The other danger zone: When a husband’s affair turns his wife into an obstacle and exposes her to fatal risk

Months before Caleb Flynn murdered his wife, he was already talking to his mistress about how to get rid of her.

“I was up until 4am last night crying, literally trying to think of ways to kill her and not go to jail,” he texted her.

Six months before Ashley Flynn was shot twice in the back of the head as she slept in her Ohio home, her husband sent that chilling message to his 24-year-old mistress Alleigha Botner.

In another exchange, Botner wrote: “I want to kill her Caleb.”

“That makes two of us,” Flynn replied.

The pair exchanged more than 100,000 messages during their year-long affair.

The night before the mother-of-two was murdered, Flynn told Ms Botner: “I choose you. I’m free. Actions will come tomorrow.”

Flynn, a former American Idol contestant and church music pastor, was this week found guilty of murdering his 37-year-old wife and staging a home invasion to make it appear an intruder had killed her while he slept on the couch.

Prosecutors argued the 40-year-old wanted to “keep his mistress and have his daughters all to himself”.

Flynn’s televised trial has captivated audiences — and resonated with women — around the world.

Separation is one of the most dangerous times for a woman experiencing family violence. Flynn’s case has highlighted another potential danger point for women — when a man wants a new life and sees his wife as a barrier to it.

“Absolutely that’s a pattern,” forensic criminologist Claire Ferguson said.

“Affairs are very common in these types of cases.”

Associate Professor Ferguson, from Queensland University of Technology, researches intimate partner homicide, offender-victim dynamics and the ways killers attempt to avoid detection.

She said these cases can occur as the ‘walls close in’ on a perpetrator juggling a marriage, children, work, money and an increasingly impatient affair partner.

“They want to move forward with the affair, but often there’s also some pressure from that person in terms of, ‘Why are we not moving forward? When are you going to be divorced?’” she said.

“So that pressure can create that sense of urgency in terms of needing to do something.”

For some perpetrators, separation can threaten money, property, access to children, social standing and control over the story they have told both women

“We know that these relationships are often abusive in addition to the affair,” Associate Professor Ferguson said.

“There’s often also coersively controlling abuse, which is sometimes also financial abuse, and divorces are often very expensive.

“Perpetrators do not want to relinquish control of their children.

“And they don’t want the new partner to interact with the existing partner because then their deception will be uncovered.”

For some offenders, she said, widowhood can appear an attractive solution.

If a death can be made to look like suicide or misadventure, the perpetrator can attract sympathy, retain money and children and potentially rewrite the history of the relationship.

“These types of perpetrators are really attracted to the notion of being a widower because they’re highly manipulative and it’s a really good bargaining chip moving forward,” she said.

“So the idea of killing someone and crime scene staging becomes really attractive because they get the widower status, they get to keep all of their money, they keep control over their children and assets and everything else.”

The revelations from Flynn’s Ohio murder trial have shocked audiences around the world, but Australia has its own notorious examples.

Gerard Baden-Clay was having an affair with employee Toni McHugh when he murdered his wife Allison in Brisbane in 2012.

The High Court later noted Baden-Clay had promised Ms McHugh he would leave his marriage by July, could not afford to divorce Allison and faced the prospect that his wife and mistress would encounter each other at a real estate conference the day after Allison disappeared.

The court found the jury could regard his efforts to conceal the affair as evidence that, in his mind, “the affair and the killing were inter-related”.

In 2022, Chris Dawson was convicted of murdering his wife Lynette, who disappeared in 1982, after becoming infatuated with the teenage babysitter and student known as JC. The prosecution case was that Dawson wanted an “unfettered” relationship with the girl and killed Lynette after attempts to leave the marriage and start a new life failed.

Sydney GP Brian Crickitt was convicted in 2016 of murdering his wife Christine by injecting her with insulin. The Crown case was that he wanted to start a new life with lover Linda Livermore, while also benefiting from more than $500,000 in life insurance and retaining property interests.

“It’s about getting out of the old relationship with as much power and control as you can,” Associate Professor Ferguson said.

The existing wife is reduced, in the offender’s mind, to a financial cost or an obstacle to the new life he wants.

“They’re the person that can provide this huge insurance payout or access to this large superannuation, or whatever,” she said.

Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, one of Australia’s leading violence-against-women researchers, cautioned against treating infidelity itself as the danger.

“In some cases, what appears on the surface to be a story about infidelity may be better understood as a story about entitlement and control,” she said.

“The woman becomes framed by the perpetrator not as an autonomous person with her own rights and future, but as a problem to be managed or an obstacle to the future he believes he is entitled to have.

“In some cases, an entitled perpetrator appears to believe that his interests, reputation, finances or desired future matter more than his partner’s autonomy and ultimately her life.”

Professor Fitz-Gibbon cautioned that male entitlement does not inevitably lead to violence, but said broader gendered expectations around men’s authority and control in relationships are important to understanding and preventing violence against women.

“These cases can challenge the comforting idea for people that they will always be able to recognise a man who is capable of lethal violence,” she said.

“Some intimate partner homicides occur after a documented and well known history of coercive control, including violence, but that abuse and the risks present are not always visible to friends, colleagues or the broader community.

“There is something deeply disturbing about the idea of a woman being treated as disposable because she complicates the future her partner wants for himself.”

Community psychologist Dr Peter Streker, who has spent decades working in family violence, primarily with male perpetrators, said some men want the benefits and status of family life while retaining the freedom to do whatever they want.

“In some cases they want to have their cake and eat it too,” he said.

“They want to have the status of the loving wife and the children, and also have an affair on the side.

“They do what they want when they want, and they’ve got full control, full power over their life, and other people are the collateral damage of that lifestyle that they’re looking for.”

Dr Streker said some intimate partner killings were highly calculated and planned, while others arose from assaults that escalated beyond what an offender claimed to have intended.

“I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of men who’ve committed violence against their partners and their children over the years,” he said.

“And when we meet their partners, they come from every socio-demographic background, every culture, every age, every profession. Some are extremely high-level professional women, women who are homeless, women who are in and out of jail.

“It can happen to anyone.”