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On the morning of Friday, November 3, 2006, Meredith Fisher headed to her sister’s home on 5108 Birchleaf Drive in Raleigh, North Carolina, after she’d received a call from her brother-in-law, Jason Young. He told her that he was out of town & asked if she could do him a favor & grab some printouts from his home printer in his upstairs office. Jason lived with Meredith’s 29-year-old sister, Michelle Young & their 2 & a half year-old daughter, Cassidy. Michelle was also five months pregnant with their baby boy.
Jason left Meredith a voicemail that Friday at 12:10 pm where he explained that before he left for his trip, he had been searching for a Coach purse on Ebay for a belated anniversary gift for Michelle & accidentally left the papers on the printer in their upstairs home office. He was worried that Michelle would come across them & the anniversary surprise would be spoiled.
As Meredith entered her sister’s home through the garage door & then through the unlocked kitchen door into the home’s mudroom at about 1 pm, she found the house eerily quiet. There was no sign of Michelle or Cassidy despite the fact that Michelle’s car was parked in the garage & her purse & car keys were sitting on the kitchen counter. The house also seemed oddly cold & an unsettling feeling immediately washed over her.
As Meredith began calling out Michelle’s name, she was met with nothing but silence. The only sound she heard was from the family dog, Mr. G, who was whimpering, but Meredith didn’t see him & wasn’t sure where he was.
Finding no sign of her sister or her niece on the first floor of the home, Meredith made her way upstairs. As she reached the landing of the second floor, she noticed what she initially believed to be red hair dye on the floor. The red substance was at the top of the stairs & in the bathroom & she worried that Cassidy had smeared dye around the house.
When Meredith looked to the left, she was horrified to see her pregnant sister laying in her bedroom, surrounded by blood. Bloodied footprints trailed across the floor & blood splattered across the walls. Meredith noticed a baby doll nestled against her sister’s lifeless body which was later believed to have been placed there by Cassidy in a heartbreaking attempt to comfort her mother.
As Meredith desperately tried to process the horrific sight, her niece suddenly emerged from under the covers of her mother’s bed. She was wearing pink fleece pajamas without a diaper or underwear. She immediately scooped Cassidy up, ran from the house & called 911. Cassidy, who was physically unharmed, told her aunt that she needed bandages because her mommy had boo boos everywhere.
Meredith told the dispatcher that she believed that her young niece said that there was somebody in the house.
When paramedics arrived they sadly confirmed that Michelle was deceased & had been for some time. She was dressed in sweatpants & a zip-up sweatshirt, her body was discolored, cold & stiff. She was lying outside a closet marked his closet & there was also blood inside the closet. Cassidy had dried blood on her toenails & the bottom of her pajama pants, but was physically unharmed.
When detectives responded to the Young’s home they immediately noted that the attack against Michelle had been both brutal & frenzied. An autopsy showed that she suffered extensive injuries that included blunt-force trauma to the head resulting in multiple skull fractures & brain hemorrhaging. She was also strangled & had 13 lacerations to the back of her head. Her lips were badly bruised & several of her teeth were knocked out. There was a strand of hair stuck in blood that was found in her left hand. There was no evidence of sexual assault. Because her murder was so vicious, it suggested a crime of passion which led investigators to begin to look at those closest to Michelle.
When Meredith was asked if Michelle was having any marital issues, she explained that her sister & her brother-in-law did frequently fight but elaborated that the fighting wasn’t anything too ridiculous.
Meredith called her mother, Linda, to break the devastating news & when Linda called Jason’s mom, Pat Young, she told her that Jason was on his way to her house in Brevard from his business trip in Virginia. When he arrived, his step-father broke the news of Michelle’s death & when he eventually spoke with Meredith, she told him that Michelle’s death was a homicide & to come to her house since his was a crime scene. Meredith indicated that he asked about Cassidy as well as what happened to Michelle & she said he seemed upset.
As Jason & his family made the four hour drive from Brevard to Raleigh, his friends told him that detectives were asking about the status of his marriage. With this, he made the decision to hire an attorney & when authorities contacted him on his drive over, he refused to answer any questions, indicating that it was the advice of his counsel. He refused to come to his house to do a walk-through with investigators to determine if anything was missing or out of place. He never asked authorities about his daughter’s wellbeing or the nature of his wife’s death.
Jason, Pat, his sister & his brother-in-law arrived at Meredith’s house between 9 & 10 pm. He gave Meredith a hug & went to check on Cassidy. When investigators arrived, he continued to refuse to speak with them.
