NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Court TV) — A former pro football scout who killed his girlfriend and unborn child is heading to prison after a judge refused to show any mercy at sentencing.
Blaise Taylor appears at his sentencing on Sept. 9, 2026. (Court TV)
A jury convicted Blaise Taylor, 30, on two counts of felony murder and second-degree murder in the death of Jade Benning and her unborn daughter, who was to be named Ivy; Benning died on her 25th birthday.
Taylor called 911, saying Benning was suffering an apparent allergic reaction on Feb. 25, 2023. At the hospital, Benning’s condition steadily declined. Ivy was declared dead on Feb. 27, while Benning died a week later on March 6.
At his trial, prosecutors said that Taylor poisoned Benning with a deadly dose of cocaine because he did not want the child. A key piece of evidence was a late-night phone call Benning made to her friend, during which the victim said that her drink “tasted funny” and accused Taylor of doing something to her baby.
“What haunts me most is knowing that Jade was aware something was wrong,” Benning’s mother, Bridget Benning Burkes, said at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing. “She knew her drink tasted funny, she knew she was losing control of her body, and before help arrived she knew that something terrible had been done to her and her baby. What makes the loss even harder to bear is that Jade believed she was safe. She trusted the person responsible and that trust was exploited in the most final and irreversible way.”
“I certainly never imagined that 25 years after watching my family grow with Jade’s birth, I would watch an entire generation of that family disappear with Jade and Ivy,” Benning’s aunt, Brandy Moran, said. “Our family was supposed to be growing with them. Instead, we will spend the rest of our lives remembering the future we were supposed to have and missing the two people who should have been there to live it with us.”
Taylor’s attorney, Joshua Brand, submitted 87 letters on his client’s behalf; he said they were written by Taylor’s family and friends, including Taylor’s mother, father, uncle, grandparents, teammates, former girlfriends and kindergarten teacher. Four people stood in the gallery in a show of support for the defendant.
Prosecutor Jan Norman agreed that the pile of letters “described a man of honor, a man of honesty, a man of great accomplishments,” but noted that in the letters themselves, “not one of them mentioned Jade Benning. Not one of them mentioned baby Ivy…They don’t mention anything about the jury’s finding that Blaise Taylor intentionally, and with premeditation, poisoned Jade Benning for the purpose of murdering his own unborn child.”
Norman urged Judge Steve Dozier to sentence Taylor to consecutive life sentences, arguing he showed a pattern of concerning behavior. “The testimony that Your Honor has heard is that Blaise Taylor considered poisoning another woman to terminate her pregnancy of her unborn child. That was something he considered years before.”
On the day Benning was poisoned, Norman said that Taylor arrived at the victim’s house with the cocaine in his pocket before eating the meal she prepared for him. “He ate her chocolate chip cookies, all the while knowing that he was there to murder his unborn child.”
Dozier agreed with prosecutors that consecutive sentences were necessary. “I do think both of these victims deserve a just punishment for ending their lives,” he said. “What occurred on this particular night shows a level of cruelty, a level of calculation, a level of inhumanity that’s deeper than just some impulsive, reckless thoughts that may have come to mind at that particular occasion.”
Dozier ordered Taylor to serve two consecutive sentences for felony murder plus 22 years for second-degree murder.
Before his arrest, Taylor was a scouting assistant and then a pro scout for the Tennessee Titans. He left that position to become a senior defensive analyst for the Utah State University football team.
