The Boy Who Killed His Twin - True Crime Documentary

The Boy Who Killed His Twin - True Crime Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
There's kind of no more. What's the location of your emergency?
My sister, tell me what your name is? The dam alias. Okay,
tell me exactly what happened.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I thought it was a dream.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I took my stabbed her a weird one. How old
is she more twins? Is she awake?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yes, it's like rearly awhile?

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Is there anyone else there in the house with you? Parents?
There a sleep? Okay, I need you to go wake
them up? Wow, Dad, We're gonna have to start CPR
right now. One two three four one two. Keep helping
her chest just like that.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Okayre's your son? Where's your son? Okay, okay, we got
asking you a message.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Comment you can blow down a little bit. One two
four one two.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
So it was a dream, he said, it was a dream.
Honey what.

Speaker 5 (01:24):
I don't know what, I don't know what we'll do?
She it was just a dream and it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 6 (01:31):
Start jug you real quick and then put in the
back seat.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
I'm just rying. Okay.

Speaker 7 (01:37):
What was your first reaction when you heard about the case.

Speaker 8 (01:40):
I was skeptical. Why does he have a knife next
to his bed at night? This is the first study
that we did on ben I'm doctor Gerald Simmons. I'm
a neurologist, sleep disorder specialist. See these are rapidi movements.
I was asked to review the case of Benjamin Elliott.
The claim was that he was sleepwalking and stabbed his sister.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
We have a video film right here.

Speaker 7 (02:03):
Oh there he is. Yeah, Okay, you are convinced this
was a sleep walking incident.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (02:10):
Are you saying then that he did kill his sister
but he didn't intend to kill his sister.

Speaker 9 (02:18):
I wouldn't say that it's impossible for someone to commit
a crime while sleepwalking. I just don't think that was
the case with Benjamin Elliott.

Speaker 7 (02:26):
Were you able to find any evidence that there was
a problem with these twins?

Speaker 9 (02:32):
No, we definitely looked into it and tried. The biggest
thing that they're hanging their hat on is the lack
of motive. My name is Megan Long and one of
the prosecutors on the case.

Speaker 7 (02:47):
So this is really hard, isn't it.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Mike, She's gone.

Speaker 10 (02:57):
This was not Benjamin's fault.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
I've never thought of him. Is somebody responsible for this?

Speaker 7 (03:02):
What makes you so sure that you stabbed your sister
while you were sleepwalking?

Speaker 5 (03:06):
I would never have done that. I loved her. She
was my best and closest friend.

Speaker 7 (04:04):
On the morning of September twenty ninth, twenty twenty one,
seventeen year old Benjamin Elliott was in a Harris County
Sheriff's interrogation room in Houston, Texas.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
So what happened, Benjamin?

Speaker 5 (04:18):
Do you ever have like a really.

Speaker 11 (04:22):
Realistic nightmare or like just everything feels real but also
off at the same time.

Speaker 7 (04:31):
Benjamin told Detective fred Or Munos that he stabbed his
twin sister once with this knife, but had little memory
of what had happened.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
So you go to sleep? Was the next thing you remember?

Speaker 11 (04:46):
The next thing I remember is like the feeling of
stabbing something. I was in her room and I turned
on the light. I was panicking and I tried to
stop leaving the.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
Pillow.

Speaker 11 (05:06):
So I run in my room and I un put
my phone and dial mine one one.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
What's the location of your emergency?

Speaker 5 (05:12):
I stabbed my sister?

Speaker 3 (05:15):
How many times did you faver her?

Speaker 5 (05:17):
Just once?

Speaker 12 (05:19):
I heard the nine one one call and I screamed
and I went to go move into the bedroom. As
I moved, as I saw Megan and she was okay,
she was gray, you know.

Speaker 7 (05:39):
Michael Elliott remembers calling out to his wife Kathy.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
I heard Michael Gill.

Speaker 13 (05:46):
I was trying to fiure out what's going on, and
Michael said, the police are here, where's the brother?

Speaker 10 (05:51):
And I just.

Speaker 7 (05:55):
Arriving. Paramedics took over CDR.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
They took Benjamin out of the house. It was shocked.
He said, it was a dream.

Speaker 10 (06:03):
What did you make of that?

Speaker 4 (06:05):
I don't. I mean, I just I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 7 (06:07):
I mean, I couldn't not the ben you knew, So
it would have to have been that he was.

Speaker 10 (06:11):
Something would have had to happen.

