Post Mortem | Jade Benning's Final Call

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Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host Ann Marie Green. And I'm joined today by 48 hours correspondent Natalie Morales. To talk about the case of 24-year-old Jade Benning. Who collapsed in February of 2023 while on a date night with Blaze Taylor. Who she had dated on and off again. Jade had told her friends and family that she was pregnant with Blaze's child. When Jade fell ill, Blaze called 911 and told the operator that he thought that she might have had an allergic reaction. But minutes before that call, Jade's best friend said Jade called her. And what she overheard, she says, was Jade asking Blaze what did you do? What did you put in my drink? Natalie, thanks again for joining us today. Yeah, good to be with you again, Ann Marie. And what's also really interesting in this case, as you mentioned, is that evidence, which was that phone call, ended up being the most important evidence in the case. And again, that was overheard, but it was not a recorded conversation. All right, as usual, I'm going to tell everybody that if you have not watched or listened to this episode, it's called Jade Benning's final call, go check it out, go watch or listen to it, and then come on back for this conversation because we don't want any spoilers for you. All right, so let's get into this Natalie. Jade and Blaze, their relationship, it started casually. They met in 2022, but things took a significant turn when Jade discovered that she was pregnant about three months into them dating. She told Blaze the baby was his. How did Jade's pregnancy then change their relationship? And what was going on in their lives at the time? Well, Jade's friends and family, they said that Jade told them Blaze Taylor was unhappy at the prospect of becoming a dad. He was at the time an assistant football scout for the Tennessee Titans. His career was on the rise. He was well known among college football fans at Arkansas because he'd been also a standout defensive back and top student at Arkansas State University. And Blaze also comes from a somewhat prominent family in the football world, his dad, trooper Taylor. He was on the football coaching staff at Duke at the time, but now he's the associate head coach at Texas A&M University. So they're a family and a family name that is well known in Arkansas and Tennessee and all of those areas. All right, so pretty impressive. He is following in the family business. That's what Blaze has going on, but what about Jade? Well, Jade also had accomplished quite a lot in her career. Back in Arkansas, she'd attended culinary school. She had created her own catering company. You actually see in the episode, there's a photo where Jade and her friend, IJ are wearing shirts with her catering company logo on it. Now Jade had moved to Nashville because the city offered more opportunities. She thought for someone in the food industry and she was able to get a job as a chef and she was pursuing her dream of eventually opening up her own restaurant. She did at the time make it clear to Blaze after she told him that she was pregnant. She intended to keep the baby. She wanted to have the baby. And that's when their relationship cooled off for a bit. Then it was on New Year's Eve of 2022 when Blaze was the one to reach back out to Jade. And that's when they sort of rekindled things they started to date on and off again. So we heard in the hour that Jade's parents, they were supportive, but I'm curious about just how Jade felt about becoming a mother. I mean, she's sort of starting her life and becoming a mother would have changed things. Yes, very much so. But according to her mother, Bridget Benning-Birks, Jade was very excited to be a mom. She had done in fact a lot to prepare early on. Bridget said that she had already moved into a two bedroom apartment. Her family and friends had bought her baby gifts and she had tons of diapers, wipes, clothes, and other baby items stored in bins and boxes at the apartment. She'd also apparently already picked out the baby's name Ivy and those in her inner circle, they all knew the baby's name. We didn't have time to get into it in this hour, but I interviewed Jade's aunt, Brandi Moran, who she was very close to. And I want to share a little bit more of that interview where Brandi is describing the unique way in which Jade surprised her and told her she was pregnant. She gave me this little bag that said only the best dance get promoted to great aunt and it had her ultrasound picture in it. Did you understand right away not seeing the ultrasound? I did not. I didn't see the ultrasound in it and I just kept thinking, what does this mean? And why does, you know, I'm a great aunt. I know that. And then it dawned on me and I was, you know, your pregnant. And so we went from there. The great part, the great aunt. Yes. Yeah, really sweet. You know, when Brandi first saw the bag that said great aunt, she thought Jade was calling her as you heard great aunt. She's like, I know I'm a great aunt. Of course I am. But then she realized Jade, of course, met great aunt as in the family relationship and what she was going to become to her child. Brandi had a son. She didn't have any daughters. So being a boy mom, she told Jade that she'd have to share Ivy with her and her sister. That would be Jade's mother. So they were very tight. So Jade was being supported. This baby was going to be loved. She had a community around her. I want to go back to the night of February 25th, 2023. Jade had organized a date night with Blaze Taylor at her apartment. She was going to make dinner for him. And then the both of them were going to paint pictures that would eventually end up in the baby's room. At the time, she was nearly six months pregnant. Her best friend, Nigeria Jackson, briefly stopped by that night. How did she say Jade and Blaze seemed that night as a couple? Well, she said what she observed was, you know, Jade was