Eva Benefield has a lot on her mind after her ex-ballerina stepmom was convicted of killing her dad.
Following seven hours of deliberation Tuesday, a jury found Ashley Benefield, 32, guilty of manslaughter in connection with the fatal shooting of her 58-year-old husband Doug Benefield, at her mother's Florida home in September 2020.
She was initially accused of second-degree murder and pleaded not guilty.
The case gained national attention and was soon dubbed the "Black Swan" murder trial in a call back to the 2010 Natalie Portman-led thriller about a perfectionist ballet dancer's psychological struggles.
Following the jury's decision Tuesday night, the victim's 23-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, appeared seemingly satisfied in a video posted to social media.
Eva Benefield on #AshleyBenefield verdict. “After 4 years of waiting, my dad got the justice he deserves.” #DougBenefield pic.twitter.com/iVd5Sv8yIW
— TrueCrimeSushi (@CrimeSushi) July 31, 2024
"She was convicted of manslaughter," Eva said, smiling. "After four years of waiting, my dad got the justice that he deserves."
"I will be talking more about the trial once I have my thoughts collected. I have a lot of things I want to say," she confessed.
During the week-long trial, Ashley's lawyers argued she shot Doug in self-defense, painting him as a dangerous and manipulative husband.
"Thirty years older than Ashley, he was obsessed with her and he successfully portrayed himself as he was not in an effort to win her hand in marriage," defense attorney Neil Taylor said, according to WFLA-TV. "Despite promoting himself as a religious, honorable, and decent human being, Benefield was a manipulative, cunning, and abusive man who insisted, absolutely insisted on control."
Ashley took the stand and told the court she was "scared to death" of her husband. "I thought he would kill me. I had nowhere to go. I was trapped in my own house. He wouldn't let me leave," she said, WTSP-TV reported.
On the other hand, Eva testified for the prosecution that the couple "were just with each other all the time. It was very lovey-dovey. They were very touchy-feely PDAs. Any event with school or extracurriculars that I was in, they were together," she recalled, the outlet reported. "They never left each other's side."
Prosecutors argued Doug's slaying was motivated by Benefield's desire to be a single mom to the couple's young daughter, Emerson, after their whirlwind romance deteriorated amid their failure to successfully launch a ballet company.
"This case is about a woman who, very early on in her pregnancy, decided she wanted to be a single mother," prosecutor Suzanne O'Donnell said, according to ABC News. "Her husband and everything she did from that point on was to attain that goal and she would stop at nothing to attain that goal. When there was no other option, she shoots him and kills him and claims self-defense."
After learning her fate, Ashley was remanded to jail. She will be sentenced at a later date in which she faces up to 30 years in prison.