Speaker 7 (06:13):
Benjamin, his parents say, sat handcuffed at a police car
for three hours while police, confronted with an apparent homicide,
took control of the crime scene.

Speaker 6 (06:25):
I I.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
Nobody would tell us if Megan was, okay, what's going on?
Take a picture for me? Let me see can we
see something, sir.

Speaker 7 (06:35):
The Elliots say they felt isolated by the police and
eventually called a longtime friend who was also an attorney.

Speaker 13 (06:44):
He went and got some information, and he told us
that Megan had died.

Speaker 7 (06:51):
It was news police didn't share with Benjamin. Benjamin asked
detective Munos several times if his sister was all right.
She is okay, but the detective withheld the truth.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah, let's I know about She was being checked out.

Speaker 7 (07:07):
By the ear Mass authority say this is a textbook
police technique to keep a suspect talking, and they wanted
Benjamin talking about his feelings for his sister.

Speaker 8 (07:19):
Is hes your relationship with Megan good?

Speaker 11 (07:22):
She's my twin sister.

Speaker 5 (07:23):
I do anything for her.

Speaker 14 (07:24):
The rivalry there, No, you douys have any recent fights
or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
No, we're pretty.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
Close for siblings.

Speaker 7 (07:32):
Benjamin, who spoke to police without a lawyer, said he
loved his sister and describe what he says he remembered
before the stabbing. Phone record show he was scrolling the
web and Benjamin says he thinks he fell asleep somewhere
around two thirty or three thirty in the morning.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Where with the phone be at.

Speaker 11 (07:52):
Right now somewhere at the crime scene.

Speaker 7 (07:56):
Benjamin provided Munos with his iPhone password and permission to
search his phone.

Speaker 11 (08:03):
Have you ever been diagnosed with an emailtal illnesses?

Speaker 3 (08:05):
No?

Speaker 7 (08:06):
Benjamin said there were no problems at home and said
that he was looking forward to college.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
I'm thinking about mechanical engineering. I'm taking the SAT.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I think.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
Friday, no Saturday, And let me ask you.

Speaker 8 (08:22):
The knighte that you had in your hands, where'd you
get a.

Speaker 11 (08:25):
Problem for my dad? He had given it to me
that day. It's like a Air Force survival knife.

Speaker 5 (08:33):
I was really enamored with it.

Speaker 7 (08:36):
Benjamin and Meghan's parents had a big collection of knives
and gear. The family is big into camping. Kathy is
senior manager with the Girl Scouts of America. Michael is
a stay at home dad.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
I know that if I had not given him that knife,
this would not have happened.

Speaker 15 (08:55):
And after two hours in that interrogation room at eleven am,
Munnos finally revealed that Meghan was dead.

Speaker 16 (09:15):
Megan, He and Megan are so close, so you could
never picture anything bad happening between them.

Speaker 7 (09:27):
Longtime friend Drew Whittaker was stunned to learn Benjamin was
in police's custody.

Speaker 16 (09:33):
He was very protective of her, she says.

Speaker 7 (09:36):
Her family and the Elliotts have been closed since two
thousand and five.

Speaker 16 (09:41):
Ben was very engineering focused.

Speaker 7 (09:43):
Whittaker, herself an engineer, described Benjamin as soft spoken, smart, funny,
and a bit nerdy. While Meghan was sensitive, wrote poetry
and loved to draw. As a teenager, Meghan had been
diagnosed with autism. How did she feel about Ben She
loved him.

Speaker 13 (10:03):
She looked up to him.

Speaker 16 (10:04):
You would see her walk up next to him when
she would feel uncomfortable and just kind of stand bying.

Speaker 7 (10:11):
Did he ever get tired of having to take.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Care of me?

Speaker 4 (10:14):
I think he was proud of it. He liked being
a protector.

Speaker 7 (10:17):
The Elliots say. The twins seemed happy in the weeks
before the stabbing, with their eldest child, Elizabeth, already off
at college. The twins toured separate universities.

Speaker 13 (10:29):
Megan at this point had started coming out of your
shell as well.

Speaker 10 (10:32):
She was finding her voice, and she had found friends.

Speaker 13 (10:35):
Online, and she had a YouTube channel where she was
doing art.

Speaker 7 (10:39):
The night before Megan's death, father and son spent hours
playing popular video games such as Survive the Nights. It
was in that video game that Benjamin noticed a military
style knife that his father said resemble one that he owned.
Michael offered to give it to Benjamin.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Unfortunately I went and got the knife out.

