▶ Watch Video: Sneak peek: Jade Benning’s Final Call
On the night of Feb. 25, 2023, outside Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, Blaise Taylor was answering police questions about how a date turned into a medical emergency.
BLAISE TAYLOR (police bodycam): We were together having a date night.
Authorities wanted to know what happened to 24-year-old Jade Benning, who had been rushed to the hospital, arriving unresponsive.
BLAISE TAYLOR (police bodycam): She started not to feel well.
Jade Benning started that night with the hope of strengthening her relationship with Blaise Taylor, then a 26-year-old assistant football scout for the Tennessee Titans. Jade, a professional chef, was planning a special night at her apartment — cooking dinner, to be followed by painting pictures. But as the evening progressed, just minutes after taking selfies, Jade fell ill. Blaise said she was spitting up and shaking — unsure what to do, he first called his father.
Evi Taylor, Blaise’s mother, said their children would often contact their father, a college football coach, with medical questions.
Evi Taylor: Being in sports and things, a lot of times, you know, they would go to their dad. … He would be on the field. Like if somebody got hurt, he would be the first one there.
Blaise Taylor calls 911
Blaise’s call with his dad lasted 30 seconds. He told his son to immediately call 911, which Blaise did.
BLAISE TAYLOR (911 call): I don’t know what’s happening … She’s got spit coming out of her mouth and she’s shaking.
EMT responders found Jade lying face down on her bed, with no pulse. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital. By then, Jade’s best friend, Nijaiha Jackson, had returned to Jade’s apartment, only to learn Jade was unresponsive.
Nijaiha Jackson: She has to be OK. I just saw her an hour ago. (cries)
Just an hour earlier, Jade was her usual lively self. She was known, says her family and friends, for being spirited — traits on display in cheerleading. She was captain of the squad at her high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, and cheered in competitions.
Dennis Browning: Jade was very much a bridge builder.
Dennis Browning, Jade’s dad, says she has always been about bringing people together — even her own parents — after her mom, Bridget Benning Burks, and her dad divorced.
Dennis Browning: She was always putting out the fire.
She moved from Little Rock to Nashville, to pursue her career, and her dream of owning a restaurant.
Dennis Browning: She was close to doing it.
Natalie Morales: When did you start to hear the name Blaise Taylor?
Bridget Benning Burks: It wasn’t long after she moved there, she told that she had met this person … And my husband’s big into sports so he knew exactly who he was.
Blaise Taylor was well known to people in Arkansas who followed college football. A former standout defensive back and top student, who had earned a scholarship to Arkansas State University.
Evi Taylor: You know, when he got to college … he got his bachelor’s and his master’s in business in three-and-a-half years while playing football and starting his own nonprofit.
Blaise was all about helping people, not hurting them, says his family. He and his sister, Starr, while students at Arkansas State, started a foundation, providing educational opportunities for children.
Starr Taylor: He’s always been really passionate about community service and giving back
After college, Blaise went on to an assistant coaching job at Duke. Blaise then moved to Nashville for that scouting job with the Tennessee Titans, where he was working when he met Jade.
Evi Taylor: He mentioned her name once … maybe going on a date or something. … And he just said that she was a chef. And that’s all I knew about her.
Jade and Blaise’s relationship had been a casual one, with each seeing other people. Then, in November 2022, about three months into dating, Jade called her mom with surprising news.
Bridget Benning Burks: She said, hold on, I got to send you a picture to look at. And so, she texted a picture and it was a pregnancy test — positive.
Dennis Browning: And she goes, “you’re going to be a grandpa.” … And that’s when I asked her, I said, well, “who’s the father?”
She told her parents it was Blaise. Jade learned she was having a girl and chose the name Ivy for the baby. By the time of that date night, Jade was nearly six months pregnant. Those paintings Jade planned for that night were meant for Ivy’s room. Jade’s creation included the words, love, and hope. But hope turned to horror when Nijaiha received that call from Jade, where she says Jade was accusing Blaise of putting something into her drink.
Nijaiha Jackson: It just sounded like something I never heard before. She just sounded scared.
