Texas Man Sentenced to 15 Years After Prosecutors Argued He Was Using Cellphone Moments Before Claiming He Was Sleepwalking When He Found a Knife In Twin Sister’s Neck

A Texas man who attributed a bout of sleepwalking to the fatal stabbing of his twin sister more than three years ago was recently was found guilty of murder in connection with the slaying.

Benjamin Elliott was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Feb. 25 for killing his sister Meghan in 2021.

Only 17 at the time, Benjamin called 911 in the early morning hours of Sept. 29, 2021, and told dispatchers he had just stabbed his sister, FOX26 reported.

When Harris County authorities got to the Elliott home, they found Benjamin performing CPR on Meghan who had sustained multiple stab wounds. First responders pronounced her dead at the home.

Elliott told detectives that he abruptly woke up in his sister’s room and saw a knife in her neck. When he realized it wasn’t a dream, he removed the knife, put a pillow on her neck to stop the bleeding, and then ran to his room, grabbed his phone, and dialed 911.

“I stabbed her and then suddenly wasn’t,” Benjamin said during an initial interview with an investigator following his arrest, according to KHOU11. “I freaked out and, like, put the knife down and put a pillow on her to try and stop the bleeding. Then called, you know, 911 from my phone.”

Elliott told investigators that he and his sister were good friends and it felt like a “realistic nightmare” when he woke up above her bed.

During the now-21-year-old’s week-long trial, his attorneys mounted a defense to bolster the sleepwalking claim by using the testimony of a forensic psychologist and a sleep expert who talked about abnormal sleep behaviors and Elliott’s history of mental health issues.

Benjmain’s older sister video-conferenced from Georgia and testified that she once witnessed an instance in which her brother sleptwalk. A great-aunt also told jurors that the family has a history of sleepwalking.

Prosecutors also enlisted sleep experts to testify against the defense and presented evidence from Benjamin’s phone logs to discredit the somnambulism claim, stating that he was using his smartphone just before the murder and that the device even tracked his steps to his sister’s room, ABC13 reported.

They also asserted that Benjamin had purchased the survival knife he used in the stabbing just a day before Meghan was killed and used the pillow to muffle his sister’s screams rather than stop her bleeding.

“While I didn’t give you motive, I did give you premeditation. It’s not a coincidence that the knife he got the night before is the same knife he used to kill his sister,” prosecutor Megan Long told the jury during closing arguments.

After five hours of deliberating, the jury delivered a guilty verdict on Monday. The next day, the judge sentenced Elliott.

Defense attorneys asked for five years, calling the conviction a “miscarriage of justice.” The jury asked for the judge to be lenient. Prosecutors, on the other hand, requested a 40-year prison term.

Elliott will be eligible for parole halfway through his 15-year term.

Dr. Jerald Simmons, a neurologist who testified for the defense, said he thought the “jury got it wrong,” according to ABC13. “If it wasn’t possible, I would have not taken the position. There are other cases. They are rare, but they can occur.”

In 2019, Raymond Lazarine mounted the same sleepwalking defense after being charged with his wife’s murder in Harris County. He was convicted.