Speaker 7 (11:02):
The Elliots remember, heading off to bed. Was there any
you know, any problem at all between the twins. The
Elliots like police couldn't make sense of why Benjamin stab Megan,
but police had the teenager's confession, the bloody knife he used,

(11:24):
along with the disturbing detail discovered at autopsy. Megan hadn't
been stabbed just once. She had two stab wounds. Benjamin
Elliott was charged with the murder of his twin sister.

(11:57):
After several days on suicide watch, seventeen year old Benjamin
Elliott was released on bail. His parents were there waiting
for it.

Speaker 4 (12:13):
I saw them put him out and he just kind
of stood there on the sidewalk and.

Speaker 10 (12:18):
Okay.

Speaker 12 (12:19):
I went up Twitt, and he seemed I told him.
I said thank Ben, you know, and he seemed like
like he didn't see me. He's surprised to see me.
We started driving and we were asking him if he
was okay, and we were getting very very quiet. It's
not quiet like you know, single word answers.

Speaker 13 (12:44):
So Michael pulls the car over and stops and he
gets up, comes around and takes his face in his
hands and he says, he's like, hi, I love you, Hi,
and he.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
Just yeah, And I saw him kind of sort breach.

Speaker 10 (13:08):
And then he just hugged ye.

Speaker 7 (13:13):
The Elliots knew they could never sleep in their home again,
and had already moved in with Kathy's mother.

Speaker 13 (13:19):
Ben was worried that he might walk around, and he
was worried that he might do something, and he wanted
to make sure everybody was safe.

Speaker 7 (13:25):
The Elliots were worried too.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
The first two us have slipped on a chair in
front of the door.

Speaker 7 (13:30):
The couple even installed an alarm on Benjamin's door. Because
his attorneys had asked them not to speak with their
son about the night Megan was killed. They couldn't ask
him the burning question, why.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
He'd never been anything wrong with them all?

Speaker 10 (13:46):
Or my manduin was a mental health something.

Speaker 7 (13:51):
Kathy's father was schizophrenic, she now feared her son might be.
So did Benjamin's lawyers, Wes Rucker and Carrie Hart.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
So we had a psychiatrist sit down with him.

Speaker 17 (14:03):
I fully expected her to come back and say he's
got schizophrenia or he's severely bipolar.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
When she calls me up, she said, Wes, he's fine.

Speaker 10 (14:12):
It blew my mind.

Speaker 7 (14:14):
They came to suspect that Benjamin experienced something else entirely.
He was actually sleepwalking when he killed his sister. I
had either one of you ever had a case quite
like this.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Never.

Speaker 17 (14:28):
No, you have a twin causing the death of the other,
and the last thing you think of is this a
sleepwalking case.

Speaker 7 (14:36):
But Benjamin had told police that ID stabbed his sister
it felt like a dream, and his lawyers say that
sleepwalking defenses have been used successfully in the past. In
nineteen eighty seven, Canadian Kenneth Parks drove his car fourteen
miles to his mother in law's home, beat her to

(14:57):
death with a tire iron and after he claimed he
was asleep the whole time, and a jury believed him.
And in North Carolina in twenty ten, Joseph Mitchell strangled
his four year old son and attacked two of his
other children, all while sleepwalking. A jury also found him

(15:20):
not guilty. The big question here is just whether ben
Elliott in fact killed his sister while he was sleepwalking?

Speaker 13 (15:27):
Correct, he's here?

Speaker 7 (15:34):
So Benjamin's lawyers reach out to doctor Gerald Simmons, a
neurologist and a sleep disorder expert.

Speaker 8 (15:41):
When I first was approached, I was very skeptical. The
next question is did I even want to deal with this?
My first reaction to this is you know, well, who
else are they going to go to? I mean, within
the field of sleep medicine, this is what I do.

Speaker 7 (15:57):
Simmons wanted to do a sleep study with ben Benjamin
to test if it's possible Benjamin could experience something called
a parasomnia.

Speaker 8 (16:07):
In general, think of a parasomnia as an abnormal behavior
that occurs during.

Speaker 7 (16:11):
Sleep, like sleepwalking.

Speaker 8 (16:13):
Sleepwalking would be a parasomnia.

