Post Mortem | The Boy Who Killed His Twin

0:10Erin Moriarty:Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, 48 Hours Correspondent Anne-Marie Green, and joining me today to discuss the season premiere episode of 48 Hours is 48 Hours Correspondent Erin Moriarty. Erin, how many seasons has it been for you now?

0:25Anne-Marie Green:Okay, I was trying to count, and I think it's 35, which means isn't this your first full season? So you have a little bit to catch up with me.

0:35Erin Moriarty:I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Still, with all those seasons under your belt, this is quite an episode. I don't know if you've done anything like this one before. It's the perplexing case of Ben Elliott. He murdered his twin sister, Megan, in 2021. They were both just 17 years old at the time. Now, Ben maintains his innocence. He admits that he stabbed his sister, but he says he was sleepwalking and he did not intend to harm her. So this is one of those episodes, Erin, that throughout the hour, my mind kept on changing about whether or not, you know, I felt it was intentional. I felt that, you know, whether or not he was guilty.

1:16Erin Moriarty:I just I couldn't really decide.

1:19Anne-Marie Green:You know, Anne-Marie, I'm with you. I was conflicted as well. When I first started on the story, I thought, well, that's a novel defense. You know, but I thought of it as a defense. But I have really gone 180. The problem here is our judicial, our criminal judicial system that is based on adversarial sides. The courts want to find guilt or innocence, guilt or not guilty. In this case, we know he did it. He, you know, Ben Elliott admits he stabbed his sister, but we don't know why or if he intended to. And the other problem with this case, which you and I will talk about, is this is a young man who never shows a lot of emotion.

2:09Erin Moriarty:Absolutely. We will get into his demeanor. But before we even sort of get into the case, we'll just remind people that if you haven't actually listened to this episode of 48 Hours, you can do so. You can find the full audio version just below this episode that you're listening to in your podcast feed. Go take a listen and then come on back for this conversation. Okay. You actually have a pretty unique perspective here. You are a twin, which I'm just learning.

2:36Anne-Marie Green:I am a twin. I have a twin sister. We are not identical, but we are very close. And so this case hit me hard. It was hard not to look at this case as a twin. I can't in a million years imagine hurting my twin. It's the person I knew before anybody. And in this case, there didn't seem to be any problem between these two people. So how do you make sense of that?

3:04Erin Moriarty:Yes, the prosecution argues that Ben intentionally killed his sister and that he wasn't sleepwalking, that this was just sort of an excuse, something that he made up. But they never really established a motive. And me, as the viewer slash juror watching this, that bothered me.

3:23Anne-Marie Green:What was so troubling about this case is that not only was there no evidence of a motive or a problem between these twins, everyone that the prosecution talked to said that Ben loved his sister and loved being her protector. She had been diagnosed as autistic, and he, according to the witnesses, wanted to protect her. But here's something else to think about. They couldn't find any evidence on either one of the twins' phones. You would think if there was a problem between the two, there'd be some kind of text trail. Another thing, this is a young man who used his phone all the time. if he was just going to use sleepwalking as a defense and excuse, wouldn't you think he'd do some research?

4:19Anne-Marie Green:They didn't find any. So I found this all so troubling because, again, the prosecutors say he's a danger to society. That's why they charged him with first degree and and fought to get him convicted of first degree murder. And yet there's no evidence other than the act itself, which is pretty awful, that he really intended to do this.

4:49Erin Moriarty:I think that that would have helped me as I was watching The Hour if they could give me the why, even though they don't really have to. But the other thing that I kept on thinking about as I was watching The Hour is just how much do you know about sleepwalking? I think immediately what comes to mind is sort of this visual of this person walking with their eyes closed and their arms out, sort of zombie-like, not, you know, somebody doing sort of complicated tasks. But I have to say, I have heard some crazy things about people, you know, it could be an urban myth, but I mean, cooking a turkey while sleeping, walking and all that sort of stuff.

5:27Anne-Marie Green:Well, you know, it's not crazy for someone to actually cook while they're sleeping. I learned that. So just so that people understand what it is, there's a large category called parasomnias, and sleepwalking is one of those. So is sleep eating or if you want to say sleep cooking. And it really happens, and it's more common than I realize it is. but crimes committed while you're sleepwalking is less common, although it does happen. Here's the real problem, Anne-Marie, and it was a problem reporting on this. There are no, usually no witnesses to somebody sleepwalking. And so they sometimes have to kind of guess about what happens during those episodes.

