‘The Black Swan’ Breaks Silence About Killing Husband: ‘Worst Nightmare’

Ashley Benefield, the former ballerina convicted of manslaughter in the killing of her husband, broke her silence in a new interview where she recounted the moments leading up to the fatal shooting.
Benefield appeared in an episode of ABC’s 20/20 titled “The Pointe of No Return,” which aired on Friday and described the deadly night as “the worst nightmare.”
The 32-year-old who once stumped with former President Donald Trump admitted to fatally shooting her husband, 58-year-old Navy veteran Douglas “Doug” Benefield, in a Lakewood Ranch, Florida, home in September of 2020.
She was initially charged with second-degree murder but was found guilty of the lesser offense of manslaughter. The trial has commonly been called the “Black Swan Murder Trial” in reference to the 2010 psychological thriller film Black Swan.
Ashley Benefield recalled her reaction to finding out the shots she fired at her husband, Doug Benefield, were fatal.
“I was horrified, like the worst nightmare,” Ashley Benefield said in the interview.
A former ballerina, she met her husband Doug Benefield in 2016 at a political fundraiser at Dr. Ben Carson’s home in Palm Beach, Florida.
“He was charming, very funny, really smart, confident but quiet,” she said. “We were there for political reasons, but then also he was a man of faith. We shared similar interests.”
One of those shared interests was a passion for guns.
“We both had very strong opinions about the Second Amendment,” she said. “That was something we bonded over. I had a concealed carry permit. I wanted to be a responsible gun owner.”
The two quickly became swept up in a whirlwind romance.
“I think it was about four days in when he first told me he loved me,” Ashley Benefield said.
She was 24 and he was 54 at the time. They got married 13 days after they first met at a private ceremony, with just two of Doug’s friends.
Ashley Benefield said it was not a traditional proposal.
“It was more of like, ‘hey, you know, we should just do this, like let’s get married.’ And I was like, ‘oh yeah, OK,” she said.
Despite the unconventional nature of their budding relationship, she said she was happy at the time.
“I was thrilled,” she said. “Yeah, I felt like I had finally met my soulmate.”
The marriage came to a tragic end in 2020 when Ashley Benefield shot her husband in what she claimed was an act of self-defense.
“I thought he was actually going to kill me this time,” she said.
Doug Benefield was helping her load things into a U-Haul ahead of a planned move to Maryland. The two were living separately at the time.
The two began, and it later became a physical altercation. She claimed that he pushed a moving box into her side.
“He ended up trapping me and I tried to leave. He hit me,” she said.
She said she ran into her bedroom after he allegedly hit her in the face. She then reached for her gun.
“He had never hit me before. I thought he would stop if you saw it,” she said.
Ashley Benefield claimed that her husband lunged at her. She then fired four shots, with two shots hitting his body.
She alleged that her husband had acted abusively toward her prior to that day.
“He would yell and scream and cuss,” she said. “And like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, things would be happy and OK one moment and then the next minute he was out of control.”
In 2017, the two had a heated argument that continued to escalate.
“He pulls a gun out and started moving it around,” she said. “He threw the gun at me. He said that if I left that he was going to kill himself.”
She claimed he fired a shot into the ceiling. At a court hearing, Doug Benefield discredited his wife’s account of the incident and denied threatening to kill himself.
Ashley Benefield recalled finding out she was pregnant a few months later.
“It was supposed to be like a happy thing, but my heart dropped,” she said.
She got very sick during her pregnancy and decided to move in with her mother.
“It was like around the clock sickness,” Ashley said. “I couldn’t eat. He couldn’t take care of me, and he drove me down to Florida and dropped me off at my mom’s house.”
Ashley Benefield said that when she lived with her husband, he wanted her to drink a certain tea every morning.
“I realized that the tea that he had been giving me, if I didn’t drink it, he would get really mad at me and I started to wonder if he was doing something to the tea,” she said.
She decided to do a toxicology test where she sent a hair sample to a lab. She claimed the results showed that she had been poisoned.
The results appeared to show extremely high levels of heavy metals like aluminum and tin. A test on her child yielded similar results.
Stephanie Murphy, attorney for Doug Benefield, denied the poisoning allegations.
“Doug never poisoned Ashley, never,” Murphy said. “I read the allegations and I thought, ‘oh my God, this is crazy.'”
Medical records showed Ashley to be in good health and a judge denied her request to keep Doug away from her and their child.
During the trial, prosecutors alleged that Ashley shot Doug as a means to get him out of her life and their child’s life after multiple legal challenges failed. The defense claimed Ashley’s life was in immediate danger and she had the right to use deadly force.
Doug Benefield was previously married to Renee Benefield. The two had a child together, Eva Benefield.
She described her mother in the 20/20 interview.
“My mom was the sweetest, happiest woman you would ever meet,” she said. “She was an angel walking on Earth. She was never, ever, ever in a bad mood. She loved everybody.”
Eva Benefield also remembered finding out her mother had died in 2015. Eva was 14 years old at the time.
“I was waiting in the pickup line outside of my school and she wasn’t there,” Eva Benefield said. “And I went home and nobody was answering the doorbell.”
She called her dad, who was out of town at the time. He contacted a neighbor, who finds Renee unresponsive in her bed.
“I just remember going back out on the porch and seeing my neighbor’s face, and he shook his head,” she said. “And I knew that she just wasn’t there anymore. She passed of an underlying heart condition. It was shocking.”
Just nine months later, her dad introduced her to Ashley.
“I heard about her on Friday,” Eva said. “I met her the following Saturday, and then Sunday I was up in my room, and my dad came upstairs and he said, ‘Eva, we need to have a conversation, all three of us.’ And I said, ‘No, I think the only thing that I would be interested in hearing is if you told me that you proposed to her.’ And as soon as those words came out of my mouth he said, ‘We’re married.’ Yeah, it was a lot.”
Eva and Ashley, who were only eight years apart in age, clashed at times.
“I felt like Ashley, like, tried to act like my mom and tell me what to do and I was like, ‘you’re less than 10 years older than me,'” Eva Benefield said.
She explained that she had this feeling that Ashley would harm him somehow.
“There was always this little thought in the back of my head that said Ashley’s going to do something to him,” Eva Benefield said. “Ashley’s going to sabotage him somehow. There’s a look in her eyes where she just looks like she finally got her way.”
As Eva Benefield coped with the grief, she turned to social media.
“I had been on TikTok for, like, a few months and I thought, ‘Oh, that’d be funny if I made a joke about my dad being murdered,'” she said. “I made a TikTok and I put my phone down, And I went to bend and I woke up and it was at 700,000 likes and then it just kept going and going and going. It got like 3 million likes and like 10 million views and within two weeks I had 100,000 followers.”
She said she hopes she can have a relationship with Ashely and Doug’s child someday.
“I hope one day me and Emerson will be able to have a relationship where she can come to me with any questions,” Eva Benefield said. “And I hope that one day I’ll be able to explain how great of a father my dad would have been to her and how great he was for the short amount of time that they got to spend together.”
Ashley Benefield also had a message for her stepdaughter during her interview.
“My heart is broken for her,” Ashley Benefield said. “She has been through so much.”
Ashley Benefield’s sentencing is scheduled for October 22. She is facing 11 to 30 years in prison.
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