Speaker 7 (16:16):
Simmons asked if Benjamin had a history of sleepwalking, and
his lawyers say he did. When he was about ten
years old, Benjamin's older sister, Elizabeth, found him sleepwalking by
her bedroom door. There was also a sleepover with childhood
friends the night this photo was taken. When Benjamin was

(16:37):
found asleep on a couch eating a donut. When they
woke him, he seemed surprised and confused. Simmons also learned
that there were other members of the Elliott family whose sleepwalked.

Speaker 8 (16:51):
The likelihood genetically is hired to have a parasomnia specifically
non am piasomnius if there are other family members that
have had that.

Speaker 13 (17:00):
My uncle apparently used to sleepwalk when he was a teenager.
He would go out into the garage and you know,
with tools, and apparently he walked in on my mom
one time when she was in the shower.

Speaker 7 (17:10):
Kathy also had an aunt who once walked out of
her house while she was asleep.

Speaker 13 (17:15):
Ran out in the woods in the middle of the night,
and you know, waking up in the middle of a
thunderstorm outside.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
You know, here's a video of him right here.

Speaker 7 (17:23):
Simmons conducted two sleep studies with Benjamin in his sleep lab,
six weeks apart. In each, Benjamin was hooked up to
machines that monitor just about everything his body did as
he slept.

Speaker 8 (17:37):
This is brainwave activity here. So we did the sleep
study activity. I saw that he had obstructed sleep apnea.

Speaker 7 (17:43):
Obstructive sleep apnea, says Simmons, is where the airway becomes
partially blocked, creating a disturbance in the sleep pattern. So
he's sleeping struggling a bit to get bread right then,
that could be the trigger. Yes, a trigger that Simmons says,
could cause a sleepwalking episode, particularly when Benjamin's brain waves

(18:08):
enter what is known as a non rem slow wave sleep.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Now he's been slowly sleeping.

Speaker 7 (18:14):
This is slow wave sleep.

Speaker 8 (18:16):
Sleepwalking will typically occur in non rems slow wave sleep.

Speaker 7 (18:20):
During the sleep studies, Benjamin did not sleepwalk, but Simmons
observed how quickly Benjamin entered that non rem slow wave sleep.

Speaker 8 (18:30):
So it was eleven minutes from the time we turn
off the lights until he was in slow wave sleep.

Speaker 7 (18:36):
This is important because on the night Benjamin stab Megan,
his phone activity stopped at four seventeen am. It was
just twenty four minutes later that he was on his
phone calling nine one one. Simmons says, the fact that
Benjamin is able to reach slow wave sleep so quickly

(19:00):
means it's possible Benjamin was sleepwalking during that period of
time his boat was inactive. Do you believe Ben killed
his sister without even realizing he was doing it in
his sleep?

Speaker 8 (19:19):
Yes, Ben definitely killed his sister. He did it, There's
no question. He's the one that had the knife and
he stabbed her. But I believe it was part of
a parasomnia. He didn't do this voluntarily. There was no motivation.

Speaker 7 (19:37):
Doctor Simmons findings took Benjamin's parents by surprise.

Speaker 10 (19:42):
It's scary as hell.

Speaker 13 (19:44):
If that can happen to us, then that could happen
to anybody with the sleep problem.

Speaker 8 (20:04):
He realized he was sinking the knife into something or someone,
and then woke up and realized it was his sister.

Speaker 7 (20:15):
After sleep expere doctor Gerald Simmons made his assessment that
Benjamin was sleepwalking when he killed his twin sister, the
Elliots were hopeful prosecutors might drop the case.

Speaker 10 (20:26):
At that point. We thought it might not go to trial.

Speaker 7 (20:31):
But in April twenty twenty three, a year and a
half after Meghan's death, a grand jury indicted Benjamin Elliott,
then nineteen years of age, a first degree murder.

Speaker 9 (20:44):
We just didn't think that what we saw was sleepwalking.

Speaker 7 (20:48):
Meghan Long and Maroon Kutani would handle the prosecution. It
wasn't Long's first sleepwalking case. In twenty nineteen, she successfully
convicted a man who claimed he was sleepwalking when he
shot and killed his wife, and Long told us she
herself was a sleepwalker, as were her children. Still, Long

(21:11):
disputes the Elliott's claim of a family history, since she
says neither of Benjamin's parents have been sleepwalkers.

Speaker 9 (21:20):
From our conversations with our sleep expert, family history of
sleepwalking is a factor. It's more prevalent when it's like
first gay family member, so your parents.

Speaker 7 (21:31):
The prosecutors hired their own sleep consultant, psychologist doctor Mark Pressman,
who concluded Benjamin was not sleepwalking when he stabbed Megan.
He says, sleepwalkers become aggressive only when someone physically interferes with.

