The Boy Who Killed His Twin

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Speaker 4 Terrorist County, now more. What's the location of your emergency? I just killed my sister.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 Tell me what your name is. Benjamin Elliot.

Speaker 4 Okay, tell me exactly what happened. I thought it was a dream.
I took my wife. I stabbed her.

Speaker 4 I don't want you to violate you.

Speaker 4 How old is she?

Speaker 4 17. We're twins.

Speaker 4 Is she awake? Yes. She's like barely alive.
Is there anyone else there in the house with you? There is. It's my parents, but they're asleep.
Okay, I need you to go wake them up. Mom! Daddy!

Speaker 4 We're gonna have to start CPR right now. One, two, three, four.
One, two, keeping her chest just like that, okay?

Speaker 7 Where's your son?

Speaker 6 Where's your son?

Speaker 5 Okay, okay.

Speaker 8 We got MDMSs coming.

Speaker 6 Okay, slow down a little bit. One, two, three, four.

Speaker 6 One, two, three, four.

Speaker 9 Can we take over?

Speaker 6 Can you step out?

Speaker 6 It's a dream.

Speaker 6 He said it was a dream, honey.

Speaker 6 What the f?

Speaker 6 I don't know what

Speaker 6 i don't know what i'll do she know

Speaker 6 it was just a dream and then it wasn't

Speaker 10 i'm gonna do a search of you real quick and then i'm gonna put you in the backseat i'll just rain okay

Speaker 13 what was your first reaction when you heard about the case 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 dr gerald simmons i'm a neurologist sleep disorder specialist see these are rapid eye movements i was asked to review the case of Benjamin Elliott.

Speaker 13 The claim was that he was sleepwalking and stabbed his sister. We have a video of him right here.

Speaker 11 Oh, there he is? Yeah, okay. You are convinced this was a sleepwalking incident.
Yes. Are you saying then that he did kill his sister, but he didn't intend to kill his sister?

Speaker 9 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 11 Were you able to find any evidence that there was a problem with these twins?

Speaker 9 No, we definitely looked into it and tried. The biggest thing that they're hanging their hat on is the lack of motive.

Speaker 9 My name is Megan Long. I'm one of the prosecutors on the case.

Speaker 11 This is really hard, isn't it, Mike?

Speaker 11 I need this.

Speaker 14 I need this.

Speaker 15 This was not Benjamin's fault.

Speaker 16 I've never thought of him as somebody responsible for this.

Speaker 11 What makes you so sure that you stabbed your sister while you were sleepwalking?

Speaker 18 I would never have done that.

Speaker 12 I loved her.

Speaker 18 She was my best and closest friend.

Speaker 16 Aaron Moriarty reports: the boy who killed his twin.

Speaker 11 On the morning of September 29th, 2021, 17-year-old Benjamin Elliott was in a Harris County Sheriff's Interrogation Room in Houston, Texas.

Speaker 5 So what happened, Benjamin? You ever have like a really

Speaker 19 realistic nightmare

Speaker 19 where like just everything feels feels real

Speaker 20 but also off at the same time

Speaker 11 Benjamin told Detective Fredder Munoz that he stabbed his twin sister once with this knife but had little memory of what had happened.

Speaker 20 So you go to sleep.

Speaker 21 What's the next thing you remember?

Speaker 19 The next thing I remember is like

Speaker 19 the feeling of stabbing something.

Speaker 19 I was in her room and I turned on the light and I was panicking and I tried to stop bleeding with the

Speaker 20 pillow.

Speaker 20 So I run in my room and I unplug my phone and I dial 911. Now, Mama, what's the location of your emergency?

Speaker 19 I stabbed my sister.

Speaker 21 How many times have you stabbed her?

Speaker 19 Just once.

Speaker 17 I heard the 911 call and I screamed.

Speaker 4 What's going on?

Speaker 12 And I went to go move into the bedroom.

Speaker 17 As I moved, I saw Megan. And she was.

Speaker 17 Really not.

