Benjamin Cayea’s story changed yesterday at trial
Now he says he accidentally killed her during sex
It has been almost a year since Benjamin Cayea killed his girlfriend Shannon Jones ’15, in his Cayuga Heights home on Thanksgiving.
The infamous line in the case, “I lost my shit and I killed my girlfriend,” was splattered across local news outlets for months.
Cayea told the police on the day he was arrested, “We got into a fight … I choked her.” When the authorities asked if she was okay, she responded, “No I don’t think so. She was cold when I left.”
But he is changing his story, claiming that he lied when he initially spoke with investigators to protect the memory of his girlfriend Jones, then a Cornell senior.
His trial began on October 16th and he took the witness stand yesterday
Cayea had mentioned in previous statements that the couple had gotten into a fight that led to him choking her to death.
His emerging defence includes details of their rough sex life, and how Jones enjoyed being choked despite it making Cayea uncomfortable. He also mentioned that most of their fights ended in sex.
The court heard that after returning to buy her tissues from Tops, Cayea says the two watched videos online for half an hour before Jones began to yell at him, saying he didn’t care about her.
He says the two fought in their usual manner. Jones entered the bathroom and he followed her to continue talking. He then said that she initiated rough sexual intercourse, Jones asking him to choke her and prompting him to go further.
According to the Daily Sun, he told the courtroom,” she started telling me that I was a little bitch … and I couldn’t do it hard enough.” She then collapsed on the floor.
Cayea said that he checked her pulse and concluded that she was dead. He then contemplated suicide and spoke to his friend Jacob Ives who convinced him not to.
It was Ives who then eventually called 911.
In a previous report, Ives stated that Cayea had told him, “She would not stop coming at me, she would not stop yelling. I did it, I choked her.” Ives had also said that Cayea told him he “snapped.”