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In November 2002, Nathaniel Jones was found attacked outside his home. His murder shocked the entire community, but police quickly arrested five teenage boys who were convicted of the crime. However, for more than 22 years, these men have maintained their innocence, and now this case is back in the spotlight at a recent evidentiary hearing that has the potential to change everything. I'm investigative journalist Delia D'Ambra, and in an all-new episode of my podcast, CounterClock, I take you inside the courtroom
and share the results of this pivotal hearing. Plus, you'll hear new interviews I've uncovered and people who were willing to talk for the first time after hearing Season 7. Don't miss this crucial update. Listen to the bonus episode of CounterClock now, wherever you get your podcasts. Anatomy of Murder is proudly sponsored by Amika Insurance. As Amika says, empathy is our best policy. That's why they'll go above and beyond to tailor your insurance coverage
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Here's a young lady with a child. She's pregnant with another child. And you know, she deserves justice. I mean, there need to be answers provided here. And the person responsible needs to be brought to justice. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murders.
It could be argued that being a parent is the most selfless job there is. Every day, the careers, the sleep, and even the personal safety of moms and dads everywhere are being sacrificed for the well-being of a child.
But if providing a good, safe life for a child is the epitome of selflessness, then denying that safety through acts of abuse or even homicide, that could be the most selfish act of all. Today's tragic story is one where those two opposites meet in a devastating act of violence. ♪
29-year-old Michelle Young was born on Long Island, New York, and grew up in a large, close-knit family that valued hard work, loyalty, and above all, each other. Described as outgoing and personable, Michelle put her high spirits and positivity to work as a varsity cheerleader, first in high school and then at North Carolina State University.
Here's Richard Spivey, a retired investigator at the Wake County Sheriff's Office in Raleigh, North Carolina. From everybody we talked to, I mean, she was somebody that kind of had a plan. She was going to get like a business degree. She was going to, I think, what was specializing in accounting. She wanted to find a professional husband, somebody that was, you know, kind of had the same goals of achieving and building a nice life and wanted to have children, etc. I mean, so she had it kind of laid out what she wanted.
But of course, things don't always go according to plan, even for goal-oriented young women like Michelle and the most common cause, falling in love.
In 1997, Michelle met a fellow NC State student named Jason Young, and the two had instant chemistry. Shortly after graduation, the couple was married and had a child on the way. By 2006, Michelle was pregnant with their second child, and that meant some big changes for her future plans.
She was planning on cutting back on the number of hours that she worked. It was going to be a pay cut. She also was planning on converting the third floor slash semi-finished attic space. She was going to convert that into a room where her mother could live. And her mom was going to move down here from New York and move in with them and help take care of the children.
It's the kind of sacrifice many mothers make all the time, putting careers on hold for the benefit of a growing family. But sadly, Michelle's act of selflessness and family-first priorities would have tragic consequences.
On November 3rd, 2006, Michelle's sister received an unusual text from Michelle's husband, Jason, while he was away on a business trip. He wanted her to go over to the house and pick up some printouts that he had left on the printer concerning a handbag that was for sale. I think it was like a coach handbag that was for sale on eBay.
Michelle and Jason's anniversary was approaching, and as he explained it, he wanted to buy one of those bags for her as a gift, but he feared the printouts would spoil the surprise. And he did not want Michelle to discover these, so he called her sister and asked her if she could go over there and pick them up.
Okay, a bit random, but not the strangest request in the world, especially for a close family that is used to being a regular part of each other's lives. And so at about 1.30 in the afternoon, Michelle's sister pulled into Michelle's driveway and let herself into the house. And this wasn't unusual. I think she had a key to the house. She would babysit for them and stuff like that. So it wasn't unusual. She said she went to the house, expected her sister to be there because she saw her car, started calling out to her and didn't hear anything.
And then heard, I think her niece, who was maybe not quite two years old at the time, heard her upstairs. And so Michelle's sister proceeded upstairs to the master bedroom, but she was not prepared for what she discovered there.
