Brutally murdered. Her little girl left to wonder in her mothers blood. Police had a suspect and they say that he had a motive. We had an intimate relationship. Ended up having sex. Could they prove he was the killer . It was a circumstantial case, except for that witness, girl who left those footprints. They will never know what cassidy saw and what she did not see. Maybe she could not tell detectives who the killer was, but maybe she did not have to. The fact that cassidy was spared, would that mean anything to a jury . Person who killed the mother cared about cassidy. Hello, and welcome to dateline. Michelle young was married to her college sweetheart, four months pregnant with her second child when the unthinkable happened. The young mother was beaten to death in her own bedroom. The investigation would quickly bowl a troubled marriage. But her husband was away on business. And unraveling this complicated case would take years. Here is Keith Morrison with Silent Witness. I think i pause for a second and had to take a deep breath. And just the reality of what was going on sinking in. Those who saw the footprints would not forget them. They were tiny and they were bloody. I had to get my composure to finish searching this house to make sure there is nobody else in the house. It was the third november 2006, early afternoon. Scott irving was the wake county sheriffs deputy dispatched to chatted oaks. The outskirts of raleigh, North Carolina. Here because of the 911 call from this placed on birch leaf drive. I think my sister is dead. Tell me what happened maam . I have no idea, oh my god. The caller was meredith fischer, she had just discovered on the floor of the Master Bedroom the savagely beaten body of her elderly sister, 29 year old Michelle Young, a woman who in death, was about to be famous. Listen to me mom, im going to tell you what to do but you need to calm down. Theres blood everywhere . Yes. Listen to me, maam is she breathing . I dont think so. Have you checked . Michelle . Shes cold. Okay. Two and a half year old cassidy who had crawled out from underneath the parents bed just feet from where her mother lay. Cassidys voice, chattering to her aunt was caught. Shes got boos everywhere . Had cassidy witnessed the murder . Awakened, alone, to find this. Just picture a small child Walking Around in this blood and tracking it across the hallway into the bathroom. By now wake county investigators were on the house and having secured the crime scene, his job was done. But on his way out He Saw Cassidy again. She was still in her pink pajamas, still in merediths arms. He asked meredith a question. I looked over to the child and didnt see any blood and i asked her was did she clean the child . Her response was no. I thought a response was odd cause i was expecting her to say yes i did. Somebody did. But who . Was it the same person who murdered the little girls mother . On this november day, all they had was questions. A sergeant with the White County Sheriffs Office probably knows the case better than anyone. I mean this was just a brutal, vicious beating. There was a lot of time and Energy Invested into this assault. Why do you say a lot of time and energy . The Medical Examiner told us it was over 30 blows with some sort of a blunt object. So detectives started investigating and everyone else around her. Michelle young was born and raised on long island new york. She was smiling all the time. She was the life of the party. Grossman knew her from childhood. She didnt like being the center of attention, but created a great atmosphere. Michelle was a cheerleader in high school, Ans A Straight a student. Jennifer powers felt drawn to her. She had this kind of book or inside to her, where she was very studious and goal oriented. She was also just a great person to be around, a fun, happy spirit. Somebody who i wanted to spend a lot of time with. Lots of people did. And when she chose a college far from home, North Carolina state, she was soon surrounded again by an Admiring Group of women, best friends, buddies. Fiona child was her sorority big sister. Theres this one picture and it just came out beautiful and we like that because we thought we kind of looked like Charlie S Angels posed without intentionally doing that. It was sometime in 2001 when friends started hearing about michelleles new guy. A fellow student named jason young. Heard how he had grown up in the North Carolina mountains, i loved to camp, how he was a life of tailgate parties. Michellele fell hard and fast. They seemed like a good couple. He was different from other men that he she had dated in the past. Was not as serious about a career as she was. He was a little bit less sophisticated than michelle was, but seemed to be very happy with him. Michelle and jason married in october of 2003. The day after the wedding they shared a big secret. Michelle was pregnant. Their daughter cassie was born early the next year. I love you mommy. I love you too, cassidy. And when she came along, it was love at first sight. Michelle was an enthusiastic mother. By all accounts jason was a good dad. He was a great playmate. He knew how to sit on the floor and play with his daughter. The youngest moved into the house on birchleaf in 2005. Both of them worked, he is a salesman, she a financial