A Tennessee jury took just three hours to convict former National Football League scout Blaise Taylor of murdering his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn daughter — after evidence showed he poisoned her drink with a lethal dose of cocaine and waited nearly two hours to call for help.
Story Highlights
- Blaise Taylor, a former Tennessee Titans scout and college football player, was convicted of first-degree murder for killing his pregnant girlfriend, Jade Benning, and her unborn child.
- Prosecutors proved Benning died from an extreme cocaine concentration — the highest the medical examiner’s office had ever seen — dissolved in a drink Taylor gave her.
- A witness testified Taylor tried the same thing in 2017, slipping poison into another woman’s drink to end a pregnancy.
- Taylor was sentenced to life in prison on three of four murder counts.
What the Jury Heard
Blaise Taylor was a former college football player and scout for the Tennessee Titans. He was dating Jade Benning, who was five months pregnant. On the night she died, surveillance records show Taylor arrived at her Nashville apartment at 7:00 p.m. with cocaine. He stayed about 30 minutes. He took selfies while her condition got worse. He did not call 911 until 9:50 p.m. — nearly two hours after she began to collapse.
At 9:29 p.m., before help was called, Benning managed to phone her friend Niga Jackson. She told Jackson that Taylor had poisoned her drink. Medical expert Dr. Aaron Carney testified that the cocaine concentration found in Benning’s blood was the highest the entire medical examiner’s office had ever recorded. Carney said a person would go pulseless within 30 minutes of ingesting that amount. Both Benning and her unborn baby girl died.
A Pattern the Jury Could Not Ignore
Prosecutors did not rely on Benning’s death alone to make their case. Witness Apple Denny testified that Taylor tried to poison another woman’s drink back in 2017 — with the goal of ending that pregnancy. That prior act established a pattern. The defense did not present any witness or document to directly refute Denny’s account. The jury heard it and convicted Taylor on all major counts after roughly three hours of deliberations.
Physical evidence backed the story up. Investigators found a washed-out cup near the sink — the likely vessel used to deliver the cocaine. A security camera at the scene had been moved to block the angle where the poisoning would have occurred. The defense argued no cocaine residue was found in collected cups and that the medical examiner ruled the manner of death as undetermined rather than homicide. The jury weighed those gaps and still found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Life in Prison — and a Lesson About Justice
Taylor was sentenced to life in prison on three counts: first-degree premeditated murder for the unborn child and felony murder for both victims. The verdict drew wide attention because of Taylor’s football background, but the facts of the case are what matter. A young woman called her friend in her final moments to name her killer. A baby girl never got the chance to be born. The jury heard all of it and delivered a clear answer.
Poisoning cases are notoriously hard to prove. There is rarely a witness to the act itself. Courts have long accepted that behavioral evidence — who was there, what they did afterward, whether they had done it before — can be enough to convict when the circumstantial case is strong. Here, the evidence was damning: a dying woman’s accusation, a doctor’s timeline, a moved camera, a washed-out cup, and a witness who had seen Taylor do it before. Justice was served for Jade Benning and her daughter.
Sources:
thegatewaypundit.com, youtube.com
