Former college football star Blaise Taylor allegedly pressured his pregnant girlfriend to get an abortion – before poisoning her and their unborn baby to death, jurors heard during his double-murder trial this week.
The 30-year-old ex-Arkansas State player faces four counts of murder after prosecutors say he intentionally gave Jade Benning a fatal dose of cocaine inside her Tennessee apartment on Feb. 25, 2023 – killing her and the couple’s unborn daughter.
Benning, who was five months pregnant when she died, had previously sent a chilling text message to a close female friend that appeared to reference Taylor’s alleged push for her to end the pregnancy.
“I’m going to tell him today that I’m not having the abortion…so he can just get it out of his head,” the message stated, according to an investigator who read it aloud from the witness stand Thursday.
Benning referenced Taylor’s alleged concerns with becoming a father in a second text message heard by jurors.
“You said how you felt and stated that moving forward you want no part, so I will let it be that,” reads a message she sent Taylor three months before her death, local news outlet WSMV 4 reported.
“I will not involve you at any point. I will love this child unconditionally with or without you,” her text continued.
Taylor’s defense team told the court that he reached back out to Benning, saying he wanted to work on their relationship, roughly two months after she sent that message.
Prosecutors argue that Taylor’s unwillingness to become a father was what drove him to allegedly serve Benning the deadly drink at her Nashville home – then falsely tell 911 operators she was suffering from an allergic reaction as she lost consciousness.
EMTs reportedly found an unresponsive Benning face down in her bed when they arrived about 20 minutes after that call.
The unborn baby, who was reportedly going to be named Ivy, died in the hospital on Feb. 27, 2023.
Benning died days later on March 6, which would have been her 25th birthday.
On Friday, day four of Taylor’s trial, a medical examiner broke down Benning’s autopsy report – which showed sky-high amounts of cocaine in her system that night.
A blood sample taken from her body revealed a total of 1,787 nanograms of cocaine per milliliter of blood – a level never before seen by Dr. Erin Carney, she told jurors.
“I could not recall anything this high,” she said, referring to her hundreds of cocaine-related autopsy reports throughout her career.
“The circumstances surrounding [Benning’s] ingestion of cocaine were very concerning, that she ingested this unknowingly,” Carney claimed, adding that cocaine being administered orally is “very uncommon.”
“Acute cocaine toxicity caused Miss Benning to die,” she said.
The manner of death for her five-month-old baby “could not be determined” – though cocaine was likely a factor, according to Carney.
“Cocaine is one of the only drugs that we know can cause pregnancy loss because it can cause placental abruption,” she explained.
“That disrupts the blood flow from mom to baby, so now baby’s not getting the oxygen that it needs to the blood, and then baby dies.”
The former Tennessee Titans scout – who has been required to wear a GPS monitor since posting the $2.5 million bond set by a judge in April 2024 – faces life in prison without parole if he’s convicted on the top murder charges.
He has pleaded not guilty.
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