Despite Jason’s refusal to speak with investigators, they were able to determine that he’d left Raleigh one day earlier on Thursday, November 2 for Virginia for a sales meeting at the Dickenson Community Hospital in Clintwood that was scheduled for 10 am the following morning. He checked into a Hampton Inn in Galax, Virginia, about 160 miles (257 km) away from their home, right around 11 pm on the previous night. Friday morning, he attended a sales meeting & then drove to his parent’s house as he previously planned.
Police saw no signs of forced entry into the home & the only blood found outside of the second story was on the doorknob that led from the kitchen to the garage that was later determined to belong to Michelle. The garage door was broken but had been for some time. The drawers of Michelle’s jewelry box were removed & various pieces, including Michelle’s wedding & engagement rings, were missing despite the fact that she was always known to wear them. The rings have never been recovered. The house hadn’t been ransacked & was otherwise in order & nothing else had been taken.
No blood was found in Jason’s car, on his clothing or in the hotel room where he stayed on Thursday night.
Michelle was born in Sayville, New York on February 17, 1977 & had always been described as the all-American sweetheart by her family & friends. She was unassumingly confident, had an infectious smile & was a beloved member of her community.
During high school Michelle was the co-captain of her cheerleading squad & when paging through her yearbook, her beaming smile could be seen on many of the pages. On top of her beauty, she was an incredibly ambitious, hard working girl. After graduating from high school Michelle moved on to North Carolina State University to pursue a degree in finance.
During her time in college, Michelle was part of the cheerleading squad until she stepped back to focus on her studies. She ended up graduating with a master’s degree in accounting & looked forward to securing a promising career in the finance industry, specifically working as a tax lawyer.
In February 2001 Michelle was out celebrating her 24th birthday at The Poor House, when a man accidentally knocked over her glass of wine. After he profusely apologized, he bought her a fresh drink. This was the moment that Michelle met Jason Young, who would eventually become her husband. The two immediately hit it off & bonded over their shared alma mater as well as their love of NC State’s football team, the Wolfpack.
It wasn’t long before Jason & Michelle began spending every moment they possibly could together. Jason was working as a salesman for Black & Decker & often configured his schedule so he could be in the Raleigh area to catch up with Michelle. He eventually moved to Raleigh & the couple moved in together.
Within two years of meeting at The Poor House, Michelle realized she was pregnant. It was a surprise for the couple as Jason was initially hesitant about marriage & fatherhood, but as the idea settled in, the pregnancy ultimately brought them closer together.
Somewhat out of necessity, Jason & Michelle decided to get married so that Michelle could get onto Jason’s health insurance before the baby was born. In October 2003, the couple was married in what appeared to be a happy, joy filled day & five months later, their daughter, Cassidy Elizabeth Young was born on March 29, 2004. In 2005 the family moved into their home in the Enchanted Oaks subdivision near Lake Wheeler in Raleigh.
Two years after Cassidy was born, Michelle & Jason faced a loss when they were involved in a car accident in May 2006 while visiting his parents that resulted in a miscarriage. The couple had been driving outside Brevard when their Mitsubishi drove off a mountain road, down an embankment & became partially submerged in a river. The state trooper who conducted the investigation indicated that he saw nothing suspicious, but prosecutors later suggested otherwise after Michelle’s death. Not long before the crash, the couple had increased their life insurance.
A later arrest warrant detailed an email exchange between Michelle & Jason from July 12, 2006, four months before Michelle’s murder gave a glimpse into their relationship:
Michelle: I know you are mad & I’m really sorry. I know you have been doing a lot around the house & with Cass & I really appreciate it. I have just been really busy at work & I thought this is a slack time for you with your job so you could handle it. Please give me a call – I want to know who is picking up Cass today.
Jason: I don’t care who gets her.
Jason: I just got home & the goddamn power is out. I called progress & crew is already out. Cass pissed herself all over the floor, it’s hot as hell inside & I can’t entertain her enough w/o tv to finish the goddamn yard. I am taking beer & her to the pool. I am in a mood that makes our trip to myrtle seem mild, pray the beer kicks in. I could kill u for not letting me finish the yard this morning.
During the summer of 2006 Jason began working as a salesman for a medical records software company that afforded Michelle the option of dropping down to part-time at her job as a senior financial consultant in the tax department of Progress Energy. By the fall, Michelle realized that she was pregnant with their baby boy.