smiling. She was happy. Nigeria had never met Blaze in person. So part of her reason for going there was she wanted to meet him. Blaze always traveled. He was a football scout. And so that's why Nijaya never really got a chance to get to meet him. And Nijaya, I should say, she was going to dental school in Nashville. She said she needed a study break. So Nijaya took that as an opportunity to maybe stop by, pick up some food, meet Blaze and then leave. But then an hour after she left, Nijaya gets a phone call from Jade. And she says she can hear Jade asking Blaze, what did you put in my drink? And then saying, you did this so something could happen to the baby. I think a lot of people might be wondering, you know, she gets this frantic phone call from her good friend. Why didn't Nijaya call 911? Yes. And that was something that the defense questioned her about at the trial as well. And Nijaya testified that she wouldn't have been able to answer questions. You know, had the 911 operators asked her about Jade's physical stay. She didn't really know because she wasn't there. I had also asked Nijaya that question in our interview. And she said that in that moment, she did not think that Jade was going to die. And she also thought it was important to stay on the phone in case, you know, Jade really was trying to tell her something. She wanted to be able to listen to here. And Nijaya drove to Jade's house right after the call. Now, Nijaya also told me she thinks about that phone call all the time. It really haunts her. After it happened, she would have trouble sleeping for days because in the quiet, she said she kept hearing that call in her head. Part of what makes this case interesting is that it is blaze who calls 911. And on the phone, he sounds concerned. Right, blaze, you know, interestingly, he actually called his father first, his mother, Evie Taylor said that both blaze and star, which is their daughter. They would often call their father with medical questions because he is a football coach. And he's often on the field and, you know, on the sidelines that there's, there are injuries, apparently that call to his father lasted about 30 seconds. And blaze's dad told him in on that call, call 911 immediately, which is what blaze did at the hospital. It was determined that Jade was brain dead and she is put on life support in the ICU. Nijaya had followed the ambulance to the hospital. And she was basically telling anyone who would listen, including law enforcement and medical staff, what she said she heard on that phone call from Jade. But aside from what Nigeria said she heard on the call, which was not recorded, there was really no proof that Blaze harmed Jade at that point. Now, Liu spoke to both Jade's family and Blaze's family about whether Blaze had a motive to harm Jade and a motive to harm the unborn child, both families had very different responses. - Right, Jade's mother Bridget told me that she believed Blaze did put something in Jade's drink because he didn't want the baby. And Jade's dad, Dennis Browning, told me he thinks Blaze thought of himself as sort of that picture perfect person with a stellar career on the rise and that he may have felt that having a child would somehow tarnish that image. But then I asked Blaze Taylor's mother, Evie, if there was any reason Blaze would try to hurt Jade or the unborn child because he did not want to become a father and she said absolutely not that the family already knew she was pregnant and that he had a stable job. She also brought up the point, there are a lot of coaches, there are a lot of players that have babies and they aren't married. - While Jade is in the hospital on life support, her family is definitely expressing their concerns to law enforcement about Blaze, but Jade's apartment is not sealed off. And the day after Jade is admitted, Nigeria and three friends went to the apartment to investigate on their own. And the whole time I am yelling at the TV, no, because I know that, you know, even if she finds a proverbial smoking gun, she is doing the case at tremendous disturbance. - And Nigeria said they took all the precautions they could, they wore gloves, they recorded everything they did. However, you and I both know and anybody who watches a lot of 48 hours, you're disturbing what is a possible crime scene. And Niger friends, they did notice though vomit on Jade's computer, which became an important part of the case. They put that comforter in a garbage bag to preserve it and they brought it back to Jade's mom Bridget, who then turned it over to the police the next day. Now, Nigeria also moved a security camera that she found, it was in the bedroom, but it was facing out the window. And she said, normally it was in the kitchen, facing the door to see who was coming in and out of the apartment. So she took it upon herself to then move it back because she wanted to see if blaze would come back into the apartment for any reason, she would want to get that captured. Well, the next day police did secure the scene and they did do their own search, they collected drinks and also other items to be tested. And then as I mentioned, Bridget also gave police the comforter. And then two days after Jade is admitted to the hospital, cocaine is detected in her system. Something doctors said might have explained her condition. How did Jade's loved ones and how did law enforcement react to that development? Well, Jade's parents and friends, they knew that Jade sometimes used marijuana and drank alcohol, but they say she stopped all of that after she learned she was pregnant. Jade's parents also said she never tried cocaine. Now, for law enforcement, those lab results made them then focus on looking for cocaine in the substances that they tested and they thought something nefarious had happened. Then on March 6, 2023, on what would have been Jade's 25th birthday, her family made the heartbreaking decision to take her off life support. Five months later, her autopsy was completed, finding