Speaker 1: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 2: my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have
Speaker 2: to say?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: You do?
Speaker 2: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 4: Really? Yes?
Speaker 2: Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I
Speaker 2: never win? And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot
Speaker 1: com play for free right now?
Speaker 2: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 1: Noprigucesaryoid were my long eighteen plus terms and conditions of plus
Speaker 1: sy wort say details.
Speaker 2: It is Ryan here and I have a question for you.
Speaker 2: What do you do when you win?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Are you at fist pumper, A wooo, A handclapper, a
Speaker 1: high fiver? I kind of like the high five. But
Speaker 1: if you want to hone in on those winning moves,
Speaker 1: check out Chumbuck Casino At chumbacasino dot com, choose from
Speaker 1: hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to
Speaker 1: redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly,
Speaker 1: plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait. Start having the
Speaker 1: most fun ever at Chumbuck Casino dot Com.
Speaker 5: No producessary d I lost e terms, it is eating blood.
Speaker 2: Luck to Padian.
Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 3: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening was Jason, the monster who bludgeoned his beautiful
Speaker 6: wife to death, leaving his toddler alone for hours to
Speaker 6: walk through her blood. If so, would he get away
Speaker 6: with it to the outside world. Jason and Michelle Young
Speaker 6: lived a storybook life, an attractive couple with great jobs,
Speaker 6: a beautiful home, a precocious two year old daughter, and
Speaker 6: a baby boy on the way. Soon after the twenty
Speaker 6: nine year old pregnant mother's brutally beaten body was discovered
Speaker 6: on their bedroom floor, a very different picture emerged of
Speaker 6: a marriage crumbling at its foundation, of a meddlesome New
Speaker 6: York mother in law whose running critique left Jason frustrated
Speaker 6: and angry, of a thirty two year old man who
Speaker 6: behaved like a frat boy, rebelling against adult responsibilities. Murder
Speaker 6: on Birch Leaf Drive documents the gripping tale of a
Speaker 6: family's marathon quest for justice, confounding crime scene evidence, persistence
Speaker 6: of law enforcement officers, and riveting courtroom combat. The book
Speaker 6: they were featuring this evening is Murder on Birch Leaf Drive,
Speaker 6: The True story of the Michelle Young murder case, with
Speaker 6: my special guest, attorney and author Stephen b Epstein. Welcome
Speaker 6: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 6: Steven b Epstein, thank you for having me. Thank you
Speaker 6: very much for this. I want to ask how you
Speaker 6: came to be the author of Murder on Birch Leaf Drive.
Speaker 6: What was it about this story? Tell us the circumstances
Speaker 6: in which you happen to be and want to write
Speaker 6: Murder on Birch Leaf Drive.
Speaker 5: Well, it really was a light bulb epiphany one day
Speaker 5: a couple of years ago. I had kept up with
Speaker 5: this story as someone living in Raleigh, North Carolina, following
Speaker 5: the news, and this story about this murder that occurred
Speaker 5: in November of two thousand and six was on the
Speaker 5: news a lot. There were two different criminal trials, which
Speaker 5: I suppose we'll talk about during today's interview, and that
Speaker 5: the trials were covered a lot. As someone who's a lawyer,
Speaker 5: I was of course interested. I knew the judge that
Speaker 5: was involved in the case, I knew some of the
Speaker 5: lawyers involved in the case. But I think what really
Speaker 5: drew me to this story was that I shared some
Speaker 5: common pathways with the victim. Michelle Young. She grew up
Speaker 5: in Long Island and used a computer in her high
Speaker 5: school to find her way to North Carolina to go
Speaker 5: to college. She wound up going to North Carolina State
Speaker 5: University in Raleigh. I pretty much did the same thing.
Speaker 5: I grew up in Long Island, and I used a
Speaker 5: computer in my high school to find my way to
Speaker 5: North Carolina. I wound up going to the University of
Speaker 5: North Carolina. But I moved to a place that was foreign,
Speaker 5: as did she. The culture in the South is quite
Speaker 5: different in the culture in New York. And I married
Speaker 5: a Southerner and had to learn all of the things
Speaker 5: that were different about the South and the culture in
Speaker 5: the South. And she did as well. Jason Young grew
Speaker 5: up in Brevard, North Carolina, in the mountains, and there
Speaker 5: were a lot of culture clashes between Michelle and Jason
Speaker 5: and between their two families that were prominent in the
Speaker 5: problems in their relationship that ultimately, if you believe that
Speaker 5: Jason is the one who killed her, ultimately led to
Speaker 5: him committing this despicable act. So there was a lot
Speaker 5: about this story that I was attracted to, just as
Speaker 5: basically a reader of newspapers and as someone who watched
Speaker 5: little bits of news here and there about this trial.
Speaker 5: And no one else had written this book. I think
Speaker 5: that was the thing that eventually pushed me to write it,
Speaker 5: is that I believe that this was a story that
Speaker 5: really needed to be told, and that others around not
Speaker 5: only Raleigh and around North Carolina, but around the country
Speaker 5: would find to be a very fascinating true crime story.
Speaker 5: And that's why I decided to write the book. And
Speaker 5: certainly that was a great decision. You take the reader
Speaker 5: November third, two thousand and six, and a phone ringing,
Speaker 5: awaking Meredith Fisher, and the call is from or the
Speaker 5: message is brother in law Jason Young and this is
Speaker 5: her sister's husband. Michelle tell us what that phone ringing means?
Speaker 5: Does he leave a message? Does she talk to Jason
Speaker 5: Young personally tell us about that phone call November thirty two.
Speaker 5: So the book begins with the phone in Meredith Fisher's
Speaker 5: Mere Fisher's cell phone ringing in her bedroom, waking her
Speaker 5: from a dead sleep at twelve fourteen pm on November third,
Speaker 5: two thousand and six. Because she's asleep, she doesn't answer. Eventually,
Speaker 5: she sets the phone down and listens to the voicemail,
Speaker 5: which is from her brother in law, Jason Young. And
Speaker 5: what Jason Young says in that voicemail is that he
Speaker 5: he had left some papers on the printer in his
Speaker 5: home on Birch Leaf Drive in Raleigh, North Carolina, at
Speaker 5: the time he departed for a business trip by car
Speaker 5: to Virginia, and those papers that he said he left
Speaker 5: on the printer were of auctions that were taking place
Speaker 5: on eBay for coach purses, And what he says is
Speaker 5: that he had intended to take those with him on
Speaker 5: his business trip because he was trying to figure out
Speaker 5: the perfect gift for Michelle for their third wedding anniversary. Now,
Speaker 5: mind you, this call was on November third, two thousand
Speaker 5: and six. Their third wedding anniversary was on October tenth,
Speaker 5: two thousand and six. A few weeks before. Nevertheless, he
Speaker 5: says he really wants Meredith to run the twenty minutes
Speaker 5: over to his home, pull those off of the printer,
Speaker 5: and get them before his wife sees them, because he
Speaker 5: didn't want them to spoil her surprise and that he
Speaker 5: was thinking of getting her a coach purse were their anniversary,
Speaker 5: And that's what eventually leads to Meredith heading to fifty
Speaker 5: one oh eight Birch Leaf Drive, the home that was
Speaker 5: shared by Jason Young, Michelle Young, and their two year
Speaker 5: old daughter, Cassidy.
Speaker 6: Now what does Meredith's find when she pulls up there?
Speaker 6: Does she find anything unusual at the home?
Speaker 5: When she arrives, she finds several things that are unusual
Speaker 5: before she even enters the home. For one, at that
Speaker 5: point in time, it was about an hour later, about
Speaker 5: one fifteen in the afternoon, and the lights at the
Speaker 5: top of the brick pillars at the driveway edge were
Speaker 5: still illuminated, which, being in the middle of the afternoon,
Speaker 5: didn't make any sense. She noticed that the gate that
Speaker 5: kept the backyard closed was open, which was odd because
Speaker 5: the Youngs had a black lab dog named mister Garrison,
Speaker 5: who was often allowed to roam free in the backyard
Speaker 5: and seeing that gate open was very unusual. So those
Speaker 5: are the first two things she noticed. She got to
Speaker 5: the front door, and she heard mister Garrison inside whimpering,
Speaker 5: which seemed a little bit unusual. Unfortunately, she couldn't she
Speaker 5: didn't have a key. She thought she had a key,
Speaker 5: but then she realized that she had let a friend
Speaker 5: borrow the key while she and Jason and Mary and
Speaker 5: Michelle were in New York on a vacation a little
Speaker 5: while earlier, so she didn't have a key to get in.
