Caleb Flynn’s former mistress took the stand at his murder trial. Here’s what we learned

By Eric Levenson, Nicki Brown, CNN

(CNN) — As Caleb Flynn’s former lover Alleigha Botner sat on the stand, a prosecutor opened a cardboard box and presented her with a hefty red book to read aloud.

Then he gave her another. And then another.

34 books later, the jury had heard key firsthand evidence about their illicit affair, Flynn’s hatred for his wife, Ashley, and his desire to kill her.

“I was up until 4 a.m. last night crying, literally thinking of ways to kill her and not go to jail,” Flynn wrote in a message to Botner on August 22, 2025.

Those 34 books, organized into three cardboard boxes in court, constituted a transcript of the 107,000 messages Flynn and Botner exchanged during a 1.5-year love affair from 2024 to around early 2026. Botner testified over two days about their relationship, reading snippets from the books that showed in intimate detail affection, jealousy, hatred and violent fantasizing.

Prosecutors say the books show the motive for why Caleb Flynn, a former “American Idol” contestant and church worship leader, murdered his wife in February and staged the crime scene to make it look like she was killed by an intruder.

Flynn, 40, has pleaded not guilty. His defense has acknowledged he sent the messages and cheated on his wife, but said the prosecution lacks key evidence, such as the murder weapon, to prove he committed a crime.

In an interview Thursday, Botner’s attorney said it was difficult for the 24-year-old to take the stand because it “brought up a time in her life that she’s not proud of.”

“She was younger, she was a lot more naïve, and she said a lot of things that obviously no one would ever expect would be publicized to the world,” Nicholas Gounaris told CNN. “She’s not proud of what she said and she’s not proud of how she acted.”

Though the prospect of testifying was daunting, Botner felt she could provide information that would help prosecutors advance their case, Gounaris said.

“Right now, she’s very relieved that her part in this trial is over with,” he said.

Here are the key takeaways from Botner’s testimony.

A passionate, messy 1.5-year affair

Botner was 21 years old when she met Flynn at their Ohio church in 2022. She was an intern at the time, and he was a volunteer on the worship team, she said. They struck up a romantic relationship in March 2024 and it continued until the following winter, she testified.

Their romance was passionate but messy. They saw each other at least once a week and traveled to nearby cities where no one would recognize them, and they discussed getting married one day, she said. At the same time, she suspected Flynn hacked into her phone and Instagram account during their relationship, although he denied it, Botner testified.

They got matching Harry Potter lightning bolt tattoos, she said. Hers was on her forearm, but his was in his armpit because “he didn’t want Ashley to see,” she testified.

The two exchanged over 100,000 texts during their relationship – about 300 a day – between iMessage, WhatsApp and GroupMe for privacy from others.

In August 2025, Ashley Flynn found out about the affair by seeing their texts during a cruise for their 15-year wedding anniversary. Ashley reached out to Botner for a meeting, but Botner said she was too busy, she testified.

The relationship began to break down after that. Botner repeatedly asked Flynn to leave his wife, but he declined to do so, citing his two daughters, his job working with his in-laws and his reputation. After she set a final deadline in January, she told him to stop contacting her.

“It’s time for me to put my big girl pants on, be strong and officially move on from you and us,” she texted him on January 11.

Flynn texted about wanting to kill his wife

In scores of texts to Botner, Flynn said that he hated his wife and referred to her by the crude codename “douche.” Early in their relationship, he said he wished she was dead.

“I just want her dead and gone,” he wrote in early 2025.

He even asked Botner to help.

“What can I do?” Botner wrote on March 24, 2025.

“Kill her,” Flynn responded, referring to his wife.

Later, Flynn even fantasized about killing her himself.

“If I could literally kill her and not go to hell, I would do it in a heartbeat. That’s how dark and hateful I feel,” he wrote on May 16, 2025.

In one instance, Botner spoke similarly. “I want to kill her, Caleb,” she wrote in a July 2025 text. “That makes two of us,” Flynn responded.

Botner cried in court as she read that text aloud, saying she regretted writing it and “didn’t mean it.”

And in another text from August 2025, she said she just wanted him to divorce her, not kill her.

“I’m not asking that you take her life, obviously, because that’s not what you should do, and I know you actually wouldn’t,” Botner wrote to him. “But to make the divorce happen, it would change everything.”

‘I’m not scared tomorrow,’ he texted day before killing

In a spree of texts to Botner on February 15, Flynn said he was going to tell his wife he planned to leave her and get a divorce the following day.

“It’s kind of crazy. I’m not scared tomorrow. I mean, I’m not looking forward to it, and it’s about to be a crap-fest here moving forward, but I’m not scared of it,” Flynn wrote.

Botner said she was house-sitting at a pastor’s home that night. On the morning of the 16th, she received a message from a church congregant asking if she had heard “about Mrs. Flynn,” and she was sent an article about her death.

“My heart started pounding,” Botner said. “It seemed like too much of a coincidence that the day he’s divorcing her, she’s just dead all of a sudden.”

What Flynn told Botner after wife’s death

Hours after Ashley’s death, Flynn and Botner met at his in-laws’ house, where members of their church were gathered. When Botner arrived, Flynn hugged her, she testified.

“It didn’t happen the way we thought it would, did it?” Flynn said, according to her testimony.

Botner asked Flynn a lot of questions about how the shooting happened, she testified, telling the court she was “very suspicious.”

Flynn told her he had been sleeping on the couch when he heard a gunshot, saw the garage side door open and found Ashley dead in the bedroom.

“He said he saw blood everywhere. He told me he’ll never forget that sight,” Botner testified.

The testimony contradicted Flynn’s statement to investigators that he was lying down in his daughters’ bedroom when the shooting occurred.

Botner deleted messages and lied to the FBI

Botner admitted to trying to hide evidence of her affair by deleting messages and lying to the FBI.

After first hearing of Ashley’s death, she said she messaged Flynn and asked him what was going on, whether he was involved and if it was real. He did not respond, and she later deleted the messages, she testified.

“Since there was a murder involved, I knew that they would probably be searching his phone, and if they saw any messages between us anywhere, the affair would be found out,” she said.

In addition, she said she lied to the FBI in her first interview on February 20.

“I was selfishly afraid that my reputation was going to be ruined and that I was going to lose my job,” she testified. “And now that there was a murder attached, I didn’t want to be attached to that in any way.”

She hired an attorney and came clean to the FBI on February 26, she testified.

Botner grilled on cross-exam

The defense questioned Botner for about an hour during cross-examination.

For one, Botner said she was not entirely convinced Flynn truly hated his wife.

“I would see text messages on his phone from her saying that she loves him,” she said. Ashley’s seemingly loving nature toward Flynn made Botner think “he was also loving towards her.”

Botner allowed that Flynn “might have been” saying he hated Ashley to make her feel better due to her own insecurity.

In addition, she said, she did not believe Flynn meant it when he said he wanted to kill his wife.

“I didn’t think he could ever be capable of doing something like that,” she said.

Yet in her direct testimony Wednesday, she said she now believed he did it.

“I hate him,” Botner said. “Because I believe that he murdered his wife.”

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CNN’s Isa Mudannayake, Tori B. Powell, Andy Rose, Lauren Mascarenhas and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.