In the master bedroom, she finds her deceased sister laying between the bed and what is actually the husband's closet. From her positioning, injuries, and the condition of the room itself, it was immediately clear that Michelle had been the victim of a violent attack. The carpet was completely saturated with blood. There was blood spatter around the walls and the door. Blood areas that were soaked into the pillow and part of the mattress were
I mean, just a horrific kind of scene right there. And perhaps the most frightening detail of all, signs that Michelle's two-year-old daughter was also somewhere in the house. She noticed soon thereafter that in the bathroom, there were bloody footprints of little tiny footprints that were her niece. Thankfully, Michelle's sister located the young girl unharmed. And hiding in her parents' bed, her first question...
What's wrong with mommy? After rushing her niece to safety, Michelle's sister immediately called 911. But as the first responders arrived, it was clear that Michelle was beyond saving. The injuries to her face and head were severe and fatal. Upon preliminary examination, blunt force trauma had caused skull fractures, multiple lacerations, and several broken teeth.
I think the first ones arriving were just kind of shocked at exactly how brutal the beating was and how serious the crime scene was as far as the amount of blood. I mean, that really stood out. I've seen serious facial injuries, usually because of the result of maybe a self-inflicted shotgun blast or a rifle or something like that. I've seen really horrific injuries.
Adding to the tragedy was the loss of Michelle's unborn child.
The autopsy would also reveal that in addition to being beaten, Michelle had been strangled and even had wounds on the back of her head that appeared to have been caused by an unknown object. A lot of the lacerations to her head had kind of a half moon shape.
So in our interview, I discussed with Richard what kind of weapon could have caused that kind of shape. And what we're talking about is this crescent looking shape, which could be at the end of a bat or the portion of the end of a hammer. But he could only speculate because no weapon had ever been found at the scene.
But the gruesome scene left behind, it obviously indicated a brutal and violent attack, a part of which may even have been witnessed by Michelle's young daughter. It does seem clear that she saw the aftermath. So was this a result of a botched break-in? Or was Michelle the premeditated target of someone's homicidal rage? The only thing that we could determine that was missing were there was a
a little jewelry box or jewelry chest that had three or four drawers in it that had been built by Jason's stepfather and given to Michelle. I think this is a wedding gift. There were two drawers, I believe that were missing from that jewelry chest. And in speaking with her sister, we were like, you know, does she have a lot of jewelry, a lot of expensive jewelry, uh,
anything like that. Hardly anything like that. No, that's, you know, she just, that wasn't her thing. From my experience, you know, as an investigator and a police officer, I just thought that was kind of a bizarre thing to be missing as well because no electronics were taken. Why take the whole drawer? That just stood out as like somebody was trying to draw attention to that. Oh, look, this is missing. Somebody took this.
The fact that so little was taken wasn't the only clue that this attack was likely not the result of a random robbery or home invasion. First of all, there was no forced entry into the house. And two, the excessive violence of the attack, what we sometimes call overkill, to me suggests that robbery was not the motive. It was something entirely more personal.
I investigated and responded to numerous scenes of a break-in where a homeowner was home or walked in on a break-in or what have you. And usually the perpetrator would just run.
Whoever killed Michelle also took their time.
striking her in the face and the head repeatedly, perhaps with a fist and then some other weapon, and also strangling her. There was no mercy and no mistaking the intention to end her life. There's anger. There's some kind of, you know, something behind it. Some kind of anger, hatred, something.
Michelle was just 29, a mother of a two-year-old and pregnant with her second child. And as you can imagine, her murder was absolutely devastating to her family and friends, none of whom could think of any reason why she would be targeted by this kind of violence. She was very serious about things, very dedicated. They said, loving mother, very dedicated to her child, great friend. If she said she was going to be someplace at such and such a time,
She was there five minutes early. I mean, you know, she was that kind of person, kind of person. You'd be lucky if you had somebody like that as a neighbor.
By every account, she was also a devoted parent and spouse. But according to those close to Michelle, the same could not necessarily be said about her husband, Jason. Jason was known by his friends as a popular guy and a skilled salesman who had a knack for being the center of attention, sometimes at the expense of others. He was very much an alpha male, very much going to do whatever he wanted to do with
Make fun of somebody if he's going to get a laugh from the rest of the group, regardless of how much it may have hurt the person that he was talking about. That kind of a person. At first glance, he and Michelle had seemed like an unlikely match. The friendly, family-first cheerleader and the slick guy with a mean streak. But you know what they say about opposites.
