caleb Flynn case.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the GoFundMe that directly supports Ashley Flynn's two daughters. All funds raised will be managed by Ashley's uncle and will be used for the benefit of Ashley's children. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's team of dedicated researchers, and we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. This case covers topics of gun violence, of potentially mentally manipulative DV situations. And there was a very lengthy trial that was livestreamed. Statements and quotes may be condensed and or shortened for brevity. So with that being said, let's get started. Oh, and another thing, only one individual, Caleb Flynn, has been charged and convicted of the murder of Ashley Flynn.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Anybody else that is brought into question of, oh, could they be involved? Is nothing but netizen speculation, netizen theories, netizen rumors, netizen comments. They don't reflect our individual thoughts. We're just parlaying the message to you. We're just giving you a comprehensive overview. So with that being said, let's get started. In the world of Reddit cheaters and adulterers and philanderers, there is something called OPSEC, which is a term coined by the US military. It means operational security, OPSEC, OPSEC. And it's for keeping sensitive operational information from the enemy. That's, Redditors that are cheaters will use the term OPSEC to talk about how they cheat without getting caught.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  So you're a balding 50-year-old man, and you cheat on your wife to feel like you're the man when you're not? Do you really need these terms to make it sound like you're going off to war? It's like to make yourself feel like you're better than the incapable cheater and incompetent individual that you are? It doesn't make sense. This also applies to women who cheat on their partners as well. Like, what are we doing? So much of the cheating is adding this delusional idea of self-importance to it. They're cheating because the love that they're experiencing is one in a century type of love. You know, people write books about that love. No, they don't, Phil. They don't fucking write books about your midlife in middle of nowhere America with your mid-affair partner. Like, no one writes books about that. You're fine, okay?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  They're not coming to get an autobiography anytime soon from you. Or they convince themselves that they have to live a double life or run a psy-op on their own family. Because some of these individuals on Reddit, they act like they work for the CIA and are forbidden to tell their spouse about their undercover jobs as a spy for the nation. Calm down, Linda. You work at the bank, okay? You're cheating on your family and betraying probably the best thing in your life. You're not on some sort of valiant mission for the good of the people. You have secret fondling sessions at a Chipotle parking lot. Like, that's all that's happening. But alas, here we are. There are a few divisions of OPSEC. Physical OPSEC, behavioral OPSEC, and digital OPSEC. Physical OPSEC is the obvious. Don't keep receipts for restaurants, hotels, any sort of physical thing that can be traced to the affair.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Be careful that nothing is left in your car, hair ties, earrings, obviously panties. You would think that that's like the most common one, but that's actually the one that they forget the most.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  What?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Do you mean?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know, but I've never been in a situation where I went somewhere with my undies on and left without my undies and didn't realize that I didn't have my undies on. So, yeah. You gotta be paranoid about where you meet. You ensure that you always have a prepared reason in case you bump into someone, even if you're 100 miles away from your house. You gotta be like, no, Linda, oh my God, Linda, I haven't seen you since last week. This is my insurance agent.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  If you have a secure debit card that you use to pay for hotels, don't accidentally give them your family card. This is something that happens frequently. But if you do, now you must pretend that your card was stolen, and now you have to get a new one. There's behavioral OPSEC is one of the harder things to manage because it depends on how good you are at being a shit person. One of the top rules is do not text your affair partner in front of your spouse because you will absolutely, eventually, at some point, smile or smirk at your phone, and that will set off every single alarm bell. Because I've never, which is so valid. Even if my sister is smiling at her phone, I'm like, who are you talking to? You know, who are you texting? What's going on?

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that, wow, that's, that actually is a good point.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Most people say, even if you think you've got it under wraps?