Now on the morning of Friday, November 3 both Michelle & her unborn baby boy were gone after she had been brutally murdered. Investigators began to trace her last steps in hopes of finding their killer. They learned that on the previous evening, she’d hung out with her friend, Shelly Schaad.
Shelly explained that she’d gotten to Michelle’s house that Thursday at about 6:30 pm & she was surprised to see that Jason was still home when she arrived. She brought dinner for herself & Michelle so she asked him if he planned to eat with them, but he explained that he was going to stop at a Greensboro Cracker Barrel to eat on his way to Galax, a drive that would have taken just under three hours. The next morning, he planned to make the nearly 3 hour drive from Galax to Clintwood for his 10 am meeting.
According to Shelly, after Jason left, Michelle gave Cassidy a bath, dressed her in her pajamas with a diaper & put her to bed. Once Cassidy was settled, Shelly & Michelle watched Grey’s Anatomy. While they hung out & watched TV, Michelle told her friend that she & Jason had been arguing a lot lately over holiday plans since Michelle wanted her mom to stay with them from Thanksgiving until Christmas, but Jason felt that was too long.
Through review of phone records, police learned that Jason had called Michelle seven times that Thursday night.
Shelly told investigators that she left Michelle’s house sometime between 10-10:30 pm & as she walked outside, she had a strange feeling that the house was being watched. She elaborated that she wasn’t sure why she felt uneasy, but she was so unsettled that Michelle walked her to her car. Michelle also told Shelly that Jason had been hearing a lot of noises around the house & she said, If someone is going to break in & their intention is to kill you, then that’s what they’re going to do. After she learned the news of her friend’s murder, she couldn’t stop thinking about what Michelle had said to her before she left.
According to Shelly, Jason & Michelle were either hot or cold & were not at all opposed to fighting in front of others. Meredith confirmed this & told investigators that the couple would get into screaming matches in public. According to Meredith, when they got into a fight on November 1, Jason threw a remote at his wife.
As investigators spoke with Jason, his alibi initially appeared to be airtight. However, as they dug deeper, they spoke with the night clerk from the Hampton Inn where Jason stayed on Thursday night & learned that he found an emergency exit door propped open with a small rock early Friday morning. Even more troublesome, he discovered that the security camera covering that exit had been unplugged & readjusted so that it pointed upwards at the ceiling. Surveillance video from the Hampton Inn proved that Jason had checked in at 10:49 pm, but at 11:20 pm, the footage went black after the camera had been tampered with.
Keith Hicks, the employee at the hotel, found a red rock holding a first floor emergency door open which was normally locked between 11 pm – 6 am. When he went back to the desk to review the hotel’s surveillance cameras, he noticed that the camera for that doorway was malfunctioning & stopped recording at 11:19:59 pm on Thursday.
A maintenance worker plugged the camera back in at 5:50 am on Friday morning & indicated that someone who was six feet tall would be able to easily reach the camera’s plug (Jason is 6’1”). The camera was functioning until 6:34 am, but at 6:35 am, someone pointed it up at the ceiling. At 6:38 am the maintenance worker fixed the camera a second time. Prior to this incident, the cameras had not been tampered with in several years. Jason’s fingerprints were not located on the camera & no fibers from the hotel room were located in the Young’s home.
Forensic analysis of Jason’s phone showed that he had made several brief phone calls on the morning of November 3. One call at 7:40 am was placed 30 miles from the hotel when Jason called his mom. Each call lasted only 10 seconds & painted the picture of someone who may have been panicked & frantic. Jason, who was a normally punctual person, had also arrived 35 minutes late to his sales meeting, claiming he’d gotten lost. The hospital representative later described Jason as hyper & nervous during their meeting.
After his meeting, Jason purchased gas at 12:06 pm & left a voicemail for Meredith about the printouts on his home office printer.
The most damning piece of evidence came from a gas station attendant, Gracie Calhoun, who was working at the Four Brothers Food Store in King, North Carolina in the early morning hours of Friday, November 3. The location was two hours from the Young’s home & was situated along the route Jason would have taken to drive back home. This account was in direct contrast to the story he told police that he’d simply been at the hotel the entire night.
According to Gracie Calhoun, Jason entered the gas station in the pre-dawn hours, right around 5:30 am. Following the station’s policy for early morning customers, she asked the man for both his ID as well as his credit card for verification purposes before he was allowed to pump gas.
Gracie clearly remembers the man’s visit to the station because her routine request was met with extreme anger & agitation. The man refused to comply & began to spew profanities & insults at her. Before the customer left, he threw a $20 bill at Gracie to cover the $15 in fuel he ultimately pumped & sped off into the darkness.