Speaker 6 (21:48):
Them, and they respond by hitting or kicking or throwing furniture.
But that's that's like a reflex, you know, an instinctive
reflex to protect themselves.

Speaker 7 (22:00):
And he points out that Benjamin would have had to
have unsheathed the knife before he used it in the stabbing,
which Pressman believes is a complex conscious action, not an
unconscious one.

Speaker 11 (22:14):
The next thing I remember is the feeling of stabbing something.

Speaker 7 (22:20):
He also says it's unusual for a sleepwalker to recall
details the way Benjamin did to authorities after he stabbed Megan.

Speaker 6 (22:29):
He remembered the feeling of the knife going into the neck. Okay,
that's a memory. Okay, I should be able.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
To have that memory.

Speaker 7 (22:38):
Aren't there sometimes pockets of memory?

Speaker 4 (22:40):
Not in these cases?

Speaker 7 (22:41):
No. Doctor Simmons disagrees. He says Benjamin told police what
he could recall.

Speaker 8 (22:48):
If he was trying to fabricate this or just use
this as an alibi, it would have been just as
easy for him to say I don't remember anything. Instead
he's I interpret it as he's trying to be as
honest as he can.

Speaker 7 (23:00):
But Pressman felt he had enough information to make his determination.
You didn't think you needed to talk to ben No,
prosecutor long news she needed more than an experts assessment
to convict Benjamin, especially because she couldn't identify a motive
for murder. No one had witnessed any problems between the twins.

Speaker 9 (23:24):
Is there no motive because he was sleepwalking, or is
there no motive just because no one's willing to come
forward and tell.

Speaker 7 (23:30):
Us, And they think they could convince a jury that
Benjamin's actions were intentional that night stabbing Megan twice. One
wound was four inches deep and severed her carotid artery
and jugular vein.

Speaker 9 (23:45):
So he's saying that he stabbed her in the neck,
removed the knife with where she was stabbed, blood would
be coming out of her neck, and you should see
some sort of blood spatter on the walls, and there
isn't any of that.

Speaker 7 (23:58):
Benjamin had told police he used a pillow to stop
the bleeding, and I tried.

Speaker 5 (24:03):
To stop bleeding with the pillow and what was behind her.

Speaker 8 (24:07):
I like to do that.

Speaker 7 (24:09):
Long doesn't believe that.

Speaker 9 (24:11):
I think he wanted to cover her face. I think
maybe even muffle if she were to scream or anything
like that. The only way for there not to be
that blood spatter is it had to be there when
he took the knife out. It wasn't there for life
saving measures.

Speaker 7 (24:24):
But he's calling nine one one, so he's not trying
to hide what he had done, right.

Speaker 18 (24:29):
I think at that point when he's making that nine
one one call, he realizes I can't hide, right, just.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Stop name.

Speaker 7 (24:42):
Kutani claims Benjamin is whispering on the nine one one call,
and it's suspicious why he's not yelling to his parents
for help.

Speaker 18 (24:55):
I think he's whispering the because he doesn't want his
parents to come to the same reality that he's not
living in that he took his sister's life. I think
that that's why he doesn't awake them before calling nine
one one. I think that's why he doesn't scream in
the house when he realizes what he's done.

Speaker 7 (25:15):
And they argue Megan was already dead by the time
Benjamin called nine one one.

Speaker 9 (25:24):
By the time ems got there. She wasn't breathing on
her own, she had no heartbeat. Our medical examiner said
that with the wound that she suffered from, she would
have been dead within minutes.

Speaker 7 (25:38):
Benjamin's interrogation raised even more questions, they say, especially when
Benjamin described his house as a crime scene.

Speaker 18 (25:47):
Benjamin Ellie is asked by Deputy Munio's where's your phone?
Benjamin Ellie responds with it's at the crime scene, and
to us that was significant. Not many seventeen year old
would respond with at the crime scene. Most people would
say at my house, in my room.

Speaker 7 (26:04):
And there is more, says Kutani.

Speaker 18 (26:07):
His demeanor and his behavior is very calm, certainly not
the type of behavior you would expect from somebody who
comes to with a knife in their hand and their
sister dead in the sleep of her own bedroom.

Speaker 7 (26:20):
Could he be in shock, I mean, realizing what he
had done. Isn't that possible?