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  You don't. They say, quote, don't do it. I do not care how good of an actor you think you are. You're going to give yourself away, and you're good, they're gonna see it. You have to have agreed-upon times and stick to them. They're called dark times, where you go dark on your affair partner, and they know that you're not ignoring them, that you just have to go dark because your actual partner that you are lawfully wedded to is in the house.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Others say that they bypass that by accumulating a history of grinning at funny memes. Yeah, they said that they started months in advance and they always have a meme ready to go. So they have a text message up in and then they'll have a meme ready to go when they're texting. So that they can quickly swipe and show them the mean if they're smiling at the phone, which at that point get a job. Because what are you doing? It would seem like it would be easier to just change your name, move to Alabama and take on a new life. And careers like a peanut farmer, like, why are we doing all of this? The redditors on these rather depraved subreddits contemplate whether or not cheating on their spouse with someone single or married is safer. Obviously, if the other party, the affair partner is single, you are at the mercy of their whims.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  If they want to blow up your life, they can easily blow up your life without facing severe repercussions. But if your affair partner is also married, then you are only as good as their op sec.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Because now you and your affair partner are trying not to get caught cheating by two individuals. Your partner and their partner and two people are looking for clues. And that spouse has every incentive if they find something to go blow up your marriage now. So the best, safest option people say is not not cheating. That never comes across on the subreddits, but no, it's finding a single person who cares a lot about their reputation.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  So nobody ever says, just leave your wife, leave your husband. Go pursue whoever you want to pursue. No, that doesn't come up in these groups.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Not in these groups. Yeah. The, the only time that comes up is like, hey, if your op sec is shit. Then you're asking to get caught and you should be ready to blow up your life. Like if you're fine getting a divorce at the end, then like, go ahead, blow up your life.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Doesn't that apply to every single person in there?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they never frame it as like, hey, before you cheat, why don't you just tell your partner that you don't want to be with them anymore? But they're like, no.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so bizarre.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  They said, find a single person who has a good reputation that they care about. They have a strong social circle that will care if they are the other man or the other woman. Then they won't be incentivized to blow up your life because to some degree it'll blow up theirs. For digital op sec, there is a longstanding debate of second phone or not. Now, many opt for a second phone, but they say when you have a second phone, you have to use your main phone. Use wifi hotspot to get service on your second phone. Because if your wife finds out that you have a second phone on the plan. It's like a whole thing, okay?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  However, if you don't hide the second phone well, even if there's nothing damning on that phone, your spouse's alarms are going all the way off. Because why the hell do you have a second phone? So don't hide it. Some say, don't hide your second phone. Tell your spouse, it's your work phone. And then they do something called like getting people comfortable where they'll have their work phone. And they'll time it, they'll wipe everything, they'll tell their affair partner, do not reach out to me under any circumstances. They've got everything wiped, they leave the phone unlocked while they're showering. So they leave these moments where their actual partner is like, oh, this phone means nothing. It's just a work phone. And then now you can carry your little affair work phone around and your wife will never think anything about it. I hate these people. I hate these people so much.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  I was getting mad reading these. It's so bad.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  So sad.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  And like, get a job. It's so much work. Just get a divorce and get a job.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  One person summarizes it as work phone or treat it as a nuclear device that explodes if the wife sees it. But that is the last of people's concerns nowadays because now your fitness tracker can give you up after showing a big boost in exercise and caloric burn. When you're really someone who never works out in the middle of the day and you work in an office job. Or location tracking apps that are very difficult to uninstall. There's duping apps that there's so many Reddit threads about of how to dupe your location on things like Life360.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, cheating in the big year of 2026 is.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Impossible.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's truly.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Like, I don't think anybody can pull it off.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  No, I mean, clearly, yeah, no.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, obviously.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  It's just a matter of time.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they say, they argue, these adulterers argue, if there is a will, there's a way. You know, they say they are willing to put in like 40 hours a week. But even with considerable op sec, your chances of getting caught are never zero. One person writes, my spouse was out for the evening. I was texting on the couch with my affair partner, the couch is against the front window. He came home early and then watched me text from outside through the window. She says, honestly, we had good op sec. That was just like a wild way to get caught. Another person says, I used to book Airbnbs for rendezvous like four or five years ago. And being like a conscientious user, I would occasionally leave reviews. Fast forward to the summer and my wife is invited by Airbnb to leave a review and sees the old ones that I left.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  I explained it away as a data glitch on Airbnb's backend. That they must have been written by someone else, but attributed it to my account. My significant other believed it. I logged out of that account immediately so that there's no accidental snooping. Another person says, your number one enemy is suspicion. No matter how on point your op sec is, if your partner wants to find the truth, they are committed to looking hard enough, they will find it. Your mission is to keep them from wanting to search that hard. Everything you do should revolve around not raising suspicions. So like, that's also another thing of, hey, raise suspicions. Tighten my op sec, how long do I need to wait before I see the affair partner again?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And most people are like, once you raise suspicions, it's game over. Because now they're always looking. It could be three years from now and they're still looking.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  And then others say, if you have a very firm routine, you need to spend months creating chaos. Because routines are the first thing to give you away. If you never work out and suddenly you're working out, or if you never work late at the office and suddenly you're coming home late, they're going to be suspicious. So you need to spend months creating and introducing as much chaos into your life when the stakes are low and there's nothing to be caught. But what do you do when you have someone who is adamant about catching you talking to somebody else? So much so that they would even download and pay for a service that tracks your Instagram follows and likes. It aggregates all the recent posts that you've liked, tracking new followers, unfollowing. And they aggregate that into a weekly report that it sends you. What do you do then?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Because Caleb Flynn pays for the snoop report service, which tracks someone's Instagram profile and sends him a weekly report. He has this paid service, but it's not for his wife, Ashley Flynn. It's for his mistress, Aliyah Botner.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  The guy is.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 24:54Speaker 01

