Speaker
Ashley Flowers
Appearances over time
5 episodes
Episodes
5
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Carmen Van Huss screamed and fought for her life for 30 minutes while multiple neighbors heard her, yet not a single person called 911 or went to her door.
Alberta O. Jones became the first Black woman prosecutor in Louisville, Kentucky's history, making her a trailblazer at the height of the civil rights movement.
Brendan waited 15 minutes between the first and second 911 call — time prosecutors say he used to stage the crime scene and ensure Christine could not survive to tell what really happened.
Susie Jaeger was just 7 years old when she was abducted through a sliced tent at a Montana campground in June 1973.
Brittany appeared at a stranger's back door with no shoes or coat on a freezing Michigan night, bleeding from small cuts on her feet and arms.
Carmen suffered 60 stab wounds to her head, face, body, and genitalia, with wounds to her head penetrating her skull.
Five years before Susie's disappearance, 12-year-old Boy Scout Michael Raney was stabbed in his tent at the exact same Montana state park, a case that was never solved.
Brittany's dad Greg Wallace didn't report her missing to the St. Joseph County Sheriff's Office until 8 days after she vanished, partly because people assumed she was laying low due to an outstanding warrant.
Christine Banfield was stabbed six times in the neck, plus suffered additional cuts on her neck and shoulder, bruises across her body, and a possible restraint abrasion on her wrist.
Alberta co-founded the Independent Voters Association and helped register roughly 6,000 Black citizens to vote in Louisville.
The coroner determined Alberta was beaten, put into the Ohio River alive, and drowned sometime between 2:30 and 4:30 in the morning on August 5, 1965.
The kidnapper initially demanded $25,000 but raised the ransom to $50,000 in a follow-up call, providing details about Susie's deformed fingernails to prove he had her.
By the end of 2013, investigators had eliminated at least 40 men as suspects through voluntary and covertly obtained DNA comparison samples.
Body-cam footage showed Joe Ryan's hands folded neatly across his chest in what detectives called a 'funeral pose,' with blood-free skin under and between his fingers — inconsistent with him being the attacker.
Sheldon's car — the vehicle Brittany was driving the night she disappeared — was never processed for fingerprints or other forensic evidence before being returned to him.
At first, Brendan Banfield looked like the tragic hero: a federal agent who walked in on his wife being attacked and fought to save her. But for every part of the story that made sense, Ashley Flowers says, there were ten that didn't.
Joseph Ryan cared for his elderly grandparents, supported his mother through cancer, and even reached out to former partners during MeToo to check they were okay. He was lured to the Banfield home believing he was attending a prearranged consensual encounter — and walked into an execution.
On the morning of February 24, 2023, Brendan disabled Christine's phone, handed Juliana a gun, staged a fake reason to leave, and watched Joe pull into the driveway before returning as the 'hero.' Christine woke up to a stranger attacking her — and then her husband walked in and stabbed her instead.
Joe Ryan's blood showed small, round drops consistent with someone lying still. Brendan's clothing bore the elongated, chaotic stains of someone moving while blood sprayed through the air — the pattern of a stabber, not a rescuer. The blood told a story the staging couldn't erase.
Unlike Juliana's first police interview — which detectives said sounded rehearsed and hollow — her post-cooperation testimony was filled with visceral sensory details: Christine's warm blood on her hands, the deafening crack of the gunshot. Her account matched the physical evidence. It was the difference between a script and a memory.
Every person investigators spoke to used the same word for Brendan: narcissist. Ashley Flowers explains narcissistic abuse — gaslighting, isolation, blame-shifting — and how Brendan's pattern of feeding his own ego made each escalation easier until murder became just one more crossed line.
Christine had an infectious laugh, loved Italian food traditions and 90s boy bands, and was above all devoted to her daughter. Joe was goofy, loyal, and rescued old and injured dogs. Brendan turned them into a cheating wife and a violent predator — neither of which was true.
Someone created a fake FetLife profile in Christine Banfield's name, using her bathing suit selfie, portraying her as a married woman craving violent sexual assault roleplay. Christine was a pediatric ICU nurse and former sexual assault nurse examiner with no history of infidelity or BDSM interests — detectives say the account was never hers.
Juliana Perez Magalhães testified that Brendan first proposed killing Christine during a family trip to New York in October 2022, four months before the murders. He cited custody concerns and said hiring a hitman was too traceable — so he designed an elaborate catfish scheme instead.
When Brendan Banfield took the stand, he stumbled over his account of what Joe supposedly said before Christine was stabbed, correcting himself multiple times. Ashley Flowers notes: it's hard to remember the right words if the event never happened.
A 911 call lasting just seconds — ending in a groan — became the linchpin of the prosecution's case. Prosecutors argued it proved Joseph Ryan was already dying while Brendan staged the scene for 15 minutes before calling back.
Brendan and Juliana put on a show for his four-year-old daughter the morning of the murders so she would repeat their cover story to police. That same night in the hotel, she asked Juliana if she could call her mommy now — and whether Juliana would marry her daddy. Both parents are now in prison.
When first responders arrived at the Banfields' home, they found a chaotic scene: a stripped bed, two guns on the mattress, Christine Banfield naked and bleeding from stab wounds, and a stranger — Joseph Ryan — dying on a dog bed. The scene was carefully composed, though no one knew it yet.
Brittany bought $20 of gas at 6:11 PM on November 30 at the Marathon station on Fawn River Road. That receipt shouldn't have ended up anywhere near Ashley Huley. Yet photos of it surfaced from a garbage bag in Ashley's stolen car — recovered two months after the disappearance. Ashley says she didn't realize its significance until after she'd thrown it away.
Commonwealth prosecutors discovered the murder plot — luring a man via a fake fetish profile to be framed for a wife's death — closely mirrors Season 1, Episode 6 of The Closer. Ashley Flowers watched it herself: the similarities are hard to ignore.
Analysis
What they talk about
- True Crime 86%
- Society & Culture 12%
- Technology 2%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