Speaker 18 (26:27):
I think based on his response to Deputy Munos in
a couple portions of the interview, we can tell that
he's not necessarily in shock with what the consequences of
his actions were.

Speaker 7 (26:37):
During the interview, Benjamin told believes that his sister had
struggled with her mental health.

Speaker 11 (26:43):
My sister had a pretty severe depression of camorrow maya.

Speaker 7 (26:51):
To prosecutors that suggested maybe everything wasn't so perfect in
the Eliott family, a contingent that Benjiman's lawyers find ridiculous.
They say investigators made virtually no effort to learn about
the Elliotts or Benjamin.

Speaker 17 (27:11):
They don't have a clue about this kid. They weren't
even curious he.

Speaker 14 (27:15):
Would know what was going to happen to him if
he killed his sister. There was nothing for him to gain.
There was everything for him to lose. There's just no
reason why he would have done that.

Speaker 7 (27:27):
Before trial, prosecutors offered Benjamin a thirty year plea deal.
He turned it down.

Speaker 17 (27:35):
The tragedy is now the family lost their daughter, but
they're now losing their son. He's on trial for his life.

Speaker 10 (27:52):
All he's a victim.

Speaker 13 (27:55):
He went to sleep, he woke up, and he found
out he'd sister.

Speaker 7 (28:01):
After struggling with Meghan's loss, Movis, the Elliots now faced
the possibility they could lose Benjamin too.

Speaker 10 (28:09):
It's a nightmare that happened to all of us.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
All right.

Speaker 7 (28:12):
For the jury, Benjamin's first degree murder trial began on
February eighteenth, twenty twenty five.

Speaker 14 (28:19):
You tell your colleagues of a client who killed us
twin sister, and we believe he was sleepwalking, then they
think you're crazy.

Speaker 7 (28:26):
But with no evidence of any problems between the twins,
Benjamin's lawyers hoped they could convince a jury that sleepwalking
is the only explanation. Even prosecutors knew the lack of
motive could be a problem.

Speaker 9 (28:41):
I think our biggest hurdle going into this trial was
the why.

Speaker 7 (28:44):
So you made sure you had jurors who at least
be open to the idea they may never know why
Meghan Elliott was stabbed. Right in his opening remarks my room,
Katani made it clear that while there was no mo
they had their murderer.

Speaker 18 (29:02):
He calls nine to one.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
One at four forty one, Hello, Hello, I stabbed her
with a knife.

Speaker 5 (29:15):
He's whispering.

Speaker 7 (29:16):
Prosecutors told Jerrors about Benjamin's behavior during that interrogation.

Speaker 18 (29:22):
And you'll see his demeanor of the.

Speaker 7 (29:23):
Interview, pointing to Benjamin's reaction when the detective tells him
Megan is dead.

Speaker 18 (29:30):
I'm sorry to tell you this, but Megan has succumb
to her injuries, and the defendant.

Speaker 7 (29:35):
Says witnesses offered details about her wounds, the lack of
blood spatter, and the prosecution's theory that Benjamin covered Meghan's
head with a pillow while he stabbed her, and Benjamin's
father was surprised to learn that prosecutors would ask him

(29:56):
to identify Meghan's body for the record.

Speaker 9 (29:59):
Is photo taken from an autopsy?

Speaker 4 (30:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (30:14):
For the question drama.

Speaker 7 (30:15):
After the prosecution rested, defense attorneys carry Hart and Wes
Rutger took over more making their case about sleepwalking.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
And this is not a ruse.

Speaker 17 (30:27):
This is not some defense to get them off of
a tragic set of circumstances.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
This is a real phenomenon.

Speaker 7 (30:35):
And that call Benjamin made to nine one one, the
defense says, that's evidence he was desperate to save Megan.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
He's saying things like, oh my god, I thought it
was a dream.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
I don't I don't want her to die. He's trying
to do CPR.

Speaker 7 (30:55):
Family friend Drew Whittaker told the jury about Benjamin's devotion
to ever.

Speaker 17 (31:01):
Noticed that if the sweet kid or the tender kid
change into somebody else, absolutely.

Speaker 7 (31:06):
Not appearing by zoom. Childhood friend Annan Singh told the
jury about that sleepover when he found Benjamin asleep and
eating a donut, just the sheer confusion on his face,
like he genuinely seemed baffled.

Speaker 10 (31:22):
As to how that happened.

Speaker 7 (31:23):
Benjamin's great aunt, Martha Knight Oakley, a psychologist, told the
jury about her own sleepwalking history, including finding herself in
the woods one night.