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• 27:51Speaker 01

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• 28:04Speaker 01

  He is jealous at the mere idea that Aaliyah Botner is talking to someone else. So much so that Aaliyah Botner believes he's hacking her Instagram. She says, I noticed that someone kept hacking into my Instagram. So in my email, I kept getting alerts that someone was hacking into it and it was always in a tip city location. And also, somebody was liking a lot of pictures of different people's profiles that I wasn't liking, such as guys that Caleb thought that I had feelings for. So Aaliyah thinks that Caleb was hacking into her Instagram, but I don't really think that she understands what the word hacking means because she says, well, I told him my work laptop password and it happened to be the same one as my Instagram and he just assumed and he guessed it right. And I'm like, girl, that's not hacking. That's just being fucking dumb with your cybersecurity.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Wait, he is logging into her account and liking guys' photos?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  So that he can get mad at her, is what she theorizes. Now, she could very well just be liking these photos herself.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  And then being like, I don't know, someone's hacking me, right? I don't know.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  What context are we getting this information?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  At the trial, because the prosecutors found Caleb paying for a snoop report. And the snoop reports being on Aaliyah Botner's Instagram profile. And they're asking her about it, like, do you know about this? And she's like, yeah, so I thought he was hacking me. Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Doesn't make sense. What a bizarre.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Doesn't make sense at all. Around the same time, she claims another odd thing starts occurring. She starts getting messages on Instagram from a guy named Derek Hammer, which prosecutors were able to find Caleb Flynn had set up an Instagram account for a Derek Hammer. And they're reaching out to Aaliyah Botner, pretending to be this younger, hotter, single man to lure Aaliyah in as some sort of test, if you will. And she says that she wouldn't be surprised if it was Caleb, because this is just something that he would do. She says, quote, "He would search my phone a lot. When I was singing on stage, my phone would be sitting in my office and he would go and look through my phone. I know that it was him because, like, you know, he was hacking my phone the whole time." And again, knowing someone's password does not mean that they're hacking you.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  But when Aaliyah talks about it, Caleb naturally denies that he would ever snoop. He's like, that's not me. But he has proven in all other aspects to be a low-life barnacle that lies all the time. So like, do we, do we believe anything he says? Do we believe anything she says? One of Caleb's fixations with Aaliyah Botner was this group called Run with Christ, which appears to be a run club for young members of the church. And apparently, that's a thing. In Korea, run clubs are a hotspot for affairs. Run clubs in the US, I think the Strava app, people say, is like second to Tinder.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  A running app?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they say lots of people flirt and have affairs through Strava. I don't know how it works. I prefer not to run at all if I have the choice, unless something is like chasing me, but.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  That is interesting. Like, you're running.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and every time we drive down that way, remember, we see all these young runners?

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, you're out of breath, you're like barely able to talk. Where does cheating come in, you know? Like, you're tired afterwards, you're wiped.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, but that's how they cheat, apparently. And then pickleball clubs these days.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's messy.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, pickleball clubs are very messy. Apparently, everybody's cheating at pickleball. They're cheating in the game and then cheating outside the game. It's a thing. But Aaliyah joins Run with Christ, and she also plays pickleball, so there's that. But this Run with Christ club is run by a guy named Will, and Caleb fucking hates Will. He despises Will, especially because near the end of Caleb and Aaliyah's relationship, the months leading up to Ashley's murder, Aaliyah starts dishing out deadlines of when Caleb needs to leave Ashley. And if he does not, Aaliyah will no longer engage with him. He inevitably misses these multiple deadlines that she's set forth, and Aaliyah does not, in fact, leave him. She just kind of like holds threats of dating someone else over his head. She says that she's free to date now until he divorces his wife.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  And one of Caleb's biggest fears in life is apparently not prison, but it's the idea that Aaliyah Botner is gonna date Will. Caleb texts Aaliyah, "Now, you're 100% open to date and do whatever, so it sucks so bad. I could literally throw up, thinking of you holding another man's hand or holding or kissing. Those thoughts and feelings make me so bitter and resentful of any young adults or Run with Christ thing. I'm just being transparent and honest. Any man would be a fool not to pursue you. And so those events that you go to are so hard for me."

• 32:19Speaker 02

  So on this Will guy he created, yes?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  No, Will is real. He created Derek Hammer.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Oh, Derek Hammer, okay. And that guy is irrelevant?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Irrelevant. It's just Caleb showing his obsessive jealous behavior.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Okay, that didn't go nowhere.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Okay. And Will is a real guy?

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And he hates Will. He says, you know, "People think I'm taken, so no woman would approach or pursue me. You're the opposite. You've been asked out by several guys. You were pursued by others. Guys want you and it just sucks beyond belief. I want to know everything you do, but at the same time, I know it kills me and it's not healthy. It's a constant freaking battle in my mind and heart. I know you know what I'm talking about, but I'm just affirming again. I hate Douche, I hate her with everything that I do." Aaliyah doesn't agree. She says, "I understand your pain and I go through these things every day when you only do a few times a month." So she's saying, "I only go to Run with Christ a few times a month. However, you live with Ashley every single day." But Caleb argues back, "Well, these clubs have not ruined your life.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  They have not put you in a prison and literally crucified any possibility of a future. And yet, they are easy to talk about with me. Talking about how Douche is so different, as I said, I hate her and she's ruined and taken everything from me. You know I hate her. I can't even stand the sight of her or the mention of her." He argues it's not the same. He says, "It's gonna piss you off, but you know what? At Run with Christ, you hug guys, you talk to guys, you spend all day with them. I'm not there. I don't talk to Ashley, I don't hug her, I don't spend time around her. Yes, I know I share a living space at the moment, but I'm beyond distant with her. I ignore her at all costs. I don't like her posts, I don't follow all kinds of other girls. I'm not minimizing your feelings, what you go through sucks and it's awful. But whether you believe it or not, I hate this stupid bitch, I hate her guts, and I literally run away from her at all costs.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Every young adult event you go to, you hell, you laugh, you talk to guys. I don't ever talk to her." To which, Aaliyah just responds, "Wouldn't you be worried if I didn't go insane about you living with another woman and doing life with another woman? I need her gone, Caleb." Which the irony is not lost on anybody aside from Caleb and Aaliyah, because Aaliyah is, in fact, the other woman. But she continues, "You know how awful it's been for me? If you want me when I'm healed, just tell me. I already warned you way ahead of time that it's gonna take a long time for me to heal after that cruise. I don't mean to keep bringing it up, but it has changed my entire life." They get into a whole back and forth, and eventually Caleb shows his real colors by snapping at Aaliyah and saying, "Yeah, just let me know if your R-worded singles club is the most important thing in your life or me. That will be the determining factor."