Speaker 5: She eventually realized that the garage door was broken and
Speaker 5: she was able to slip underneath the crack of the
Speaker 5: garage door by pushing it up just enough to get
Speaker 5: her body inside. And she noticed that Michelle's Lexus SUV
Speaker 5: was inside of the garage, which also was very odd
Speaker 5: because she should have been at work at Progress Energy
Speaker 5: where she was a financial specialist in the accounting department.
Speaker 5: So all those things were unusual before she even opened
Speaker 5: the door to enter the home.
Speaker 6: Now once she editors, she has any suspicions whatsoever despite
Speaker 6: having seen these unusual things, What is their mindset as
Speaker 6: she walks into this home?
Speaker 5: Well, her mindset is there's a lot that's unusual, but
Speaker 5: she wasn't able to piece together or anything until she
Speaker 5: got upstairs, and then it all became very clear. But
Speaker 5: she walks into the home through the unlocked door leading
Speaker 5: from the garage into the kitchen, and she notices that
Speaker 5: Michelle's purse is lying on the floor against a leg
Speaker 5: of a small desk, which suggests to her that Michelle
Speaker 5: must be in the house, and she starts crying out Michelle, Michelle,
Speaker 5: and there's no response, and then she proceeds up the
Speaker 5: front stairway and gets to the top of the staircase,
Speaker 5: and out of her peripheral vision on her right, she
Speaker 5: sees Cassidy's bathroom, and she noticed she notices that there
Speaker 5: are footprints on City's bathroom floor, and then she looks
Speaker 5: at the landing just at the top of the staircase
Speaker 5: and notices that there are similar footprints on the carpeting
Speaker 5: on the landing, and those footprints, she realizes that are
Speaker 5: actually in the color red, are just large enough to
Speaker 5: be a toddler's set of footprints, and so they were
Speaker 5: clearly Cassidy's footprints. But even then she's thinking the Cassidy
Speaker 5: must have gotten into Michelle's red hair dye, and she's
Speaker 5: thinking Michelle must be pissed, so she doesn't clewe in
Speaker 5: at that point that those footprints were made in blood.
Speaker 5: She then turns to the left to face the master
Speaker 5: bedroom and she takes a few steps to the entranceway
Speaker 5: of the master bedroom, and then she sees, in addition
Speaker 5: to red streaks on the walls and red spots on
Speaker 5: the walls and on the bed, she sees in between
Speaker 5: the bed, on the far side of the bed and
Speaker 5: some closet doors, she sees her sister's lifeless body lying
Speaker 5: on the floor soaked in blood. And that's when she
Speaker 5: realized that her sister has been attacked, and she immediately
Speaker 5: goes to the phone to call nine to one one.
Speaker 6: You talk about her sister, Michelle laying face down in
Speaker 6: this now realizes Meredith realizes as a pool of blood.
Speaker 6: You say, while she's looking in horror and shock at
Speaker 6: her lifeless sister's body, there's a rustling under the covers.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right. So right about the same time, she
Speaker 5: punches in the numbers nine to one one at the
Speaker 5: near side of the bed, which is actually Jason's side,
Speaker 5: of the bed. There's a rustling under the covers, and
Speaker 5: then the covers are pulled down and they're staring at her.
Speaker 5: Is her two and a half year old niece, Cassidy, unharmed,
Speaker 5: and Cassidy looks at her. She looks back at Cassidy,
Speaker 5: and Cassidy leaps forward to her and clings to her
Speaker 5: hip like a koala bear. While Meredth proceeds to begin
Speaker 5: the conversation with a nine to one to one dispatcher.
Speaker 6: Right nine to one run a procedure, they ask a
Speaker 6: lot of questions of Meredith. What are some of the
Speaker 6: questions they ask her immediately? Initially, well, they asked her
Speaker 6: whether what had happened, and Mareth said she didn't know
Speaker 6: whether her sister had a pulse. And Mereth also didn't
Speaker 6: know because she actually had never checked to see if
Speaker 6: she had a pulse. She had never actually gone up
Speaker 6: and touched her sister's body. So at that point she's
Speaker 6: directed to do those things. And when she touches her
Speaker 6: sister's body, it's cold, and she reports that she's eventually
Speaker 6: instructed to try and turn her sister's body over so
Speaker 6: that she stays up so that she can try to
Speaker 6: perform CPR, and she basically tells the dispatcher her body
Speaker 6: is so twisted and it's so heavy, she can't do that.
Speaker 6: And then she also says her body is ice cold,
Speaker 6: it's stiff, suggesting that ray mortis has set in, And
Speaker 6: at that point the dispatcher basically gives her permission to
Speaker 6: cease any further life saving efforts because it's very clear
Speaker 6: that Michelle is dead and has been dead for some
Speaker 6: time now. You talk about the circumstances the Michelle investigators
Speaker 6: immediately find out that she is four and a half
Speaker 6: months pregnant with this baby boy that they've already named Rylan,
Speaker 6: and also that we talked about, You talked about the
Speaker 6: third anniversary and where Jason was at this particular time
Speaker 6: when this nine one one call was made. Tell us
Speaker 6: what investigators find at the crime scene in terms of
Speaker 6: forced or non worst entry. Tell us what are the
Speaker 6: some of the things that they deduce from that crime scene.
Speaker 5: Initially, Initially there were no signs at all of any
Speaker 5: forced entry. The only blood found in the house was
Speaker 5: on the top level, and I've already described blood in
Speaker 5: Cassidy's bathroom, and there was also not only blood on
Speaker 5: the floor of a bathroom. There was blood smears all
Speaker 5: over the walls of her bathroom, very clear that she
Speaker 5: had played in her mother's blood. There were streaks and
Speaker 5: smears at a very low height on the walls, including
Speaker 5: behind the door of Cassidy's bathroom. There was a baby
Speaker 5: doll that was set out next to Michelle's head in
Speaker 5: the master bedroom that Cassidy had clearly placed there, and
Speaker 5: there were some of Cassidy's footprints there right around Michelle's head.
Speaker 5: So they found all of those things. But downstairs, the
Speaker 5: only blood that was visible was on the door knob
Speaker 5: of that same kitchen door that Mariith had entered from.
Speaker 5: On the reverse side, the kitchen side, there were a
Speaker 5: couple of small drops of blood there. All that blood
Speaker 5: was eventually determined to be blood from Michelle. No one
Speaker 5: else's blood was found at the crime scene. The blood
Speaker 5: spatter went as high as the ceiling in the bedroom.
Speaker 5: It was very clear that there was a beating that
Speaker 5: was inflicted upon Michelle. When you looked at her face,
Speaker 5: you saw that her teeth had been knocked out, her
Speaker 5: lips were cut badly, her jawbone was actually protruding through
Speaker 5: her skin. On her face. It was very clear that
Speaker 5: her head had been beaten either with a blunt object
Speaker 5: or with a strongly with a fist many many times
Speaker 5: she was dressed. There was no indication of any type
Speaker 5: of a sexual assault. The only thing missing from the
Speaker 5: bedroom there were two drawers in a jewelry box out
Speaker 5: of a total of three that were not there. They
Speaker 5: were missing. And then Michelle's wetting and engagement rings that
Speaker 5: supposedly she always had worn were also missing from the
Speaker 5: ring finger of her left hand. Those were the only
Speaker 5: things that appeared to be missing from the house. There
Speaker 5: did not appear to be a robbery of any kind
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about the investigators and the initially or
Speaker 6: assigned to this case, and then the medical examiner trying
Speaker 6: to determine the time of death to be more accurately
Speaker 6: pinpoint when she was killed in actuality. Now investigators have
Speaker 6: to find out and determine about Jason's whereabouts during this time.
Speaker 6: Tell us about their efforts to contact him. How is
Speaker 6: Jason first notified about the death of Michelle, what is
Speaker 6: his reaction? Tell us those circumstances, and then tell us
Speaker 6: his reaction to finding out about that. Police are interested
Speaker 6: in questioning him talking to him.
Speaker 5: Sure, So Jason was on a business trip, there's no
Speaker 5: dispute about that. Jason went. He had a business meeting
Speaker 5: that was supposed to take place at ten o'clock on
Speaker 5: November three in clint Wood, Virginia. He was selling electronic
Speaker 5: medical software, electronic medical records software. That was a big
Speaker 5: thing that Barack Obama's president was pushing, was getting physicians
Speaker 5: and hospitals to convert paper records into electronic records. And
Speaker 5: he was selling software that would allow hospitals and doctor's
Speaker 5: offices to do just that. He had just started this
Speaker 5: company called chart One, and he had a meeting at
Speaker 5: a regional hospital in clint Wood, Virginia the morning of
Speaker 5: the third. So he had decided he was going to
Speaker 5: leave home on the second to break his trip into
Speaker 5: two legs, and he was going to stay at a
Speaker 5: Hampton End hotel in Hillsville, Virginia, which is kind of
Speaker 5: in the western mountains of Virginia, before heading almost to
Speaker 5: the Kentuck Key bordered to Clintwood the next morning for
Speaker 5: his sales meeting. So that's what he did. He went
Speaker 5: and had this sales meeting. He was apparently about thirty
Speaker 5: minutes late to the meeting. It didn't go well. They
Speaker 5: didn't buy the software, and then he drove south through Asheville,
Speaker 5: North Carolina, another hour to his home in Brevard, North Carolina,
Speaker 5: which is where he grew up, and he was going
Speaker 5: to spend the night there with his mother and his stepfather.
