Former football star allegedly poisoned girlfriend for refusing abortion

A former football star has been standing trial in Tennessee for allegedly poisoning his pregnant girlfriend, killing both mother and baby, after she refused to have an abortion.

Key Takeaways:

• Blaise Taylor was a star football player at Arkansas State University, and then worked for the NFL as a scout for the Tennessee Titans.

• He was in a relationship with Jade Benning, a chef with dreams of owning her own restaurant.

• Benning became pregnant and Taylor insisted she have an abortion; she refused.

• Taylor allegedly put a fatal dose of cocaine into her pink lemonade, which killed her; her baby girl, Ivy, survived for several days, but ultimately died as well.

• Taylor has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

The Backstory:

Taylor and Benning began dating in 2022, and were in a casual relationship when she became pregnant.

According to a former co-worker, Taylor openly did not want children yet. "The comments ... 'not ready yet. Not anytime soon.' Things of that nature," Mical Johnson said during testimony at Taylor's trial.

Taylor pressured Benning to have an abortion, but she refused, and the couple split up.

"I'm going to tell him today that I'm not having the abortion… so he can just get it out of his head," a text message she sent to a friend said.

In a different text, Benning told Taylor she would not require him to be part of the child's life if he didn't want to be. "You said how you felt and stated that moving forward you want no part, so I will let it be that," she wrote. "I will not involve you at any point. I will love this child unconditionally with or without you."

This wasn't the first time Taylor found himself in this situation. He got his ex-girlfriend Apple Dennie pregnant, asked for an abortion, and she agreed.

Dennie testified that Taylor reached out to her about Benning's pregnancy, and asked her to procure abortion pills for him.

"Very erratic. He, like, was upset. Didn't want to have a baby with her," Dennie said. "He was googling things. He was looking stuff up to figure out how she ... if there was something you could do to make her have an abortion. And asked me if I could get the abortion pills, and he could make her take them or put it in her drink."

Bridget Burks, Benning's mother, agreed that Taylor wanted nothing to do with his baby.

"If she had the baby, he wanted nothing to do with the baby. He didn't want it to have his name. He didn't want the child to ever know who he was," she said. Yet Benning, according to a co-worker of hers, was still excited about having her baby.

“She just knew what was ahead of her," Lauren Weber said. "She was positive, she was going home after work, she was getting her apartment ready, she just wanted to be a mom and she was ready to be a mom."

Poisoning her after pretending he wanted to reconcile

In January of 2023, Taylor reached out to Benning to ask for a reconciliation. Yet he did not attend her February doctor's appointment, where she discovered she was having a little girl.

Taylor planned a date night for Benning on February 25, 2023, during which the two painted canvases to hang in their daughter's nursery. Benning's friend Nijaiha Jackson stopped by and noticed that while Benning's painting was bright and colorful, Taylor painted a black hole.

“He told me he was going to paint a black hole,” she recalled. “I’m going to call it midnight — the further you look, the deeper you go. It was a very dark demeanor about this painting after Jade said she was going to make something for the baby’s room.”

Jackson left soon after, and then received an alarming phone call from Benning; she could hear her yelling at Taylor in the background, saying he had poisoned her.

“She immediately starts saying, ‘What did you do? What did you put in my drink?’ Then I heard her say, ‘Blaise, you’re scaring me,’” Jackson said during her testimony. “He said, ‘You’re scaring me.’ And she was like, ‘I know you put something in my drink. ... I knew my drink tasted funny.’”

All the while, Benning continued addressing Taylor, and didn't direct any words to Jackson herself. “She was like, ‘I know you put something in my drink because I can’t even walk straight.’ She was just saying that she couldn’t feel her legs," Jackson said, and then added that the last thing she heard Benning say was, “You did this so something would happen to the baby.”

From there, Jackson said Benning's speech became slurred and confusing. She called Benning back, but Taylor answered; he eventually got off the phone and called 911, saying Benning was having an allergic reaction, while Jackson raced back to the apartment. When she got there, ambulances had already arrived, and EMTs were performing CPR. She had been found face down on her bed, unconscious, with a very weak pulse.

“She’s just really pale,” Jackson recalled. “She still has on the pajamas she was wearing when I left. And Blaise was going back and forth, back and forth.”

Zoom In:

Benning was rushed to the hospital. At five months pregnant, doctors knew there was a possibility of saving her daughter, Ivy, who was delivered alive. Benning was placed on life support.

Tragically, both died; Ivy survived for two days before passing away on February 27, 2023, and Benning died on her birthday, March 6. She was just 25 years old.

Defense attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins argued that Benning's death was her own fault, saying she had been a habitual drug user, though prosecutors said there was nothing to indicate she had used drugs before.

"She was involved with marijuana, she was involved with Adderall, she was involved with weed cartridges, they call it resin, she was involved with mushrooms," Quinones-Hollins said.

Yet medical examiner Erin Carney testified otherwise, saying the amount of cocaine in her system was far higher than anything she had ever seen before.

"I could not recall anything this high," Carney said. "The circumstances surrounding [Benning's] ingestion of cocaine were very concerning, that she ingested this unknowingly. Acute cocaine toxicity caused Miss Benning to die."

Prosecutors argue that Taylor put the cocaine into Benning's pink lemonade. And though it can't be proven, Carney testified that she believes the cocaine is responsible for Ivy's death as well.

"Cocaine is one of the only drugs that we know can cause pregnancy loss because it can cause placental abruption," she said.

Prosecutors are seeking life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Bottom Line:

Weber, who worked with Benning at Ernst Bar and Hideaway, said staff there continues to remember her, and her baby, celebrating Ivy's heavenly birthdays with Benning's family.

They have kept Benning's favorite dish on the menu, as well as a photo of her and a candle next to the kitchen door, which is lit every day, adding, "And then at night, whatever staff members are left at closing will come around and actually blow it out together and tell her goodnight."