The call lasted a little more than six minutes. Nijaiha says Jade’s voice faded at the end and then, the call was disconnected. As Nijaiha raced to Jade’s apartment to figure out what was going on, she called Bridget.
Nijaiha Jackson: To have this responsibility to tell my best friend’s mom that something is wrong … having to explain to her mom, police, the doctors, all these things that I, only I heard, and needing them to believe me because I knew that my friend was, needed help.
Nijaiha and Blaise separately followed the ambulance to the hospital. Once there, Nijaiha repeated what she heard on that call from Jade to anyone who would listen, including law enforcement and medical staff. Meanwhile, Bridget traveled all night to Nashville to be her daughter. Bridget says she kept calling Jade’s phone.
Bridget Benning Burks: Finally, after probably the third time I’m calling, he answered. And I was like … “What have you done to my child?”
Searching for answers
Bridget knew her daughter Jade Benning was in critical condition, but when she arrived at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, she realized just how dire the situation had become.
Bridget Benning Burks: They told me that, um, she had gone approximately 45 minutes without oxygen. I knew.
Jade was brain dead. She was hooked up to life support, put in ICU, and any hope of even communicating with her daughter to learn what happened was gone.
Natalie Morales: And what about the baby? What were the doctors saying?
Bridget Benning Burks: Well, the baby at this time was 24 weeks … and if Jade went an extended time without oxygen, the baby went the same. … and a baby at 24 weeks wouldn’t have a chance.
Amid their sorrow, Jade’s family and friends were searching for answers as to how a healthy 24 year-old could now be in this state. Still, there was that phone call Jade made, where Nijaiha Jackson said she heard Jade accuse Blaise of putting something in her drink.
Natalie Morales: Is Blaise at the hospital too with you, are you seeing him?
Bridget Benning Burks: No. Actually, when they moved her to ICU, he was told that he needed to leave. And at that time, they placed her under an alias name for her protection. … The only people that had access to her were her parents.
Police had spoken to Blaise, who cooperated several times earlier that night at the hospital. Aside from what Nijaiha said she heard on that call, which was not recorded, there was no proof that Blaise harmed Jade. And, it was Blaise, remember, who had contacted 911. Blaise’s parents were concerned and traveled from Texas to Nashville to be with him.
Evi Taylor: And of course, you know, worried about her and, you know, she’s pregnant and, is she going to be OK? Is the baby gonna be OK?
In the days that followed, Blaise and his family say they were cut off from receiving updates about Jade’s condition. Jade’s family says they also were not receiving information they wanted from police about next steps into the investigation.
Dennis Browning: As a parent, you know, you want answers like right now — you know, what happened … what are you gonna do?
They thought authorities weren’t moving fast enough. It wasn’t just the phone call their daughter had made. There were also conversations months earlier, where Jade had told them Blaise was unhappy at the prospect of becoming a dad.
Dennis Browning: She told me that he didn’t want to have anything to do with the baby.
Nijaiha and others say that Blaise, at one point, even suggested to Jade she terminate the pregnancy.
Nijaiha Jackson: Kinda giving her an ultimatum on either get an abortion or you’re risking this being over between you and I.
Jade made it clear to Blaise she wanted the baby and was fine to do it without him. For a while, their relationship cooled off. Jade’s family, though, was more than ready to help out.
Lyn Burks, Jade’s stepdad, had been looking forward to having a grandchild, no matter the circumstance.
Lyn Burks: We was very excited. If he didn’t want anything to do with it, we was OK with that. … we wasn’t gonna ask for one thing from him.
Her family says Jade told them to keep the pregnancy quiet, per Blaise’s instructions. But Evi Taylor says Blaise did tell people, including his family, in December 2022.
Evi Taylor: He just told us that, um, that she was pregnant. … So I think it was a difficult conversation because obviously they had a casual relationship.
Evi said they discussed a paternity test, to be performed after the baby was born, to confirm that Blaise was the father. Still, his family was supportive.