Speaker 5: He pulls up to the curb and he gets out
Speaker 5: of his car, which was a Ford Explorer. He slings
Speaker 5: his suit jacket over his shoulder and he starts walking
Speaker 5: up to the front door, and he notices that his mother,
Speaker 5: Pat and his stepfather Gerald are standing on the front
Speaker 5: lawn and they have very worried, anxious looks on their faces.
Speaker 5: And he walks up to them and he says, what's wrong?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 5: Grandma? And Gerald, his stepfather, looks at him and he says, no, Jason,
Speaker 5: it's Michelle. Michelle is dead. And Jason's immediate reaction, according
Speaker 5: to both his mother and his stepfather, was that he
Speaker 5: fell to his knees and he started sobbing immediately, and
Speaker 5: they basically had to catch him before he did a
Speaker 5: face plant into the ground. They brought him into the
Speaker 5: house where he was sobbing uncontrollably, and eventually later that
Speaker 5: day they make the decision to head back to Raleigh,
Speaker 5: which is some five hours away east, five hours east
Speaker 5: all across North Carolina, and they drive and along the way,
Speaker 5: Pat is in the back seat with her son, Jason,
Speaker 5: and she's receiving calls here and there, and one of
Speaker 5: them is from law enforcement indicating that they want to
Speaker 5: speak with Jason. And when Jason arrives at his sister
Speaker 5: in law's house, Meredith's house, law enforcement seizes his Ford Explorer,
Speaker 5: and he receives several more requests to meet with law enforcement.
Speaker 5: Jason says he's not going to do that, that he's
Speaker 5: already had contact with a lawyers one, that he's going
Speaker 5: to meet with a lawyer first, and he's not going
Speaker 5: to have any communications with law enforcement until he's done that.
Speaker 5: And so that's how that started.
Speaker 6: When you say that Meredith is very close with Michelle
Speaker 6: and very close to Jason, so much so that she
Speaker 6: has been agreed to be the nanny for their child,
Speaker 6: So there is a closeness in the relationship. When Meredith
Speaker 6: discovered or found out or heard that Jason was not
Speaker 6: going to answer any questions from police, did she think
Speaker 6: she was of exception and that he would talk to her,
Speaker 6: he would speak to her. Did she naturally believe that
Speaker 6: he would say something to her regarding this.
Speaker 5: I don't think that's clear. I don't get that much
Speaker 5: into Mareth's mindset. So the information that I had for
Speaker 5: this book in my research did not come directly from
Speaker 5: the participants, from the family members. It came from the
Speaker 5: trials where they testified about these sorts of things, and
Speaker 5: both through their testimony that I watched on video footage
Speaker 5: and transcripts that I read, I was able to glean
Speaker 5: certain things. That's not something that I was able to glean.
Speaker 5: But what I can tell you is that Michelle already started,
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, Meredith already started suspecting something about Jason that
Speaker 5: very night that he came to the house, because they
Speaker 5: went to the back porch and Meredith was encouraging him
Speaker 5: to try to speak with the police, and he was refusing,
Speaker 5: and at one point he hugged her on the back deck,
Speaker 5: just lamenting what had happened, and he, in her view,
Speaker 5: was basically fake crying that there was something that didn't
Speaker 5: seem genuine about the way that he was crying. That
Speaker 5: made her suspicious on that very night, so she was
Speaker 5: suspicious right away that Jason might have been involved in
Speaker 5: Michelle's murder.
Speaker 6: Right now, as you do, you talk about Michelle Marie Fisher,
Speaker 6: and she was born in Saville, Suffolk County, Long Island,
Speaker 6: and her dad Alan and her mother Linda, and Linda's
Speaker 6: quite important character in this story certainly tell us about
Speaker 6: her life growing up and then how eventually she was
Speaker 6: to meet Jason Young.
Speaker 5: Michelle grew up in Long Island, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 5: as did I, she grew up. She was about ten
Speaker 5: years younger than me, and she graduated from Sable High
Speaker 5: School in nineteen ninety five. By all accounts, she was
Speaker 5: an energetic, vivacious, just full of life teenager. She cheered
Speaker 5: because her mother was the cheering coach at Savile Junior
Speaker 5: High School, so she was cheering in junior high school,
Speaker 5: and then she was cheering in high school as well,
Speaker 5: and eventually was the co captain of the cheerleading team
Speaker 5: and they won. They were co champions. I think of
Speaker 5: of all of Long Island as a cheer team. She
Speaker 5: actually when she went to m C State, she was
Speaker 5: on the cheering squad at m c State as well.
Speaker 5: She made straight a's throughout high school. She made basically
Speaker 5: straight a's throughout college. She was an incredibly gifted student.
Speaker 5: She made friends extremely easily, and she was a very
Speaker 5: pretty woman and had a smile, as people would say,
Speaker 5: that would light up a room. Her demeanor was such
Speaker 5: that people wanted to be around her, and people enjoyed her.
Speaker 5: She formed friends that lasted a lifetime, several of them
Speaker 5: who feature prominently in the book. And she wound up
Speaker 5: meeting Jason when she was celebrating I think it was
Speaker 5: her twenty second or twenty third birthday at a local
Speaker 5: rally bar with of course, a cluster of friends, and
Speaker 5: just so happened that Jason Young, who had graduated from
Speaker 5: Ency State a couple of years before Michelle. Jason Young,
Speaker 5: was in the bar that night himself with a cluster
Speaker 5: of his own friends. And Jason was kind of a goofy,
Speaker 5: silly guy. He could be very charismatic, but he could
Speaker 5: also be very wild, and that night, true to form,
Speaker 5: he was being a little bit wild, and he knocked
Speaker 5: over her wineglass and they struck up a conversation, which
Speaker 5: is the very first time they had ever met one another.
Speaker 5: And there was somewhat of a spark, and that spark
Speaker 5: eventually led to a romance.
Speaker 6: You talk about their personalities, and people have said opposites
Speaker 6: attract tell us how opposite their personalities were going into
Speaker 6: this relationship.
Speaker 5: Well. Michelle was described by everybody who knew her as
Speaker 5: a meticulous planner, somebody who wanted to chart out every
Speaker 5: aspect of her of her life. She wanted to have
Speaker 5: a She had her whole wedding designed and planned out
Speaker 5: before she even met Jason. She knew exactly what she
Speaker 5: wanted from a wedding in terms of what the decorations
Speaker 5: would be, who would be there. As an accountant, she
Speaker 5: was very meticulous about work. She had great jobs. She
Speaker 5: started out after getting her master's degree at De Luyte
Speaker 5: and Touche, and then she wound up working eventually for
Speaker 5: Progress Energy, a fortune five hundred company that's now part
Speaker 5: of Duke Energy, in their accounting tax department. Everything about
Speaker 5: her was planned, meticulous, and top notch. Jason, on the
Speaker 5: other hand, as people were wont to say, flew by
Speaker 5: the seat of his pants. Didn't plan anything out. Basically,
Speaker 5: he wanted to encounter life on a minute by minute
Speaker 5: second by second basis, and he wanted to pull pranks.
Speaker 5: He wanted to make people laugh, He wanted to entertain people,
Speaker 5: and he would do basically anything to entertain his friends,
Speaker 5: to have fun. He would get drunk frequently at parties,
Speaker 5: at tailgates, at football games, and sometimes when he got drunk,
Speaker 5: he did some things that were pretty shocking, Like he
Speaker 5: did something that I refer to in the book because
Speaker 5: everybody else talked about them as his dictrines where he
Speaker 5: would actually pull down his pants and use his genitalia
Speaker 5: to perform in front of other people, male and female.
Speaker 5: And this was who Michelle, this meticulous planner who got
Speaker 5: straight a's throughout high school and college, This is who
Speaker 5: she married.
Speaker 6: Now, you say, despite her elaborate wedding plans and floral
Speaker 6: arrangements and the white pick of fence dream and the
Speaker 6: house full of kids, by summer two thousand and three,
Speaker 6: she learns she is pregnant and they are living together.
Speaker 6: But what is Jason's this frat boy that can't grow up.
Speaker 6: What's his reaction to get use it to pregnant?
Speaker 5: Well, there are two different versions of his reaction. There's
Speaker 5: his version, which he provided testimony about in the case.
