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“Black Swan” defendant Ashley Benefield had a gun in her bra the night she met her husband
The stormy relationship between Doug and Ashley Benefield, the star-crossed couple at the heart of the notorious “Black Swan” murder case, began and ended with a .45 caliber gun, according to what was revealed publicly over the years.
During testimony at Ashley Benefield’s murder trial in July 2024, she said that the evening she met Doug Benefield at an upscale political dinner, she was carrying a .45 caliber gun in her bra.
Assistant State Attorney Suzanne O’Donnell, who prosecuted the homicide case for Manatee County, Florida, put this question to Ashley during the trial: “You actually bragged … about having guns, correct?”
“Yes,” Ashley Benefield replied.
“During the time that you met Doug at a political event, you had one of the guns in your bra?” O’Donnell asked.
“Yes. That’s where I conceal it, carry it,” Ashley Benefield testified.
The story of Ashley and Doug Benefield will be featured in a two-hour broadcast, “The Case of the Black Swan, Part 1 and Part 2,” airing on “48 Hours” Saturday, Sept. 7, from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET/PT, and will also stream on Paramount+. The special broadcast, reported by “48 Hours” contributor Jim Axelrod, will give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the couple’s seesaw relationship from the time they met in 2016 until the night in September 2020 when Ashley killed Doug, allegedly in self-defense.
At her murder trial in July 2024, Ashley Benefield testified for the first time about what she says happened the night she shot and killed Doug Benefield. In emotionally charged testimony, she claimed the shooting was in self-defense after Doug hit her and cornered her in a bedroom. She said that’s when she reached for her nearby .45 caliber gun that was on top of a storage bin.
“I just held the gun like in front of me and I said, stop, and he like turned and he got into this like almost like a fighting stance. He started like moving his arms and his hands around…he started coming towards me and he lunged at me, and I just pulled the trigger,” Ashley Benefield testified at her trial.
Ashley Benefield’s lawyer Neil Taylor then said, “Tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury why you shot Doug.”
“I was scared to death,” she said. “I thought he was gonna kill me.”
State prosecutors called Ashley Benefield a “manipulator” and claimed she killed Doug Benefield as part of her plot to gain sole custody of their now-6-year-old daughter, Emerson.
When investigators and crime scene technicians searched the house after the shooting, they found two other loaded guns. One of Ashley Benefield’s guns was found in her backpack hanging in the closet of the bedroom where the shooting took place. A third gun belonging to Ashley’s mother was found in a kitchen pantry, according to the testimony of a crime scene technician for the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.
At the time, Doug Benefield was helping Ashley and her mother pack for a move to Maryland.
“Why does anyone need three loaded guns, unsecured, in a house with a 2-and-a-half-year-old?” asked Stephanie Murphy, Doug Benefield’s family lawyer. “There’s no answer to me other than the obvious, which is that she planned to kill Doug that night.”
But Ashley’s lawyer Neil Taylor had a different take, as he told Axelrod when Axelrod asked Taylor, “What caused her to have three loaded guns in the house, the night she shot and killed Doug?”
According to Taylor, it was all part and parcel of the fear Ashley Benefield felt around Doug Benefield as an abused woman. “What might you think would precipitate such a circumstance?” Taylor responded. “Do you think fear, anticipation?”
Ashley Benefield admitted on the stand that Doug Benefield had never struck her before she alleges he did so on the night of the shooting. But in earlier court hearings when Doug Benefield was still alive, he did admit to an episode early in their marriage when he fired a gun into their kitchen ceiling in order to stop Ashley Benefield from arguing with him. He also admitted striking their family dog, named Sully. Ashley Benefield claimed Doug Benefield punched the dog and knocked him out but Doug said he only had pushed the dog when it climbed into his lap while he was having an argument with Ashley.
Ashley Benefield, a former ballerina, was found guilty of manslaughter in July 2024 for shooting her estranged husband Doug Benefield twice with her .45 caliber gun inside her Florida home in September 2020. She faces up to 30 years in prison. She is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 22.
Ashley Benefield’s lawyers are claiming there was prosecutorial and juror misconduct during the trial and have asked for a new trial. The prosecution denies that any misconduct took place. A hearing on those motions will be held Sept. 16 in Manatee County.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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