Speaker 17 She was gray.

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 11 Michael Elliott remembers calling out to his wife, Kathy.

Speaker 2 I heard Michael yell.

Speaker 15 I was trying to figure out what's going on. And Michael said the police are here.

Speaker 22 Where's the brother at?

Speaker 15 And I just...

Speaker 11 Arriving paramedics took over CDR.

Speaker 16 They took Benjamin out of the house.

Speaker 17 He was shocked. He said it was a dream.

Speaker 11 What did you make of that?

Speaker 12 I mean, I just, I couldn't believe it. I mean, I couldn't.

Speaker 11 Not that Ben you knew, so it would have to have been that he was.

Speaker 23 Something would have had to happen.

Speaker 11 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 24 I just

Speaker 24 saw her see her. We can't.
No, we can't.

Speaker 6 We can't see her.

Speaker 17 Nobody would tell us if Megan was okay, what was going on.

Speaker 25 Take a picture for me. Let me see something.
Yeah, can we see something? No, sir.

Speaker 11 The Elliotts say they felt isolated by the police and eventually called a longtime friend who is also an attorney.

Speaker 15 He went and got some information and he told us that Megan had died.

Speaker 11 It was news police didn't share with Benjamin.

Speaker 26 Is she okay?

Speaker 11 Benjamin asked Detective Muno several times if his sister was all right.

Speaker 19 She is okay.

Speaker 11 But the detective withheld the truth.

Speaker 21 Yeah, last time I knew about she was being checked out by the earmass.

Speaker 11 Authorities say this is a textbook police technique to keep a suspect talking. And they wanted Benjamin talking about his feelings for his sister.

Speaker 21 So how's your relationship with Megan?

Speaker 20 Good.

Speaker 26 She's my twin sister.

Speaker 19 I'd do anything for her.

Speaker 20 No rivalry there? No.

Speaker 21 You guys have any recent fights or anything like that? No.

Speaker 20 We're pretty close for siblings.

Speaker 11 Benjamin, who spoke to police without a lawyer, said he loved his sister and described what he says he remembered before the stabbing.

Speaker 11 Phone records show he was scrolling the web, and Benjamin says he thinks he fell asleep somewhere around 2.30 or 3.30 in the morning.

Speaker 27 Where would that phone be at right now?

Speaker 19 Somewhere at the crime scene?

Speaker 11 benjamin provided munoz with his iphone password and permission to search his phone have you ever been diagnosed with any mental illnesses no benjamin said there were no problems at home and said that he was looking forward to college i'm thinking about mechanical engineering i'm taking the sat i think

Speaker 20 friday no Saturday.

Speaker 21 And let me ask you, the knife that you had in your hands, where'd you get it from?

Speaker 20 From my dad. He had given it to me that day.

Speaker 19 It was like an Air Force survival knife.

Speaker 20 I was really enamored with it.

Speaker 11 Benjamin and Megan'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 16 I know that if I had not given him that knife, this would not have happened.

Speaker 2 And uh, um.

Speaker 11 After two hours in that interrogation room at 11 a.m. Munoz finally revealed that Megan was dead.

Speaker 28 He and Megan are so close, you could never picture anything bad happening between them.

Speaker 11 Longtime friend Drew Whitaker was stunned to learn Benjamin was in police custody.

Speaker 28 He was very protective of her.

Speaker 11 She says her family and the Elliotts have been close since 2005.

Speaker 28 Ben was very engineering focused.

Speaker 11 Whitaker, herself an engineer, described Benjamin as soft-spoken, smart, funny, and a bit nerdy. while Megan was sensitive, wrote poetry, and loved to draw.

Speaker 11 As a teenager, Megan had been diagnosed with autism. And how did she feel about Ben?

Speaker 28 She loved him. She looked up to him.
You would see her

Speaker 28 walk up next to him when she would feel uncomfortable and just kind of stand by him.

Speaker 11 Did he ever get tired of having to take care of Megan?