Speaker 5: And then there's the version of a friend, a lifelong
Speaker 5: friend of Michelle's, who describes Michelle calling her one night
Speaker 5: in that same time period in sobbing in tears, and
Speaker 5: what she reported Michelle told her is that Michelle had
Speaker 5: told Jason that she was pregnant, and Jason basically told
Speaker 5: her in no uncertain terms that if she didn't abort
Speaker 5: the baby, that he would she would regret that decision
Speaker 5: for the rest of her life, and that he would
Speaker 5: never be able to forgive her for not aborting the baby.
Speaker 5: And that was very poignant testimony in the second trial,
Speaker 5: that is not the way at all Jason portrayed that
Speaker 5: decision making process and what he thought of when he
Speaker 5: learned that she was pregnant. He described it as you know,
Speaker 5: it was a dock to him, and he was not
Speaker 5: sure he was ready, but he was perfectly happy to
Speaker 5: have Cassidy as his child, and very quickly came around
Speaker 5: to the decision to propose to Michelle as the result
Speaker 5: of knowing she was going to have a baby.
Speaker 6: To give some credibility to what he said, how does
Speaker 6: he act during the pregnancy in terms of preparation for
Speaker 6: the baby's birth.
Speaker 5: Well, Jason, again, he wasn't the planner. He wasn't the
Speaker 5: person who figured things out and made sure things were
Speaker 5: the way they needed to be. That was Michelle and
Speaker 5: to some extent, Michelle's mother Linda, who did those things,
Speaker 5: and Jason was kind of along for the ride. He
Speaker 5: wasn't a big part of planning for the baby, planning
Speaker 5: for the wedding. In fact, he just wanted to make
Speaker 5: sure that the wedding itself wasn't falling on a Saturday
Speaker 5: that would conflict with an NC State football game because
Speaker 5: he couldn't have that. He wanted to make sure there
Speaker 5: was plenty beer at the wedding, and apart from that,
Speaker 5: he was more than willing to seed all wedding planning
Speaker 5: responsibilities to Michelle and her family. And the same was
Speaker 5: pretty much true for the baby. Other than the fact
Speaker 5: that if the baby was going to be a boy,
Speaker 5: and this turned out to be true for Rylan, who
Speaker 5: Michelle was pregnant with at the time of her death,
Speaker 5: well the baby couldn't wear any clothes that were blue,
Speaker 5: or at least not that shade of blue that conflicted
Speaker 5: with mc State. NC State wolf pack is red and
Speaker 5: light blue is the color of the Carolina tar heels,
Speaker 5: and so Jason was an avid wolf Pack fan and
Speaker 5: hated the tar heels and wanted to make sure that
Speaker 5: any clothing that was purchased for his children didn't suggest
Speaker 5: that he was a tar heel fan.
Speaker 6: Tell us about Michelle's mother, Linda, and what Linda's impression
Speaker 6: of Jason was, and also the circumstances in which they
Speaker 6: found themselves in terms of an argument over Linda's role
Speaker 6: in the baby's lives.
Speaker 5: Okay, and so Linda was a school teacher, which ironically
Speaker 5: so was Jason's mother Pat And Linda, because she was
Speaker 5: a school teacher, had summers completely to herself, and after
Speaker 5: Cassidy was born, she would spend large chunks of her
Speaker 5: summer living with Michelle and Jason. So the first summer
Speaker 5: after Cassidy was born in two thousand and four, she
Speaker 5: spent the summer living at the town home they lived.
Speaker 5: In the next summer, they had moved into their home
Speaker 5: on Birch Leaf Drive, and she spent large portions of
Speaker 5: that summer there, as she did the following summer in
Speaker 5: two thousand and six. Linda was a New York raised,
Speaker 5: New York bred woman in her at that point in
Speaker 5: time in her fifties, and she had very decided views
Speaker 5: about things and about her daughter, and she very quickly
Speaker 5: came to consider Jason as not good enough for her daughter,
Speaker 5: that he was very immature, irresponsible, didn't pull his weight
Speaker 5: in their marriage, and especially after Cassidy was born, didn't
Speaker 5: pull his weight with child responsibilities. Instead, he would go
Speaker 5: off and do things like join basketball and softball leagues,
Speaker 5: and even though he worked from home, he was never
Speaker 5: at home when Linda was there, and she grew very
Speaker 5: dissatisfied with the way he was pulling his weight and
Speaker 5: treating her daughter. Jason, of course, found her to be
Speaker 5: very intrusive, moving in on their new home in the
Speaker 5: summer of two thousand and five almost the day that
Speaker 5: Jason and Michelle moved in, and he couldn't stand her
Speaker 5: and didn't want to have anything to do with her,
Speaker 5: and that created enormous turmoil and conflict as we head
Speaker 5: into two thousand and six. And then, of course, Michelle
Speaker 5: gets pregnant in two thousand and six, and Michelle tells
Speaker 5: Jason that he's planning to convert the third floor attic
Speaker 5: into a bedrooms and bathroom, essentially a mother in law
Speaker 5: suite for Linda to move in, and Linda at that
Speaker 5: point has retired from teaching altogether. So the thought is
Speaker 5: that Linda's going to move in and be that Rylan's
Speaker 5: nanny after he's born and in early two thousand and seven,
Speaker 5: and that Jason's going to have to see her pretty
Speaker 5: much every day. And Jason said, no way, that is
Speaker 5: not going to happen. And they were also having fights
Speaker 5: about whose houses they were going to stay at over
Speaker 5: the holidays in two thousand and six and the extent
Speaker 5: to which Linda would be part of that, and Jason
Speaker 5: was pushing as hard as he could to limit Linda's
Speaker 5: time with them over the holidays, and of course Michelle,
Speaker 5: who loved her mother Dealey, was pushing for the opposite.
Speaker 5: So there was enormous conflict over things like that.
Speaker 2: Hey, Guysaida is Ryan.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you know this about me, but
Speaker 1: I'm a bit of a fun fanatic when I can.
Speaker 2: I like to work, but I like fun too. It's
Speaker 2: a thing.
Speaker 1: And now the truth is out there, I can tell
Speaker 1: you about my favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino.
Speaker 1: They have hundreds of social casino style games, to choose from.
Speaker 1: With new games released each week, you can play for
Speaker 1: free anytime, anywhere, and each day brings a new chance
Speaker 1: to collect daily bonuses. So join me and the fun.
Speaker 1: Sign up now at Chumba Casino dot com. No necessary
Speaker 1: drip where every by loss He Terms and Conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 4: Step into the world of power, loyalty and luck. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. With family
Speaker 4: canoli's and spins mean everything. Now you want to get
Speaker 4: mixed up in the family business. Introducing The Godfather at
Speaker 4: Champa Casino dot com. Test your luck in the shadowy
Speaker 4: world at the Godfather Slodge. Someday I will call upon
Speaker 4: you to do a service for me. Play The Godfather
Speaker 4: now at Champacasino dot com. Welcome to the Family vdW Group.
Speaker 5: No purchase necessary if we we're privited by loss He
Speaker 5: Terms and Conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 6: You talk about Jason's excitement and anticipation of their baby Ryland.
Speaker 6: That being a baby boy, why was he particarticularly he
Speaker 6: said excited about having a son.
Speaker 5: Jason's father, Bob Young, died of cancer when he was
Speaker 5: only five years old, and Jason was the only son
Speaker 5: born to Bob and Pat Young. Therefore, he was the
Speaker 5: only one of the three children that had the ability
Speaker 5: to carry down the Young name into another generation, and
Speaker 5: so Cassidy, of course presumably was not going to carry
Speaker 5: the Young name down after she got married. So having
Speaker 5: a boy gave Jason the ability to have his father's
Speaker 5: memory preserved by the Young name being passed down to
Speaker 5: another generation, and he was very excited about that. Jason
Speaker 5: is also very he was very manly, liked being a
Speaker 5: man and having a boy or a son to do
Speaker 5: sports related things with, I think really appealed to him.
Speaker 5: So he was really looking forward to having by all accounts,
Speaker 5: to having Rylan as his son.
Speaker 6: You talk about too that once they had the dream home,
Speaker 6: they both agreed to prepare their wills. Some people might
Speaker 6: find that unusual. Why was this something that was important
Speaker 6: to them?