Starr Taylor: My dad immediately like grabbed all of our hands and we just prayed … for Jade, for Blaise, um, for the child.
Then, on New Year’s Eve 2022, Blaise reached out to Jade. They started dating again. Now, with Jade on life support, her family and Nijaiha questioned Blaise’s motives for reconnecting back then — wondering if he had been planning something nefarious. Despite expressing their concerns about Blaise to police, Jade’s apartment had yet to be sealed off as a potential crime scene.
Nijaiha Jackson: I was just like, “I know what I heard, and something needs to be done. Like, we need to go to her apartment.”
So, just one day after Jade was admitted to the hospital, Nijaiha and three friends decided to investigate on their own. They went to Jade’s apartment and recorded video.
Nijaiha Jackson: I got some gloves from the hospital, and I told everybody to put them on. … and we went into the apartment, and we started recording upon entry.
Natalie Morales: Did you … worry at all that, “I could be hindering the police investigation. I might be contaminating the scene?”
Nijaiha Jackson: Honestly, at that time, no.
When the group entered Jade’s bedroom, Nijaiha said she noticed something out of place.
Nijaiha Jackson: I see that the camera is in the corner. … and the camera was never there.
Nijaiha said she had seen the Blink security camera in the kitchen when she left the apartment earlier the night Jade became ill. She wondered if Blaise moved the camera, so it would not record him putting something in Jade’s drink.
Nijaiha Jackson: So I moved the camera back to the kitchen. … I wanted it back where it was in case he came back for whatever reason.
While in the apartment, they noticed vomit on Jade’s comforter. Thinking it might be important, they put it in a garbage bag to bring to Bridget. The next day, police did secure the scene and did their own search, collecting drinks and other items to be tested. Bridget also gave police the comforter. At the hospital, now two days after being admitted, results from Jade’s lab work were coming back.
Dennis Browning: That’s when the positive results came back in her blood and in her urine.
Natalie Morales: Positive results for?
Dennis Browning: Cocaine.
Cocaine — something doctors said might explain Jade’s condition.
Natalie Morales: Was cocaine ever something that she had tried as far as —
Dennis Browning: No.
Bridget Benning Burks: Never.
Dennis Browning: Never.
Jade’s parents and friends knew she sometimes used marijuana and would drink. But, they say, once Jade learned she was pregnant, that stopped. For days, Jade had been kept on life support. Now, the family had a heartbreaking decision to make: when to remove the equipment.
Bridget Benning Burks: We talked, and with it being so close to her birthday, we were like, our wishes are to wait until her birthday.
On March 6, 2023, on what would have been Jade’s 25th birthday, life support was stopped.
Dennis Browning: When she died, a part of me did too.
Five months later, Jade’s autopsy was completed, finding she died from acute cocaine toxicity, with the cocaine having been ingested. While cocaine had been identified in her system in the hospital, the levels revealed in the autopsy were extraordinarily high, and according to the medical examiner, rarely seen — more than seven times what is typically found in fatal cocaine overdoses.
Dennis Browning: Which is like off the chart.
Natalie Morales: What did that tell you, Bridget, in that moment?
Bridget Benning Burks: That he did something. He didn’t want the baby, so … he ultimately put something in her drink that took her life.
The manner of death, though, was listed as could not be determined, not as homicide. There was no evidence Blaise bought any drugs, and no drugs were found in the drinks police took from Jade’s apartment. The one place cocaine was identified was in the vomit stain on that comforter. Still, Jade’s family and friends were convinced Blaise poisoned Jade, putting cocaine into her drink.
Dennis Browning: I think … he had an image he wanted to uphold, you know, being this picture-perfect person … I guess he felt like, you know, having a child would somehow tarnish that.
After Jade died, Blaise was offered a college football analyst job in Utah and decided to move.
Evi Taylor: It’s kind of like a coaching assistant … And that was like a step up in his career, you know, where he’d actually be on the field with the players.
To Jade’s family, the man responsible for killing their daughter and her unborn baby was living his life, while they were waiting for him to be held responsible.
OFFICER (bodycam): How are you doing?
