Caleb Flynn, 40, a former worship pastor and former American Idol contestant, cried until he was hoarse when it was his turn to speak to his daughters for the last time before going to prison.
He told them they were his greatest joy, that he loved them more than he could express, and that it hurt him to know he wouldn’t be there for their most important moments. He said this minutes before the judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole for murdering his wife, Ashley, in Tipp City, Ohio. She was asleep when she died, with the girls in the house. Even so, Flynn repeated in court: “I did not kill my wife”.
But during the trial, chats Flynn exchanged with his lover also came to light, in which he repeatedly expressed his desire for Ashley to die. In one of them, he even wrote that he had spent hours thinking of ways to kill her without going to prison.
On the other side were their words. At the trial, Ashley’s sister said the girls kept asking just one question: “She loved Dad more than anyone in the world. So why didn’t Dad love her the same way?”. And at sentencing, one of the daughters wrote him a letter that began with “Dear Dad” and asked what her mother had done to make him hate her so much. He sobbed uncontrollably as it was read aloud.