It was just really strange that the two of them somehow ended up connecting, getting married, and had so, so different personalities. When asked about the state of their marriage, Michelle's family did acknowledge that Michelle and Jason had hit a bit of a rough patch with arguments about money and his late nights away from home. But their relationship never seemed volatile and had certainly never turned violent.
While a disgruntled husband would typically be an obvious person of interest in a homicide like this, investigators did have real reason to believe he was not involved.
because Jason was out of town, at least 150 miles away on a sales trip to Hillsville, Virginia, at the time of the murder. At least initially, his alibi appeared pretty solid. Surveillance footage confirmed that he had checked into a Hampton Inn at 10.54 p.m. on November 2, 2006, the night before the murder, and witnesses confirmed that he was present at his scheduled meeting the following morning.
Now, obviously, investigators were prepared to dig into his alibi more deeply before they could eliminate him as a suspect. But it's important to note that even Michelle's family members were adamant that no matter what issues the couple was having, Jason was no killer.
They were some of his biggest defenders. When he came back to Raleigh, they were like, you know, his wife has just died. Why are you all bothering him and wanting to talk to him? And why are you doing this and that? And like I said, they were big, big defenders of his. They did not believe he was involved in any way, shape or form. But of course, belief does not solve homicides. Evidence does. And in this investigation, detectives were just getting started.
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In November of 2006, 29-year-old Michelle Young, the pregnant mother of a two-year-old daughter, was mercilessly beaten to death in her own home. The brutality of the murder had the hallmarks of a personal and rage-filled attack and likely not the work of a random stranger, which left investigators in Raleigh, North Carolina, looking in the direction of one man, her husband, Jason Young.
According to friends, the couple had been having some marital trouble and there were even rumors of Jason's infidelity. And while eyebrows will raise, to say the least, it doesn't make a murder suspect at least not on its own, especially when he was on a business trip 150 miles away at the time of the homicide.
But even after confirming that he, in fact, had checked into the hotel the night of the murder and was present at an early meeting the next morning, there were still some signs that perhaps Jason Young's alibi was not as solid as it initially appeared.
He works at this time for a company that I believe they sell some sort of medical software. And he's gone to a hospital up there in Clintwood, Virginia. And it's an appointment that he has set up. It's not something that the hospital was requesting. They have already told him that the kind of software, whatever he's selling, is not something that they can use at their hospital. But he wants to go up there anyway and just sit down and kind of show it to them, explain it to them, etc.,
Jason drove to Virginia on the afternoon of November 2nd, and video surveillance footage showed him in fact checking into a hotel the night Michelle was killed and checking back out the next morning. His appointment was set for 10 o'clock that morning. He was about 35 minutes late. The person he met with described him as being hyper and kind of nervous. Shortly after this meeting is when Jason texted his sister-in-law to go retrieve something from his and Michelle's home.
He drives from Clintwood, Virginia, and instead of going straight back to the home in Raleigh, he drives to his mother's house in Brevard. But in the frantic moments after Michelle's body was discovered, no one could reach him. Not Michelle's sister, not his mother, and not the police.
He is in the mountains, so I can understand, you know, your cell service is going to be kind of spotty. In the meantime, his mother-in-law has been trying to call him repeatedly. And it's being allowed to go straight through the voicemail and not being answered. He drives all the way to Brevard and his mom talks about how he gets out of the car. He's got his jacket on.
slung over his shoulder and he's petting the dog that's come out to greet him. He's walking up to them in the driveway. The mother walks out to him and says, Jason, I've got some bad news. And he's like, what is it? And she says, Michelle's dead. And he immediately falls to the ground.
Now, there is just no way to know how anyone would react to the news that your spouse was dead. But when Jason's mom recounted this story to investigators, it immediately struck them as a little bit odd.
You know, Anasiga, in making these types of notifications, I describe it as a two-step process. Both are equally heartbreaking. First, the fact that a loved one has passed, and then the inability at that very moment, in most cases, to have complete answers for the family, why it happened, and most importantly, who is responsible. And she goes, I thought he was going to pass out, but he just like fell down to the ground, just immediately kind of drops to the ground.
