Florida arrest in staged suicide killing of Ashlee Butler after four-year probe

Ross Butler was taken into custody outside AdventHealth Palm Coast after investigators tracked him to Flagler County, Florida, where he had been staying at a motel in Flagler Beach and had recently been admitted to the hospital. Detectives with Chesterfield County traveled to Florida on May 27, 2026, to help with the arrest and interview the 56-year-old, closing in on a fugitive path that had stretched nearly four years after Ashlee Butler’s death was first treated as a suicide.

That first call came to the 5500 block of Alberta Road around 1 p.m. on December 20, 2021. Police said Ashlee Butler, 36, was reported to have attempted suicide and was taken to a local hospital, where she died three days later on December 23. Investigators later concluded that the scene and her injuries did not fit the original explanation and believed the death had been staged after Ashlee Butler was strangled. They also said the home had a history of domestic violence, and that Ashlee Butler had been trying to pack her belongings and leave Ross Butler when she was killed.

The case moved only after years of forensic review, scene reconstruction, and witness work that prosecutors say finally aligned enough to bring a grand jury indictment. On May 18, 2026, Ross Butler was indicted on charges including first-degree murder, abduction, felony homicide, and strangulation. Authorities said the arrest in Flagler County came through close coordination between Virginia detectives and the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, which located Butler in the area before waiting for him to be released from the hospital. He was then taken into custody and held without bond pending extradition to Virginia.

Flagler County officials said Butler had prior arrests there for driving while license suspended, DUI, and marijuana possession. Chesterfield County police said the investigation remains active, and they are asking anyone with information to call Chesterfield County Police at 804-748-1251 or Chesterfield County/Colonial Heights Crime Solvers at 804-748-0660. Investigators also pointed to the broader danger in intimate partner violence, citing that roughly one in four women experiences severe abuse in her lifetime and that non-fatal strangulation by an intimate partner carries a sharply higher risk of later homicide. For Ashlee Butler, the arrest outside a Florida hospital did not end the case so much as finally expose where it had been hiding all along.