specialist. In the summer of 2006, michellele got pregnant again. They kept the news to themselves, but it was clear that something good was happening. The comment he said to me was that he was excited to have another baby. Not implying that she was pregnant, but excited about the prospect of. But just a few months later, michellele was dead. Jason was 170 miles away in virginia on a Business Trip In The Night of the murder. He heard the news the next afternoon and returned to raleigh. Grossman got word from her mother. My mother called and said michelle is dead . I said michelle who . Some celebrity, what are you talking about . What do you mean, how is that possible, what happened . The very question wake county investigators were asking themselves. As the Investigation Heats up, a Security Camera provides a critical clue. Its not what it caught, its what it missed and why. Coming up. There was a camera there had that had been unplugged. Who had something to hide . When dateline continues. m at work, i need to feel secured. What im looking for in a pad is, super thin, super absorbent. All of the things that youre looking for in a pad, that is always discreet. This is thin. My pad is thick. Lets put it to the test. Lets do it look how its absorbing and locking it right on in look at that no liquid, no nothing. Totally absorbed you feel no wetness. Oh my gosh are you a believer now . Im a believer i got to get some always discreet lowes knows you want the best quality products for the best price. 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Join the millions of people taking back their privacy the facts were stark and Keith Morrison voiceover the facts were stark and ugly. Ugly. One night in november 2006, when her husband was away on business, Michelle Young was attacked in her own bedroom and brutally beaten to death. Her body discovered the next day by her sister, meredith. Along with her two and a half year old daughter cassidy, who had been left to wander in her blood. For the investigators who set out to find her killer, no way to get those little footprints out of their minds. Sergeant richard, lead investigator. Those of us who work law enforcement, this is our profession, we are also parents, that certainly strikes a different note with you when you see Something Like that. Michelles husband jason, a medical Software Salesman was 170 miles away on the night of the murder. Even so, investigators had to look at him. We know he was the last person to talk to michelle that night. And that he was also the reason why she was found. He called meredith that she should go to the house. Jason youngs Business Trip that night was routine. Security tapes show him getting gas 7 30 pm when he left raleigh. Two hours later he was seen on tape at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in greensboro. Later he checked into this hamptons in. This is him at the front desk at about 11 pm. And him again at midnight. He also made a phone call around midnight and that was the last that anyone had heard from jason young, until he made another call at 7 40 the next morning. A normal person would look at this and say he is 170 miles away, hes got an alibi. That sounds like a great distance. 170 miles, you can get between the crime scene and the hotel in about two and a half hours. Perhaps, but there was curious anomalies at the crime scene. A jewelry box was missing from the drawers. So was that a bungled burglary . Then there were footprints near the body that seemed to eliminate jason. An obvious print on the pillow was a size ten, but jason wore a size 12. But this was weird, there was another partial footprint that defied easy identification, so they began calling in shoe experts. Now they wondered, were their two attackers . Investigators discovered early on that michelles and jasons marriage was strained. In the last weeks of michelles life, things were not good. At our friend shellys wedding he was so drunk. Just really out of it. When we got to the wedding, our friends were letting us know that michelle and jason were fighting. And they were referring to it as world war iii. Jennifer powers told investigators about another fight that october. Michelle wanted her mother to stay with him for the holidays and jason, who had a tense relationship with his motherinlaw, wanted to limit her stay. Said so in an email. Along with another nugget. He wrote, our marriage has seen better days and i dont see it trending up. And i remember that really struck a chord with me, because i did not know that their marriage had seen better days. So of Course Investigators wanted to interview jason young. Maybe he could tell them something. But he refused to talk to them. He talked to the lawyer and then under the advice of counsel he declined to speak with us at all. Didnt ask about her . Didnt ask how his wife died . No. Perhaps investigators thought that Business Trip deserved a second look. So they went to the hotel, poked around. And discovered some odd activities that night in a stairwell near an exit. There was a camera there that had been unplugged. Really . Yes. Was one of the side exits of the hotel. The fire stairs that go down to the first floor. Was there any other tampering done . The door that was adjacent to where this camera was located, that door