The stepfather goes and grabs him a chair, a lawn chair, so he can sit in it out in the driveway while he gathers himself. And he's like, oh, you know, my son, my son, all this kind of stuff. Now, what stood out to me, having delivered death notifications and stuff, is when you tell people that somebody's dead, there's a moment where it doesn't register and people are like in kind of disbelief. They're also like, what do you mean they're dead? What happened? What, you know?
None of that from him. Just immediately accepted that she's dead and drops to the ground. And I mean, you know, most people would be like, you know, are you sure? Was she in an accident? How did this happen? A million questions. But it wasn't just his strange reaction to the news of Michelle's murder that was turning heads. Before he had even returned to his home in Raleigh, it seemed Jason was already on the defensive.
They talked to him on the phone as he's headed from Brevard back to Raleigh. Investigators spoke with him on the phone, said that they needed to talk to him just to get, you know, find out information about her. By the time he got back to Raleigh, he had already spoken with a friend of his. It was an attorney who basically said, don't talk to them. Don't say anything to them. Get yourself an attorney in Raleigh before you talk to him.
So if you listen to enough true crime podcasts, you already know that the people closest to the victim are in the initial circle of suspicion. Now, as you know, Anastasia, it doesn't really make a difference in the legal sense, but in the sense of optics, it's something to talk about.
You know, it's an interesting thing. I think people's first reaction is like, well, wait a second, if they ask for a lawyer, they must be hiding something. But, you know, my first reaction reading this was literally like careful because as law enforcement, as prosecutors, you can't
take anything adverse from someone exercising their right to remain silent, right? And we do know that when people talk, if they're not telling the truth, they trip themselves up all the time. But also, you know, look, it could also just be exercising that right because they want a lawyer there to make sure there isn't something untoward by police, prosecutors, whatever it is. So it's an interesting thought.
But again, I have to err on the side of caution here and just say that that is everyone's right. And while yes, it's the optics that we just can't read into it, at least not yet. And Asika, I totally agree. Let me just add this. Let's say as an investigator, you're working a missing persons case, a case you've deemed suspicious from the start. Not being able to talk to the person closest to your missing person is definitely a hindrance to an investigation. But when you have a body,
Already, you're just trying to unravel what happened, and it does seem like a roadblock to your investigation not being able to talk to that person. But it also just serves to emphasize the importance of collecting the direct and circumstantial evidence that could help solve this case. Because while a confession is good,
Forensics can be even better. And as I've said repeatedly before, as a prosecutor, I like assembling all the various pieces of evidence that together hopefully give a complete picture.
It can sometimes be even more compelling to a jury than a case relying on what witnesses saw and more compelling than a confession on its own. So not getting the cooperation of Jason Young here would not necessarily be a game changer. But there was one problem with assembling this puzzle, the forensic evidence. It wasn't really yielding the answers that investigators hoped it would.
Well, the only thing we found as far as the blood, all the blood was hers. Once the closet doors opened, there was a little fingerprint smear in the blood, but it could not be identified.
I'm sure we're all thinking, what about DNA, right? But remember, Jason lived there in the home. So the presence of his DNA in the bedroom or even on Michelle's body could easily be explained. But that's not to say that the presence of DNA elsewhere in the house couldn't contribute to the growing suspicion that he did in fact have a motive to kill his wife. The only DNA that really stood out
that was his from any of the evidence collected. There was a condom found behind a couch in the living room and the seminal fluid that was in that was his. The exterior DNA ended up being another female friend of his who lives in Montana that had come to visit them for a few days.
And here it is. It was the definitive proof of Jason's infidelity, not to mention a brazen selfishness that he would carry on an affair with another woman in his own home. But again, proof of infidelity and a suggestion of a potential motive does not equal proof of murder. What investigators needed was evidence that could connect Jason to the crime or crime scene itself.
When we brought in the State Bureau of Investigation, one of their latent evidence people was looking at a lot of the bloodstains and looking at, like I said, there was blood on the bed sheets and pillows had fallen off and the bed and there's bloodstains on them. She actually was able to identify a footwear impression on one of the pillowcases.
Okay, so now we're talking, and I think I hear that Law & Order music coming in here because a shoe print left on a bloody pillowcase, which could really only be left by whoever she was with in that room when Michelle was being attacked.