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Caleb apologizes the next morning, but he also says things like, "You're still gonna hug guys? You'll accidentally like posts, you'll travel with Bryce, Will, Isaiah, Garrison, and more? If you can hug and like guys' posts, then it will all fall under the umbrella of we're not together and we took a step back, so you'll do all those things and feel no guilt or feel no need to protect me. All the while, I will still distance myself from the whore, because regardless of us, I will always hate her and want nothing to do with her." In another message, and he takes a softer tone with Aaliyah, saying, "I want you, I want us. It's just so hard. You want me apart from her and I totally understand that. I'm gonna give you that. And I want you apart from Will and Run with Christ. Not assuming, just again, sharing my heart. I don't feel like you're willing to do that. You even said yesterday, you want the opportunities that Will can give you."

• 35:35Speaker 01

  He asks that as a show of faith that she unfollow Will on Instagram. And he reiterates to her, "Just like you hate Douche, I hate Will. You can't stand me being anywhere near her, even the thought of anything about her, as I can't stand you near Will or even following the R-worded dude. I'm here for you, baby. I hate her, I despise her, I will be leaving her. There's no doubt in my heart and you are it. P.S. I'm not insecure when you listen to Will speak." So I guess Will speaks at church sometimes. He says, "I'm not insecure when you listen to Will speak. I've heard enough of his snippets. He sucks at speaking and is as monotone and boring to listen to as ever. Not sure why you sent him that long message saying you admired him."