6:20Anne-Marie Green:So we have experts because they were used in the trial, both on the defense side and on the prosecution side. And both sides agree that parasomnia, sleepwalking, does occur. They also agree when it occurs. It occurs during a period of your sleep, which is non-REM, slow-wave sleep. And it's when you're almost like in a twilight zone between sleep and being awake. But then the experts disagree. And here's the problem. You have the defense witness saying that there are pockets of memory, and that's why Ben Elliott could remember stabbing. But the state's witness says there are no pockets of memory.

7:08Anne-Marie Green:The fact that he could remember stabbing his sister meant he was not sleepwalking.

7:14Erin Moriarty:And, you know, what we're talking about here, too, is not just sort of like stumbling around your bedroom, right? We're talking about a very violent act. Do the experts have any opinion on what might cause someone who's normally not violent to act out violently in their sleep? Dr.

7:33Anne-Marie Green:Pressman, the prosecution's sleep expert, said that something has to happen to the sleepwalker. Somebody has to interfere with their movement. But again, because in most of these cases, there are no cameras, no witnesses. They don't know exactly. We don't know what happened in that bedroom. Did Megan wake up? Did she put a hand up to try to stop him? We don't know. Dr.

8:01Erin Moriarty:Pressman, he said something along the lines of, you know, he knew that he wasn't sleepwalking because he came out of it quickly. And I just sort of thought, how did he know how quickly he came out of it? Because there were only two people in that room and it certainly wasn't the expert.

8:22Anne-Marie Green:Exactly. Exactly. He's claiming that the fact that Ben said, I remember stabbing her, meant that he had come out quickly to have that kind of memory. Dr. Pressman says he shouldn't have any memory of it. The prosecution actually used the fact that Ben had some memory against him by saying that Ben had actually killed his sister earlier and had time to come up with a story. and then calling 911. Again, as you point out, Anne-Marie, there were no cameras, there were no witnesses. We don't know and the experts don't know.

9:04Erin Moriarty:So here's kind of like my journey with Ben, right? Initially, I just thought, you know, his presentation is a little odd and it starts with that 911 call. At this point, you've listened probably to hundreds of 911 calls. You know, sometimes people are frantic and yelling. Sometimes they are very measured and controlled. They want to get the information out. Ben had this soft, whispery voice. It just was a little odd.

9:35Anne-Marie Green:Well, and it was odd to the prosecutors. That was part of the trial. In fact, the prosecutor imitated the phone call in front of the jurors was whispering. And that's fair to an extent, because certainly when you listen, as you did, Anne-Marie, it does sound like he's whispering, and he may have been. But I also want to point out that when I met Ben Elliott in the jail and interviewed him, he is very soft-spoken. And he doesn't show a lot of emotion. And what he said to me was that he wasn't whispering, that that's how he talks.

10:14Erin Moriarty:But then why didn't he scream out to his parents? That was the other thing that kind of bothered me. I thought, like, why is it that the parents are finding out what's happening, you know, when the cops are showing up? Like, why wouldn't he say, oh, my God, help me?

10:28Anne-Marie Green:Well, you know what, Emery, that is such a good question. And it's certainly what the prosecution pointed out. Like, why did he call 911? Why did he keep his voice down? He didn't want his parents to know. And that's possible. But can I just point out, here's where my experience as a twin comes in. So when you are a twin, whether you're identical or not, you have a real closeness. That is who you share everything with. And I just want to throw out that possibility that as a twin, he was calling 911 because he was thinking of his sister and then didn't think about calling his parents until the 911 operator asked him to.

11:10Anne-Marie Green:It's a possibility. As a twin, I see that as a possibility.

11:15Erin Moriarty:I think the other thing that really surprised me about this episode is just how many people are familiar with sleepwalking. Because I kind of went through, it's nowhere close to sleepwalking, but my husband talks in his sleep. And when we first met, it would be sort of this mumbly stuff that I couldn't understand, but it's definitely progressed over time. But I mean, One of the prosecutors was a sleepwalker. Her children, jurors knew sleepwalkers. I was like, how many people are sleepwalking? And then I also thought, could that have an impact on, you know, whether or not they thought he was guilty or innocent?