And it might not surprise some of you to know that much like the tire prints, the FBI actually keeps a database of the signature impressions made by a variety of different models of brand name shoes. She reached out to somebody that she knew at the FBI in Quantico. They ran it through their database and actually were able to identify the shoe. And it was a hush puppy orbital shoe, like a casual shoe.
There were no hush puppies found in Jason's closet, but investigators were still curious if they could prove he was ever in possession of that particular kind of shoe. And so they examined the couple's credit card activity, and that led them to a shopping trip the Youngs had made to the local discount shoe warehouse the previous summer. July 4th, 2005.
They'd gone in there and bought a bunch of shoes. That was one of the only receipts they got were any shoes. And sure enough, on that receipt was a record of purchasing a pair of men's Hush Puppy shoes. When we reached out to Hush Puppy to confirm that that was the tread for that, Hush Puppy told us, oh, that's a sole that you use on the Belleville or a Sealy shoe. And they're like, those are the only shoes?
shoes that have that? And he goes, oh yeah, those are the only brands that we manufacture that have that sole. And we were like, oh, okay. And we were kind of saying, well, it's too bad because we had a record of him buying a Hush Puppy Orbital and we thought that that might be what it was. And the guy kind of paused for a minute and he goes, well, let me check something. He goes, oh, we did manufacture the exact same shoe for DSW Shoe Warehouse. They just sold it as an Orbital.
The young shoe receipt was from the very same shoe store. It was a solid piece of evidence and certainly enough to give investigators the confidence to really drill down on Jason's alibi to see if they could find any discrepancies or holes in his all-important timeline.
One of the first things that was done in the investigation is we're having to trace his steps. And that was done actually two ways. One is through the use of the financial records. So we knew where he stopped to eat. We knew where he spent the night, etc. Just to eliminate any other locations, all along that travel area, we stopped and got all the videotapes at all the convenience stores and gas stations. And so far, they also had video proof that his alibi was pretty solid. He stopped at a Cracker Barrel
in Greensboro, North Carolina. We had, of course, the financial records of that. We have him on videotape and we have what he is wearing on the videotape, the surveillance tape at the Cracker Barrel. Then the next time that he appears on tape is when he is in Hillsville, Virginia, and he's checking into Hampton Inn in Hillsville. So presumably, after checking in the night of November 2nd, Jason went straight to his room. But what if he didn't?
I said, "Somebody needs to sit down with this tape from the hotel and go frame by frame by frame." One of the investigators who was working with us on the case at that time, John Stubbs, he sat down and over like a week or so went frame by frame by frame through the whole tape. That's when Richard discovered something very strange. Not all the cameras in the hotel seemed to be working that night.
At some point during the night, after he checked in on one of the stairwells, somebody had pushed the camera so it points straight up at the ceiling instead of at the staircase. One of the employees there realized this, went over there, readjusted the camera, put it back in the right place. And a short time later, just the cable to that camera got unplugged.
Not only that, but this same employee noticed that there had been something amiss with the exit door located right underneath the unplugged camera. This employee later on discovered that someone had put a rock down there to keep the door from closing all the way. So it had been slightly propped open so that the latch wouldn't fully latch.
And the video footage that had once seemed to confirm his whereabouts the night of the murder was now opening a large hole in his alibi. We actually have him on the other stairwell coming down the stairwell. Ends up walking to the front desk. There's more photographs of him there. And then he leaves going toward the exit door that was propped open. And that actually is the last time we see him on video.
But as it turns out, it was not the last time he was seen between checking into the hotel and showing up at his scheduled meeting the next morning.
Credit card receipts revealed that he had made another stop at a gas station near the Virginia-North Carolina border. And they had investigators go and speak with people at these different stores as well who were working night shifts. They stopped at a convenience store in King, North Carolina, just south of the Virginia border, and went in there and spoke with the clerk that was working the night shift. I think they showed her a picture of
of Jason and said, "Have you ever seen this guy before?" And she goes, "Yes, I have." They said, "Well, when did you see him?" She goes, "He came in here. He was in a white SUV.
