After seven hours of deliberation in July, a jury found Ashley Benefield guilty in what has become known as the “Black Swan” murder case. The former ballet dancer admitted to shooting her estranged husband Douglas, but there were vastly different stories in court presented behind that shooting.
In the end, the jury found her guilty of manslaughter, a lesser charge than the second-degree murder sought by the prosecution. She is scheduled to be sentenced on October 22 and faces up to 30 years in prison.
Her legal team filed multiple motions requesting a new trial, claiming prosecutorial and juror misconduct, per ABC News. Now, in an exclusive new interview with True Crime News, Dr. Barbara Russell pulls back the curtain on that fateful night
Dr. Russell was the psychotherapist who evaluated both Ashley and Doug amid their contentious custody battle. Along with her story, never-before-seen reenactment photos featuring Ashley after the shooting shared exclusively by True Crime News paint a vivid picture of her final moments with her husband.
The psychotherapist was granted special permission by Ashley herself to speak with the outlet, with Dr. Russell saying she was encouraged to do so because “much of the information that has been put forth in the media has been very biased and very one-sided and unfortunately the public has gotten a very distorted perception of the events that happened leading up tot he incident and who Ashley is as a person and she’s hoping that things will be more clear after I speak about her.”
Check local listings for True Crime Newsshowtimes in your area to keep up with all the latest in true crime.
Dr. Russell was very candid and forthcoming in all of her answers with True Crime Newsexcept that she couldn’t speak to why these reenactment photos — in which Ashley, wearing an ankle monitor after her arrest, is seen showing what allegedly happened during the shooting — and accompanying animation, were not shown to the jury.
When reporter Ana Garcia noted that she didn’t understand the totality of terror in that moment until she saw them. “How is it possible that the jury never got to see these reenactment photos and the animation, which really tells a completely different story than what was told in court?” she asked.
In response, Dr. Russell noted that as a forensics medical health professional, she couldn’t speak to why none of this material was presented at trial, but she could speak to what the reenactment photos and animation were attempting to portray.
She explained that on the day that the shooting happened, Doug was at the house to help load the moving truck. “They were both moving to Maryland,” Russell explained, “separately but together.”
It was while Doug was helping with the packing and moving that things started to change, per Russell. “He started to become aggressive, body checking her when he walked by her, slamming her in the hip or in the stomach with a box a couple of times,” said Russell.
“She wanted him to leave,” Russell continued. Then, Ashley attempted to leave — with Russell saying, “She managed to get out of her room when he had turned around and moved, and went towards the front door.”
“So, here she is in her own home ready to run out the front door because Doug was scaring her, and he wouldn’t leave,” the therapist claimed. “He pursued her, grabbed her by the arm, pulled her away from the front door, kind of spun her around and stood between her and the door.”
At this point, according to Russell, Doug “punched her in the side of the head,” which sent Ashley running to her bedroom “for cover.” The therapist said that Doug pursued her to the room, at which point “she grabbed the gun,” and “was pointing it at him.”
Russell said that even this gesture didn’t slow down Doug, who “continued to pursue her.” It was in the heat of this moment, and while attempting to stay away from him, that Ashley allegedly fired.
Self-defense is what Ashley’s legal team argued in court, but it was clear the jury didn’t completely buy that, based on their guilty verdict for manslaughter. Dr. Russell, though, can’t see any other possibility.
She told True Crime News, “There is no way on earth that this woman that I psychologically evaluated, that I spoke to nearly every day for six months after that, because of my safety concerns for her, and that also lived in my house for nearly eight months– there is no way on earth that she ever would have grabbed a gun and pointed it at anybody unless she sincerely, truly believed that her life was in imminent danger right there in that moment. It is absolutely impossible.”
When the verdict came back against her, Dr. Russell said Ashley was “absolutely shocked.” She added, “She really thought she was going home that night. She couldn’t understand how it wasn’t clear that she defended her life.”
Ashley even took the stand in her own defense at trial, testifying that while she had killed her husband, it was done in self-defense after he became physically abusive.
One witness, Bruce Ferris, a mental health professional specializing in domestic and family traumas, testified that Ashley’s displayed behaviors fit the pattern of someone who’s a victim of domestic abuse. He called them “techniques of compliance, not wanting to poke the bear.”
Dr. Jason Quintal, who’d worked with the couple in the past, described Doug as “somebody who was domineering” and “super-controlling.” A realtor, Vincent Vizzaccaro, testified that Doug had wanted to buy a house directly behind the one Ashley was living in during their separation.
Finally, a forensics expert, Michael Haag, took the stand and talked about bullet trajectories from the crime scene. He testified that Ashley had to have been moving during the shooting, which sits in stark contrast to the prosecution saying she shot her husband from behind.
According to the prosecution, Ashley murdered her husband so she could be a single mother.
“This case is about a woman who very early on in her pregnancy decided she wanted to be a single mother,” argued Assistant State Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell. “She would stop at nothing to obtain that goal.”
They presented their own evidence about the shooting, as well. “Based on entry wounds on Douglas it does not appear that he was facing Ashley when she began shooting,” the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said in an affidavit received by The New York Post.
“It also does not appear that Douglas had taken any kind of defensive or combative stance. He was not found to have any weapons on his person or near him,” the affidavit continued.
It’s conclusion: “Detectives found no evidence that she was acting in self-defense when she fired multiple shots at her husband.”
Ashley and Douglas first met in 2016 at a GOP fundraiser in Palm Beach when she was 24 years old. A trained dancer, Ashley shared her aspirations to open her own ballet company. Two weeks after they met, the couple was married and he was funding her studio.
According to the prosecution, things took a turn when the money started to run out and Ashley’s ballet company faltered. An ensuing divorce battle turned ugly with allegations of infidelity on both sides and abuse.
While they were only married for four years, Ashley filed allegations of abuse against Douglas multiple times, including a story that he’d shot a gun at the ceiling to “shut her up,” that he’d kicked their dog unconscious, and that he’d even tried to poison her while she was pregnant.
Throughout the trial, it was revealed that the couple was estranged when their daughter, now six, was born with Doug only finding out Ashley had given birth when she filed a restraining order against him, per WTVT.
A judge previously found no evidence of abuse by Douglas in relation to these allegations, the NY Post reported. The prosecution argued that all of this was part of a calculated strategy by the defendant to gain sole custody of their child. And when that didn’t work, she took even more extreme measures.
They enjoyed a period of reconciliation after that, per the outlet, until Ashley shot and killed her husband in September 2020.
True Crime News airs in syndication nationwide. Check local listings for when and where to catch the latest, up-to-the-minute news in your area.