BLAISE TAYLOR: Good.
OFFICER: Can I ask your name?
BLAISE TAYLOR: Blaise.
OFFICER: Blaise?
Then, after a year of investigating Jade’s death, on March 14, 2024, in a store parking lot in Utah —
OFFICER (bodycam): What’s your last name?
BLAISE TAYLOR: Taylor.
OFFICER: Put your hands behind your back for me, OK?
BLAISE TAYLOR: What’s going on?
OFFICER: We have a warrant out of Tennessee for homicide.
Blaise Taylor was arrested, facing murder charges for killing Jade and her unborn child. He was brought back to Nashville, and the Taylor family worked to have him released, a month later, on a $2.5 million bond.
Natalie Morales: Did he have any reason … to try to hurt Jade or the unborn child because he did not want to become a father?
Evi Taylor: Absolutely not. I mean, we already knew, um that she was pregnant. … he has a job … So there’s no reason.
And there’s no evidence, says Blaise Taylor’s defense attorney.
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: There was absolutely nothing that tied Blaise Taylor to the drugs that caused the death of Ms. Benning and her unborn child. Nothing.
Best friend on Jade Benning’s phone call
For two families, who define justice differently, the stakes were high as Blaise Taylor, in June of 2026, went on trial for the murders of Jade Benning and her unborn child.
Davidson County prosecutors Jan Norman, Roger Moore and Kendall Ponchillia needed to convince the jury that Blaise Taylor intentionally poisoned Jade Benning. And that he thought he could get away with it, but his plan was foiled by that call Jade made to Nijaiha.
Prosecutor Jan Norman: We all agree that his plan was to poison her with the liquid cocaine and then to leave her there.
Prosecutor Roger Moore: And that phone call totally disrupted … what could theoretically have been the perfect murder.
And so, Nijaiha Jackson was the key witness for the prosecution — describing to the jury what she says she heard on that call from Jade.
NIJAIHA JACKSON (in court): She immediately started saying, “What did you do? What did you put in my drink?” And then I heard her say, “Blaise, you’re scaring me” and he was like “You’re scaring me.” And then she was asking him to empty his pockets and … he was like, “I don’t have anything.”
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN: Can you repeat the last thing that you heard Jade say?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: She said that “you did this so something could happen to the baby.”
Natalie Morales: What do you make of that call?
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: I can’t make heads or tails of it.
Letitia Quinones-Hollins, one of Blaise Taylor’s defense attorneys, has doubts about that call, since it was not recorded and only relies on what Nijaiha says she heard.
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: Think about your very best friend and you hear that she is in danger. … Do you call 911 to get her help?
That was a question she asked Nijaiha during cross-examination.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS (in court): You could have reported to 911, correct?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: And if they would have asked me questions about her physical state I would have not been able to provide those answers.
Nijaiha also testified about that visit to Jade’s apartment with friends to undertake their own investigation, before police secured the scene. She spoke about taking those precautions: wearing gloves, videotaping the process, and about moving the camera from the bedroom to its usual spot in the kitchen, and taking the comforter.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN (in court): Were you there when that comforter was bagged up?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: Yes.
JAN NORMAN: Did anybody touch it with anything other than gloved hands to put it in that bag?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: No.
For the defense, the fact that the friends moved the camera and took the comforter raised questions about the integrity of the scene and evidence.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS (in court): Why were you so careful about not touching anything, but you weren’t careful enough to preserve the scene? What was the difference?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: I’m not sure.
Nothing usable was recovered from the camera. Because Jade’s death involved a drug, prosecutors knew this was something they would have to address.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN (in court): Prior to Jade learning that she was pregnant … did Ms. Benning, did she drink alcohol?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: Yes.
JAN NORMAN: And did she use any other substances?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: Um, she smoked marijuana.
But the state argued that when Jade learned she was pregnant, her drinking and marijuana use stopped — and that she was not known to use cocaine.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN (in court): Have you ever heard of her using cocaine or even talking about it?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: No.
The defense also questioned Nijaiha about this.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS (in court): Would you smoke marijuana together?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: Yes.
LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS: Would you drink together?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: Yes.
LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS: Did she ask you to do mushrooms with her?
NIJAIHA JACKSON: Um, maybe. I don’t recall.
Nijaiha Jackson: It felt like they were tainting Jade’s character and her image as well as mine. … have to defend myself and her, was, like, very jarring.
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: Nobody, including myself, wants the victim blame … But at the same time … what we are talking about here is a drug overdose. Whether it was accidental, whether it was intentional, that’s what we were there to determine.
Throughout the trial, the defense contrasted Jade’s history with drugs to that of Blaise.
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: The only person that had experience and connection with drugs between the two of them was Ms. Benning. And it wasn’t just her past.
Evidence was presented that earlier the same day Jade collapsed, she had a text conversation with someone identified in her phone as Danny Weed Guy, a drug dealer, asking: “Heyy, my coworker wants to get a half from you.”
Prosecutor Jan Norman: Every single text message to Danny Weed after she found out she was pregnant … there’s a corresponding text message every single time that it was not for Jade’s use.
There was no evidence that the request was for Jade, nor that they ever met that day —only the message, with Danny Weed responding, “bet I gotchu when I get back.”
Natalie Morales: Was Danny Weed called as a witness at all just to clear any of this up or to testify?
Prosecutor Jan Norman: No, because Jade did not die from marijuana use. Jade died from acute cocaine toxicity.
But for the defense, any interaction between Jade and a drug dealer should have been investigated more thoroughly.
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: He was not considered a witness for the prosecution and … he did not want to talk with us … But he was never spoken to by the police.
The state argued this was all about liquid cocaine as a murder weapon — nothing else. Dr. Erin Carney, a medical examiner for Davidson County, testified that the levels of cocaine found in Jade’s system were rarely seen.
DR. ERIN CARNEY (in court): Based on the high level of cocaine … I actually signed her death certificate to say ingested cocaine.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN: And what was the manner of death?
DR. ERIN CARNEY: It could not be determined … It was much more suspicious that someone gave it to her without her knowledge, but it didn’t have enough to get to that, you know, homicide determination.
To try to help the jury get to that homicide determination, the prosecution was going to call a witness from Blaise Taylor’s past.
Jan Norman: We were going to ask her to do something that in our opinion was a very big deal … to testify about things about herself that were so incredibly personal.
Former girlfriend of Blaise Taylor shares her story in court
Apple Dennie: When I first met Blaise Taylor … he seemed very smart. … And he just was really charming.
Apple Dennie met Blaise Taylor at Arkansas State in 2016, when she was a freshman and he was an upperclassman. They dated on and off for a few years. Apple says she eventually saw a different side of Blaise.
Apple Dennie: Calculated … and controlling, and willing to do whatever it takes to maintain an image.
That Blaise Taylor was the one Apple Dennie would testify about as a crucial prosecution witness. She told the jury that Jade Benning was not the first woman Blaise got pregnant. She said that while she was dating Blaise in 2017, he admitted to reconnecting with a former girlfriend, when he thought he and Apple were on a break. And there was more.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN (in court): What was it that he came to tell you about?
APPLE DENNIE: That, uh, he got her pregnant.
JAN NORMAN: And what was his demeanor like when he came to you to tell you about this?
APPLE DENNIE: Very erratic. He was upset. Um, didn’t want to have a baby with her.
Blaise, says Apple, was seeking her help. Apple had been in the same situation with him a few months earlier when she became pregnant with Blaise’s baby.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN (in court): What were your feelings when you learned that you were pregnant?
APPLE DENNIE: I was really scared and confused. I knew I wasn’t ready to have a kid.
JAN NORMAN: What did you ultimately end up doing?
APPLE DENNIE: I had an abortion.
Apple says that decision was solely her own, and that Blaise was supportive, going with her to appointments. But this other woman told Blaise she might want the baby.
Natalie Morales: What did Blaise ask you to do when he came forward and told you that he had gotten another woman pregnant?