Considering that police had not revealed the make and color of his car, this eyewitness account was already credible and promising. And she goes, he came in this store and he started cussing at me because the pumps weren't turned on. Night, you got to come in and pay first before we turn the pumps on so we don't have a drive off. And he came in here and cussed me. And I don't ever forget anybody that's ever cussed at me. And the time of his purchase of a full tank of gas...
was 5.30 a.m., just a few hours before his wife's body was discovered. That was big, because he wasn't in Virginia anymore. He was back in North Carolina. The cracks in his alibi were beginning to show.
Search warrants for his internet browsing history would break them wide open. We got the search warrant for what he had searched on the internet, what he looked at on the internet. There were topics that came up such as anatomy of a knockout, head trauma knockout, divorce, and right posterior arterial occipital region. And that's the region at the back of the head.
In terms of circumstantial evidence, this was the motherlode. And any doubt that Jason was their prime suspect was quickly fading away. I was pretty certain that if he didn't do it, he's at least involved in it somehow. I don't know if he had assistance or not, but he's responsible for her murder. Jason Young's alibi for the night of his wife's murder was blown. His search history was sinister, and his shoes placed him at the scene of the crime.
He's the main guy we're looking for. This is, we have our, our suspect right here.
Now, I know this might sound greedy, but as an investigator, I'd still be looking for more. A murder weapon for starters, or bloody clothing in his possession. Even a spot of blood in his car. Anything to help remove even the shadow of doubt that he was responsible for this crime. There was what appeared to be blood on the outside of the vehicle. It looked like a little spot of blood. They were able to seize the vehicle, come
completely inventory everything that was in the vehicle, and it later turned out that it was actually not blood. But at least we had the PC to seize the vehicle and completely process it. Unfortunately, even with that probable cause to search his car, police turned up no weapons, no bloody clothes, no bloodstains, nothing incriminating. Although, it was interesting that they also never found the clothes he was wearing in the videos from his Virginia business trip.
It was obvious that whoever did this with the amount of blood, that blood is going to be on their clothes, feet or shoes or pants. I mean, you know, they're going to be covered in blood as well. They seized the vehicle when he got back to Raleigh. They did a complete inventory of everything in there. The clothes that he was wearing at the Cracker Barrel and in the video at the Hampton Inn, those clothes were never found.
So at this point, the lead investigator and the prosecutor would be weighing whether or not this was enough to make an arrest, but also to successfully try the case. And while the prosecutor does not have to prove a motive to prove someone is responsible for a homicide, it definitely would help if you could show a jury why Jason Young would act so viciously and kill his wife.
When he got up on his phones and started doing some of the phone work, it became very clear that he was talking to one of Michelle's best friends a lot more than Michelle was.
An affair with his wife's best friend.
And it turns out it wasn't really even a well-kept secret. Once we found out about this, started talking to his friends about it, they were like, well, yeah, he told me that he thinks he's in love with her. Not just a one-night-fling thing. I mean, this was a rather developed relationship that they had going on. But was it that relationship, or at least the relationship alone, that really motivated Jason Young to kill his wife?
$4 million says it was likely only part of the equation. One of the things that stood out there was that he had a, I think it was a $2 million life insurance policy on her. And it was a policy that was a double indemnity. So with something like this, there would have been $4 million available.
And the tragic part about it was that Michelle not only knew about the policy, she had been warned that it was totally out of the ordinary and unnecessary.
A friend of Michelle's who was an attorney, I think she had kind of set this whole thing up. And the whole time what she was doing, she said she was telling Michelle and telling him, this is really excessive. You don't need this much money at your age, et cetera. With half this, you're going to have enough money to pay off the house and all these things if something was to happen to her. But this is like an excessive amount of money.
But like so many times before, Jason had somehow convinced or coerced her to do exactly what he wanted. But as a prosecutor, I'm thinking this reveals even more than just a motive. I totally agree. I mean, this is a clear sign that Michelle's murder was not a crime of passion or accidental death from an assault. It was premeditated and meticulously planned.
Jason had spent a lifetime of keeping up appearances, even to the point of convincing Michelle's own family that he had nothing to do with her death. But the mounting evidence was finally too much to ignore. Like I said, they were big, big defenders of his. They did not believe he was involved in any way, shape, or form.
