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Ex-American Idol contestant charged in wife’s murder previously described as ‘very talented’ church leader
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An Ohio man was described as a “very talented” church leader before being accused of the brutal killing of his wife, according to online records.
Thirty-nine-year-old Caleb Flynn was charged with murder Friday in the death of his wife, Ashley Flynn. Ashley, a mother, teacher and volleyball coach, was shot and killed in her Tipp City, Ohio, home early Monday morning.
Caleb Flynn initially called 911 and told a dispatcher someone broke into his house and killed his wife, according to audio obtained by Fox News Digital.
CHRISTIAN MOTHER, TEACHER’S AUTOPSY CONDUCTED AS POLICE PROBE HOMICIDE IN OHIO HOME INVASION
Caleb Flynn was charged with murder, two counts of felonious assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of tampering with evidence. He was booked into the Miami County Jail at 5:07 p.m. on Thursday, according to inmate records.
He was arraigned on Friday morning and pleaded not guilty. His bond was set at $2 million. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 26 at 1 p.m.
According to court documents, Caleb Flynn allegedly shot and killed his wife with a 9 mm handgun and staged a crime scene, which “led estray” officers.
A Tipp City mother of two was found dead after a reported home invasion. Police used drones and K-9 units to search for a suspect as the community mourns the tragic loss. (Ashley Flynn/Facebook)
“Oh my God, somebody broke into my home. Somebody broke into my home and shot my wife,” Caleb Flynn said when calling 911. “My wife, she’s got two shots to her head. There’s blood everywhere. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“Ashley, Ashley, baby, baby please, oh my god, there’s no — she’s not!” Caleb said.
Caleb Flynn then claimed the door “leading to the garage door” was “wide open” at the time.
In a statement to Fox News, the family of Ashley Flynn said, “Our hearts are shattered.”
“Ashley brought endless light to our world, and we are trying to navigate this immense loss. Our family believes this arrest was made carefully and not without serious consideration. After speaking with both local police and federal authorities, we trust the proper steps were taken, and the process is being handled appropriately,” her family said.
“We kindly ask for privacy as we work through this complex situation. We are clinging to our faith — just as Ashley did each and every day.”
Who is Caleb Flynn?
In 2013, Caleb Flynn was a contestant on “American Idol,” and he discussed his love for his wife during an interview to be on the show.
“I absolutely love the Lord. I love my wife more than anything. She is very, very pretty. … I love her,” Caleb Flynn said. “But, you know, I’m just a normal person who absolutely loves to sing more than anything in the world.”
Caleb Flynn in a 2013 “American Idol” Hometown Interview. Caleb is the husband of Ashley Flynn, who was shot and killed in her Ohio home Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. (YouTube/American Idol)
According to Caleb Flynn’s LinkedIn, he was a worship director at Free Chapel Church in Spartanburg, South Carolina, from July 2015 to February 2021.
For about a year in 2021, Caleb Flynn worked at Equis Financial before becoming the vice president of Sales at Richard D. Smith & Sons, which is a family-owned commercial interior supplier.
CHRISTIAN MOTHER, TEACHER FOUND DEAD AS POLICE HUNT HOMICIDE SUSPECT IN OHIO HOME INVASION
Caleb Flynn’s booking photo from Miami County Jail in Dayton, Ohio, on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (Miami County Jail)
One person who worked with Caleb Flynn submitted a recommendation on LinkedIn, saying the 39-year-old is a “very talented and passionate worship leader! A bright future awaits this young man.”
Beyond speeding tickets and traffic infractions, Caleb Flynn doesn’t have a criminal history.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Caleb Flynn’s attorney, L. Patrick Mulligan, said prosecutors rushed to accuse his client of murder.
FBI JOINS PROBE IN MURDER OF CHRISTIAN TEACHER SHOT IN OHIO HOME AS ‘AMERICAN IDOL’ HUSBAND, CHILDREN SLEPT
Ashley Flynn, a Tipp City Schools substitute teacher and volleyball coach, was found dead in her Ohio home during the reported burglary. Police launched a homicide investigation into her death. (Tipp City Schools)
“Caleb Flynn entered a plea of not guilty this morning and looks forward to defending this case. We are both disappointed and concerned about the short timeline and seeming rush to judgment in this case,” Mulligan said.
“When the government runs out of leads or can’t develop leads and looks at a surviving spouse in cases such as these, the chance of a wrongful conviction increases.”
According to News Center 7, only Ashley and Caleb Flynn and their two children were inside the home during the incident.