As investigators began to look more closely at Jason & Michelle’s marriage, they learned that there were many issues within the relationship. When they spoke with Michelle’s family & friends, they painted a picture of a very tumultuous relationship. As the couple welcomed their daughter, Cassidy, into the world, Michelle wanted to settle down & embrace motherhood while Jason seemed to struggle with shedding his bachelor, college lifestyle. The fact that they weren’t on the same page led to frequent arguments.
Investigators also learned that Jason was involved in at least two affairs just prior to Michelle’s death.
Michelle was exceptionally close with her mom, Linda & the two spoke on a near daily basis. It didn’t take long before Linda was concerned with her daughter’s relationship which led to friction between herself & Jason.
Jason was arrested in December 2009, three years after Michelle’s death, & charged with first-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty.
It wasn’t until June 2011, nearly five years after Michelle’s murder, that Jason went to trial. The prosecution highlighted a tumultuous marriage involving an unfaithful husband who no longer wanted to be married.
They presented the evidence that painted the picture of what happened to Michelle on the night of her murder as investigators retraced Jason’s steps starting on Thursday, November 2 when he left his home in Raleigh for Virginia in his white Ford Explorer. He stopped for gas at 7:30 pm & called his mom, Pat & told her he was going to talk with Michelle to see if she was okay with him spending Friday night at her house en route from his business meeting since Pat was giving him a wash stand & an antique dresser. He planned to head back home to Raleigh on Saturday morning since guests were coming over to watch the NC State football game.
Jason paid for his dinner at the Cracker Barrel in Greensboro at 9:25 pm & checked into the Hampton Inn in Galax, Virginia at 10:54 pm. His room’s key card was scanned into his room at 10:56 pm & he never used his key to re-enter the room for the remainder of his stay. He tampered with the security camera & propped the door open so he was able to drive home & kill his wife unnoticed, confident that he now had an alibi.
Security footage showed that Jason wore a light shirt, jeans & brown slip-on shoes at the Cracker Barrel & upon his entry to the Hampton Inn. When Jason’s car was seized on November 3, investigators found two pairs of brown slip-on shoes in his car.
Just before midnight, Jason was seen on surveillance at the front desk of the hotel as well as walking down a hallway that led to stairs & an exit door, this time he was wearing a darker colored shirt with light-colored horizontal stripes across the chest. This was the last time he was seen on surveillance footage that evening.
Jason tampered with the surveillance camera at 11:20 pm & sometime after midnight, he made the 2 hour & 45 minute drive back home to beat & strangle his wife to death, knowingly leaving his 2-year-old daughter home alone with her mother’s dead body. Investigators found small, bloody footprints tracked through the house. & there was blood streaked across the walls at a child’s level in her bathroom after Cassidy had been left alone for hours.
On his way back to the hotel, he stopped for gas at the Four Brothers Food Store in King, North Carolina at about 5:30 am where he was confrontational & aggressive with the attendant after he was asked to hand over his identification. Gracie Calhoun testified that the aggressive customer had been Jason as she couldn’t forget because I don’t forget nothing like that, when somebody is cussing & fussing at me.
Gracie elaborated that the man driving the white SUV stopped at the farthest pump & tried to pump gas numerous times. Because the pump wasn’t working, he came into the station & began cursing at her. She explained that during the night & early morning hours the pumps were locked until a customer provided ID or money. The man gave her $20, pumped $15 worth of gas & left without retrieving his change.
Later that morning, Jason utilized express checkout so the hotel could not confirm what time he checked out. He pointed the hotel’s security camera up toward the ceiling at 6:35 am after it had been plugged back in by a maintenance worker at 5:50 am. He called his mom at 7:40 am which placed him 30 miles away from the hotel near a cell tower in Wytheville, which is about 2 hours & 15 minutes from the hospital where he had his 10 am meeting. With this, he was set to arrive just before 10 am though he ended up being 35 minutes late. When he arrived, he seemed hyper & nervous.
After his meeting he contacted his sister-in-law with the ruse of printouts for a Coach purse so Meredith would find her sister’s body. Jason assumed he would be in the clear since he was allegedly hours away at a hotel in Virginia.