had also been propped open that night. How do you know that . The gentleman working as the clerk that night found a rock that had been placed in the door to keep the door from closing. Then they plugged the camera back, and so its now working again. At about 6 35 that morning, suddenly that camera is pointing straight at the ceiling. Same camera . Same camera. Its tampered with yet again. If that was jason youngs work, is it possible he did make the 340 mile round trip . Could he have killed his wife and cleaned up his daughter all in seven and a half hours without ever being seen . To find out investigators played a hunch. They visited every gas station along the route, showed jasons photo, talked to the night clerks, and came across a woman named gracie. In a tiny place called king, North Carolina she took one look at that photograph and recognized it instantly. He was the foul mouth customer, she said, who came storming into the store to complain that the pumps were locked. What time was it . 5 40 am, murder of the murder. There was an altercation between the two of them. So youd have a reason why she would remember him, as opposed to any customer who had come to the store. If that attendant was right, investigators may have undercut jasons alibi. But still, it was not enough. And so they plotted ahead. Painstaking work that took time. And then years after the murder, they finally got a match for that partial footprint. The State Bureau Of Investigation and fbi were able to eventually identify that shoe as a hush puppy shoe. It was a size 12, which is the same size that he wore. Throughout the investigation, Jason Steadfastly maintained his silence. And rather than face a legal battle where he would be asked some tough questions, he even gave michelles Family Custody of his daughter. Everyone we spoke with, everyone talked about how much he Loved Cassidy and what a great dad he was. To just turn over primary custody, that was very surprising. Investigators had heard enough. They believed they had a case, circumstantial, but a case. And three years after Michelle Youngs body was found on the bedroom floor, jason young was charged with her murder. Investigators and prosecutors knew that very little pointed directly towards jason young, but so far nothing pointed away. Coming up, the case against jason young as an alleged killer. And as a cheating husband. We had an intimate relationship for the two days that he was there. We ended up having sex. He never settled down. When dateline continues. And when you save more on the things you need, you can get more of the things you want. Thats why if you find the same product for less, well match it. Shop now with the confidence of our lowest price guarantee. With gold bond. You can age on your own terms. Retinol overnight means. The smoothing benefits of retinol. Are now for your whole body. Plus, fastworking crepe corrector diminishes wrinkled skin in just two days. Gold bond. Champion your skin. After advil. 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With no Murder Weapon found, prosecutors case was based on that partial shoe print. Knowing that jason once owned a pair of hush puppies that matched the print they were now missing. They also told jurors about that visit to the gas station and activity in the hotel. But their case was this, jason young was trying in the most violent possible way to get out of the troubled marriage. Were you aware of tensions in that marriage . Yes. I was well aware. Michelles sister had lived near the couple and for a period was capacities nanny. As the youngs fights intensified, she took on the role of a Marriage Counselor too. Where would you say were the main issues . Michelleles main issues were jason being more responsible, understanding her more and his main concern was their lack of sex life. Prosecutors called friends to the stand to paint a picture of a marriage that was unraveling out loud and in public. Jason made it very well known that he was upset about the lack of sex in the relationship. And at parties, jasons x rated tricks were famously over the top. I never observed it myself, i would just hear about it and he would expose himself and do what he would thought was funny tricks. And i was always just rather embarrassed for michelle. He never settled down, it was as if he was still living the single life and that he had never fallen into the marriage and put all of that meant. In october 2006, when michelle was four months pregnant, jason became deeply involved with another woman. And not just any woman. Michelle money was one of Michelle Youngs friends from college, one of those charlies angels. In an alley october, days before his third wedding anniversary, jason flew to florida. Testifying that they both knew it was wrong. We basically just hung out at the house and we had an intimate relationship for the two days that he was there. Jason was crazy about her, his friend josh dalton said. Basically told me that he thought he was in love with her. Michelles mother Linda Fischer testified. In the final weeks of michelle s life, could see the toll that the marriage was taking on his daughter. Had her head on my lap and she was lying out. And i was stroking her hair. And she was empty. What did she tell you . Things werent we are working out with jas