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Ashley and Caleb Flynn in an undated photo with their two children. (GoFundMe)
In an earlier statement to Fox News Digital, Tipp City Chief Greg Adkins said he believed the incident was isolated.
“We believe that this was an isolated incident targeting this specific residence,” Adkins told Fox News Digital Wednesday. “No information at this time to believe the public is in any danger. The investigation will continue until we can provide all the answers to the family and community.”
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin and Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.
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Driving through the winding roads of Callaway County, often visible in the distance is a massive, 553-foot-tall concrete structure emitting what looks like white clouds.
“A lot of people think that’s smoke coming out of the top; it is not. That is water vapor,” said Travis Hart, manager of the Callaway nuclear power plant that produces 15% of Missouri’s electricity.
“The next structure that you see, this big rounded dome … that is the reactor building itself,” Hart said.
The single nuclear reactor near Fulton was built in the late 1970s and began generating electricity in 1984. Initially, the site was designed with two reactors in mind. But Hart said plans for a second unit came to a halt in the early ’80s due to decreasing electricity demand and rising costs.
Now, more than 40 years later, energy demand is growing due to increased manufacturing, adoption of electric vehicles and the development of AI data centers.
In a scramble for more power, tech companies and utilities are restarting formerly shuttered nuclear power plants, such as Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. In states like Missouri, politicians are eager to find ways to build new ones and expand existing plants like the one in Callaway County.
Debates about how to pay for the multibillion dollar projects resurfaced in the Missouri legislature this spring. While cost is the first hurdle to creating a new fleet of nuclear power plants in America, the actual construction of the facilities is the second.
Early this year, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed an executive order that creates the Advanced Nuclear Energy Task Force to “evaluate and guide” the state’s “strategic approach to nuclear energy development.”
Lost skills
The majority of the nuclear power plants in America were built between the 1960s and 1980s. Construction slowed in response to energy demand leveling out, increased safety regulations and public perception of nuclear power souring after the Three Mile Island accident.
Speaking at the University of Missouri in May, Director-General of the federal Nuclear Energy Agency William Magwood said building nuclear power plants is a skill, and America has gotten rusty.
“We used to be really good at building plants back in the ’60s and ’70s. How do we reconstruct that? That’s going to be a real challenge,” Magwood said.
The only new nuclear power facilities built in America in recent decades are the third and fourth reactors at the Vogtle electric plant near Waynesboro, Georgia. While the reactors came online in 2023 and 2024 and produce more than 1,000 megawatts of power each, the project was billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
Magwood said a lot of what boggled the Vogtle construction was the lack of institutional knowledge about building nuclear power plants.
“We just didn’t know what we were doing,” he said. “We hadn’t built a nuclear plant in a generation. We didn’t have people who knew how to do it. We didn’t have the infrastructure. We didn’t have the supply chain. The regulator didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I was there, so I know.”
In South Carolina, efforts to construct a new nuclear power plant were abandoned after billions were spent and the company behind the project went bankrupt.
Kurt Schaefer is tasked with ensuring Missouri can avoid similar blunders.
The longtime politician and public servant has been dubbed “the leader of Missouri’s nuclear power renaissance” by UM System President Mun Choi, who has been enthusiastic about advancing nuclear power by hosting national energy leaders on campus in recent years.
In May, Kehoe appointed Schaefer as head of the state’s new nuclear power task force, a group of representatives from utility companies, higher education institutions, politicians, state utility regulators and trades workers all charged with finding a way to make new nuclear power a reality.
Schaefer said the first step to establishing more nuclear power in the state is finding the cash.
“It’s all about money,” he said. “It is expensive up front to build a plant and unless the federal government steps up, I just don’t see it happening.”
In June, the federal Department of Energy announced $17.5 billion in loans for utilities and energy companies to build 10 large-scale commercial nuclear reactors.
Schaefer wants one of those reactors to be in Missouri, ideally near the existing nuclear plant in Callaway County.
“We are really behind the eight ball here in the United States on nuclear power, but you’re seeing a big effort, particularly from the federal government, to move us in that direction,” he said.
As electricity demand continues to climb, Schaefer believes nuclear power is the best way for Missouri to meet that demand. The zero-carbon plants can generate energy around the clock, unlike solar and wind power that need the right conditions to produce power.
Plus, given the longevity of nuclear power facilities, Schafer sees them as a good investment. To him, a robust power supply means a booming economy.
