Jade Benning | Inside the Blaise Taylor Murder Trial (Part 4)

Stephanie Harlowe (0:12)

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlowe.

Derrick Levasseur (0:15)

And I'm Derrick Levasseur.

Stephanie Harlowe (0:17)

So today we are going into the fourth and final part of the Jade Benning series, and this is where we get a little relief because we get to see what happens to Blaise. But listen, we can look at this case and what we've talked about over the last three episodes, and we can say there's no video showing Blaise Taylor putting cocaine into Jade Benning's drink. Police never recovered the cup prosecutors believed contained the poison. They never recovered the cell phone that Blaise was believed to be using that night. Jade's apartment was not immediately secured as a crime scene. Family and friends entered it before homicide investigators did. Even the medical examiner could not determine Jade's manner of death, meaning it was written as inconclusive, not homicide. Undetermined, yeah, not homicide. And yet on July 1st, 2026, after hearing seven days of testimony, a Nashville jury needed only a few hours to decide that Blaise Taylor murdered Jade Benning and their unborn daughter Ivy. So what did the jury see that convinced them and why didn't the defenses case that they built convince the jury otherwise? Because this is a largely circumstantial case. I think we can all acknowledge that there was a lot actually in Blaise's favor that I think could have possibly swayed a jury into saying, yeah, we think he did this, but we don't have enough. So rather than repeat multiple days of testimony witness by witness, I want to look at this the way the jury ultimately had to look at it. What was the state actually asking them to believe, and what was the defense asking them not to believe? So Blaise Taylor originally faced first-degree premeditated murder involving Ivy, murder charges involving Jade, and felony murder charges involving both Jade and Ivy.

So once again, this was always going to be a circumstantial case. There was no eyewitness to anything being put into Jade's drink, no confession, no recovered poisoned drink or glassware, no surveillance footage. The state had to convince a jury that the pieces could really only fit together in one reasonable way. They said that enough evidence had been shown to prove that Jade was beyond happy and excited to be having her baby. She was planning for Ivy to be born even before Blaise came back into her life. There was evidence in the texts between Jade and Blaise that when they had gone no contact with each other months before her death, Jade felt Blaise had given her what she called a crazy ultimatum, right? And according to the prosecution, it was the same ultimatum that Blaise had given Xavier Windford when he found out she was pregnant with his child. It's me or the baby. If you choose to keep the baby, you will lose me.

Not only am I not going to have anything to do with you, I will have nothing to do with this child. You will never see me again, basically. The choice is yours. And it seems that Xavier chose to maintain some sort of relationship with Blaise, but Jade chose her baby, Ivy.

She and Blaise stopped talking, but then he made the choice to return, not to support her, not to act as a partner or a father, but to remind Jade that her life was going to change, and this was something she should not be so optimistic about. And when Jade continued on with her pregnancy and didn't let Blaise's negativity sway her, Blaise had to come up with another plan, a plan that he had considered using before on at least one other woman that we know about. And I say at least because I can't imagine how many times this happened with Blaise, and these women have just never talked about it. But I'm sure it's happened on more than one occasion. We know it happened with Apple that he got her pregnant. We know what happened with Xavier.

Derrick Levasseur (3:55)

I can tell you this much with Xavier and Apple, especially Apple with her testimony.

I do think that was a big contributing factor to the jury's decision. Having them not be connected to Jade in any way, shape or form, and yet reporting similar behaviors and then even making comments like, you know, put something in your drink or put something in her drink is that to me was probably a nail in his coffin, a big one as well.

Stephanie Harlowe (4:21)

Yeah. So, Blaise was like, all right, I can't talk this woman out of terminating this pregnancy. I can't threaten her with losing me to terminate this pregnancy. So maybe I can put something in Jade's drink that could cause a miscarriage, right?