Detectives who the killer was, but maybe she didnt have to. The fact that cassidy was spared, would that mean anything to a jury . The person that killed the mother cared about cassidy. Hello. And welcome to dateline. Michelle young was married to her College Sweetheart and four months pregnant with their second child. When the unthinkable happened. The young mother was beattone death in her own bedroom. The investigation would quickly reveal a troubled marriage. But her husband was away on business. And unraveling this complicated case would take years. Heres Keith Morrison with silent witness. I think i paused for a second and had to take a deep breath and just the reality of what was going on sank in. Those who saw the footprints will not forget them. They were tiny, and they were ey bloody. I had to get my composure to finish searching this house to make sure there was nobody else in the house. It was the 3rd of november, 2006, early afternoon. Scott earp was the wake county sheriffs deputy dispatched to a quiet and leafy neighborhood called Enchanted Oaks on the outskirts of raleigh, North Carolina. Here because of the 911 call from this place on birch leaf dry. I think my sister is dead. Ac tell me what happened, maam. I have no idea. Oh, my god. T the caller was Meredith Fisher. She had just discovered on the floor of the master bedroom the savagely beaten body of her elder sister, 29yearold Michelle Young, a woman who in death was about to be famous. You listen to me, maam. You need to calm down so you can help us. You said there is blood everywhere . Yes. Listen to me, maam. Is she breathing . I dont think so. Have you checked . Michelle. She is cold. Okay. As she spoke, meredith was cradling her 2 1 2yearold niece cassidy, who had crawled out from under the bed clothes on her parents bed just feet from where hered mother lay. Cassidys voice,ot chattering t her aunt, was caught on the recorded call. She got booboo everywhere. Had cassidy witnessed the murder . Awakened, alone, to find this . You just picture a small child Walking Around in this blood and tracking it across the hallway over into the bathroom. By now wake county investigators were descending on the house and having secured the crime scene, earps job was p done. But on his way out he saw cassidy again. She was still in her pink er pajamas, still in merediths me arms. He asked meredith a question. I looked over the child, and i didnt see any blood, so i asked her did you clean the child . And her response was no. I thought it was kind of odd because i was expecting her to say yes, i guess. Somebody did. E yeah. Somebody did. But who . Was it the same person who murdered the little girls mother . On this november day all they hi had were questions. Richard spivey, then a sergeant with the wakeey county sheriff office, probably knows the case better than anyone. This was a brutal, vicious er beating. There was a lot of time and e Energy Invested into this assault. Why do you say a lot of time and energy . Lo i think the medical examiner told us there was over 30 blows with some sort of a blunt object. So detectives starting investigating the victim and everyone else around her. Michelle young was born and raised on long island, new york. She was smiling all the time. And she was the life of the party. Stacia grossman knew her from childhood. She didnt like being the center of attention but she liked creating a great atmosphere for everyone to have a good time. Michelle was a cheerleader in high school and a straight a student. Jennifer powers felt drawn to her. She had this kind of bookworm side to her where she was very studious and goaloriented. I mean, she was also just a great person to be around, a fun, happy spirit. And you know, someone that 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 friends, best friends, buddies. Fiona childs was her sorority big sister. Theres this one picture and its like it just came out beautiful and we liked it because we thought we kind of looked likeht charlies angels posed without intentionally doing that. It was sometime in 2001 when friends started hearing about michelles new guy, a fellow student named jason young, heard how hed grown up in the North Carolina mountains, how he loved to camp, how he was the life of tailgatee parties. Michelle fell hard and fast. T. They seemed like a good couple. He was different from other men that shed dated in the past. He wasnt as serious about a career as she was. He was a little bit less sophisticated than michelle was. But she seemed to be very happy with him. Michelle and jason married in october 2003. The day after the wedding they a shared their big secret, michelle was pregnant. Their daughter cassidy was born early the next year. I love you, mommy. I love you, too, cassidy. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and when she came along, it was love at first sight. How i wonder where you are yay michelle was an enthusiastic mother. Huh . Huh . [ laughter ] huh . Huh . [ laughter ] 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, you know. The youngs moved into a big fine house on birch leaf in b 2005. Both of them worked, he a salesman and she a financial specialist. F in the summer of 2006 michelle got pregnant again. They kept the news to themselves but it was clear something good was happening. The comment he said to me was he is excited to have another baby, not implying that she was pregnant but that he was excited at the prospect of it. But just a few months later michelle was dead. Jason was 170 miles away in virginia on a business trip the night of the murder. He heard the news the next rd afternoon and returned to raleigh. Stacia grossman got word from her mother. My mother calls and says michelles dead. And i said, michelle who . Some celebrity . Like what are you talking about, like what do you mean, how is that possible, what happened . The very questions that wake county investigators were asking themselves. V 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 wh there was a camera there that had been unplugged. Who had something to hide . When dateline continues. Protect your pet with the 1 name in flea and tick protection. Frontline plus. Trusted by vets for nearly 20 years. With acetaminophenction frontline plus. Fights pain in two ways. Advil targets pain at the source. While acetaminophen blocks pain signals. The future of pain relief is here. New advil dual action. 