“This is our future, this is what we have to do to keep Missouri economically viable and that’s what we’re gonna do,” Schaefer said.
Who goes first?
The ballooning costs of nuclear power plants isn’t a new issue.
“Any project that big takes years to complete and things may change in the meantime,” said Victor McFarland, University of Missouri energy historian. “The costs of your supplies might go up, the cost of labor might go up.”
Decades ago, when many of America’s atomic energy centers were built, inflation was high and budgets stretched beyond initial figures.
“So the original estimates for the construction of these plants that were true, say, in 1970, they weren’t true anymore in 1975 or 1980,” McFarland said. “There were big cost overruns.”
Now, as the world turns away from fossil fuels, Magwood said nuclear capacity needs to triple to meet the net zero by 2050 goals. Currently, the nuclear power industry does not benefit from economies of scale. Because new nuclear projects are rare, costs are high and supply chains aren’t fully developed, adding to the overall risk of the endeavor.
“One of the big problems is nobody wants to be first … everybody wants to go fourth,” Magwood said. “Believe it or not, that doesn’t work very well. Somebody has to bite the bullet. Somebody has to take the risk. And what I think the industry would really like would be if the government somehow put a safety net under the first projects.”
Ameren Missouri has been clear about its goals to develop additional nuclear power. The company is planning to add 1,500 megawatts of atomic energy to its portfolio by 2045.
Callaway nuclear plant manager Travis Hart is an electrician by trade and first set foot at the facility 25 years ago when he was hired to work on the refueling crew. He said that’s when he fell in love with the place.
“When I walked in here and saw the equipment, how it fits together, how it works, how the design was, it was just extremely interesting to me,” Hart said.
There are a number of reasons the Callaway site is suited for expansion, Hart said. The location has access to the power grid, water from the nearby Missouri River, and a largely supportive local community that fills the plant’s roughly 750 permanent jobs while the company pays $9.8 million in annual property taxes to Callaway County.
The Callaway Energy Center’s current operating license extends through 2044, and Hart is confident the company will receive approval to operate beyond that date.
“I tell my people here all the time, … ‘this is important, so we got to get it right, and we got to do a good job of it, and it’s okay to be proud of it, because it makes a difference,’” Hart said.
In the coming years, the state’s new nuclear power task force will assess Missouri’s readiness to provide the workforce, policies and supply chain needed to create the “nuclear power renaissance.”
This story was originally published by KBIA and shared through the Missouri News Network.
A pair of Nebraska basketball players were honored by the Big Ten Conference on Thursday. Rienk Mast and Callin Hake were chosen as Nebraska’s Outstanding Sportsmanship winners.
The Big Ten honored 36 players with the Outstanding Sportsmanship Award for the 2025-26 year. One member of each varsity sports team is nominated, and two winners are selected from each institution.
Mast averaged 13.3 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game in 2025-26 and helped Nebraska to the Sweet 16 for the first time in school history. He is working out with the Indiana Pacers during the NBA Summer League.
Hake averaged 7.2 points, 3.6 assists, 2.5 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game while drawing a single-season school-record 33 charges. She is also the first Husker to be a two-time Outstanding Sportsmanship Award winner across all sports after earning her first award in 2024-25.
Contact/Follow us @CornhuskersWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Nebraska news, notes and opinions.
The Bison are in the game. For real, this time.
When EA Sports brought back its College Football title in 2024 after a decade-plus hiatus, FCS teams were not included. That’s still the case as the game moves into the third year of its revival, but, of course, North Dakota State has moved up to the FBS level, as members of the Mountain West.
And one of the perks of that move is inclusion in the popular sports simulation. Participating players get $1,500 plus a free copy of this year’s game, College Football 27.
Not bad, huh?
I can only imagine how cool it is for a kid like Abraham Myers, a tight end from Sioux Falls Washington High School, to see himself as a playable character on a millions-selling PlayStation game, but it’s cool for fans, too.
If you’re a Bison fan, it’s all right there. The Fargodome (sorta, EA didn’t bother to include the name, calling it ‘North Dakota State Stadium’), Tim Polasek, the Bison mascot — OK, that’s really about all the detail they went into, and Polasek’s likeness leaves a bit to be desired. Then again, they still haven’t made much effort to make Kalen DeBeoer look like Kalen DeBoer, so whatever, I guess.
In the past you could still play as NDSU, or SDSU, or USD, or Augustana, or Roosevelt High School, or St. Mother Theresa’s Middle School for the Deaf, or any other team, real or imagined, because of the game’s “Create a team” engine, and that’s still there on this year’s game. There are already a few Jackrabbit teams up on the servers that you can download if you’re an SDSU fan and want to play as the Jacks.
