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ashley benefield as the former ballerina turned alleged murderer she's admitted shooting and killing her husband doug
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benefield but according to a neighbor said it was in self-defense ashley claimed her husband had been
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poisoning her it's a story filled with beautiful bodies and ugly allegations jim axelrod has the full report in
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tonight's 48 hours i started working on a story about a scandal in the ballet world
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it was a business story about a ballet company that turned into a murder investigation
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alice robb is a contributing writer for vanity fair magazine the focus of her story was a new ballet company started
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by doug benefield and his much younger wife ashley a former ballerina ashley's dream was to create a ballet company
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that would be a home for dancers who were different body types different types of training
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friends say doug knew nothing about ballet but wanted to make his new wife's dreams come true he just
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immediately thought ashley was the most beautiful the most amazing person in the world
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doug was 30 years older than ashley and they were married 13 days after they met
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they hardly knew each other and fought often says stephanie murphy doug's family attorney and then on top of
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starting a ballet company ashley also wanted to get pregnant ashley did get pregnant but says she
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suffered from terrible nausea at a certain point she came to believe that doug was poisoning her she accused him
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of trying to poison her claiming to be worried for herself and her unborn baby ashley fled to her mother's home in
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florida and did not even tell him when their daughter was born ashley wanted to raise her daughter with
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her mother alone the baby's blood work showed she was healthy but ashley still took the
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baby for treatment in this hyperbaric chamber to detox poisons eventually the benefits took their
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battle to court where a judge ruled there was no evidence ashley had been poisoned
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then last year ashley surprisingly suggested they all moved to maryland for a fresh start they were packing up her
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house in florida i heard from somebody screaming outside and she shot him she told the neighbor doug
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had attacked her and she had to defend herself she's pled not guilty to second-degree
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murder charges was she genuinely afraid and just trying to protect her baby and save herself or was
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she trying to get doug out of her life just because she hated him doug supporters say ashley was a
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manipulative character straight out of hollywood to doug ashley's this innocent pure
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white swan but underneath those white feathers she's an evil woman she's the black swan
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so for more on this we want to bring in 48 hours correspondent jim axelrod as per usual jim twists and turns um you
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leave us with all these questions and i know you can only answer a few but black swan
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i mean do does she did she have a history of being a master manipulator well anne-marie we got twists we got
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turns and we got pirouettes from the ballet world with ashley benefield let me let me just say this in
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terms of black swan which of course is iconic character from the ballet world swan lake and this this manipulative
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character we don't really know what the facts are yet only because uh she doesn't go to
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trial till 2023 and she hasn't really been talking yet um we can tell you this during the
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course of their four-year marriage uh ashley accused doug not only of trying to poison her but he accused doug of
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having poisoned his first wife fatally i can tell you that doug was investigated many times over the course
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of the investigation the marriage and no charges no criminal charges were ever brought by the authorities against doug
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benefield oh my gosh you added another twist um you know whenever uh you guys the
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correspondents in 48 hours come here the stories that have to do with children always
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really sort of hit me hard there is a baby involved here um do we know anything about her where
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is she who's caring for her and where's ashley for that matter yeah well so the baby is about three and a
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half years old now and lives with ashley's mother um and while ashley's terms of uh
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uh of how much she can see the baby are controlled uh we're told sources tell us
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that ashley lives very close uh to her mom and sees the baby all the time but again
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we will know more as this case moves closer to trial in 2023 but i agree with you a thousand percent the
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fact that there's a child involved here just uh makes the whole story even more heart-wrenching if if that's even
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possible doug's family has said that if ashley is convicted they will move uh to take husband
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wow um so we heard in your piece there that you know ashley told a neighbor that
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this was an act of self-defense is there anything to support that idea well that's obviously what the entire
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trial will revolve around uh just a couple of points there one of the facts from the investigation
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is that doug was not facing ashley so the question becomes how menacing was he at the time that he
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was shot but we're going to have a lot more on this very complicated rich uh story that is
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really gripping um and gut-wrenching and that's tonight on 48 hours yeah it sounds layered yes a very
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special 48 hours on a wednesday night jim thank you so much thanks for having us
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so once again you can watch jim's full report the black swan murder during a special weeknight episode of 48 hours
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that is tonight at 10 9 central on cbs