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But she still pays too much. Thats no good. So kate downloaded the goodrx app. Now she can compare prescription prices, to find the best discounts. She even beats her insurance price. Good for you kate, good for you. Goodrx, stop paying too much for your prescriptions. Download the free app today. Puberty means personal space. So sports clothes sit around growing odors. Thats why we graduated to tide pods sport. Finally something more powerful than the funk. Tide sport removes even weekold sweat odor. Its got to be tide. Thats very common to have a gum Health Concern as well. You know, i talk to dentists every day, and theyre able to recommend sensodyne sensitivity gum. Its really good dentistry to be able to recommend one product that can address two conditions. The facts were stark and ugly. One night in november 2006, while 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 2 1 2yearold 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 spivey, lead investigator. Those of us who work in law enforcement, this is our profession, but were also parents, and that certainly strikes a different note with you when you see Something Like that. Michelles husband, a medical Software Salesman, was 170 miles away the night of the murder. Even so, investigators had to look at him. We know that he was the last person to talk to michelle that night, and he was also the reason why she was found. He called Meredith Fisher to go to the house. Jason youngs business trip that night was routine. Security tapes showed him getting gas about 7 30 p. M. As he left raleigh. Two hours later, he was seen on tape at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in greensboro. Later he checked into this hampton inn in hillsdale, virginia. This is him front desk about 11 00 p. M. And him again at midnight. He also made a phone call around midnight, and that was the last time anybody 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 was 170 miles away, hes got an alibi. That sounds like a great distance, you know, but 170 miles, you can get from the crime scene to the hotel in about 2 1 2 hours. About two and a half hours. Perhaps, but there were curious anomalies at the crime scene. Couldnt explain them. A jewelry box was missing two drawers. So was it a bungled burglary . Then there were footprints near the body that seemed to eliminate jason. An obvious print on the pillow was a size 10, 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. And now they wondered, were there two attackers . Of course, investigators discovered early on that michelle and jasons marriage was strained, and in the last weeks of michelles life things were not good. At our friend shellys wedding she 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 them for the holidays, and jason, who had a tense relationship with his motherinlaw, wanted to limit her stay and 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 striking a chord with me because i didnt 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 it . 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. It was one of the side exits of the hotel. One of i guess the fire stairs that go down to the first floor. Was there any other tampering done . Well, the door that was adjacent to where this camera was located, that door also had been propped open that night. How do you know that . The gentleman that was 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 in, so its now working again, and at about 6 35 that morning suddenly that camera is pointing straight at the ceiling. Same camera. Same camera. And its tampered with yet again. If that was jason youngs work, is it possible he did make the 340mile round trip . Could he have killed his wife and cleaned up his daughter all in 7 1 2 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 domes in a tiny place called king, North Carolina. She took one look at that photograph and recognized it instantly. He was the foulmouthed customer, she said, who came storming into the store to complain that the pumps were locked. And what time was it . 5 30 a. M. , the morning of the murder. There was actually an altercation between the two of them, so you have a reason why she would remember him as opposed to any other customer that may have just happened into the store. If that attendant was right, investigators may have undercut jasons alibi. Still, it wasnt enough. So they plodded ahead, painstaking work, took time. And then, years after the murder, they finally got a match for that partial footprint. The state bureau of investigation and the fbi were able to eventually identify that shoe as a hush puppy orbital shoe, and it was a size 12, which was 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, spivey said, he even gave michelles family custody of his daughter. Everyone that we spoke with, all of them 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 toward 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. Verizon knows how to build unlimited right. Start with americas most awarded network. Im on my phone 24 7. Then, for the first time ever, give families more entertainment with disney , hulu, and espn now all included, were a big soccer family. Handmaids tale. I love frozen. Then, give families plans to mix and match, so you only pay for what you need. 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We gotta fight this together. Well emerge from this stronger because we did it together. Im joe biden and i approve this message. Where you can find games, news and highlights. All in one place, right on your tv. The xfinity sports zone. Use your voice to search every stat and score. Follow the teams you love. And, even get notifications with breaking news alerts and more. With the xfinity sports zone everybody wins. Now thats simple, easy, awesome. Say xfinity sports zone into your voice remote today. Jason young went on trial for the murder of his pregnant wife, michelle, in june 2011. By then he had spent 18 months in a jail cell. The guy who lived for tailgates, the guy who loved to party, that guy was long gone. Becky holt was the prosecutor who opened for the state. The defendant had a plan. His plan was to murder his wife. His plan was to get away with it. With no murder weapon found, the prosecutions case was built on that partial shoe print. They knew now that jason once owned a pair of hush puppies like these that matched the print. They were now missing. They also told jurors about that Early Morning visit to the gas station and the suspicious activity at the hotel. But the thrust of their case was this jason young was trying, in the most violent possible way, to get out of a troubled marriage. Were you aware of tensions in that marriage . Yeah. I was well aware. Greta fisher, michelles sister, lived near the couple and for a period was cassidys nanny. As the youngs fights intensified, she took on the role of marriage counselor, too. What would you say were the main issues . Michelles 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, you know, he was upset about the lack of sex in the relationship. And at parties, said fiona childs, jasons xrated tricks were famously over the top. I never observed it myself. I would just hear about it. You know, he would expose himself and do what he thought was these 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 he never bought into the marriage and what all that meant. In october 2006, when michelle was four months pregnant, jason became deeply involved with another woman. And not just any