Speaker 12 I think he was proud of it.

Speaker 5 Like,

Speaker 17 he liked being a protector.

Speaker 11 The Elliotts 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 15 Megan at this point had started coming out of gel as well. She was finding her voice, and she had found friends online, and she had a YouTube channel where she was doing art.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 that Benjamin noticed a military-style knife that his father said resembled one that he owned. Michael offered to give it to Benjamin.

Speaker 13 Unfortunately, I went and got the knife out.

Speaker 11 The Elliotts remember heading off to bed. Was there any,

Speaker 11 you know, any problem at all between the twins?

Speaker 11 The Elliotts, like police, couldn't make sense of why Benjamin stabbed Megan.

Speaker 11 But police had the teenager's confession, the bloody knife he used, along with a disturbing detail discovered at autopsy. Megan hadn't been stabbed just once.
She had two stab wounds.

Speaker 11 Benjamin Elliott was charged with the murder of his twin sister.

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Speaker 11 After several days on suicide watch,

Speaker 11 17-year-old Benjamin Elliott was released on bail.

Speaker 11 His parents were there waiting for him.

Speaker 17 I saw them put him out, and he just kind of stood there on the sidewalk.

Speaker 6 And I went...

Speaker 6 Sorry.

Speaker 5 It's okay. I went up to him and he seemed...

Speaker 14 I told him, I said, hey, Ben, you know, and he seemed like he didn't see me.

Speaker 17 He was surprised to see me.

Speaker 17 We started driving and we were asking him if he was okay.

Speaker 16 And we were getting very

Speaker 17 quiet, sort of quiet, like, you know, single-word answers.

Speaker 15 So Michael pulls the car over and stops and

Speaker 23 gets out, comes around, and takes his face in his hands. And he says, it's like, hi.

Speaker 1 Just, you know, we love you.

Speaker 15 Hi. And he just.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 14 And I saw him kind of

Speaker 17 sort of wake.

Speaker 33 And then he just hugged us.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 11 The Elliotts knew they could never sleep in their home again and had already moved in with Kathy's mother.

Speaker 15 Ben was worried that he might walk around.

Speaker 23 He was worried that he might do something.

Speaker 15 He wanted to make sure everybody was safe.

Speaker 11 The Elliots were worried too.

Speaker 17 The first two guys slept in a chair in front of the door.

Speaker 11 The couple even installed an alarm on Benjamin's door.

Speaker 11 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 6 There's never been anything wrong with him at all.

Speaker 15 Or my magnit was a mental health

Speaker 15 something.

Speaker 11 Kathy's father was schizophrenic. She now feared her son might be.
So did Benjamin's lawyers, Wes Rucker and Carrie Hart.

Speaker 34 So we had a psychiatrist sit down with him. I fully expected her to come back and say, he's got schizophrenia or he's severely bipolar.
When she calls me up, she said, Wes, he's fine.

Speaker 35 It blew my mind.

Speaker 11 They came to suspect that Benjamin experienced something else entirely. He was actually sleepwalking when he killed his sister.
Had either one of you ever had a case quite like this?

Speaker 17 Never.

Speaker 33 No.

Speaker 34 You have a twin causing the death of the other and the last thing you think of is just a sleepwalking case.

Speaker 11 But Benjamin had told police the night he stabbed his sister, it felt like a dream. And his lawyers say that sleepwalking defenses have been used successfully in the past.

Speaker 11 In 1987, Canadian Kenneth Parks drove his car 14 miles to his mother-in-law's home, beat her to death with a tire iron, and stabbed her.

Speaker 11 He He claimed he was asleep the whole time and a jury believed him.

Speaker 11 And in North Carolina in 2010, Joseph Mitchell strangled his four-year-old son and attacked two of his other children all while sleepwalking. A jury also found him not guilty.

Speaker 11 The big question here is just whether Ben Elliott, in fact, killed his sister while he was sleepwalking. Correct.

Speaker 11 So Benjamin's lawyers reach out to Dr. Gerald Simmons, a neurologist and a sleep disorder expert.