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Wait, what is going on with Will? Or do you know, are there something going on with Aaliyah?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  And it doesn't seem like anything is going on.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  It seems like perhaps, yeah, maybe Aaliyah kind of had a crush on Will. Maybe Will reciprocated a little bit, considering she's single, or at least everyone thought she was. But it didn't amount to anything significant, but we do know that she sent him some sort of message saying that she admires him and probably his. Faith in God that she clearly lacks a lot of.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. But they get into another lengthy argument about Aaliyah unfollowing Will and Caleb unfollowing Ashley, which is kind of crazy, but Caleb argues, you unfollowing Will has no repercussions besides maybe a blow to his effing ego. Me leaving douche ruins my daughter's lives and yet I would still probably do it. I hate her. I despise her. I want nothing to do with her. Their self-centered idiocy warrants a medical study because Caleb argues that he needs Aaliyah to unfollow Will as a sign for him that she's willing to fight for their love too. Yeah. He says, it will showed me that you're willing to do something for love. I know you do a lot. I'm not saying you don't. And again, this may make no sense to you, but there are things you have said to me that you need to see me do before you can marry me.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  And I've done them and I'm willing to do the biggest one of all, which will shatter my daughter's lives and set me on a course of hell with her family and possibly friendships and church relations. But I have and will do those things, basically saying he will divorce his wife. I need you to do this.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  The only reason he's given that he's not leaving his wife is the kids.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, he claims that he wants full custody of both of his daughters. Now I couldn't find anyone even saying that he is the most phenomenal dad.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  So I don't even, I think he's just using it as an excuse. And Aaliyah argues that she will unfollow Will as long as he divorces his wife. And Caleb says, if you told somebody our entire situation and told them that I was going to divorce her, quit my job, leave my house, lose my daughters full time for you. And that all I was asking for you was to unfollow someone, they would probably laugh and ask why you haven't done it yet. Aaliyah just responds, leave her, leave her, leave the woman that means nothing. I was going to leave her sometime before Thanksgiving. It doesn't matter anymore. You give up and said we don't work. You would rather have your connection to Will. Thank you seriously for breaking my heart and shattering my jeans. Aaliyah doesn't buy it. She's like, Caleb, let's just face it. You don't want to give up your girls for full time. You're going to punish me for it forever and you choose her in a life with her. Please don't lead me on any longer.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  And it's very clear throughout the course of this trial that Caleb Flynn is a highly unlikable defendant. The defense, who are ultimately just doing their jobs at the end of the day, they do try and let the jurors know ahead of time in their opening statements that this is an unlikable defendant. They do the whole, hey jurors, great members of society. This guy is trash. We don't even like him. You're certainly not going to like him. Nobody likes him. But just because we don't like him, does that mean he's guilty of murder? They do that whole spiel in the opening statement. The defense says Ashley Flynn deserves justice and a tragedy deserves more than a theory. The state of Ohio has pinned its entire case on the flawed claim that simply because Caleb Flynn had motive to leave his wife, that he instead murdered her and manipulated the scene.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  They say at times Caleb said ugly, hurtful, selfish things about his wife Ashley to appease his mistress. And at the same time, the evidence will show a warm and loving text message relationship between Caleb and Ashley regularly, which I'm like, I think that makes it so much worse.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  We're not going to stand here and excuse Caleb for this, stated plainly, Caleb betrayed Ashley as a husband. This trial is not the first time that any of you have heard about a man having an affair and lying about it. Caleb is not on trial for being a bad husband. He's not on trial for cheating. You're not here to deliberate on whether or not you like Caleb. You certainly are not here to render a verdict on whether or not you approve or condone of his actions. This is an aggravated murder trial. A man can fail as a husband without being a murderer and a man can make selfish decisions without committing a crime. So how do we end up here with Caleb sitting next to us on trial for murder? Well, they say the investigation was plagued with errors, bias, convenience, lack of integrity and a rush to judgment.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  And that's why Caleb is sitting here on trial for murder. The defense tries to focus their arguments on a few key things, like the fact that, yes, there are lots of strange things happening in that house. However, the garage side door being broken in in an atypical way. Yes, it's odd, right? Like that's the point of entry for this so-called intruder. So yeah, it's very odd. But nothing says it's odd because of Caleb. Just because something is odd doesn't mean it's attributed to the defendant, right? I will say the door is such a big point of contention, in fact, that it was ripped out of the wall, taken into evidence before the trial, and it was dragged ultimately into the courtroom for everybody to see. The doorknob is broken off. There is some damage, visual damage to the frame of the door, but it's from inside the house, not from the outside.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  One of the responding officers testifies that this is not consistent with other break-ins that they've seen.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  What does that mean from inside? Like someone pulled it?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  It looks like they're kicking it or using some sort of tool from the inside of the garage to break off the doorknob. And then what's worse than that is investigators, they found out that when the doorknob was broken off, because they can identify these things, it wasn't even locked. So.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  So it's unlocked and it was most likely open.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which I guess the defense is saying like, why would Caleb be so dumb that he damages the door from the inside of the house? I mean, he would definitely be that dumb. Caleb also has an Apple Watch and an Oura ring. Authorities believe that Ashley Flynn was killed around one thirty AM. Around one nineteen AM, Caleb's Apple Watch starts recording step data. He had said that he was asleep on the couch. The dogs woke him up. He went to his daughter's room and then fell asleep again. However, his Apple Watch data starts recording heart rates. Now, the evidentiary weight in the heart rates lies in the fact that the heart rates were recorded. So somebody is wearing the Apple Watch. Steps are being logged. They're being taken. But the heart rates themselves aren't super alarming.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  The step data is very difficult for prosecutors to exactly pinpoint, but but it is weird. So his step data is one nineteen AM, eighteen steps. One twenty-two AM, eighteen steps. One twenty-three AM, thirty-four steps. One fifty-two AM, twenty-one steps. Two eighteen AM, a hundred and five steps. And then it seems like he takes off his Apple Watch around that time because there are zero steps.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  When was the cop called?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Around that time, like two thirty.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Which would go against his story that he was asleep all night until he woke up from hearing the gunshots. If anything, that, I mean, that's a lot of steps.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  There's a lot of, that's not even just, oh, I got it from the couch and that's the data that it was logging. It's just a lot of steps. As for more digital data, there is another random component that people have been debating heavily online, which is Caleb's AirPod case was found, but his AirPods were not found anywhere in the residence. People lose their AirPods all the time. What's the big deal, right? Well, Caleb's phone data shows that his AirPods were connected to his phone at two twenty-nine AM and then disconnected at two fifty AM. Oh, sorry. I think they were called at like three, the cops.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  What?

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it doesn't appear that any audio was playing, which means doesn't speculate that he was using the AirPods just as ear protection for the gunshots. Because you can blow your eardrum out.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Oh, that's gnarly.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, some people thought that originally he was playing music to hype himself up, but there was no, it seems like the evidence leans more towards there was no music playing.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  But why would it be gone then? If he's just using it as a plug?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  I will say he's pretty suspicious. So I don't know if he got rid of it with the gun. Because later on, he starts Googling things like, does your iPhone record video even if it's not on and not recording? So I don't know if he thinks that maybe his AirPods could record loud noise.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  But then also this gun missing is so suspicious, no?

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. People think the one hundred and five steps, his house is in a cul-de-sac. And it's a pretty wooded area behind. People think that he found a way to hide the gun. Now, the officers did do a drone search, a grid search. They even looked under the shed. They lifted the shed with a crane, looked under the shed. But people theorize that maybe he taped the gun high up on a tree. Because that's a place that typically is a little bit harder to find.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. That's crazy. Wait. Wow. I'm trying to understand a hundred and five steps. That, is that like, hmm, okay, anyways.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Some people think that the gun could be in the attic. The, I mean, I will say authorities did look pretty intensely for the gun, which is why it's puzzling. Because Caleb is not somebody that strikes most people as someone with superior thought processes. So it seems as if the gun would have been easily found, but it's the one thing that people just cannot write their, they're like, he's an idiot. Where's the fucking gun? We don't know where the gun is. And the police searched thoroughly. They even searched into the attic. There is lots of insulation in the attic. They bought one of those industrial vacuums. They rented it. They sucked in the insulation. But because the way that the attic is set up, most attics, you can't get rid of a hundred percent of the insulation.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  So they were able to search the attic as thoroughly as possible, but it could be plausible. Possible, well, I think it could be possible, but not plausible. That maybe Caleb chucked the gun into the attic like a frisbee into a section where the insulation could not have been taken out.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  And he is in construction, so some people think maybe he knows a thing or two about construction. It's unclear. All we know is the gun was not found to this day. One that is in writes, I cracked it. I know exactly where the gun is. He flips open his forehead and hides it in there.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  One of the first things that the officers do is canvas the neighborhood, looking for any cameras that they can go through, Ring doorbell footage, outdoor censored cameras. One of the neighbors that live left of the Flynn's, they have Ring doorbell cameras. Officers go through it and the only footage that they find is law enforcement showing up, which someone could have very well approached the Flynn house on foot, evaded that Ring doorbell camera away from the neighbors. And technically, your dog could be the second reincarnation of Bigfoot. So anything is possible in this world. But law enforcement agencies are just like, hmm, that's weird and it doesn't make any sense.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Like if there's a robbery, how is that not as he's captured?