Speaker 5: Especially it was important to Michelle, actually more than it
Speaker 5: was important to Jason. Michelle, being the meticulous planner that
Speaker 5: she was, wanted to make sure that everything was in order,
Speaker 5: everything that was in place, including should they meet unfortunate circumstances,
Speaker 5: And the wills actually led to a discussion about life
Speaker 5: insurance and somebody that was a sorority sister of Michelle's
Speaker 5: helped them both with respect to wills and powers of
Speaker 5: attorney and living wills, and also bouncing around ideas about
Speaker 5: life insurance. And Michelle, because she was a CPA, was
Speaker 5: able to get some fairly inexpensive life insurance through the
Speaker 5: North Carolina Chapter of the CPA Association and was able
Speaker 5: to procure a two million dollar life insurance policy for
Speaker 5: herself and for Jason, which had a double indemnity provision,
Speaker 5: meaning it would pay four million dollars in the event
Speaker 5: of a death that was that was accidental. And so
Speaker 5: there was a four million dollar policy essentially in place
Speaker 5: on Michelle's life at the time she was murdered.
Speaker 6: Incredible. Let's use this as an opportunity, Stephen, to stop
Speaker 6: for a second to talk about our sponsor, fab fit Fun.
Speaker 6: The twenty nineteen fab fit Fun Fall Box is on
Speaker 6: sale now. Fab fit Fun is a woman's lifestyle subscription
Speaker 6: box filled with full size, premium beauty, lifestyle, fitness, home
Speaker 6: and wellness products sent right to your doorstep each season.
Speaker 6: We take the hassle out of shopping by doing it
Speaker 6: for you. Each box is customized to your specific interest.
Speaker 6: We deliver the seasonal must haves. You need. These boxes
Speaker 6: sello fasts, so sign up for yours today. My wife
Speaker 6: Lisa was very excited when she received her very first box.
Speaker 6: She was initially very surprised and then very impressed with
Speaker 6: the high end products the box contained. Most of the
Speaker 6: items in each box are customizable, and Lisa received and
Speaker 6: ordered bobble Bar, Farah earcrawlers, and a Kate Spade lunch tote.
Speaker 6: Her favorite product of all was the Amika Strand Perfect
Speaker 6: ceramic styler. Remember the fat fit. Fab Fit Fund membership
Speaker 6: also goes beyond the box itself. Members can gain access
Speaker 6: to members only flash sales called add on sale. Browse
Speaker 6: around the website fabfitfund dot com to explore and become
Speaker 6: more familiar with the brand. Fabfit Fund is a seasonal
Speaker 6: subscription box with full sized beauty, fitness, fashion and lifestyle products.
Speaker 6: It retails for forty nine to ninety nine, but always
Speaker 6: has a value over two hundred dollars. Use coupon code
Speaker 6: Murder for ten dollars off your first box at www
Speaker 6: dot fabfitfund dot com. That's use coupon code Murder for
Speaker 6: ten dollars off your first box at www Dot fabfitfund
Speaker 6: dot com. Now, Stephen, we were just talking about what
Speaker 6: the investigators were learning about the dynamics of the relationship
Speaker 6: between Jason and Michelle and all the precipitating factors that
Speaker 6: might have led to his possible murder of his of
Speaker 6: his unborn child, and his wife, and leaving Cassidy to again,
Speaker 6: as we mentioned, walk through the blood of her mother.
Speaker 6: When investigators look at the forensic evidence when they get
Speaker 6: to search warrants for vehicles and homes, tell us about
Speaker 6: the investigator's quest to get forensic evidence tying Jason Young
Speaker 6: to this murder.
Speaker 5: Sure, and so it obviously started that same day with
Speaker 5: doing tests around the house using a chemical called phenophaline
Speaker 5: to see if they could detect any more traces of blood.
Speaker 5: And they were of course looking for bloody fingerprints because
Speaker 5: that would tie the finger in the hand of whoever
Speaker 5: whoever that hand belonged to to the murder. They were
Speaker 5: not successful in finding any bloody fingerprints other than Cassidys.
Speaker 5: They did find two sets of shoeprints that were made
Speaker 5: in blood which were promising leads that were made on
Speaker 5: a pillow case. They had those sent off for analysis
Speaker 5: and testing. The State Bureau of Investigation. Obviously, there was
Speaker 5: a medical examiner who very quickly determined that Michelle had
Speaker 5: indeed died as the result of blunt force trauma to
Speaker 5: the head. She had been beaten some thirty times, mostly
Speaker 5: in the head. There were lots of lacerations in her skull.
Speaker 5: As I said, she was so hard that her jawbone
Speaker 5: protruded through her through the skin on her face. So
Speaker 5: they were able to determine that she was beaten pretty viciously.
Speaker 5: They also were able to determine through the medical examiner
Speaker 5: that she defended herself. There were lots of marks on
Speaker 5: her arms and hands, suggesting that she had deflected some
Speaker 5: of those blows, and that was significant to investigators because
Speaker 5: they were able to determine that there was a struggle,
Speaker 5: there was a fight. So they had Jason come in,
Speaker 5: as they're allowed to do under the law, and they
Speaker 5: got his blood, they got his saliva, and they also
Speaker 5: photographed every nook and cranny and square inch of his body.
Speaker 5: And the very shocking thing to them at that point
Speaker 5: was there wasn't a scratch mark on him, and that
Speaker 5: seemed very counterintuitive if he was the killer, because Michelle
Speaker 5: had clearly defended herself. The other thing that they found
Speaker 5: that was surprising if Jason, in fact was the one
Speaker 5: who had killed her, was that there was not a
Speaker 5: sign of blood in his vehicle. And remember, he was
Speaker 5: at a hotel in Hampton at Hampton in hotel in Virginia,
Speaker 5: and he had to come back some two and a
Speaker 5: half hours if he was the one to have done
Speaker 5: this crime, and he had to be in his vehicle
Speaker 5: a whole lot of the time, and if he had
Speaker 5: done all of these things, and it was a very
Speaker 5: compressed timeline, if he was going to make that meeting
Speaker 5: the next day, and they actually were able to trace
Speaker 5: his cell phone pinging a cell tower in withvill Virginia,
Speaker 5: at seven point forty the morning of the third, so
Speaker 5: they knew, you know, at best, he had some hour
Speaker 5: or so to have committed this crime, gotten back in
Speaker 5: his car, driven up there, and still made the meeting
Speaker 5: the next day. There surely had to be some kind
Speaker 5: of sign of blood or something in his car, and
Speaker 5: there wasn't. There was no sign of blood in his
Speaker 5: hotel room either. They searched that. What they did find
Speaker 5: at the hotel, though, was one of the things that
Speaker 5: led them in the direction of Jason Young. This key
Speaker 5: card was used only a single time, when he checked
Speaker 5: into the hotel and went to his room the very
Speaker 5: first time, at about ten fifty four on November second.
Speaker 5: There are cameras showing that he left his hotel room.
Speaker 5: He was pictured at the front desk of the hotel,
Speaker 5: actually wearing a different shirt than he had been wearing
Speaker 5: at the time he checked in, and they show him.
Speaker 5: Another camera shows him walking down the hallway right about
Speaker 5: at midnight again wearing that different shirt. That was at
Speaker 5: midnight on November second, just before the clock turned to
Speaker 5: November third, and that's the last time his whereabouts at
Speaker 5: the hotel could be documented. So we know he would
Speaker 5: have left about midnight and he's back in with a
Speaker 5: Virginia at seven forty the next morning. So what did
Speaker 5: they find there? They found these things. First, there was
Speaker 5: a rock propping open an emergency exit door exactly in
Speaker 5: the direction that Jason was walking at midnight. Second, they
Speaker 5: were able to determine that the camera in that basic
Speaker 5: location had been disabled unplugged at eleven twenty the previous night,
Speaker 5: about a half an hour after Jason checked into the hotel,
Speaker 5: when it was determined that that camera was disabled. They
Speaker 5: were able to get it working in. They plugged it in,
Speaker 5: and then at six thirty on the morning of November three,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, the footage from that camera that
Speaker 5: was pointed toward the door and the hallway, the footage
Speaker 5: from that camera was of the ceiling. The camera had
Speaker 5: been pushed up to the ceiling at about six thirty
Speaker 5: that morning. Those discoveries and the fact that Jason was
Speaker 5: wearing different clothing at the front desk and he had
Speaker 5: checked in with just an hour before, and also that
Speaker 5: that clothing was never found among Jason's possessions all pointed
Speaker 5: strongly in the direction that Jason had left the hotel,
Speaker 5: traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina, killed Michelle, and then came
Speaker 5: back to Virginia to preserve as alibi.
Speaker 6: You also talk about the footprints, the shoeprints, and the
Speaker 6: extensive investigation to try to find out if they could
Speaker 6: match that to footwear that he wore. Tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit about the hushpuppies and size ten and twelve Prince.
Speaker 5: Sure, so, there were clearly two distinct shoes that were found. Eventually,
Speaker 5: it was both the FBI and a product specialist from
Speaker 5: Hushpuppies that helped the North Counta State Bureau of Investigation
Speaker 5: figure out what the first shoe was easy to identify.