Speaker 13 When I first was approached, I was very skeptical.

Speaker 13 The next question is, did I even want to deal with this? My first reaction to this is, you know, well,

Speaker 13 who else are they going to go to? I mean, within the field of sleep medicine, this is what I do.

Speaker 11 Simmons wanted to do a sleep study with Benjamin to test if it's possible Benjamin could experience something called a parasomnia.

Speaker 13 In general, think of a parasomnia as an abnormal behavior that occurs during sleep.

Speaker 11 Like sleepwalking.

Speaker 13 Sleepwalking would be a parasomnia.

Speaker 11 Simmons asked if Benjamin had a history of sleepwalking, and his lawyers say he did. When he was about 10 years old, Benjamin's older sister Elizabeth found him sleepwalking by her bedroom door.

Speaker 11 There was also a sleepover with childhood friends the night this photo was taken when Benjamin was found asleep on a couch eating a donut. When they woke him, he seemed surprised and confused.

Speaker 11 Simmons also learned that there were other members of the Elliott family who sleepwalked.

Speaker 13 The likelihood genetically is higher to have parasomnias, specifically non-REM parasomnias, if there are other family members that have had that.

Speaker 15 My uncle apparently used to sleepwalk when he was a teenager. He would go out into the garage and, you know, with the tools.
And apparently he walked in on my mom one time when she was in the shower.

Speaker 11 Kathy also had an aunt who once walked out of her house while she was asleep.

Speaker 23 Ran out into the woods in the middle of the night and

Speaker 17 waking up in the middle of a thunderstorm outside.

Speaker 13 You know, here's a video of him right here.

Speaker 11 Simmons conducted two sleep studies with Benjamin in his sleep lab six weeks apart. In each, Benjamin was hooked hooked up to machines that monitor just about everything his body did as he slept.

Speaker 13 This is brainwave activity here. So we did the sleep study.

Speaker 13 I saw that he had obstructive sleep apnea.

Speaker 11 Obstructive sleep apnea, says Simmons, is where the airway becomes partially blocked, creating a disturbance in the sleep pattern. So he's sleeping,

Speaker 11 struggling a bit to get breath. Right.
And that could be the trigger.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 11 A trigger that Simmons says could cause a sleepwalking episode,

Speaker 11 particularly when Benjamin's brainwaves enter what is known as a non-REM slow wave sleep.

Speaker 36 Now he's been in slow wave sleep.

Speaker 11 This is slow wave sleep.

Speaker 13 Sleepwalking will typically occur in non-REM slow wave sleep.

Speaker 11 During the sleep studies, Benjamin did not sleepwalk, but Simmons observed how quickly Benjamin entered that non-REM slow wave sleep.

Speaker 13 So it was 11 minutes from the time we turned off the lights until he was in slow wave sleep.

Speaker 11 This is important because on the night Benjamin stabbed Megan,

Speaker 11 his phone activity stopped at 4.17 a.m.

Speaker 11 It was just 24 minutes later that he was on his phone calling 911.

Speaker 4 I just found my sister.

Speaker 11 What you like? Simmons says the fact that Benjamin is able to reach slow wave sleep so quickly means it's possible Benjamin was sleepwalking during that period of time his foe was inactive.

Speaker 11 Do you believe Ben killed his sister without even realizing he was doing it in his sleep?

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 13 Ben definitely killed his sister.

Speaker 35 He did it.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 They didn't do this voluntarily. There was no motivation.

Speaker 11 Dr. Simmons' findings took Benjamin's parents by surprise.

Speaker 33 It's scary as hell.

Speaker 23 If that can happen to us, then that could happen to anybody with a sleep problem.

Speaker 13 He realized he was sinking the knife into something or someone

Speaker 13 and then woke up and realized it was his sister.

Speaker 11 After sleep expert Dr. Gerald Simmons made his assessment that Benjamin was sleepwalking when he killed his twin sister, the Elliotts were hopeful prosecutors might drop the case.