Michelle’s friends & family testified about the couple’s rocky relationship & their frequent arguments. Linda, Michelle’s mom, said that she’d spoken with Michelle about leaving Jason since she often witnessed him belittling her daughter. Linda spoke of Michelle during her testimony & said, She had so much to offer. There was so much about Michelle that was just, she was an NC State cheerleader. I mean, she had that pep, that vivacious, you know, she loved life & he took it away from her, just took it away from her.
According to Linda, she was often the center of Jason & Michelle’s arguments since she often visited North Carolina & stayed with the couple for long periods of time, something that Jason was not happy about. Linda even offered to cover home renovation costs so she could live with the family & help with taking care of her grandchildren, an arrangement that Michelle was on board with, but Jason wasn’t.
The court heard that after Michelle’s murder, Jason moved into his parent’s house with Cassidy & Linda hired a lawyer so she could see her granddaughter. After a lot of back & forth, Jason eventually gave Meredith full custody of Cassidy.
Jason’s affairs were also brought to light & one mistress, Michelle Money, who was also Michelle’s college friend & sorority sister, indicated that she first met Jason at their wedding. As of September 2006, two months before Michelle’s murder, the two were in contact on a regular basis & on October 7, 2006, he came to visit her in Orlando over the weekend despite the fact that it was his & Michelle’s 3rd anniversary. During that time, the two regularly had sex & Jason went on to tell a friend that he was in love with Michelle Money. Over the course of one month, they contacted each other 980 times.
One day before Michelle’s murder, they were in contact 51 times & Michelle Money was the last person Jason was in contact with on Thursday & the first person he called at 7:49 am on Friday, the day Michelle’s body was found. She testified about Jason’s expression of deep unhappiness in his marriage & his desire to leave Michelle to be with her instead.
Another woman, Carol Ann Sowerby, had known Jason since they were teens. During the fall of 2006, only ten days before Michelle’s murder, Carol came over to see Jason while Michelle was out of town. During her visit, she & Jason had sex on the living room couch. Carol testified that Jason took her wedding ring off her finger & pretended to swallow it, but ended up giving it back to her the next day.
The medical examiner who conducted Michelle’s autopsy, Dr Thomas Clark, testified that Michelle died from blunt-force trauma to the head after sustaining at least nearly thirty blows. The worst of the injuries was inflicted by a heavy object with a rounded surface that resulted in crescent-shaped skull fractures. There were also signs that she’d been strangled & she sustained a broken jaw, skull fracture, brain hemorrhaging lacerations, abrasions & dislodged teeth. She was approximately 26 weeks pregnant at the time of her death.
Cassidy returned to daycare on the Monday after her mother’s death & her teacher, Brooke Bass, indicated that the young child kept to herself more than usual that week. She noticed Cassidy playing with a doll that had long brown hair that she called the mommy doll & another female doll with short hair. She watched as Cassidy hit the two dolls together. When another teacher, Ashley, asked her what she was doing, Cassidy said, Mommy’s getting a spanking for biting. After she laid the doll face down on a dollhouse bed, she said, Mommy has boo-boos all over, Mommy has red stuff all over. After her teachers told police what Cassidy said, she didn’t return back to the school.
Genevieve Cargol, Jason’s former fiance, testified that during their relationship, she had been a victim of domestic abuse. During one argument, Jason violently pulled off her engagement ring while they were at a wedding in Texas & Jason was intoxicated. When they began to argue about his drunkenness, he demanded the ring back & when she couldn’t get it off, he began to pull at it. She indicated that she’d never seen him like that before & his eyes were glazed over as if he wasn’t seeing her. During another argument, he broke the windshield of the car by punching it & during another fight he damaged a wall in their apartment.
Genevieve had no contact with Jason for years until he suddenly emailed her on September 12, 2006 & told her that he still loved her.
Investigators detailed the forensic evidence found at the scene of the crime that included bloodied footprints that were consistent with size 12 Hush Puppy Orbitals that Jason purchased in July 2005. Jason claimed that Michelle had since donated the shoes to Goodwill.
They heard from neighbors who witnessed a white car that was similar to Jason’s, parked outside the Young’s home on the night of the murder. Terry Tiller, a woman who was delivering newspapers on Friday, November 3, was near the Young’s home between 3:30-4 am & noticed that the interior, exterior & driveway lights were on which she found unusual at such an early hour. She also saw a light colored SUV in front of the house & a minivan across the street.
Another woman, Cynthia Beaver, saw what she described as a light-colored soccer mom car at the edge of the Young’s driveway at about 5:20 am. She believes that she saw a white male sitting in the driver’s seat & possibly a female in the passenger seat. A third witness, Fay Hinsley, drove past the Young’s house at 6:15 am & saw an empty SUV at the edge of the driveway.