Speaker 5: It was a size ten Franklin airfit shoe, the type
Speaker 5: of shoe that were type of shoes that were sold
Speaker 5: at Dollar General stores, very cheap ten dollars pairs of sneakers. Jason,
Speaker 5: by the way, was size twelve, so that was somewhat edtigmatic.
Speaker 5: What did that have to do with Jason. The second
Speaker 5: pair of shoes, though, was eventually identified to be Hush
Speaker 5: Puppies orbital shoes size twelve, which was the size Jason wore.
Speaker 5: And not only did Jason wear size twelve, he had
Speaker 5: purchased a pair of Hush Puppies Orbital shoe whoes a
Speaker 5: year before the murder occurred. Actually it was about a
Speaker 5: year and a half July fourth of two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: and Jason at trial contended that Michelle must have thrown
Speaker 5: those shoes away. But some pictures of Jason that were
Speaker 5: made from the footage of him both at the Hampton
Speaker 5: I'm Sorry, both at the Hampton End Yes and also
Speaker 5: at the Cracker Barrel Will Hit where he had dinner
Speaker 5: the night of November two were shoes that looked very
Speaker 5: similar to the Hushpuppy orbital shoes that the product specialist
Speaker 5: from Hushpuppy said those shoe prints were from. And so
Speaker 5: those tied fairly closely to Jason Young. Even though he
Speaker 5: said that Michelle must have gotten rid of those shoes,
Speaker 5: they were never found, along with the clothing he was
Speaker 5: wearing the night of the murder. So again that's something
Speaker 5: else that pointed at him directly. Although the size ten
Speaker 5: shoes were very enigmatic, the other thing that was very
Speaker 5: enigmatic was Cassidy. Cassidy, Remember she was under the covers
Speaker 5: in the bedroom. She had walked through her mother's blood.
Speaker 5: She had played with the blood in her bathroom with
Speaker 5: her hands, with her feet. Clearly there had to be
Speaker 5: blood all over that child. And yet when Meredith found
Speaker 5: her at one point fifteen the afternoon November third, as
Speaker 5: Mereth described that she was shockingly clean and that no
Speaker 5: one was ever able to explain, not the prosecutors, not
Speaker 5: the family members, not the SBI, not the detectives who
Speaker 5: investigate case. No one was able to explain how that happened.
Speaker 6: There's a couple other things that are very interesting in
Speaker 6: terms continuing in that thread, in terms of how Cassidy
Speaker 6: could have been so clean despite this crime scene, but
Speaker 6: also that the red liquid found in a dropper and
Speaker 6: a medicine bottle and why that could be at least
Speaker 6: technically tied to because of his job. Tell us what
Speaker 6: they found.
Speaker 5: So Jason worked before he worked at chart One selling
Speaker 5: electronic medical records software, he worked at a company called
Speaker 5: Pan American Laboratories and he sold pharmaceuticals. One of the
Speaker 5: pharmaceuticals he sold was called Pan Cough p D, which
Speaker 5: was a cough medicine for adults. In addition, so the
Speaker 5: lead detective, Detective Spivey, when he got involved in the case,
Speaker 5: one of the first things he did is he started
Speaker 5: looking through pictures and one of the pictures that he
Speaker 5: focused on was of a hutch in Cassidy's bedroom, and
Speaker 5: on that hutch were two different bottles. One was of
Speaker 5: adult strength tilonol in a liquid and one was the
Speaker 5: Pan Cough PD And he also noticed that there was
Speaker 5: a dropper sitting next to one of those bottles and
Speaker 5: it had a liquid in it, and he eventually had
Speaker 5: that liquid sent off her testing and sure enough, it
Speaker 5: had a mixture of some of these adult strength medicines
Speaker 5: that included dehydrocodeine, which is something that will cause drowsiness
Speaker 5: in an adult, let alone in a two and a
Speaker 5: half year old child. And Jason, having known about these
Speaker 5: kinds of drugs from having sold them, clearly would have
Speaker 5: known what the side effects of those drugs were. And
Speaker 5: the theory very quickly became that Jason had given Cassidy,
Speaker 5: perhaps when he entered that home before he killed Michelle,
Speaker 5: perhaps after he killed her, given her a bunch of
Speaker 5: this medication in order to get her to go to sleep,
Speaker 5: and that after he, as he was getting ready to
Speaker 5: leave the house after committing the murder, cleaned her up,
Speaker 5: put her in the bed. She was fast asleep, and
Speaker 5: she stayed asleep for the many hours between then and
Speaker 5: when she was discovered at one fifteen the next afternoon
Speaker 5: by her aunt. And that was the working theory throughout
Speaker 5: the case, that she had been drugged.
Speaker 6: Right now, you talk about to Sergeant Spivey and the
Speaker 6: police's need to be able to speak to people along
Speaker 6: the way and potentially at gas stations, because this timeline
Speaker 6: depended on he had to stop, and they needed records
Speaker 6: of those gas stops to be able to make their
Speaker 6: case and to be able to prove their timeline at
Speaker 6: the theory espoused tell us who they found at one
Speaker 6: of these gas stations.
Speaker 5: Remarkably, they found a woman named Gracie Calhoun, or Gracy
Speaker 5: Doms or Gracie Bailey. She went by different names at
Speaker 5: different times. They showed her a picture and she was
Speaker 5: located in king North Carolina, at a convenience store slash
Speaker 5: gas station, the Four Brothers convenience store. And they showed
Speaker 5: her a picture of Jason's vehicle. And they showed her
Speaker 5: a picture of Jason, and they asked her, did this
Speaker 5: vehicle did this man come to this store sometime in
Speaker 5: the early morning hours of November the third, They were
Speaker 5: there a few days later, and the aster a few
Speaker 5: days before. Did this vehicle did this Ford explore, this
Speaker 5: white Ford explorer? And did this man show up and
Speaker 5: get gas at your gas station? And she said yes,
Speaker 5: she said, I remember very distinctly. This man came in
Speaker 5: after buzzing on the pump several times. Because it was
Speaker 5: early morning hours, we wouldn't allow the pumps to be
Speaker 5: on until somebody came in and showed identification. He came in,
Speaker 5: he was angry, he cussed at me, and he threw
Speaker 5: a twenty dollars bill at me, and then he pumped
Speaker 5: his gas and he left, and she became an important
Speaker 5: witness for the prosecution to establish that Jason was not
Speaker 5: asleep at a hotel at four, five, six seven in
Speaker 5: the morning. Rather, he was on his way back from
Speaker 5: having committed this murder, ran out of fuel, needed more fuel,
Speaker 5: and filled up at that gas station that was some
Speaker 5: hour away or so, I think it was a way
Speaker 5: from the hotel in Hillsville, Virginia.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about it in the book too, the
Speaker 6: personal fight. At the same time all of this is
Speaker 6: going on this investigation is that Linda and Meredith are
Speaker 6: suffering separation anxiety basically from not being able to see
Speaker 6: Cassidy and worrying about Cassidy's life. A couple attorneys, Paul
Speaker 6: Michaels and his brother are approached by the district Attorney,
Speaker 6: Howard Cummings. What does he ask them to do and
Speaker 6: what does he believe this endeavor legally might be able
Speaker 6: to and in result, what's the end result of what
Speaker 6: this person would like to have these attorneys do well?
Speaker 5: Because the forensic evidence wasn't coming together the way that
Speaker 5: the way Kenny Sheriff's office had hoped it would and
Speaker 5: the way that Sheriff Donnie Harrison needed for it to
Speaker 5: come together in order to go to the grand jury
Speaker 5: and get and against Jason. They were somewhat stuck again.
Speaker 5: The forensic evidence was not clearly pointing at Jason, and
Speaker 5: they needed some help. So the district Assistant District Attorney
Speaker 5: in charge of the case, Howard Cummings, got a couple
Speaker 5: of personal injury lawyers involved Paul and Jack Michaels, to
Speaker 5: see if they wouldn't file wrongful death case against Jason
Speaker 5: on behalf of Michelle's family, to basically turn up some
Speaker 5: new evidence, possibly even take Jason's deposition and get him
Speaker 5: under oath as to what had happened since he wasn't
Speaker 5: talking to detectives. And they filed that wrongful death case
Speaker 5: and Jason didn't respond, he defaulted, allowing judgment to be
Speaker 5: taken against him, and that judgment was eventually signed by
Speaker 5: a judge named Donald Stevens, which among its findings included
Speaker 5: a provision declaring that Jason was the slayer of Michelle
Speaker 5: under North Carolina slayer Statute and for that reason, barring
Speaker 5: him from recovering any life insurance proceeds. Remember there was
Speaker 5: a four million dollar life insurance policy that was ready
Speaker 5: to be paid out. It didn't get paid out to
Speaker 5: Jason because he was determined to be the slayer, and
Speaker 5: instead that money was directed toward Cassidy as his as
Speaker 5: the next lineal descendant of Michelle Young. So no evidence
Speaker 5: was actually gathered because Jason didn't respond. However, that wrongful
Speaker 5: death judgment against him would loom large in later proceedings.