that she died from acute cocaine toxicity with the cocaine having been ingested. But the manner of death was listed as could not be determined. Why not homicide? Well, it is interesting, but this was not a small amount of cocaine. According to the medical examiner, the levels that were found in Jade system were more than seven times what is typically found in fatal cocaine overdoses. And the prosecution told me that the levels were even higher than those seen in sometimes cases involving drug mules. You know, those are the people who swallow bags or balloons of cocaine and that sometimes it ruptures in their body and can have fatal consequences that way. The medical examiner later testified that the circumstances surrounding her ingestion of cocaine were suspicious and concerning and that the findings didn't fit with your classic use of drugs and accidental death. But at that point in the investigation, she felt like there wasn't enough evidence though for her to say definitively that it was a homicide. Welcome back. After Jade's death, Blastehler moved to Utah when he got a new job as a college football analyst. But about a year later, in March of 2024, he was arrested for the murders of Jade Benning and the unborn child. How did Jade and Blaise's families react to this news? Well, for Jade's family and friends, it was difficult to see that Blaise seemingly was living his life while they were waiting for him to be held responsible. And their convinced Blaise poisoned Jade, putting cocaine into her drink. Jade's mom told 48 hours that when she got the news that he was arrested a year later, she felt relieved. Blaise's sister, Star, was the one who got the news before even their parents did. And she called them while they were driving. She told them to pull over. And Blaise's mom said when Star told her she felt sick, she was shaking uncontrollably. And she felt like she was in shock. So then in June of 2026, Blaise Taylor finally goes to trial. Jade Jackson was one of the key witnesses for the prosecution. And she testified about that phone call that she got from Jade the night that she collapsed. Yes, and the prosecution did a really good job at presenting Nijia's recollection of the call as if it was recorded. And the prosecution pointed out that her recollection of that call and the word she used never changed, even when she went to law enforcement, when she told police, when she told the medical staff, it always was the same. So the prosecution kept making that point. The defense, however, pointed out that again, this is what Nijia says she heard. This wasn't a recorded call. The defense also argued that if Blaise was going to do something to Jade, well, it seemed like an odd time to do it given that Nijia had just been over earlier that night at the apartment and had just met Blaise. They said it didn't seem to make sense. What else would we hear from the defense of trial? Well, the defense also argued that there is simply not enough evidence to prove what, in fact, killed Jade and that Blaise was not involved in her death. Now, remember Blaise actions that day, again, according to the defense, he was there to help Jade. He was the one who actually called 911. He then followed her to the hospital. He also talked to the police and they raise at the crime scene or the possible crime scene was contaminated by Nijia and her friends and that they removed and handled crucial evidence before then turning it over to the police. For example, that comforter that was in Jade's room and also when she moved the security camera from the bedroom back to the kitchen. So they made the point that you can't determine what really happened. Unfortunately, I should point out nothing was actually recovered that was usable from that camera as well. And one thing we didn't get into in the hour is that the defense also raised that detectives had let some surveillance footage from outside of Jade's apartment get erased, which would have shown who had entered, who had exited her apartment that night or even in the day ahead or leading up to that event. Now, the lead detectives said the property manager had sent an email giving them access to the building's camera system but the detectives admitted they were looked at in the email chain. So by the time they discovered it, the footage at that point had already been overwritten. So there was no way to recover that. And then because Jade died of acute cocaine toxicity that also became a key issue of trial, there was evidence presented that she had been communicating with a drug dealer. The defense provided these text exchanges that showed that the same day she collapsed, she'd been talking to a guy named Danny Weed Guy. What was the argument? How did that play out in court? Then Danny Weed Guy was how she had him saved in her phone and they pointed to these texts between Jade and Danny Weed Guy and they questioned police about why they didn't question this drug dealer and they argued that when determining whether an overdose was accidental or intentional, that lead should have been further investigated. Prosecutors, however, countered that there was no evidence that Danny Weed Guy ever went over that day or that they met that day and the state told us for every single text message to Danny Weed. After she found out she was pregnant, There is all- always a corresponding text every single time that the weed was not for Jade's use, that it was for usually a friend. And in fact, on the day that Jade collapsed, she had texted Danny weed guy about drugs. She said it was for her coworker. Okay. Then what about Blaze? Was there any evidence that he purchased drugs? Nope. There was no evidence Blaze purchased drugs. His family into the fence say he never used drugs or even drank. No drugs were found in the drinks police collected from Jade's apartment either. The prosecution told us though that Blaze could have washed the cups before the first responders even arrived. But again, no evidence was presented at trial that