• 47:06Speaker 01

  And usually robbery, something is taken and people come with getaway cars.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Because you're taking things. And along with the fact that there were cameras inside the Flynn residence that were conveniently not on or not working that night. Caleb had registered three cameras with Amazon, a front door camera, back door camera, a living room camera for his house. But they were all last online, January twenty-six, twenty twenty-six, over two weeks before Ashley's murder. So people think this is even more premeditated. This is also around the time that Aaliyah Butler takes a very odd trip to Clearwater, Florida, where she's going to drop her phone in the ocean, lose her laptop and get a burner phone. This Florida trip just like befuddles my mind. I don't understand it. I can't, conceptually, I get it, but I really cannot form an opinion or feeling about this trip.

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• 50:52Speaker 01

  January 22nd to 24th of 2026, Aaliyah takes a trip to Clearwater, Florida by herself and with her dog. She describes it as, "It was just kind of like a solo getaway trip, just to spend time alone with my dog. It was after Caleb and I had ended things. I just needed to kind of get away and have time to myself, just like a three small day trip. That was it." She says that she goes to the beach with her dog, took him on walks, brought him to coffee shops, watched movies in the hotel room. Oh, and she went kayaking, where her phone slips out of the kayak and falls into the ocean. She says that when her phone slipped into the abyss of the ocean, she said, quote, "I waited for a second. I was contemplating whether I wanted to jump in my clothes or leave it in there, and then I did. I went in and I got it."

• 51:33Speaker 01

  So she gets her phone. She said it was too late for her phone, though, which it just, it wouldn't work anymore. She claims that she went back to Ohio and took it to a Walmart to try to get it fixed, but they couldn't fix it. So that's the thing with her phone on this trip. But also on this trip, she loses her work laptop. She testifies, quote, "Yeah, I lost it. I genuinely, it was completely innocent. I do these things a lot. Anyone who knows me knows that I lose things and I run out of gas. I forget things all the time. So I remember putting my luggage on the overhead, like where you put your luggage on the airplane, and I think I put my laptop under my bookbag. And so as I was leaving, I must have forgotten it on the plane. I did file a claim to Frontier and also to the Tampa Airport and the Cincinnati Airport, just in case. I don't remember where I left it, and I just wanted to see if they could find it, and they couldn't find it."

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Now, this is where it's weird. We just have a word for it. We just have a word that she went to Walmart. The investigators did not pull bank statements, did not pull Walmart CCTV footage, nothing. We also just have a word that she filed this claim with airlines. We didn't see the claim. Law enforcement agencies did not get warrants for these claims, nothing. So she says that she didn't realize that she lost her work laptop until she got back home. Which is odd, and it's happening around the same time that the Flynn residence's house cameras are all go offline for the first. It just is so, I mean, I think the timing is definitely coincidental, if anything. It's just odd timing for everything to occur. And other odd things the defense wants the netizens to really focus on, because of course, the defense, they have incentive to paint Aaliyah as the crazier one.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  In their cross-examination, they ask Aaliyah on the stand, "Did he show you something from his center console?" "Yes." "What did he show you?" "He showed me his gun that was in there." So now they're establishing, she conveniently, her phone broke. She had to get a burner phone in Florida. She conveniently lost her work laptop, and then now she knows where the gun is in the console. Who knows where the gun is? She knows where the gun is. "What did he tell you about where he would keep it?" "Yeah, he just said he would keep it in the console." And then the defense is like, "Can you describe it to the jury?" And she's like, "Describe his console?" And they're like, "The gun." "Oh, I'm sorry. I don't fully remember what the gun looked like. He only showed me once when I was in the car with him. He just, I think randomly just told me he had a gun in his console."

• 53:43Speaker 02

  So also, she said they broke up right before that trip?

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yes, but they constantly break up. She gives him a deadline. He doesn't meet the deadline, and they break up, and they go through this whole, "I'm gonna date other people. No, but I don't even want to date other people because I only love you, and this is so unfair." And then they get back together, and it's...

• 54:00Speaker 02

  So that's not the last they're talking?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  No. They didn't talk for a while, but they start talking again.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Up until...

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Like a week or two into February, it seems.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Oh, so they're still talking even after...