And then as they started laying out some of the facts, et cetera, they were devastated. But convincing Michelle's family was one thing. Convincing a jury, well, that was a different story. It was partly why even three years after Michelle's murder, no arrest had been made in the case. And Anastasia, you know this. All of the pieces needed to be in place before they would bring a case in front of a jury. And building a great case begins right.
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting, I think, especially for people on the outside, you know, is it that there's not enough evidence or were investigators and prosecutors being overly careful? And a lot of times it comes down to door B or at least somewhere in between. You know, I always think about all those conversations in my office or in the supervisor's office in homicide that you're debating with detectives.
detectives and we're often on the same page. Like, yeah, we have all this, but because it's circumstantial, we're just waiting for that one more thing that takes away what we think might, you know, be the hindrance or the biggest hurdle in a case. But ultimately, you know, there's that one thing you suspect, you believe the evidence is growing, but it's not yet there. So it is that tough question, which is obviously subjective sometimes. When is it enough to walk into court, especially when a case is circumstantial?
And you use the word subjective, which I think is perfect because, you know, you've had investigators banging on your door and saying, listen, we do have enough here. We have our killer and we'd love you to push forward. And I guess it's your responsibility at that point to put a stop or put a pause in it until you really feel confident that
that you'll actually be able to be successful in your prosecution. And sometimes, again, it's us together, right? As we hammer out these cases, you know, whether it's you and me, Scott, talking it through or as a prosecutor with the investigators in these real life situations in our offices, it's just sometimes we're just waiting for that thing that ultimately we're like, hey, it hasn't appeared. It's time to take our shot. And that's kind of what happened here.
If I can be completely honest, so often talk about the public having the CSI effect. And I think law enforcement officers and investigators at times are kind of guilty of the same thing. We're thinking that, you know, oh, we're going to get a report back any day. That's going to be the slam dunk and he did it and that's it. And, you know, it's not always the case. Sometimes it's just a lot more involved in that. Even when you have good crime scene evidence, you need more than that a lot of times to go along with it.
That delayed justice? As you can imagine, it was especially hard on Michelle's family. But they had a very tight wire they had to walk because he had custody of the daughter. I think one time it was even suggested that if they wanted to keep seeing her, that they needed to make a public statement in support of him. Finally, in 2008, Michelle's mother, Linda, filed a wrongful death suit against the man she was convinced took her daughter's life.
And basically with a civil case, that's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The burden of proof is different. It's a preponderance of the evidence. And the sentence is not prison, but monetary relief, often never collected. But families have definitely told me that they have filed them at least sometimes in part because they want to hear someone say that this person has been proven to have committed the crime.
At the conclusion of that civil suit, a judge agreed that Young was indeed responsible for Michelle's death. And while the verdict could not mandate prison time, it could bar Young from receiving any of the life insurance benefits from his wife's death. And soon afterwards, the prosecutor's office also charged Young with Michelle's murder.
In December of 2009, Jason Young was formally indicted for first-degree murder, with prosecutors highlighting the couple's volatile marriage
his incriminating internet searches, and the inconsistencies in his alibi to make their case. There was an indictment handed down, and we had people already on the way from our SWAT team who were headed up that way. But he ended up getting in a car and going somewhere, and just to be safe, they went ahead and arrested him in the vehicle and then transferred him over to our custody in Black Mountain and brought him down.
But as he had already shown for the last five years, Young would prove to be a formidable defendant. He sat in jail maybe almost a year, I think, before we actually went to trial. It was actually quite a while. So we were still monitoring phone calls and things like that that were coming from the jail. And he just never talked about the case. If you've ever sat around and thought about what a suspect should do or not do in the lead up to a trial, Young was a case study. From the moment he first lawyered up,
He never did anything to further incriminate himself in his wife's murder. They did put on a defense and actually they put Jason on the stand. He, of course, talked about how much he loved his wife and got emotional on the stand and everything else. But I mean, that was the first time we'd ever heard him tell anything about his story or anything whatsoever. And you know what? It worked. His criminal trial ended in a mistrial with the jury deadlocked.
I went into the trial expecting a conviction, but prepared for a not guilty, you know, like you do for all trials because anything can happen. This caught me totally off guard because, I mean, we've been working this case for so long. In some respects, I was like, finally, there's going to be a conclusion one way or the other. We're going to be done with this.