Speaker 13 (31:34):
All I know is I came to in the bushes.

Speaker 5 (31:39):
Clutching my dog.

Speaker 7 (31:41):
But the defense team's star witness was doctor Gerald Simmons.
He testified for four hours detailing the science and sleep
studies that convinced him of Benjamin's innocence.

Speaker 8 (31:56):
It totally fits in line with a process we call
sleep sleepwalking violent behaviors.

Speaker 7 (32:02):
On rebuttal, prosecutors called their own sleepwalking expert, doctor Mark pressmo.

Speaker 4 (32:08):
I, concluded he was not in a sleepwalking state.

Speaker 9 (32:11):
How did you come to that conclusion?

Speaker 4 (32:13):
He had memory.

Speaker 6 (32:15):
He is said to have come out of the state
much faster than any sleepwalker could ever do.

Speaker 7 (32:21):
In closing arguments, prosecutors described a deliberate murder.

Speaker 18 (32:27):
Benjamin Elliott walked into his sister's room with this very knife,
and he stabbed her in the neck twice. There's no
blood spraying in the room. You know why.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
The only thing.

Speaker 18 (32:36):
Soaked in blood is the pillow that he muffled her screams.

Speaker 7 (32:40):
With Benjamin's defense attorneys pushed back, if.

Speaker 14 (32:44):
You're trying to cover something up, you're not calling nine
one one, You're not begging for someone to help your sister.

Speaker 7 (32:50):
And they appealed for justice.

Speaker 17 (32:53):
You do not convict a young man, a seventeen year
old because of how he looks or because how he
answers interrogation questions.

Speaker 7 (33:00):
But prosecutor Megan Long had the final word, and she
suggested the family was involved in a cover up that
began with calling the friend who is a lawyer.

Speaker 9 (33:11):
Look, I'm a mother. I understand wanting to protect your children.
I get it, but you can't let them get away
with it. They have been protecting him from the get go.

Speaker 7 (33:24):
Long didn't leave it there.

Speaker 9 (33:26):
They want to say that this family life was perfect,
but we don't necessarily know what happens behind closed doors.

Speaker 7 (33:33):
And what she said next done the courtroom filled with
the Elliott family and friends.

Speaker 9 (33:39):
I want you to look in this courtroom. There are
so many people here for Benjamin. There is not one
person here for Megan.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
I'm going to check about.

Speaker 18 (33:50):
That.

Speaker 7 (33:50):
The judge let the prosecution continue.

Speaker 9 (33:53):
You have to be her hero. He knew exactly what
he was doing. There's been no remorse shown here in
this courtroom by him.

Speaker 7 (34:03):
After four days of testimony, the case went to the jury.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
We took a vote immediately.

Speaker 7 (34:10):
Jurors were divided.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
It was split from seven to five.

Speaker 7 (34:15):
Could they reach a verdict?

Speaker 15 (34:31):
I was a sleepwalker when one of my own children
used to sleepwalk too.

Speaker 7 (34:34):
As several of the jurors who decided Benjamin's fate knew
a lot about sleepwalking. You know someone who was a sleepwalker?

Speaker 5 (34:42):
Absolutely yes, had a family member, yes, on my mom's side,
my grandfather.

Speaker 7 (34:47):
But even with their experience, they were deeply conflicted about Benjamin.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
And we spent a lot of time with the interview by.

Speaker 10 (34:54):
The detective I'm taking the SAT.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
I think.

Speaker 8 (35:00):
He talked about how he was going to go take
the SAT. He just seemed to not have a lot
of remorse.

Speaker 7 (35:10):
It didn't take them long to come to a unanimous decision.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
My understanding is that y'all have a verdict? Is that correct?

Speaker 7 (35:21):
After four hours of deliberations, we.

Speaker 19 (35:24):
The jury find the defendant Benjamin David Elliott guilty of
murder is charging the indictment signed by the foreman of
the jury, up printed by the foreman of the jury.

Speaker 5 (35:34):
I remember hearing guilty and I was completely shocked.

Speaker 7 (35:40):
Benjamin Elliott, who did not testify a trial, later spoke
to forty eight hours inside the County jail.

Speaker 5 (35:47):
I feel like this has been a I don't know,
a miscarriage of justice seconds. I am not guilty of
murder for my sister, Megan Elliot.

Speaker 7 (36:02):
Benjamin, now twenty one years old, said he and his
family were appalled by the way prosecutor Megan Long ended
her closing argument.

