Dubbed the ‘Black Swan’ case, a former ballerina falls in love with a man 30 years her senior, but when their love story spirals out of control one of them winds up dead. Andrea Canning reports.Andrea Canning and Blayne Alexander go behind the scenes of the making of this episode in ‘Talking Dateline’:Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/4g8azvJListen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3PBWoFd5lZN2pLjuSZsaz8
Chapter 1: What happened on the night of the shooting?
tonight on dateline he started coming towards me and then he lunged at me and i started pulling the trigger ashley ran to her neighbor hysterical she had shot her husband i guess he had attacked her and she shot him she's a beautiful ballerina she appears to be a great mom we wanted to find out what happened in that room
He's thrown furniture. He would push her into a wall. I really believed he was going to kill her. Her clothing didn't appear to be stained or torn. She didn't look like she had any injuries. So you're seeing this case shifting from self-defense to murder? Yes, ma'am. There were guns placed around this house. She ambushed him on that day in that room.
People are calling Ashley the Black Swan, this dark ballerina who is a cold-blooded killer. There's just nothing about that that's true.
I was scared to death.
How can you not believe her? Did the dancer choreograph a killing inside the notorious Black Swan murder case? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with Deadly Dance.
It takes grace, strength and passion to make it as a ballerina. One beautiful dancer and model had all that. plus the perfect partner to share her dreams. She thought he was very charming. He was smart. He was fun to talk to. It was just a click. 13.
Yep. But one warm autumn night, it ended just as fast as it began. Left behind, four bullet casings and a love story that had spiraled out of control. September 27, 2020. As the sun was setting, a frantic 911 call came in from Lakewood Ranch, a community near Sarasota, Florida. He's saying the neighbor came over, a female neighbor. It was a domestic neighbor.
The neighbor was 29-year-old Ashley Benefield, and she had a dramatic story to tell.
He was Ashley's husband, 59-year-old Doug Benefield. Detective Dan Dickerman with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office raced to the scene.
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Chapter 2: What evidence suggests self-defense in the case?
Two more on the way. Did that surprise you? Yeah, it did strike me as odd. Three attorneys and a therapist. It was clear this was going to be an unusual investigation, especially after Deputy Warren started checking police records. So we started looking into these things. I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting.
Turns out there was a long and twisted history between Doug and Ashley. This reads like a Lifetime movie. You have allegations of poison tea, stalking, murder. It goes on and on. Every time I thought, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard, then I would hear something else. In fact, there was a tidal wave of accusations.
She was making some allegations at some point that Doug had possibly poisoned his deceased wife. In the hours after shooting her husband Doug, Ashley Benefield was at the Manatee County Sheriff's Office. Investigators hoped she would fill in the gaps leading up to the moment she pulled the trigger.
We know that this is a self-defense claim. We know from the initial 911 call. So we need to find out exactly, to the best we can, what happened inside that house. But Ashley, sitting next to her attorney, exercised her right not to say anything. I know that we haven't talked yet, and we're not going to be taking a statement from you. That's fine. No one knows Ashley's story, but Ashley...
But Ashley? Yes, ma'am. She wasn't under arrest, so Ashley was free to go. A few miles away at the hospital, doctors were trying to save Doug's life. But his injuries were too severe, and he died. His family was stunned. I'm just, I'm overcome with grief. I can't think straight.
Doug's brother David and cousin Tommy called Eva, Doug's 19-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, to break the news. This is such a devastating phone call. Horrible. She begins wailing, and it was just one of the worst moments of my life. She goes from anger into grief, crushing grief so quickly.
Grief she knew all too well. Eva not only has lost her mom, but now she's lost her dad too. Eva's mom Renee died from a heart attack when Eva was only 15. Her dad was her whole world. Eva talks about how wonderful he was. She said, he was my best friend. I could bring all my girl problems too. And I loved hearing that about it because that's the Doug that I knew.
Eva had struggled to accept her stepmom. And now detectives were diving into Ashley and Doug's May-December romance. So we start to kind of try to develop a little bit more background as far as what they were like together and what the relationship really was.
They learned that Doug met Ashley in the summer of 2016, less than nine months after his wife died. The former Navy pilot was 54, deeply religious and worked in the defense industry. Ashley, 30 years younger, was a retired ballerina who modeled and taught dancing. The two instantly clicked at a dinner party hosted by former presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson.
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