Teenage Benjamin Elliott Killed His Twin Sister—He Thought It Was a Dream

In the early morning hours of September 29, 2021, a nightmarish scenario began to unfold inside a Texas home. Benjamin Elliott—then just 17 years old—called 911 to report he had stabbed his twin sister, Meghan Elliott, in the neck.

The teenager claimed he had been dreaming, but then suddenly awoke to find himself in his sister’s room, standing over her. 

”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,” Benjamin told a detective with the Harris County Sheriff's Office, according to KHOU11. 

He was performing CPR when first responders arrived, but it was too late. Meghan was dead. Family members and neighbors were blindsided, as the Elliott twins had always appeared to get along well. 

“I was really shocked when this thing went down,” Robert Dawson, one of the family’s neighbors, told ABC13. 

Despite Benjamin’s claims that he had been sleeping at the time of the attack, jurors later convicted him of murdering his sister.

No one will ever really know what happened September 29, 2021, inside the Elliott family home in Katy, Texas, a northwest suburb of Houston. But investigators responded to the scene around 5 a.m., after getting a call from a 17-year-old boy who said he had stabbed his twin sister in the neck while he was sleeping.

In a recorded interview, Benjamin asked a detective if he had ever experienced a “realistic nightmare where everything felt real,” according to ABC13. The teen also said the incident was like “a dream, and then I stabbed her,” court documents showed. He realized what he was doing when he heard his sister make a “half-scream.”

By the time Benjamin’s case went to trial in February 2025, investigators still had not uncovered any possible motive for the killing. Defense attorneys used the lack of apparent motive to bolster their argument the teen had been asleep—and, thus, was unaware of his actions—when he slayed his twin.

“From the beginning, Benjamin Elliott admitted to police that he fatally stabbed his sister, so the trial focused on only one thing: did he do it intentionally?” Joshua Lake, the director of the Criminal Justice Clinic at the University of Houston Law Center, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.

The defense called witnesses like Benjamin’s older sister, who told the jury her brother had sleepwalked before, as well as a great-aunt who testified that sleepwalking ran in the family. Jerald Simmons, a neurologist who testified for the defense, explained that sleep disorders can sometimes cause people to behave violently. 

Defense attorneys also emphasized the positive relationship between the twins, explaining that Benjamin had no reason to want his sister dead.

“How could a kid who cherishes his sister, who loves her, protects her—how could someone commit a crime that heinous, unless there was a reasonable explanation?” defense attorney Wes Rucker told the jury, according to ABC13. 

Rucker additionally attempted to address any possible skepticism from the jury about the sleepwalking defense head-on.

“Is this just some made-up bologna or a really creative defense?” he said during the trial. “The answer is absolutely not… This is not a ruse, this is not some defense to get Ben off a tragic, tragic set of circumstances.”

In legal circles, Benjamin’s claim that he was asleep when he killed his sister is known as the “sleepwalking defense.” Experts say the use of this defense is unusual, but not unheard of, in criminal proceedings. 

One of the first known uses took place in 1846, when a lawyer for Albert Tirrell suggested his client might have been sleeping when he murdered his mistress in Boston. The jury apparently found the explanation plausible, as they ultimately acquitted Tirrell.

That was more than 150 years ago, but the sleepwalking defense has also been used in more modern cases, too. In 2013, for example, Raymond Lazarine told police he was dreaming when he fatally shot Deborah Lazarine, his wife of 35 years. A Texas jury rejected this version of events, and Lazarine was ultimately sentenced to 75 years in prison. Then, in 2017, Randy Herman Jr. claimed he was sleeping when he fatally stabbed his roommate Brooke Preston in the Florida home they shared. A jury also rejected this argument, finding Herman Jr. guilty of first-degree murder in 2019.

“It’s rarely successful,” Shaheen Manshoory, a Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “It heavily relies on expert testimony, and the prosecution will likely have an expert to refute what the defense expert is saying.”

Manshoory also notes that it’s often difficult for jurors to imagine themselves behaving violently while sleeping, so they have a hard time believing it could happen to anyone else.

“The best scenario is that [the defendant] has a history of sleepwalking, or if they are caught on camera and jurors can visually see the person is not awake or responding to the incident as a normal person would,” he adds. 

Prosecutors, however, argued at trial that Benjamin’s sleepwalking story didn’t add up and that he was awake when he murdered his sibling. Cell phone data showed the teenager had been using the device not long before the stabbing occurred, and that he had been alert enough to turn off his alarm for school that morning. His phone also recorded him walking to his sister’s room and back.

The prosecution also suggested the teen had placed a pillow over his sister’s head not to stop the bleeding, but to muffle her screams. They bolstered that claim by pointing out that Benjamin spoke in hushed tones after calling 911.

“You know how we know he was whispering? Because Michael Elliott, his own father, took that witness stand and said it was the 911 operator’s voice that woke him up, not Benjamin,” prosecutor Maroun Koutani said during his closing argument.

At the end of the week-long trial, the jury did not find Benjamin’s sleepwalking claims convincing. After roughly five hours of deliberation, they returned a guilty verdict on February 24, 2025.

“The defense asked the jury to believe that Benjamin Elliott had been sleepwalking and never meant to harm his sister, but ultimately, they disagreed,” Lake says. 

The next day, Harris County Judge Danilo Lacayo sentenced Benjamin to 15 years in prison, noting his lack of criminal history, good behavior while on bond and his family and the jury’s requests for leniency. Prosecutors had asked for 40 years, while defense attorneys had asked for five.

“Even though the jury found Benjamin Elliott guilty, it seems they did not believe he deserved a steep punishment,” Lake adds. “The judge heard both the jury and the victim’s family ask for leniency, and it seems he agreed.” Today, 21-year-old Benjamin remains incarcerated at the Garza West prison in Beeville, Texas, about 180 miles southwest of Houston. He will be eligible for parole starting in August 2032 and is expected to be released in February 2040, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.