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But Bison fans (and Sac State fans, and Missouri State fans, etc., etc.) don’t have to do that. Their team is in the game, with their actual stadium and their actual coach and their actual players, and when I fired up the game on Thursday just an hour after it officially launched, I’ll admit it, the first thing I did was start a game in Fargo, pitting New Mexico against the Bison in the Fargodome for a Mountain West clash that sent former SDSU assistant Jason Eck up against his old Dakota Marker nemesis.
The game started up and there they were: Nathan Hayes under center for the Bison, with DJ Scott carrying the ball, Jackson Williams running free over the middle and Myers teaming with Reis Kessel at tight end to create problems in the red zone.
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I went right down the field and scored on the opening drive, with Hayes finding Williams on a drag route for the touchdown.
Despite the best efforts of New Mexico’s star linebacker and former Brookings Bobcat Jaxton Eck (Jason’s son), I had no trouble dispatching the Lobos 31-10.
Later I played around with some other fun matchups.
I brought Nebraska into the Dome, and while we all know the Huskers stink now, for someone like me who’s old enough to remember their Glory Days, it was fun to see the iconic Nebraska uniforms on the Fargo turf, and wonder if someday that could actually happen now that NDSU is in the FBS.
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Later I played a game at the Big House in Ann Arbor, sending the Bison up against the Wolverines. Michigan got the ball first and after a holding penalty pinned them deep in their own territory, Keenan Wilson’s strip-sack of Bryce Underwood gave the Bison first and goal, and with the Miaze and Blue crowd of over 100,000 roaring, I quickly turned it into a short touchdown pass from Hayes to Myers.
Ultimately I couldn’t keep that up against the Wolverines, falling 31-21.
I played around with some other teams, mostly the ones with familiar faces. Jimmy Rogers and Iowa State, Matt Entz at Fresno State, Missouri State, Kennesaw State, Sac State, Delaware and other former FCS powers.
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I also played a few series of the Tennessee vs. Alabama rivalry game to get an early glimpse of what kind of teams South Dakota’s two favorite SEC sons (DeBoer and Josh Heupel) might have in store for 2026.
Much has been made of trying to predict how successful the Bison will be in year one at the FBS level. Some have already anointed them a favorite to grab a G6 playoff spot. Others think they’ll at least win the Mountain West, while few seem to think they’ll finish much lower than third or fourth.
What does EA think?
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The Bison are given an overall team rating of 75 (99 is the highest possible), which is higher than many if not most G6 teams. James Madison, for one, gets a 77.
The other Mountain West teams earned the following ratings:
Air Force – 74
Hawaii – 76
Nevada – 73
New Mexico – 76
Northern Illinois – 70
San Jose State – 72
UNLV – 78
UTEP – 72
Wyoming – 73
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As for the NDSU players, here are their top rated personnel:
Griffin Empey (LG): 87
DJ Scott (RB): 83
Keenan Wilson (DT): 80
Darius Glance (SS): 79
Myles Mitchell (RB): 78
Josh Magin (RT): 78
Donovan Woolen (LB): 78
Keith Williams (LB): 78
Logan Larson (DT): 77
Jackson Williams (WR): 76
Matthew Stenbroten (DE): 76
Zach Vanderpool (DT): 76
Alijah Wayne (DT): 76
Jaylin Crumby (FS): 75
Kelton McCaslin (DE): 75
Reis Kessel (TE): 75
Nathan Hayes (QB): 74
Nate Tastad (RG): 74
Taylen Eady (FS): 73
Ryan Babatz (LT): 73
Alex Jenkins (LT): 73
DJ Volts (CB): 72
Mekhi Collins (WR): 71
Jack Liwienski (OG): 71
EJ Davis (CB): 71
Will Steil (FS): 70
Drew Klein (K): 70
Makes you wonder how players like Chase Mason and Charles Pierre would measure up. Maybe someday the Jacks, Coyotes and Fighting Hawks will be in the game and we’ll find out.
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Matt Zimmer is a Sioux Falls native and longtime sports writer. He graduated from Washington High School where he played football, legion baseball and developed his lifelong love of the Minnesota Twins and Vikings. After graduating from St. Cloud State University, he returned to Sioux Falls, and began a long career in amateur baseball and sports reporting. Email Matt at mzimmer@siouxfallslive.com.
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