Speaker 6: Now talk about the grand jury, grand jury indictment and
Speaker 6: what happens as a result.
Speaker 5: So by December of two thousand and nine, now over
Speaker 5: three years after the murder, everyone's getting somewhat impatient. Ultimately,
Speaker 5: the District Attorney's office decides they have as much evidence
Speaker 5: as they're going to have. It's time to move forward
Speaker 5: and put the evidence before the grand jury. They did.
Speaker 5: Sergeant Spivey is the only witness who testified before the
Speaker 5: grand jury, and his testimony was convincing enough that they
Speaker 5: indicted him fairly quickly, leading a posse of sheriff's officers
Speaker 5: to head from Raleigh. The five hour trek to Brevard,
Speaker 5: North Carolina in order to arrest Jason, which they did
Speaker 5: in early December of two thousand and nine.
Speaker 6: Now tell us how they proceed with this grand jury indictment.
Speaker 5: It's just so. The way the grand jury process works
Speaker 5: is there's no defense attorney involved. It's a one sided fight.
Speaker 5: The DA gets to put on any evidence they won.
Speaker 5: So they basically called Sergeant Spivey to basically go through
Speaker 5: with the grand jury all of the evidence they had amassed,
Speaker 5: which would have included things like the hushpuppies' shoe prints
Speaker 5: that were the same size Jason wore. It would have
Speaker 5: included things like the propped open door at the Hampton End,
Speaker 5: the camera being tampered with twice at the Hampton Inn.
Speaker 5: Would have included interpersonal stories between Jason and Michelle, Jason
Speaker 5: and Linda, and all of the turmoil that was going
Speaker 5: on in their marriage and in Jason's life. Those types
Speaker 5: of things would have been presented. Grand jury proceedings are secret,
Speaker 5: so I didn't have access to them in writing the book,
Speaker 5: But presumably those are the types of things that would
Speaker 5: have been presented to the grand jury, and then the
Speaker 5: grand jury would have deliberated and come to a decision
Speaker 5: that they were going to sign the bill of indictment,
Speaker 5: which meant that at that point Jason was formally charged
Speaker 5: with first degree murder.
Speaker 6: Okay, now you talk about the judge Stevens would be
Speaker 6: presiding over the trial, and this is for June twenty eleven,
Speaker 6: and Brian Collins is the public defender Wake County and
Speaker 6: he was an appointed and Mike Glinkos Clinktham, sorry, and
Speaker 6: both excellent attorneys as you say. And the DA is
Speaker 6: Colin Willoughby, and the assigned has assigned Howard Cummings and
Speaker 6: Becky Holt to lead up the prosecution.
Speaker 5: Well, let me correct that slightly in that Howard Cummings
Speaker 5: was leading the prosecution but was not able to participate
Speaker 5: in that first trial because he had just tried another
Speaker 5: very complex murder case. So David Sachs, another attorney in
Speaker 5: the District Attorney's office, actually filled in as the second
Speaker 5: chair attorney. Becky Holt was the first chair prosecutor in
Speaker 5: that first trial.
Speaker 6: What you read about, though, too, is with the replacement
Speaker 6: at Howard Cummings. Because of the previous cases working on,
Speaker 6: David Sachs was the most inexperienced attorney of the lot,
Speaker 6: wasn't he?
Speaker 5: He was, but he was not an inexperienced attorney by
Speaker 5: any stretch. In fact, David Sacks had been involved in
Speaker 5: the Michael Peterson murder case when he had been part
Speaker 5: of the DA's office in Durham County. Michael Peterson is
Speaker 5: of course the staircase murderer, so to speak, where his
Speaker 5: wife was found at the bottom of a staircase in Durham,
Speaker 5: North Carolina, and he was ultimately convicted of killing her,
Speaker 5: although he was later released from prison, and David Sachs
Speaker 5: was one of the more junior lawyers involve in that
Speaker 5: case several years before this trial.
Speaker 6: Now, it's very interesting, and you have already alluded to
Speaker 6: more than one trial, So let's talk about what happens
Speaker 6: at this first trial and the obviously successes and failures
Speaker 6: of that first trial, and why tell us what happens
Speaker 6: in this trial.
Speaker 5: Well, a lot of the trial focused on the forensics,
Speaker 5: and what was interesting is that the DA's office, Becky
Speaker 5: Holton David Sachs put on a large quantity of forensic evidence,
Speaker 5: the vast majority of which did not point at Jason Young.
Speaker 5: And of course his defense attorneys hammered away at all
Speaker 5: of the things that did not point at Jason Young.
Speaker 5: No blood in his hotel room, no blood in the car,
Speaker 5: despite the fact that it was one of the bloodiest
Speaker 5: crime scenes, you could imagine all of the things that
Speaker 5: were unexplained, like Cassidy's shockingly clean appearance, like the size
Speaker 5: ten shoe prints, and so these things were thrown up
Speaker 5: to cast reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors. But
Speaker 5: the most, probably the high point of the trial from
Speaker 5: a theatrical standpoint, was when Jason Young took the witness stand,
Speaker 5: much to the surprise of the prosecutors, and for a
Speaker 5: couple of hours in his direct examination, mesmerized the jury
Speaker 5: with his testimony about his love for Michelle, his wife,
Speaker 5: and the life that they led together, and though it
Speaker 5: wasn't a perfect marriage, and though he had made mistakes.
Speaker 5: In fact, he admitted to having affairs, including a very
Speaker 5: active affair at the time his wife was killed, that
Speaker 5: he had nothing whatsoever to do with her murder, and
Speaker 5: it was convincing testimony. The cross examination was very brief,
Speaker 5: it only lasted some fifty to fifty five minutes, and
Speaker 5: it didn't make a lot of progress in establishing that
Speaker 5: Jason was involved in his wife's murder. The difficult questions
Speaker 5: that he could have been confronted with, he was not.
Speaker 5: I think the prosecutors were actually not expecting him to
Speaker 5: testify and were not prepared to cross examine him. They
Speaker 5: did the best they could, but he got the better
Speaker 5: of the prosecutors rather than the other way around, which
Speaker 5: is not the way it's supposed to be, and that
Speaker 5: result resulted in the jury, for the most part, finding
Speaker 5: a reasonable doubt. Eight of the jurors were at the
Speaker 5: time the case was mistried because the jury did not
Speaker 5: come to an unanimous decision. Eight of the jurors had
Speaker 5: decided they would have voted in favor of a quitting Jason.
Speaker 5: Four of the jurors hung strong and prevented that result,
Speaker 5: and as a result of the Judge Stevens declared a mistrial,
Speaker 5: and that led to the case being tried a second
Speaker 5: time about seven months later.
Speaker 6: Tell Us about the issue of the judge mentioning the
Speaker 6: slayer statute designation at trial. Tell us when that occurs
Speaker 6: and how later issue works.
Speaker 5: So that did not happen in the first trial. The
Speaker 5: first trial, as I said, focused a lot on the
Speaker 5: forensic evidence, and then the real pinnacle of that first
Speaker 5: trial was when Jason came to the witness stand in
Speaker 5: his own defense. In the second trial, a lot of
Speaker 5: things were different. The prosecutors really wanted to do things differently,
Speaker 5: and Howard Cummings at this point is back in the
Speaker 5: first chair. Becky Holt slides to second chair, David Sachs
Speaker 5: is not part of the second trial, and they wanted
Speaker 5: to do a lot of things differently. They focused less
Speaker 5: on the forensic evidence. They focused more on Jason and
Speaker 5: Jason's mindset and the relationship and the troubles in his marriage.
Speaker 5: The affairs that he had were more pronounced in the
Speaker 5: second trial. That he had had a former girlfriend that
Speaker 5: became a fiancee who he had actually attacked in a
Speaker 5: hotel room in Texas during that relationship was played up
Speaker 5: somewhat more prominently than the first trial. And then the
Speaker 5: other thing that was mentioned in the second trial that
Speaker 5: had no role in the first trial was the wrongful
Speaker 5: death judgment that Judge Stevens himself, the trial judge in
Speaker 5: the criminal case, had signed when Jason defaulted. When Paul
Speaker 5: and Jack Michaels filed that case several years earlier, and
Speaker 5: that was brought to the jury's attention when the clerk
Speaker 5: of court won by the name of larn Freeman, who
Speaker 5: eventually became the district attorney. She was called to testify
Speaker 5: about the case file in the wrongful death case and
Speaker 5: testified that a wrongful death judgment had been entered against Jason,
Speaker 5: declaring that Jason had been the slayer of Michelle, and
Speaker 5: that fact was put to the jury as if it
Speaker 5: was a fact they should have been aware of. And
Speaker 5: though an objection was made initially by Brian Collins, there
Speaker 5: was very little objection thereafter to this testimony coming before
Speaker 5: the second jury.