A search of the Young’s computer indicated that at some point in time, there were internet searches for anatomy of a knockout, head trauma blackout, head blow knockout & head trauma.
Meanwhile, the defense argued the lack of evidence to prove this story & claimed that Jason didn’t have enough time to kill his wife as well as the lack of blood evidence inside his SUV or clothing. There were also no injuries found on his body other than a bruised & broken toenail. They also argued that just because he wasn’t an ideal husband, didn’t make him a killer.
Jason maintained his innocence & said that he’d been looking forward to the birth of their baby boy. An email he sent to Michelle on October 24, 2006 showed his willingness to attend counseling. He argued that he & his wife didn’t argue any more than the average couple, they just argued in front of others more often than the typical couple.
Michelle’s counselor testified that when she saw Michelle on October 27, she cried during her entire session & the counselor’s assessment of the situation was that she was being verbally abused.
According to Jason, after he checked into the hotel, he reviewed the demonstration software for his meeting the next morning since he was nervous because it was going to be his first solo sales call & he wanted to be prepared. He said that he realized that he left his laptop charger in his car so he propped the exit door open the first time so he could run to his car to grab the charger. He said he left his hotel room slightly ajar so he could re-enter without disturbing his neighbors. As he walked out the exit door toward his car, he broke off a piece of shrubbery to prop the door open. He grabbed the charger & came back to the room.
Jason claimed that after he finished reviewing his work information, he logged off a little before midnight & wanted to smoke a cigar & catch up on sports news. He stopped at the front desk to get a copy of USA Today & was seen at the front desk of the hotel at 11:59 pm. From there he said he walked down the hall, put a stick in the door & went outside to smoke. When he was done, he came inside & went to sleep.
Meredith as well as some of Jason’s friends testified that he didn’t like smoking & disliked the smell of smoke. On top of that, the Thursday night he’d stayed at the Hampton Inn had been cold & windy & Jason hadn’t packed clothing that would have kept him comfortable had he gone out to casually smoke a cigar.
When asked why he was thirty minutes late to his meeting, he said he’d gotten lost & when he tried to call the appointment to let them know, the call wouldn’t go through because of the lack of cell service.
He said that after his meeting, he drove to his mom & step-dad’s house & when he arrived, he just broke when his step-dad informed him that Michelle was dead. After his friends called & advised him to secure an attorney, his sister left a message for an attorney she’d used in the past & when he eventually met with them, he was advised not to speak with police.
When asked about the internet searches regarding knockouts & blackouts, he claimed they were done a long time ago in relation to a car accident he’d witnessed. He said he was the first to come upon an accident where the person had been knocked out.
Because the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict, it resulted in a mistrial with 8-4 for acquittal.
The second trial began in February 2012 after prosecutors came back together to build an even stronger case. This time around, Jason didn’t didn’t testify, but a video recording of his first testimony was shown to the jury.
After six hours of deliberation, the jury returned with a unanimous verdict & found Jason Young guilty of first-degree murder. He was later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. During his sentencing, Judge Donald Stephens spoke of the violence that led to Michelle’s death & how Jason only stopped beating her when he became too exhausted to carry on.
In 2017, Jason appealed his sentencing which was rejected.
Michelle’s grieving family felt closure that Jason was facing justice, despite the fact that it would never erase the loss of Michelle. Cassidy lost both of her parents & went on to live with her aunt Meredith & was loved & cared for by the rest of Michelle’s family. They wanted to surround her with love after she had witnessed unimaginable violence & trauma at such a young age. Not only had Michelle’s vibrant life been cut tragically short, but her family also mourned the loss of her unborn son.
This case highlighted the fact that domestic violence can be hidden behind a seemingly perfect facade & prompted discussions about the warning signs of abuse & the importance of supporting those who might be involved in a dangerous relationship.
Michelle’s family work to keep her memory alive & focus on who she was as a person. She had a bright smile, an infectious laugh, a drive for success & an endless capacity for love.
References:
- Medium: The tragic end of Michelle Young: A marriage unraveled
- Audio Boom – Let’s Go To Court! The murder of Michelle Young
- ABC News: Jason Young gets life in prison for wife’s murder
- Chilling Crimes: Michelle Young
- The News & Observer: The murder of Michelle Young & the trials of Jason Young: A timeline of events
- Young: Warrant
- WRAL News: Jason Young’s daughter spoke of him during 911 call
- State v Young