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, after the trip.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  All the way till the night?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  They have a while they don't talk, but they are talking the night before.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. That burner phone that Aaliyah got after her phone was submerged into ocean water was never confiscated by law enforcement, so there is that. And it's also like, it's not like she just had this burner phone and never used it. She clearly used it frequently. She admits to, quote, "I probably was purchasing more minutes for that phone." One of the biggest arguments, however, for this case is, for Caleb, it can be used for him and against him, is, "What the hell is this guy's plan? Like, there's no way that he wasn't going to get caught. It didn't even take a while for him to become the prime suspect for law enforcement. It just doesn't make sense. Why didn't he just get a divorce? Did he really care about his image and reputation at the church? So much so, because it's likely that he wouldn't even have been able to go to that church after the divorce, because Ashley and her family have been there for four generations.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  It would just be awkward. If anyone's leaving the church, it's probably him." Many think it's a combination of narcissism and delusion mixed with entitlement. He didn't realize that everything he had was because of his wife. So he has a respected family with loving children that everybody adores. Most people adore his wife. He's just like, "I guess he's fine because we love his wife." Like, there's nothing inherently bad about him that people saw. But they're not like, "Oh, my God, Caleb is the best." Most people are like, "Oh, my God, Ashley is the best." Oh, and that's Ashley's husband. So he must be good. He had a very cushy job, getting paid $200,000 a year, because he was hired by Ashley's dad. He was seen generally as an upstanding guy because he's Ashley's husband.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  But he, I think netizens are saying that he started believing that these things were from his own doing. So he starts feeling entitled to a life where he could have it all. He feels like he could be this wonderful religious person. He could get praise. He could have a well-paying job. He could have a loving family, and he could also have a younger girlfriend. And it's clear that he knows there is a lot at risk. In one text message, Caleb complains to Aaliyah that if he were to divorce his wife, you made a comment that you said that you're more than willing to sacrifice more. I honestly can't even believe that you typed that out. I think I'm willing to sacrifice my daughter's a quarter million dollar job salary, which he like bumped it up $50,000, but that's the least of... A place to live, possibly a church that I serve at, public shame and humiliation and way

• 56:31Speaker 01

  more. Yet, that's what I'm willing to sacrifice. I've asked you to unfollow Will.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Big sacrifice there.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  So netizens think that Caleb was understanding if he divorces Ashley, he's not gonna keep working with Ashley's dad. That's weird. He's gonna get the girls, you know, maybe half the time. Maybe Ashley and her family would even tell people the truth, like he was having an affair. Or just the timing of him getting together with Aaliyah after. It's like, it's pretty clear he was having an affair. He's gonna lose all of that. However, if Ashley is murdered, he could probably still work with Ashley's parents because it's, that's still the dad of their grandbabies.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he doesn't want to give up everything that makes him feel like he's this special person.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  He would get more praise at the church for being a widower. He would keep the house. He would, everyone would baby him more. I guess in his mind, he thought it made sense. Because he's that narcissistic and delusional. Ashley's parents, Jill and Todd, testified during the trial. And it's very clear that they treated Caleb like they would a son. They would see him once a week. They frequently went on vacations together that Ashley's parents funded most of. They would get pizza on Sunday nights. For the past fifteen years, Caleb has gone to pretty much every single Smith family vacation. And they don't do it annually. They do it multiple times a year. Except the last one, he didn't go to because he was sick. And Ashley's parents did think it was weird. Ashley's mom Jill says, prior to Ashley's death, she thought that Ashley

• 57:57Speaker 01

  and Caleb's relationship was good, but a bit strained. Ashley was not the type to talk to people about her relationship. She, even with her parents, she's super close with Jill. But Jill says, she always wanted us to think the best of Caleb. But Jill, being her mom, would pick up on it here and there. She says, she was a little strained. It just, I think you could see that there was not a lot of peace in their home. And I couldn't pinpoint why. And I don't think that she could pinpoint why either. Ashley's parents were so generous in their love for their kids. And by default, their daughters, husbands, and the family members, because, so they have Ashley, and they have Ashley's younger sister, who is also married. They also have two daughters. And well, now they have four daughters because they've taken in, um, Ashley's two daughters. Yeah.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Todd, Ashley's dad was going to retire. And you know how a lot of people, when they become successful in their lives, that inheritance gets passed on to their children when they pass. But by that point, their children are also much older. And so he said that he was going to gift the kids the family business while everyone is still young. Ashley's sister testifies, and she says, you know, my dad was planning on retiring and talked with his financial advisor. And he joked that he read a book called Die For. And it was talking about how giving up a lot of the inheritance now while the kids are still younger, that's what he wanted to do for us. The plan was literally just to gift us his business. We had a meeting with the financial advisor, and with through tears in his eyes, my dad talked about how, I'm gonna give you guys this business as a gift now, so that you

• 59:25Speaker 01

  can enjoy life like we have been able to enjoy life. I'm not asking for anything in return, except a consulting fee over the next few years.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Wait, this is recent?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  A few months before Ashley's murder.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. That explains a lot.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  So Ashley would be inheriting, yes.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  So it's not just, oh, you're gonna get fired.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. Then that means he-