Apple Dennie: He was … asking if I could get the abortion pills and give them to him so he could give them to her without her knowing.
Apple testified about that conversation.
APPLE DENNIE (in court): So he was looking stuff up to figure out how she like if there was something he could do to make her have an abortion, um, and asked me if I could get the abortion pills, and he could make her take them or put it in her drink.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN: Did you do that?
APPLE DENNIE: Did I get the pill? No.
No evidence was presented that Blaise got a pill. Ultimately, the other woman terminated her pregnancy. Apple and Blaise stayed together on and off, until 2019, when the relationship ended. She says she hadn’t given Blaise much thought until years later, when she heard about what happened to Jade Benning. Apple and Jade’s mom, Bridget, connected. Apple was then put in touch with authorities.
Natalie Morales: So when you hear the circumstances surrounding Jade Benning’s death … what do you think happened to Jade?
Apple Dennie: I think that he carried out a plan that he had thought about years ago.
Defense attorney Jim Sanders: Her testimony to me came across as a woman spurned.
Jim Sanders, one of Blaise Taylor’s defense lawyers, questions Apple’s motivation to testify. The defense says Apple’s own words about her past with Blaise paint a different story.
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: There were actual journals and things of that nature where she talked about what an amazing individual, he was … what a positive impact he made on her life.
Apple doesn’t deny she once viewed Blaise fondly but says she had no motive to reveal details of her personal life on the stand.
Apple Dennie: I’m telling everyone that I had abortion … And that was probably one of the worst parts about it is having to deal with people thinking these things about me and having to revisit all of that.
The defense contends Apple’s testimony should never have been allowed by the court.
Defense attorney Jim Sanders: That testimony from Apple Dennie was more than highly prejudicial. … and it was clearly inadmissible. … you cannot use character evidence or evidence of a bad act to prove the case.
Natalie Morales: Would it show, though … a certain pattern of behavior?
Defense attorney Jim Sanders: Well … where’s the pattern here? …
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: We’re talking about, according to Ms. Dennie, what he said, not what he did, what he said.
Apple Dennie was one of the last witnesses for the state. The defense’s focus turned to the reliability of Jade’s lab results, and questions about what actually caused her death.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS (in court): Are you familiar with cocaethylene or the metabolite cocaethylene?
MELISSA GIGUERE Ph.D.: Yes.
The defense presented medical experts who testified about a substance called cocaethylene, formed when cocaine and alcohol are combined. It was found in Jade’s lab results.
JANCI CHUNN LINDSAY Ph.D. (in court) So, if cocaethylene is there, that indicates that a person has ingested ethanol and cocaine at the same time.
Ethanol is alcohol. The defense argued it only would have been present if Jade was drinking alcohol when she ingested cocaine, and perhaps that combination — not cocaine alone — killed her.
Prosecutor Kendall Ponchillia: The defense made a real big deal … about that Jade could have been using alcohol, that Jade mixed these two together. And there was absolutely no proof … that Jade had a sip of alcohol once she found out she was pregnant.
The state contends that the level of cocaethylene was so small, it was below a reportable unit. And it offered another explanation for its presence —- one involving Blaise.
Prosecutor Kendall Ponchillia: He could have very easily have dissolved the cocaine in a small amount of alcohol.
But there was another drug, known to be deadly, found on her comforter: fentanyl. The defense suggested that Jade had to be using fentanyl, or taken something laced with fentanyl, for it to be there.
Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins: How is that not considered when we’re talking about the causation of death?
Natalie Morales: How could that even be explained … this finding of fentanyl on a comforter if she never used fentanyl?
Prosecutor Jan Norman: Because that comforter got put in a bag, it got put in the back of someone’s car, then it gets given to the police … everyone makes every precaution about not contaminating evidence, but things happen. We also have the medics that were in there. … It’s a trace amount which is consistent with it just touching something that it shouldn’t have.
But according to the defense, there is simply not enough evidence to prove what killed Jade. And, it says, whatever killed her did not involve Blaise Taylor.