Speaker 6: Right now, he talked about too, that the information that
Speaker 6: when he was on the stand in the first trial,
Speaker 6: they were able to prosecution to be able to have
Speaker 6: the jury hear that entire testimony in the second trial with.
Speaker 5: They not only were they able to do that, they
Speaker 5: used that Instead of it being an effective defense for
Speaker 5: Jason as it was in the first trial, they were
Speaker 5: able to use it as a prosecution sword in the
Speaker 5: second trial. Why because they had seven months to pour
Speaker 5: over everything Jason said from the witness stand in the
Speaker 5: first trial. Remember, he hadn't spoken a word to anyone,
Speaker 5: not law enforcement, not his family, not his friends, about
Speaker 5: his whereabouts and his circumstances in the days leading up
Speaker 5: to the murder, the day of the murder, before he
Speaker 5: took the witness stand in the first trial, so they
Speaker 5: didn't know what he was going to say. But after
Speaker 5: the first trial ended in a mistrial, they knew everything
Speaker 5: he had said, and every fact that was in his
Speaker 5: testimony was thoroughly fact checked with all the evidence that
Speaker 5: the Sheriff's office had amassed over all those years, and
Speaker 5: there were several inconsistencies between what Jason said from the
Speaker 5: witness stand and the facts they had a mast and
Speaker 5: Sergeant Spivey went threw them one by one in the
Speaker 5: second trial before the second jury, after they had played
Speaker 5: his videotape testimony from the first trial, and that was
Speaker 5: a very effective way of establishing that not only was
Speaker 5: Jason not the charming, charismatic guy that he presented himself
Speaker 5: as to the first jury, that he was lying about
Speaker 5: a number of things, including his whereabouts the night of
Speaker 5: the murder, whether he was at a sleep in his
Speaker 5: hotel room, what he was wearing, and so forth, and that, ultimately,
Speaker 5: I think was the reason why the second jury unanimously
Speaker 5: found that beyond a reasonable doubt that he had killed
Speaker 5: his wife right.
Speaker 6: Now as a result of that second trial, in that conviction,
Speaker 6: how do we get to discontinuing tell us what happens?
Speaker 5: Well, this case had more twists and turns. As one
Speaker 5: of my reviewers, Justice Bob Edmunds from our North Rona
Speaker 5: Supreme Court said, than the road from Manteo to mur
Speaker 5: which is basically going across the entire state of North Carolina.
Speaker 5: So April first of two thousand and fifteen, I think
Speaker 5: it was was when this case. I'm sorry it was
Speaker 5: April first of twenty fourteen. This case had another twist
Speaker 5: in turn, which is when the Court of Appeals of
Speaker 5: North Carolina, and this was no April fool's joke throughout
Speaker 5: the conviction. They throughout the conviction because of the wrongful
Speaker 5: death evidence coming before the second jury, that the second
Speaker 5: jury should never have learned. The Court of Appeal said
Speaker 5: that Jason Young had been found liable civilly for the
Speaker 5: wrongful death of his wife and that he had been
Speaker 5: declared the slayer in that civil case, and that made
Speaker 5: it look like there was going to be a third
Speaker 5: trial of Jason Young, so, much to the elation of
Speaker 5: his family, it looked like he might get a third
Speaker 5: shot to convince jury that he wasn't guilty, much to
Speaker 5: the consternation this of the Fisher family, who had been
Speaker 5: fighting for justice by that point for some seven and
Speaker 5: a half years. They thought they were back to square
Speaker 5: one and that they were going to have to go
Speaker 5: back to a courtroom and have a third trial of
Speaker 5: whether Jason had in fact killed Michelle. Now that's not
Speaker 5: what ultimately happened, because the State Supreme Court ultimately undid
Speaker 5: the Court of Appeal's decision and said that Jason's lawyer's
Speaker 5: failure to object to that evidence coming before the second jury,
Speaker 5: or at least object as often and in the right
Speaker 5: places that they should have been objecting, essentially, was enough
Speaker 5: of a default on their part that the court could
Speaker 5: not say that Jason had received an unfair trial because
Speaker 5: that evidence came in that it was their obligation to object,
Speaker 5: they had not, and therefore the only question remaining was
Speaker 5: whether their failure to object had deprived Jason of effective
Speaker 5: assistance of counsel, and for that purpose and that purpose only,
Speaker 5: they sent the case back down once again to the
Speaker 5: Wake County Superior Court, not to have a trial of
Speaker 5: Jason's guilt or innocence, but to have a hearing on
Speaker 5: whether he was deprived effective assistance of counsel that he's
Speaker 5: owed under the constitution, and that proceeding eventually did occur
Speaker 5: in June of twenty seventeen before another Superior Court judge
Speaker 5: named Paul Ridgway.
Speaker 6: You talk about that ineffective council. What was the decision
Speaker 6: on that, obviously, or.
Speaker 5: The decision by Judge Ridgeway after essentially a full day's
Speaker 5: hearing in which Brian Collins, who by then was a
Speaker 5: sitting Superior Court judge himself, he was the key witness
Speaker 5: about whether he had made mistakes sufficient to grant Jason
Speaker 5: a new trial. Judge Paul Ridgway's fifty page or so
Speaker 5: decision was that whatever the failures occurred in the representation
Speaker 5: of Jason, they didn't change the outcome, that the outcome
Speaker 5: of his guilty verdict was controlled by many other pieces
Speaker 5: of evidence, and that the wrongful death evidence, even if
Speaker 5: it had not come in, would not have changed the outcome.
Speaker 5: And therefore he ruled that Jason had not been deprived
Speaker 5: effective assistance of counsel, he was not entitled to a
Speaker 5: new trial, and that decision was ultimately affirmed by the
Speaker 5: Court of Appeals and it has since been reviewed by
Speaker 5: the North count of Supreme Court in May of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: and that is where this case, in my view, reached
Speaker 5: its ultimate end, which was actually just a few weeks
Speaker 5: before my book was published.
Speaker 6: Incredible, incredible, I guess this was obvious, incredible relief, not
Speaker 6: a closure, but a relief for Linda and Meredith and
Speaker 6: their family. Bisher family tell us about Cassidy afterwards today Cassidy.
Speaker 5: So the book does not cover that subject because I
Speaker 5: did not have intimate knowledge about Cassidy and what her
Speaker 5: life has been since. Obviously we didn't go into this,
Speaker 5: but as part of the custody case that occurred before
Speaker 5: Jason was arrested, he agreed to give up custody of
Speaker 5: Cassidy to Meredith, which did occur before he was arrested,
Speaker 5: and Meredith has had custody of Cassidy ever since. So
Speaker 5: basically from kindergarten until now, Cassidy has been raised by
Speaker 5: Meredith here in North Carolina. She is currently a rising
Speaker 5: tenth grader. She by all accounts, is doing well and
Speaker 5: has flourished despite these awful circumstances that have surrounded her
Speaker 5: entire life. And so those who I have some friends
Speaker 5: who have children that have gone to school with her,
Speaker 5: and what I have learned from them is that she's
Speaker 5: doing amazingly well here in twenty nineteen as a fifteen
Speaker 5: year old.
Speaker 6: Fantastic. And how about Jason Young? Where does he sit?
Speaker 6: Supposedly for the rest of his life.
Speaker 5: For the rest of his life, he will be in
Speaker 5: a cell the Alexander Correctional Institution in western North Carolina,
Speaker 5: not far from his family. He has been sentenced to
Speaker 5: life in prison without the possibility of parole, and presumably
Speaker 5: he will die in prison.
Speaker 6: Interesting. I want to thank you very much Stephen for
Speaker 6: coming on and talking about Murder on Birch Leaf Drive,
Speaker 6: the true story of the Michelle Young murder case. It's
Speaker 6: been fascinating for those that might want to take a
Speaker 6: look at this book on other work. Tell us if
Speaker 6: you have a Facebook page or a website for this book.
Speaker 5: Well, the book is available on Amazon. You just research
Speaker 5: Murder on Birch Leaf Drive. You should find it pretty quickly.
Speaker 5: I also have a website that has tons of information
Speaker 5: about this case. You can actually watch both trials on
Speaker 5: my website from beginning to end. The website is www
Speaker 5: dot Murder on birch leafdrive dot com.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Stephen b. Epstein for a fascinating
Speaker 6: interview Murder on Birch Leaf Drive. Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: You have a great evening.
Speaker 5: You're welcome. It was a pleasure enjoyed participating.
Speaker 6: Thank you, good night.