Speaker 15 At that point, we thought it might not go to trial.

Speaker 11 But in April 2023, a year and a half after Megan's death, a grand jury indicted Benjamin Elliott, then 19 years of age, of first-degree murder.

Speaker 9 We just didn't think that what we saw was sleepwalking.

Speaker 11 Megan Long and Maroon Kutani would handle the prosecution. It wasn't Long's first sleepwalking case.

Speaker 11 In 2019, 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.

Speaker 11 Still, Long disputes the Elliott's claim of a family history since she says neither of Benjamin's parents had been sleepwalkers.

Speaker 9 From our conversations with our sleep expert, family history of sleepwalking is a factor. It's more prevalent when it's like first-degree family members, so your parents.

Speaker 11 The prosecutors hired their own sleep consultant, psychologist Dr. Mark Pressman, who concluded Benjamin was not sleepwalking when he stabbed Megan.

Speaker 11 He says sleepwalkers become aggressive only when someone physically interferes with them.

Speaker 37 And they respond by hitting or kicking or throwing furniture, but

Speaker 17 that's like a reflex.

Speaker 37 you know, an instinctive reflex to protect themselves.

Speaker 11 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 19 The next thing I remember is

Speaker 19 the feeling of stabbing something.

Speaker 11 He also says it's unusual for a sleepwalker to recall details the way Benjamin did to authorities after he stabbed Megan.

Speaker 37 He remembered the feeling of the knife going going into the neck. Okay, so that's a memory.
Okay, shouldn't be able to have that memory.

Speaker 11 Aren't there sometimes pockets of memory?

Speaker 12 Not in these cases, no.

Speaker 11 Dr. Simmons disagrees.
He says Benjamin told police what he could recall.

Speaker 13 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...

Speaker 13 I interpret it as he's trying to be as honest as he can.

Speaker 11 But Pressman felt he had enough information to make his determination. You didn't think you needed to talk to Ben?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 11 Prosecutor Long knew she needed more than an expert's 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 Is there no motive because he was sleepwalking, or is there no motive just because no one's willing to come forward and tell us?

Speaker 11 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 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.
You should see some sort of blood spatter on the walls.

Speaker 9 And there isn't any of that.

Speaker 11 Benjamin had told police he used a pillow to stop the bleeding.

Speaker 19 And I tried to stop bleeding with the pillow that was behind her. I like to do that.

Speaker 11 Long doesn't believe that.

Speaker 9 I think he wanted to cover her face. I think maybe even muffle if she were to scream or anything like that.

Speaker 9 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 11 But he's calling 911. So he's not trying to hide what he had done, right?

Speaker 35 I think at that point, when he's making that 911 call he realizes i can't hide what i've just done

Speaker 4 what's your name

Speaker 11 kutani claims benjamin is whispering on the 911 call

Speaker 11 and is suspicious why he's not yelling to his parents for help

Speaker 35 i think he's whispering because he doesn't want his parents to come to the same reality that he's now living in, that he took his sister's life.

Speaker 38 I think that that's why he doesn't awake them before calling 911. I think that's why he doesn't scream in the house when he realizes what he's done.

Speaker 11 And they argue Megan was already dead by the time Benjamin called 911.

Speaker 6 Okay, sir, can we

Speaker 9 take over? By the time EMS got there, she wasn't breathing on her own. She had no heartbeat.

Speaker 9 Our medical examiner said that with the wound that she suffered from, she would have been dead within minutes.

Speaker 11 Benjamin's interrogation raised even more questions, they say, especially when Benjamin described his house as a crime scene.

Speaker 35 Benjamin Ellia is asked by Deputy Munoz, where's your phone? Benjamin Ellia responds with, it's at the crime scene. And to us, that was significant.

Speaker 35 Not many 17-year-olds would respond with, at the crime scene.

Speaker 5 Most people would say, at my house, in my room.

Speaker 11 And there is more, says Kutani.