Speaker 10 (36:12):
There are so.

Speaker 9 (36:13):
Many people here for Benjamin. There is not one person
here for Megan.

Speaker 5 (36:19):
That was crazy to me.

Speaker 7 (36:22):
What do you mean.

Speaker 5 (36:25):
Everyone in that courtroom was there for Megan.

Speaker 9 (36:28):
I understand wanting to protect.

Speaker 7 (36:30):
Your children and his parents were outraged by this statements
made by prosecutors hinting to problems within the family.

Speaker 9 (36:38):
We don't necessarily know what happens behind closed doors.

Speaker 10 (36:42):
They were lying, yeah, it was warm.

Speaker 13 (36:44):
They waited until the closing, when they knew that nothing
could be said afterwards, to pull out these outlandish implications
about you don't know what happens behind closing.

Speaker 4 (36:53):
Yeah, she knows, Dan Will.

Speaker 12 (36:54):
There's not a shred of evidence that anything on toward
was happening in our house, in our family.

Speaker 7 (37:04):
Okay, Benjamin and his parents had little time to let
the guilty verdicts sink in.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Does he have to say?

Speaker 12 (37:15):
Yes.

Speaker 7 (37:16):
They were back in court for sentencing the following day,
and he is the.

Speaker 18 (37:22):
One that went into her room that night and saw the.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
Life out of her.

Speaker 7 (37:27):
Prosecutors asked for forty years, but a member of the
jury asked the judge for leniency because he worried about
Benjamin's family. Judge Denilo Lecayo told the court he wanted
a sentence that he could live with.

Speaker 19 (37:43):
I sentenced you to fifteen years in prison. This time
you will go with these.

Speaker 7 (37:47):
The request for leniency, says Benjamin, makes him wonder if
a few jurors had more doubts than they wanted to admit.

Speaker 5 (37:55):
If you believe that I crept into my sister's bedroom
and murdered her while she was asleep, why would you
possibly want leniency for that person? That person is horrible?

Speaker 7 (38:11):
Are you that person?

Speaker 5 (38:13):
No, I'm not, I'm not that person. I mean I'm
I'd try to be genuine, I'd try to be honest.
I'd like to think of myself as a good person.

Speaker 7 (38:27):
Benjamin says authorities misconstrued everything he did. Started with that
nine to one one call. The prosecutors say, you were
whispering on the phone.

Speaker 5 (38:40):
Were you No, that's ridiculous. I wasn't whispering.

Speaker 7 (38:42):
I was parent.

Speaker 5 (38:47):
I wasn't screaming into the phone because I'm just not
a I don't really yell.

Speaker 7 (38:53):
And Benjamin insists that as soon as he realized what
he had done, he was trying to help megan using
the pillow to try to stop the bleeding. The state
says that you didn't use the pillow to try to
stop the bleeding. You did it to keep her from screaming.
What do you say to that.

Speaker 5 (39:13):
That's crazy to me, And there's absolutely absolutely zero forensic
evidence for that at all.

Speaker 7 (39:22):
And what about his seemingly calm demeanor throughout the police interview.
The plan is I'm taking the SAT, you're talking to
a deputy, and you're talking about SATs and collegists.

Speaker 5 (39:35):
I'm trying to get my mind off of things. I've
had some issues with school stuff. Sometimes I think you
can see it in the conversation. I keep pretty much
steering the conversation away from what happened. I don't want
to think about it.

Speaker 7 (39:51):
As for learning Meghan had died, Benjamin says he just
shut down and that he was desperately hoping she'd be Okay,
do you feel you're guilty of anything?

Speaker 5 (40:02):
No, you don't, No, No, I don't think this is
my photo. I used to blame myself for it because
it's like, I mean, I was the one holding the knife, right,
But I mean I've come to realize that I'm not
you know, I couldn't have done anything any different than

(40:24):
what I had done.

Speaker 7 (40:30):
And Benjamin says he misses his twin.

Speaker 5 (40:36):
It's really hard that she's not here.

Speaker 7 (40:43):
Isn't it hard to know that it's because of you
she's not here.

Speaker 5 (40:48):
Yeah, Yeah, it's really hard. We did everything together. We
were very very close. She was a wonderful person. She
was an artist. The way she looked at the world,
she looked at it with like a creative mind. So

(41:10):
she would just see just beautiful things everywhere.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
H m h m hm, m hm hm hm