Of course, it's impossible to pinpoint why any particular prosecution fails to win a conviction, but I thought Richard had a pretty interesting take here, that it was not a matter of what was being presented, but how it was being presented to the jury.
I think the fact that we had been working on this case for so long and knew it so well, I almost wondered if there wasn't maybe a perception of like, everybody already knows all of this. We're just restating what everybody knows. ♪
For Young's retrial in 2012, prosecutors were determined to take nothing for granted. And they even strengthened their case with new evidence, including a disturbing incident reported by a caregiver at Michelle's daughter's daycare. She was at the daycare that day and they were playing with a little doll house that has several dolls in it or whatever. She took one of the dolls and put the doll on a little toy bed.
and then took another larger doll and started like beating the doll that was on the bed and then put it on the floor of the little doll house. And the lady just thought, is she acting out something she saw or is it just a coincidence? But it really stood out to her because of the situation with her mom and the belief that, you know, her having been in the house when it happened.
That daycare worker testified that Michelle's daughter seemed to be reenacting her mother's murder with dolls and pointing the blame squarely at her own father. When it came to the second trial, I think things were a lot more background, a lot more emphasis on certain pieces of evidence. Plus, we also had his statement from the first trial. We were able to pick apart his testimony that he'd given in the original trial.
The prosecution painted a picture of a man who had researched methods of killing, had taken out extra life insurance on his wife, and planted an almost perfect alibi before ruthlessly carrying out his cold-blooded plan to murder the mother of his daughter and his unborn child.
So to discuss motive in such a cruel and violent murder seems almost beside the point. But clearly at the root of Young's evil act was narcissism and a selfishness that blinded him to anyone else's needs but his own.
My theory is that I think the married life, the family, it was all really tying him down. He wanted more of a bachelor, fun life, go out, do what he wants to, when he wants to, and not have to answer to anyone. And to some extent, he kind of had that until plans were being made for his wife's mother to move in. And I just think that he saw that any freedom that he kind of did have to go out and
With his extracurricular activities, he saw that that was getting ready to come to an end. And then as a little bonus, he also would be able to finance kind of a fun lifestyle from the insurance. And he didn't seem to care whose lives he had to destroy to get it. His wife's, any of Michelle's family and friends, even his own daughter. And I think one of the things that makes this guy so terrifying is that he was smart.
For years, he didn't overplay his hand. He didn't fake a 911 call and put on the histrionics that are often so telling of a bad acting job. He lawyered up. He kept his mouth shut. But in the end, it all wasn't enough. And in fact, there was a really interesting detail that Richard described from the trial that I thought was really telling.
It may have been the last question asked of me on the stand in the second trial. Howard Cummings asked me, he says, has Jason Young ever called you to ask you the status of this case? And I'm like, no, sir, he has not. He had no interest or at least no desire to talk to any of us about anything, including his daughter and her well-being concerning the case.
At the conclusion of the trial, Jason Young was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Michelle's daughter is now 21 years old. The murder of her mother and the prosecution of her own father took up more than half of her young life. The pain and trauma from that experience will likely last a lifetime.
Surveillance footage, a bloody shoe print, and the discovery of a jaw-dropping $4 million insurance policy unraveled Jason Young's web of lies as his alibi crumbled under scrutiny.
This case wasn't just about the evidence. It was about the relentless pursuit of truth, brick by brick, by those who refused to give up. Michelle Young's murder, as savage as it was, bore every mark of premeditation. Yet the deepest tragedy lies with the innocent.
A young child left to grow up with the unshakable reality that her own father stole her mother's life. It's a wound that no justice can ever fully heal. Michelle Young was murdered by her husband, and her daughter, their daughter, lost her mother. That little girl, now young woman, will never again be held in the arms of her mom.
Never have her mom to share her good days or her secrets. Or be there in her times of need. And that is as brutal, albeit in a different way, as the violence Young inflicted on Michelle. He took Michelle's life and so, so much from his child. ♪
We remember you, Michelle Young, for the devoted mom you were and friend to so many. And to your daughter, we hope that she is still able to feel your love for her and your presence in her heart.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa and Philjean Grande. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?