Speaker 35 His demeanor and his behavior is very calm.

Speaker 35 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 11 Could he be in shock? I mean, realizing what he had done? Isn't that possible?

Speaker 35 I think based on his response to Deputy Munoz 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 11 During the interview, Benjamin told police that his sister had struggled with her mental health.

Speaker 19 My sister had

Speaker 19 a pretty severe depression for a while, Megan.

Speaker 11 To prosecutors, that suggested maybe everything wasn't so perfect in the Elliott family.

Speaker 11 A contention that Benjamin's lawyers find ridiculous.

Speaker 11 They say investigators made virtually no effort to learn about the Elliotts or Benjamin.

Speaker 38 They don't have a clue about this kid.

Speaker 34 They weren't even curious.

Speaker 33 He 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.

Speaker 33 There's just no reason why he would have done that.

Speaker 11 Before trial, prosecutors offered Benjamin a 30-year plea deal. He turned it down.

Speaker 34 The tragedy is now the family lost their daughter, but they're now losing their son.

Speaker 34 He's on trial for his life.

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Speaker 3 I have no idea how I got there.

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Speaker 15 He's a victim.

Speaker 15 He went to sleep. He woke up and he found out he had killed his sister.

Speaker 11 After struggling with Megan's loss,

Speaker 11 the Elliotts now face the possibility they could lose Benjamin too.

Speaker 23 It's a nightmare that happened to all of us.

Speaker 15 All right, funny jury.

Speaker 11 Benjamin's first-degree murder trial began on February 18th, 2025.

Speaker 33 You tell your colleagues, I have a client who killed his twin sister and we believe he was sleepwalking, and they think you're crazy.

Speaker 11 But with no evidence of any problems between the twins, Benjamin's lawyers hope they could convince a jury that sleepwalking is the only explanation.

Speaker 11 Even prosecutors knew the lack of motive could be a problem.

Speaker 9 I think our biggest hurdle going into this trial was the why.

Speaker 11 So you made sure you had jurors who at least be open to the idea they may never know why Megan Elliott was stabbed.

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 11 In his opening remarks, Maroon Katani made it clear that while there was no motive, they had their murderer.

Speaker 5 He calls 911

Speaker 22 at 441.

Speaker 5 Hello?

Speaker 5 Hello?

Speaker 5 I just killed my sister.

Speaker 22 I stabbed her with a knife. Oh my god.
He's whispering.

Speaker 11 Prosecutors told jurors about Benjamin's behavior during that interrogation.

Speaker 22 And you'll see his demeanor in the interview.

Speaker 11 Pointing to Benjamin's reaction when the detective tells him Megan is dead.

Speaker 22 Sorry to tell you this,

Speaker 22 but Megan has succumbed to her injuries. And the defendant says,

Speaker 11 Witnesses offer details about her wounds, the lack of blood spatter, and the prosecution's theory that Benjamin covered Megan's head with a pillow while he stabbed her.

Speaker 11 And Benjamin's father was surprised to learn that prosecutors would ask him to identify Megan's body for the record.

Speaker 9 This is a photo taken from an autopsy.

Speaker 9 Sorry.

Speaker 12 Yeah, that's Megan.

Speaker 9 Any further questions, John?

Speaker 11 After the prosecution rested, defense attorneys Carrie Hart and Wes Rucker took over. Good morning.
Making their case about sleepwalking.

Speaker 26 And this is not a ruse.

Speaker 26 This is not some defense to get Ben

Speaker 26 off of a tragic, tragic set of circumstances. This is a real phenomenon.

Speaker 11 And that call Benjamin made to 911, the defense says that's evidence he was desperate to save Megan.

Speaker 26 He's saying things like, oh my God.

Speaker 11 I thought it was a dream. I thought it was a dream.

Speaker 26 I don't want her to murder her. I don't want her to die.

Speaker 38 He's trying to do CPR.

Speaker 11 Family friend Drew Whitaker told the jury about Benjamin's devotion to Megan.

