Husband allegedly killed by ex-ballerina had ‘angry side’, say fellow ballerinas

Two of Ashley Benefield’s fellow ballerinas have opened up about seeing her husband Douglas’s “angry side” in a new podcast that the creators believe could support her claims of later having shot him to death to defend herself from domestic violence at his hands.

Ashley Benefield – who co-founded a ballet company in 2017 alongside her husband, Douglas Benefield – was convicted of manslaughter in July after shooting him to death in 2020 despite claiming that she was defending herself from domestic violence at his hands.

Former American National Ballet (ANB) members Hanna Manka and Sarah Walborn publicly discussed their perspective on Douglas Benefield for the first time in a new Law & Crime podcast exploring Ashley Benefield’s conviction at the so-called “Black Swan murder trial” that drew attention across the US.

According to an excerpt that Law & Crime provided to the Guardian, Manka recalled sensing that things were amiss when she visited the performance theater that the ANB was supposed to be using for its debut season – and seeing no advertising at all about the company’s planned gala performance.

“Absolutely nothing on the program,” Manka said on the excerpt of the podcast titled Black Swan Murder, whose first two episodes were released Monday to subscribers of Wondery+’s library. “That’s a bit odd.”

Walborn added that it became obvious there was no plan for the random choreography their superiors were giving them to work on. “It was very apparent in the studio that it was a bunch of charades and that there was no ultimate goal with the material that we were working on in the studio.”

As Walborn told it, Douglas Benefield tried to satiate his dancers’ concerns by making a video with “a bunch of inspirational quotes from people” and presenting it to the dancers. “He sat us all down in the room … to watch it and … had tears in his eyes … saying: ‘See, this is what we’re working towards,’” Walborn added.

But Walborn said the ploy – which she described as manipulation – failed to move the group because “there were so many other concerns involved,” including the facts that Ashley Benefield was conspicuously absent and dancers weren’t being paid. Realizing that the ballerinas’ patience was running out, Walborn recalled how Douglas Benefield showed up one day “with a lot of money and one-by-one [handed] each dancer their allotment of cash” with hopes that it would “fix everything”.

The podcast noted how dancers were baffled that a company which had boasted of a $2.5m budget was unable to cut standard payroll checks. Walborn recounted how one of the dancers at that point stood up and urged her colleagues to “keep your records and receipts of what’s going on it order to protect yourself because this is odd”.

In turn, that prompted Douglas Benefield to raise his voice and say: “You don’t need to keep receipts – don’t worry about it. I have it taken care of,’” according to Walborn.

“Doug came out with a very angry side to him – this was the first time I had seen him angry,” Walborn continued. “And at the time, that was odd to me that he was so passionate about this conversation that was being had. And it painted a picture of the future encounters that I had with him along the way.”

The American National Ballet folded within a year of its being founded in Charleston, South Carolina. Douglas and Ashley Benefield’s marriage crumbled, they became locked in a custody battle over their daughter, and on 27 September 2020 she shot him to death at their home in Lakewood Ranch, Florida.

Attorneys for Ashley Benefield, 33, argued that she was defending herself from domestic violence inflicted upon her by Douglas Benefield, 58, and that her deadly use of force was justifiable. She testified that she feared for her life when she shot her estranged husband, who blocked her from leaving her home that day, struck her and lunged at her while she held a gun.

Related: Former ballerina convicted in Florida over shooting death of husband

But prosecutors argued that the evidence surrounding Douglas Benefield’s killing did not match Ashley Benefield’s account of the fatal confrontation. They maintained Ashley Benefield murdered him out of frustration with the custody battle – and that she wanted to keep her daughter to herself because she had no interest in reconciling with Douglas Benefield.

The jury who heard Benefield’s case refused to convict her of murder but found her guilty of the reduced charge of manslaughter, which is an unintentional killing that is nonetheless illegal. She is facing between 11 and 30 years in prison at a sentencing hearing tentatively scheduled for 22 October.

Black Swan Murder is the fourth of five titles that Law & Crime has planned for Wondery+. Its three predecessors – The Rise and Fall of Ruby Franke , Sins of the Child and Karen – have all proven popular.