Defense attorney Jim Sanders: He called 911. He followed the ambulance to the hospital. … talked to the police whenever they ask him a question … Not the act of a guilty guy.
To the prosecution, those are the acts of someone guilty trying to look innocent.
Prosecutor Jan Norman: Jade Benning absolutely named Blaise Taylor as the person who put something in her drink … And her words are direct evidence that he did it.
And that would be up to the jury to decide.
A jury decides
After seven days of testimony in Blaise Taylor’s murder trial, attorneys presented their closing arguments. For the state, it ended much the way it began — referencing that call Jade Benning made to her friend Nijaiha Jackson.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN (in court): Jade Benning called the one person who knew where she was, knew who she was with, would know that she was calling scared. … She made sure that you heard her last words. … “I know you put something in my drink.”
The prosecution dismissed the defense theories that other drugs were involved, saying this was solely about cocaine.
PROSECUTOR JAN NORMAN (in court): Blaise Taylor intentionally put that cocaine in Jade’s drink to kill the baby.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS: We dealt with an official finding of undetermined, the manner of death in this case.
The defense argued that the state did not have enough evidence to even classify Jade’s death a homicide, let alone point to Blaise as her killer. And as for Jade’s final phone call, jurors were reminded those details relied solely on Nijaiha’s recollection.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS (in court): Remember, nobody else heard exactly what was going on on that phone call, nobody but Nijaiha.
In terms of a motive, the defense insisted there was none.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY LETITIA QUINONES-HOLLINS (in court): I guarantee you he is not the first human being that in his 20s, had a unexpected pregnancy pop up and he’s not happy … And they want you to believe … that would give him motive to kill her and the baby.
Evi Taylor: I thought that we were gonna be OK. … But it’s always scary, when your life is in the hands of 12 people that don’t know you.
As the case went to the jury, each family held onto hope.
Dennis Browning: We’ve prepared ourselves to be there for a while … You’re sitting on pins and needles.
The wait would not be long. After about two hours of deliberating, there was a verdict.
JURY FOREPERSON: We the jury find the defendant Blaise Allen Taylor for Count 1, guilty for second-degree murder …
Blaise Taylor was found guilty of four counts: second-degree murder of Jade Benning, first-degree premeditated murder of an unborn child, and two counts of felony murder. He received two life sentences, to be served consecutively.
Natalie Morales: Hearing that verdict, take me back to that moment for you.
Bridget Benning Burks: Relief. Like a weight lifted that this would never be done to anybody else by him.
Evi Taylor: I heard guilty and then I don’t I think I was just like everything just kind of like blacked out after that. … And that feeling as a parent … that you thought there’s no hope. … It’s the worst feeling when you can’t — when you can’t help your son.
Defense attorney Jim Sanders: They didn’t prove he was guilty. An innocent man got convicted.
Blaise Taylor’s defense team and family are working on an appeal.
Starr Taylor: I want to make sure … that we, as well as the attorneys, continue to fight for his innocence because he didn’t do this.
For Jade’s family, the verdict did bring justice, but the void left in their lives by Jade’s death and that of Ivy, her unborn child, will never be filled. They try to celebrate Jade in big and small ways. Their arms have tattoos of butterflies, which Jade loved.
And at what would have been Jade’s 10-year high school reunion, Jade’s classmates, including her best friend Nijaiha, remembered the special life lost.
Bridget Benning Burks (at the class reunion): I feel the love — I definitely feel the love that they had for her.
Nijaiha Jackson (at the class reunion): There’s like a hole … knowing that she isn’t here.
Jade’s family brought balloons for the class to release as a way to honor their daughter.
Dennis Browning: She touched so many people. … you know I think about her daily.
Bridget Benning Burks: She’s always with me. … I always wonder … just what life would have been like … to become a grandma … The rest of life will be what would have been.
Produced by Ruth Chenetz. Jenna Jackson and Ryan Smith are the development producers. Alicia Tejada is the coordinating producer. Jane Shevlin is the associate producer. Marlon Disla, Richard Barber and Diana DeCilio are the editors. Patti Aronofsky is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