Speaker 26 Ever noticed that if the sweet kid or the tender kid changed into somebody else?

Speaker 28 Absolutely not.

Speaker 11 Appearing by Zoom, childhood friend Anand Singh told the jury about that sleepover when he found Benjamin asleep and eating a doughnut.

Speaker 27 Just the sheer confusion on his face, like he genuinely seemed baffled as to how that happened.

Speaker 11 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 8 All I know is I came to in the bushes

Speaker 8 clutching my dog.

Speaker 11 But the defense team's star witness was Dr. Gerald Simmons.
He testified for four hours detailing the science and sleep studies that convinced him of Benjamin's innocence.

Speaker 13 It totally fits in line with a process we call sleepwalking violent behaviors.

Speaker 11 On rebuttal, prosecutors called their own sleepwalking expert, Dr. Mark Pressman.

Speaker 37 I concluded he was not in a sleepwalking state.

Speaker 9 How did you come to that conclusion?

Speaker 37 He had memory.

Speaker 5 He

Speaker 37 is said to have come out of the state much faster than any sleepwalker could ever do.

Speaker 11 In closing arguments, prosecutors described a deliberate murder.

Speaker 22 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 22 The only thing soaked in blood is the pillow that he muffled her screams with.

Speaker 11 Benjamin's defense attorneys pushed back.

Speaker 33 If you're trying to cover something up, you're not calling 911.

Speaker 9 You're not begging for someone to help your sister.

Speaker 11 And they appealed for justice.

Speaker 26 You do not convict a young man, a 17-year-old, because of how he looks or because how he answers interrogation questions.

Speaker 11 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 Look, I'm a mother. I understand wanting to protect your children.

Speaker 11 I get it, but you can't let them get away with it.

Speaker 9 They have been protecting him from the get-go.

Speaker 11 Long didn't leave it there.

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

Speaker 11 And what she said next stunned the courtroom. Filled with the Elliott family and friends.

Speaker 9 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 5 I'm kind of checked about that.

Speaker 11 The judge let the prosecution continue.

Speaker 9 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 11 After four days of testimony, the case went to the jury.

Speaker 36 We took a vote immediately.

Speaker 11 Jurors were divided.

Speaker 36 It was split seven to five.

Speaker 11 Could they reach a verdict?

Speaker 36 I was a sleepwalker And one of my own children used to sleepwalk too.

Speaker 11 Several of the jurors who decided Benjamin's fate knew a lot about sleepwalking. You know someone who was a sleepwalker? Absolutely.

Speaker 27 Yes.

Speaker 27 Had a family member. Yes.

Speaker 22 On my mom's side, my grandfather.

Speaker 11 But even with their experience, they were deeply conflicted about Benjamin.

Speaker 36 We spent a lot of time with the interview by the detective.

Speaker 19 I'm taking the SAT, I think

Speaker 20 Friday.

Speaker 36 He talked about how he was going to go take the SAT.

Speaker 36 He just seemed to not have a lot of remorse.

Speaker 11 It didn't take them long to come to a unanimous decision.

Speaker 5 All right, for the jury.

Speaker 7 My understanding is that y'all have a verdict. Is that correct? Yes, yes.

Speaker 7 After four hours of deliberations, we, the jury, find the defendant Benjamin David Elliott guilty of murder as charged in the indictment signed by the foreman of the jury, printed by the foreman of the jury.

Speaker 18 I remember hearing guilty.

Speaker 2 And I was

Speaker 32 completely shocked.

Speaker 11 Benjamin Elliott, who did not testify at trial, later spoke to 48 hours inside the county jail.

Speaker 32 I feel

Speaker 18 like this has been a,

Speaker 18 I don't know, a miscarriage of justice nickets. I am not guilty

Speaker 18 of murder for my sister, Megan Elliot.

Speaker 11 Benjamin, now 21 years old, said he and his family were appalled by the way prosecutor Megan Long ended her closing argument.