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Inheriting the assets.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  Right. And there's no way he wants a divorce at that point. It reminds me of the saying that I saw that, you know, when someone's like, good to a partner, they don't think that the partner is nice. They think they're better. They deserve it. This is who they are. Rather than, oh, everyone's so nice. Your partner's so nice.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  It's so crazy. And I think this has even caused people to become very paranoid. Because, I mean, I think when people saw Ashley's family testifying, like, they did everything for the benefit of everyone in their family. Like, there was no weird competitiveness. It was nothing. But Caleb, like you said, just genuinely thought that he deserved it. Instead of, oh, you're so blessed to have Ashley and her family. There's also like, a whole netizen conversation online of when parents are giving inheritance to their kids, that they need to have clauses where it excludes their partners. And that's become very controversial because some people are like, well, that's just messed up. Other people are saying, that's, I mean, look at what's happening these days in crime.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  So it's just, it's very tricky. Ashley's parents, they remained a point of contention for Caleb and Aaliyah. Aaliyah hates that Caleb was close to Ashley's parents. She seemed like she wanted confirmation that Caleb hates her parents too, as much as he hates Ashley. Aaliyah says that Caleb would often tell her that he can't stand any of the Smiths, which are Ashley family members. He just has to put up with them because they all work together. Quote, "He would say that he hated them. He would say that he doesn't like being around them, that he didn't like Todd as a boss, that he just expressed to me that he loathed them." In one text message, Caleb says, "I'm not nice to douche because I hate her, and she cheated on me and ruined my life. Todd, I can't stand and don't get along with him, but I'm still Christlike because I have to work with him at this point." And it's like, what do you mean you have to work with him? He employs you and overpays

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  you. You don't have to fucking work with him or do anything. Get a job elsewhere. When talking about leaving Ashley, Aaliyah asks if Caleb would ever miss Ashley's parents, the Smiths, his in-laws, the grandparents to his children. And she's like, do you think you would ever miss the Smiths? He doesn't respond. She says, sorry for even asking. Hard for you to answer, or something? Caleb finally responds, what? No, not even for a second. Aaliyah's response is, praise God. I don't even know what that means. But just like how Caleb feeds Aaliyah lies about how much he hates his in-laws, meanwhile, he's getting along with them. The same thing is happening between Caleb and Ashley. There are text messages expressing love for each other just two days before her murder. Ashley

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  texts Caleb, asking what she should wear for Valentine's Day, and he asks her to surprise him. Ashley seemed to know that her marriage was not without trouble, but it seemed like Caleb gave her every indication that she was safe and that they were gonna get through it. So she was putting in a lot of effort. Aaliyah Bonner's testimony should be a reminder to affair partners out there that messages are indeed forever, because Aaliyah is testifying on the stand that Caleb would send her pictures just about every day of what she's asked, quote, "normal pictures of his girls or his self, and also unfortunately nude pictures."

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  Of, of him?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Her testimony is very brutal to listen to. Are there notable questions that she's asked on the stand? "In your group meet communications, how often did the defendant express negative thoughts and feelings about Ashley?" "Just about every day." "In your communications with the defendant, how many times did he express that he wished Ashley Flynn was not in his life?" "Every week at least." "How often would he make statements about wanting Ashley to die?" "That's probably at least once a month." "Can you describe what he said when he was stating things about wanting Ashley to die?" "Yeah, he said that he just wishes if he could kill her and not go to jail or get arrested. I forget exactly what he said, that he would do it." Again, I cannot find anything that Caleb and Aaliyah bonded over, other than being shitty people and frolicking in fast food chain parking

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  lots and hating Ashley for no reason. Aside from that, the only other connection that I could find was, Aaliyah testifies, "One of the first things we bonded over was Harry Potter. So we got a lightning bolt tattoo. They have matching tattoos." She states, she states hers is on the arm, and she shows the jurors her arm, which by the way, that's the location of where the Death Eater tattoo is. So I don't think that she really loves Harry Potter, so she has a lightning bolt strike, where like, they have the death-

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  On her forearm?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, where the little Voldemort's little followers get their Death Eater skull and serpent tattoos.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  What is it? Just, just a-

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  A lightning bolt, like the, on his forehead. Yeah. But since it's so obviously on Aaliyah's arm, which by the way, I have a lot of contentions with that, because my first experience getting bullied by an adult as a child was from my youth pastor leader, because I was reading Harry Potter, and he said that that's like, the devil's word. So I don't know, I don't know how it works in their church, but to even go and get a lightning bolt tattoo is crazy.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  And where is his?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  He can't get one on his arm, because that's so obvious, right? So he got it on his pit, his armpit. Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  He got a matching lightning bolt tattoo.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  Like, if you shave the hair, you can see it. So it's hidden?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  It's a secret tattoo?

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  A secret Harry Potter tattoo. And even, even, even in court, they straight up ask Aaliyah, "How'd that make you feel? That you're getting a matching tattoo with someone who placed it in the armpit?" And she says, "I think at the time I understood." Live netizen comments for this line of questioning, literally just read, "Ain't no fucking way." Yeah. The police also find an email to a star registry website on Caleb's phone. He bought a freaking star for his mistress and named it Aaliyah Star, which sounds more like a porn star name than a constellation. And that is where I leave you with the first half of this part. The next part will be up very soon, where we're gonna go down Caleb's

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  American Idol life journey, as well as his, yeah, as well as his verdict, and probably the most powerful, impactful victim statements I've ever heard in court, from his own daughters. Yeah. But stay tuned for part two, and I will see you there.

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