investigators looked at any street cameras that might have captured drugs being delivered on the night, for example, that Jade collapsed. Okay. So we know that investigators went through Jade's phone, but what about Blaze's devices? Well, you know, that's the interesting thing is they didn't obtain Blaze's cell phone until after his arrest. So we're talking about a year later. And investigators said by that time Blaze had gotten new devices and they were not able to locate the phone he'd used at the time of Jade's collapse. They said that they did search his eye cloud though and they didn't discover any messages regarding any drugs. So there was another deadly drug found on Jade's comforter fentanyl. Did that finding play a role at all in the trial? Well, it was certainly a big point that the defense made, you know, suggesting that Jade had to be using fentanyl or had to have taken something that might have been laced with fentanyl for it to be there. And it should have been considered when we're talking about the causation of death according to the defense. However, the prosecution told me that it was just a trace amount of fentanyl. And they said it could have been introduced through contamination because the comforter did go through several hands. It was bagged and transported in the back of somebody's car before it was then given to the police also, you know, as a reminder, EMTs were working on her on her bed before she was transported to the hospital. So there was another key witness, a young woman by the name of Apple Denny. He met Blaze when they were both college students at Arkansas State University in 2016. Apple testified that she had actually become pregnant with Blaze's child at one point. She ultimately decided to terminate that pregnancy. But according to Apple, in 2017, Blaze told her that he'd gotten another woman pregnant. Apple testified about what Blaze asked her to do when he told her about that pregnancy. And I want to play an extended clip of the prosecution questioning Apple. Um, and he asked you if you could get the abortion pill for him so that he could make her take it and put it in her dreams. Is that right? Yes. Did you do that? Did I get the bill? You know? Was that even, not saying that you would agree to do that, but is that even possible? No. And did you explain that to him? Yes. Okay. So that's, you know, obviously pretty impactful testimony. I'm sure it made an impression on the jury, but I was sort of surprised that she was even allowed to testify in court to this. You typically cannot use character evidence or evidence of a previous bad act to prove a case. So there were pre-child hearings about whether or not Apple Denny's testimony should be allowed. We don't know on exactly what basis the judge did allow for it. The defense though says her testimony should not have been allowed because according to Apple, this was a conversation place has had with Apple over 10 years prior. And it appears that he didn't act on it at the time. But ultimately the judge decided to allow Apple Denny to testify. And as you said, it's most certainly seemed to have had an impact on the jury. For seven days of testimony, the jury gets the case and they deliberate for about two hours and they come back with a verdict. Blaze Haler was found guilty for counts, second degree murder of Jade Benning, and then first degree pre-meditated murder of an unborn child and two counts of felony murder. He received two life sentences to be served consecutively. I'm curious about Blaze's family, their reaction, were they expecting this sort of verdict? You know, Blaze's mother, father and sister, adamantly believe that Blaze is innocent and they were very surprised when the jury came back in two hours. Blaze's mother, Evie, told me that she thinks the whole family thought that the truth was going to be heard and that Blaze was going to walk out of that courtroom. She said never in a million years which she have expected this verdict. And Blaze's sister's star, she was there, she sat through every day of the trial. And she said Blaze isn't the monster that they tried to make him out to be. So Blaze Taylor's defense team and his family, they're all working on an appeal right now. And the defense indicated that allowing Apple Denny's testimony is likely something that they're questioning again as part of that appeal. At the end of the episode, we hear from Jade's family and they talk about how they continue to celebrate her life in big and small ways. Jade's mom got a matching tattoo. Yes. The mom has the butterfly tattoos exactly like Jade's and so does her aunt. And you know, it's actually a bit of a coincidence because hang on, I'm pulling out the right folder. And I was interviewing the family, the tattoos or the butterflies as you saw. And this was the folder. This is my case folder, you know, I had with me. And so when they saw me pull out this folder, they got chills, you know, they say they always look for signs from Jade. And they felt like me holding this folder was a sign of Jade's presence. And then 48 hours did something, I think sort of unique doesn't happen very often. You filmed her 10 year high school reunion and it certainly seemed like her friends and her classmates kind of showed up in full force for her. That's right. And so many people told our producers that they were one of Jade's best friends. Everybody was a best friend and you know, she truly was someone who seemed to have so many best friends. One said that she had a very outgoing, vivacious personality and they said she never met a stranger meaning everyone was a friend. Watching the hour Natalie really brought Jade to life. So I really appreciate the job that you and the producers did on this case. And of course, as usual, I appreciate you coming on post-mortem with us. Always good to be with you. Thanks for having me again, Anne Marie. Thank you. And thank you for listening. If you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I can't believe in anything.