Speaker 9 There are so many people here for Benjamin. There is not one person here for Megan.

Speaker 2 That was

Speaker 15 crazy to me.

Speaker 29 What do you mean?

Speaker 2 Everyone in that courtroom was there for Megan.

Speaker 9 I understand wanting to protect your children.

Speaker 11 And his parents were outraged by the statements made by prosecutors hinting to problems within the family.

Speaker 9 We don't necessarily know what happens behind closed doors.

Speaker 7 They were lying.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it was horrible.

Speaker 23 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 closed doors.

Speaker 17 Yeah, she knows damn well there's not a shred of evidence that anything untoward was happening in our house, in our family.

Speaker 11 Benjamin and his parents had little time to let the guilty verdict sink in.

Speaker 5 Does he have to say he husband had to free? Yes.

Speaker 11 They were back in court for sentencing the following day.

Speaker 22 And he is the one that went into her room that night and snuffed the life out of her.

Speaker 11 Prosecutors asked for 40 years, but a member of the jury asked the judge for leniency because he worried about Benjamin's family.

Speaker 7 Stand up, Mr. Elliott.

Speaker 11 Judge Danilo Lacayo told the court he wanted a sentence that he could live with.

Speaker 7 I sentence you to 15 years in prison.

Speaker 7 This time, you will go with the...

Speaker 11 The request for leniency, says Benjamin, makes him wonder if a few jurors have more doubts than they wanted to admit.

Speaker 18 If you believe that I crept into my sister's bedroom and murdered her while she was asleep.

Speaker 18 Why would you possibly want leniency for that person?

Speaker 17 That person is horrible.

Speaker 11 Are you that person?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 I'm not.

Speaker 18 I'm not that person.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm.

Speaker 18 I try to be genuine. I try to be honest.

Speaker 18 I'd like to think of myself as a good person.

Speaker 11 Benjamin says authorities misconstrued everything he did.

Speaker 11 Started with that 911 call. The prosecutors say you were whispering on the phone.

Speaker 4 Were you?

Speaker 12 No, that's ridiculous. I wasn't whispering.

Speaker 18 I was panicked. I wasn't screaming into the phone because I'm just not a...

Speaker 5 I don't really yelp.

Speaker 11 And Benjamin insists that as soon as he realized what he had done, he was trying to help Megan,

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 What do you say to that?

Speaker 18 That's crazy to me.

Speaker 18 And there's absolutely,

Speaker 18 absolutely zero forensic evidence for that at all.

Speaker 11 And what about his seemingly calm demeanor throughout the police interview?

Speaker 19 The plan is I'm taking the SAT.

Speaker 11 You're talking to a deputy, And you're talking about SATs and colleges.

Speaker 18 I'm trying to get my mind off of things.

Speaker 19 I've had some issues with school stuff sometimes.

Speaker 18 I think you can see it in the conversation. I keep pretty much steering the conversation away from what happened.

Speaker 12 I don't want to think about it.

Speaker 11 As for learning Megan 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 No, you don't.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 18 No, I don't think this is my fault at all. I used to blame myself for it because it's like,

Speaker 27 I mean,

Speaker 12 I was the one holding the knife,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 18 I mean, I've come to realize that I'm not.

Speaker 18 You know, I couldn't have done anything any different than what I had done.

Speaker 11 And Benjamin says he misses his twin.

Speaker 18 It's really hard

Speaker 18 that she's not here.

Speaker 11 Isn't it hard to know that it's because of you she's not here? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's really hard.

Speaker 12 We did everything together.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 18 we were very, very close.

Speaker 17 And she was a wonderful person.

Speaker 15 She was an artist.

Speaker 18 The way she looked at the world, she looked at it with like a creative mind.

Speaker 18 So she would just see just beautiful things everywhere.

Speaker 16 Benjamin Elliott will be eligible for parole in 2032 when he is 28 years old.

Speaker 13 He is appealing his conviction.

Speaker 39 Join me Tuesday for post-mortem from 48 Hours, where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.

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