She was excited to be a mother. He made sure she wasn’t.

**Ana Garcia** (0:00)
A word of warning, this podcast explores graphic and disturbing stories and includes some strong language. It therefore may not be suitable for our young listeners or other folks who may find it disturbing. Hello and welcome to True Crime News The Podcast, covering high profile and under the radar cases from across the country every week. I'm your host, Ana Garcia. Our case this week is diabolical. It was a night of painting and decorating the baby's room. The mother was five months pregnant and the father apparently didn't want the child. So police say that he put cocaine in the mother's lemonade and she and her baby died. It took the jury two hours to convict the man. They decided that he was guilty of first degree murder in the death of the baby. They said he intended to kill the baby. But when it came to the mother's death, the jury convicted him of second degree, believing he didn't necessarily intend to kill the mother.
What do you think? We are recording this on Friday, July 10th of 2026 Our guest today is Beth Karas, a veteran legal analyst that you have seen on every crime show that you love, a new guest to the show.
Beth, you are not only an attorney, but you are also a former prosecutor.

**Beth Karas** (1:20)
Yes. Thank you so much for having me, and I'm delighted to be here today.
I was a prosecutor in Manhattan, in New York City. I did it for eight years before getting into my journalism career, which is what I've spent the bulk of my adult years doing, my professional years doing. But I went to court TV from the Manhattan DA's office, and there I stayed covering trials around the country, high-profile and low-profile like you, from jury selection to verdict for 19 years. Then when I left, it was going off the air, it's back now, but under new ownership, and I reinvented myself. So I'm doing podcasts, and I appear, as you said, on a lot of different networks doing analysis.

**Ana Garcia** (2:04)
It is such a pleasure to have you. You really are one of those trusted voices in crime reporting and analysis, and you also have a very distinctive voice. So I think even if you're not watching television or listening to a podcast, once your voice pops up, it's like, oh, it's Beth.

**Beth Karas** (2:21)
You know, I have had friends from law school say, well, I haven't talked to you in 10 years, but I was in the other room and I heard your voice from the living room, and I knew it was you. So yes, apparently, it's distinctive.

**Ana Garcia** (2:34)
Well, it's wonderful and it's comforting, and your expertise is really welcome today on this case, because I find this case to be challenging both morally and legally, and I can't wait to hear your take on it.

**Beth Karas** (2:52)
There are some very interesting issues. This is a case that's built on circumstantial evidence, but most murders are prosecuted with circumstantial evidence.
When you think about it, direct evidence is a confession, an eyewitness to the actual crime, or you might even get lucky and have a video of the crime. So that's direct evidence. Everything else is circumstantial, but circumstantial evidence can be so powerful. What are the chances that this and this and this and this happen? We're going to hear a lot of circumstantial evidence in this discussion that points to Blaise Taylor wanting that, at least the baby dead, maybe not the mother, but wanting that baby dead. But it doesn't matter. If you killed her in the process, tough. You're going down for that too, which is what happened.

**Ana Garcia** (3:43)
Yeah. So it took the jury, as I said, two hours to find a former college football star guilty of killing his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn baby with a cocaine-laced lemonade in Nashville, Tennessee. The accused here, 30-year-old Blaise Taylor, a former Arkansas State football player, a pro scout for the Tennessee Titans. And he has been convicted of killing 25-year-old Jade Benning and her unborn baby girl, Ivy, who was five months old in utero. According to the prosecution, Blaise didn't want the baby.
And Jade had told him, I'm having the baby no matter what, and I will be a single mother, and I will raise this child without you. And I know we're going to get into the details of all of this, but I am really fascinated by this concept of that the jury could clearly see he didn't want that baby. This is, you know, their decision. But when it came to the mother, it's almost, and I don't mean to be crass here, but almost as if this was the collateral damage, secondary, if you will, death, because she was not the intended target. I find that fascinating.