11:51Erin Moriarty:Because I don't know. Do you know if their familiarity with sleepwalking had an impact on how they decided this case?

11:59Anne-Marie Green:I think, Anne-Marie, it was a double-edged sword. In one hand, it helped the defense because you had jurors who knew that sleepwalking exists, and they heard during the trial that Ben seemed to have a history of sleepwalking. The other side of that sword is, though, that committing a crime while sleepwalking is very rare. None of the people who were familiar with sleepwalking knew someone who committed a crime. And I think that's hard for someone to believe that even jurors who knew that people sleepwalk, to believe that someone could actually commit a terrible crime like this. They also heard testimony from Dr.

12:46Anne-Marie Green:Pressman, who says that during sleepwalking, you can't have conscious thought and made a big deal that in order for Ben to have stabbed his sister, he had to pull his knife out of the sheath. And Dr. Pressman testified that that was too much of a conscious thought. And yet you and I know that there have been cases where somebody has driven and then committed a crime while sleepwalking and the jury acquitted that person of murder.

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14:05Erin Moriarty:Welcome back. Let's dive into the really chilling body cam footage. When first responders arrive on the scene, Ben is giving Megan CPR compressions. His parents, Michael and Kathy, they are there. They are distraught. They are confused. They ask police what has happened to their daughter, Megan.

14:27Anne-Marie Green:Well, Anne-Marie, at first glance, when you see that body cam footage and you see these parents asking and the police are saying, we're not going to tell you, it seems cruel at first glance. But you have to realize that they're walking into that house not knowing what happened, who exactly was involved. They just know someone inside that house was involved. Maybe they all were. And so until they could really understand what happened, they did not want to share any information. They didn't want anyone in the house sharing stories, getting a story together until they could figure out exactly what did happen.

15:06Anne-Marie Green:It really makes more sense when you look at it from the vantage point of these investigators walking in cold.

15:12Erin Moriarty:It does make sense. I imagine for Michael and Kathy, though, as this whole thing sort of continues to unfold, they then decide that they're going to call a family friend who happens to be an attorney. Now, prosecutors use that decision a little bit against them. Frame it like it's a very suspicious thing to do.

15:35Anne-Marie Green:Well, and we see this over and over again in these cases, Anne-Marie. So the family wants to know what to do. Most of the time, they've never been involved in a situation like this. So they had a friend who was a lawyer. And in fact, that lawyer helped them find out what happened to Megan. That's how they found out that their daughter had died. But then at trial, it was used against the family by the prosecution. And we see that happening over and over again in cases. The prosecutors said that the family had conducted a cover up from the and I'm quoting the get go, you know, from the very beginning.

16:21Anne-Marie Green:Because from the prosecution's viewpoint, if you have nothing to hide, why are you calling a friend who's a lawyer?

16:27Erin Moriarty:So Ben's family, his parents, they're already going through this heartbreaking experience. But now part of the prosecution's narrative is, and they're involved in a cover-up. Their head must have been spinning.

16:45Anne-Marie Green:Can I just tell you, this was one of the most emotional interviews I've done with parents. As you can imagine, they have lost a daughter. They fear they'll lose their son. For the first time, I found out that they thought maybe he had schizophrenia. They really seemed and they said to me that they really wanted to know what happened. So they were very upset with the idea that anyone would accuse them of a cover up. And they point out that Ben was willing to talk to the state's expert, sleep expert, but that the state sleep expert did not want to talk to Ben. And that expert felt he had enough information by looking at the reports and the evidence in the case and did not need to talk to Ben, is what he said to me.

17:37Anne-Marie Green:So the family was devastated with the claim that they were trying to cover up because that's not how they saw it.

17:44Erin Moriarty:Mm hmm. The jurors really got to see Ben Elliott's police interrogation. I'm curious as to, you know, what they felt about his demeanor and what you felt about his demeanor because you spoke to him.

18:00Anne-Marie Green:That's the hard part, Anne-Marie, in these cases. We are judging people by how they act under the worst moments of their lives, but we've never met those people before. So it's a very tough part of any criminal trial to try to figure out how do you judge the demeanor of somebody. The Ben that I saw on police cam footage was very similar to the Ben I met when I saw him in the jail. He was a little more animated with me because apparently his grandmother was and is a fan of mine. And so he did say to me kind of that his grandmother under different circumstances would be happy to know that that I was the one who interviewed him.