Michelle’s relationship with her dad hadn’t been easy since her parents divorced many years earlier, but she wanted him to be part of her children’s lives. She was visibly upset—both about his declining health and his inability to come to Raleigh that weekend.
Just then, the pitter patter of little feet could be heard coming down the staircase—Cassidy wasn’t going down without a fight. Michelle excused herself and walked her toddler back up to her room. She tucked her in one final time, gave her a squeeze, and kissed her good night while finishing her conversation with her dad.
Michelle returned to the den and turned on Grey’s Anatomy, which she had been recording on the DVR. The phone rang again, this time with Jason on the other end. Michelle told him she would call back later after Shelly had gone. It was already after 9:00 p.m. when the women were finally able to turn their attention to the doctors and drama on the TV.
Toward the end of the show, Shelly was overcome by an eerie sensation, almost as if they were being watched. She asked Michelle if she was ever scared living in such a secluded area. Her friend replied Jason had mentioned hearing some noises at night recently, and the trailer park behind their home was fully visible in the winter once the trees were bare, which did concern her. But then she remarked, almost casually, “If someone’s going to break in to kill you, they’re going to kill you,” and little could be done to stop them.
Shelly was so spooked by the time she was ready to leave that she asked Michelle to walk her to her car. Michelle slipped on a coat and pair of slippers and stepped out into the driveway with her friend. They traded a warm hug by the car door and parted ways just before 10:30 p.m.
• • • • •
Less than ninety minutes after leaving the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Greensboro, Jason exited Interstate 77 and pulled into the parking lot of the Hampton Inn in the small town of Hillsville, Virginia, a crossroads community near Galax.
The wind was howling more than twenty miles an hour; it was bitter cold, barely above freezing. Though Jason hadn’t booked ahead, he was able to get a room and took the elevator up to the fourth floor. He called Michelle just before 11:00 p.m. They spoke for less than five minutes—just long enough to let her know he had arrived safely and to say good night.
With his laptop out, Jason turned his attention to preparing for his sales meeting the next morning in Clintwood, Virginia, near the Kentucky border. This would be his first solo sales call for his new employer, ChartOne. Though he was a whiz at pharmaceutical sales, he hadn’t yet perfected his pitch for the electronic medical records software ChartOne was selling. He reviewed some materials he planned to use at the sales meeting, made some calls, and looked at sports websites until nearly midnight.
• • • • •
Jason arrived at Dickenson Community Hospital more than thirty minutes late the next morning. He told hospital personnel he had gotten lost on the tricky mountain roads. The meeting was brief. The hospital didn’t seem interested in ChartOne’s software. Jason got directions to Asheville—the largest city between Clintwood and Brevard—stopped for gas, and began the long journey to his childhood home.
En route, he made several phone calls, including one to Michelle’s office at Progress Energy and another to her cell phone. Both calls rolled to voicemail. Jason decided not to leave her a message. He did, however, leave a message for Meredith about the eBay printouts he had neglected to pull off the printer. After not hearing from his sister-in-law for more than an hour, Jason called his mom and asked her to try to connect with Meredith, letting her know how important it was his wife not see those printouts. At 1:37 p.m., Jason placed a second call to Meredith. When that one also rolled to voicemail, he left her another message:
“Hey it’s Jason, just calling you back. I wanted to get an update. And I also want to let you know I called my mom and I gave her that message. My phone has been a total suck up. Don’t know if you heard the whole thing. So, I told her the deal. I think she’s going to try to call you … I tried to call Michelle, but not super aggressively because I want to find out for sure if you’ve taken those papers or not. Anyway, I will talk to you again later. If you get a chance, call me. Bye.”
Pat Young left Meredith a similar message just three minutes later. It was the first time she had ever called Meredith’s cell phone.
After making a quick stop at the Transylvania County Hospital and leaving his business card, Jason pulled up to the familiar site of his boyhood home in Brevard. He slung his suit coat over his shoulder and began walking to the front door.
Something was wrong. His mother and stepfather Gerald were standing in the front yard, holding each other, shock and grief etched into their faces. Jason walked up to them and asked, “Is it Grandma?”
Gerald responded, “No, Jason. It’s Michelle. Michelle is dead.”
Jason instantly dropped to his knees and began to sob. His stepfather had to catch him to prevent him from falling face first into the ground.
Gerald and Pat helped him inside. Jason collapsed onto their recliner, still sobbing. By the time his younger sister Heather and her husband Joe got to the house, Jason was under a blanket, his eyes red and swollen, his face pale, and crumpled-up tissues strewn all around him. Heather began to cry at the sight. She put her arm around her big brother and told him how sorry she was. Michelle was up in heaven, Heather said, with their dad and Jason’s sweet baby boy.
“You’re going to make a good mother for Cassidy,” Jason told her between sobs.
• • • • •
Joe was at the wheel of Jason’s Explorer as the family headed east toward Raleigh, Gerald remaining behind to care for the family’s pets. Jason was in the backseat with his mom, still wearing his dress clothes from his sales meeting that morning. He was slumped over with his head in his mother’s lap. Pat tried her best to console him. At one point, he told her he would surely lose the house because there was no way to pay for it without Michelle’s income.
Pat fielded several calls during the nearly 300-mile journey to Raleigh. After one of them, she told Jason the police had asked, “Are you headed back to Raleigh? Sure as hell better damn be!” He didn’t understand why anyone would be so rude to his mother. Soon it was Meredith calling to let Jason know the police wanted to speak with him and he needed to come to her house because his home was now a crime scene.
It was nearly 11:00 p.m. when the group arrived in Fuquay-Varina, a bedroom community southwest of Raleigh where Meredith was living. When they were about five minutes from her home, Pat fielded a call from Ryan Schaad and Josh Dalton. They were calling to warn Jason investigators were asking a lot of questions and were already pointing at him as the most likely suspect. They told Pat Jason needed to get a lawyer before speaking with anyone. Joe pulled into a parking lot at Applebee’s so they could discuss what to do.
Heather called a Raleigh attorney who was helping her with a personal injury case. Because it was after-hours, no one answered. Just a few minutes later, though, Ryan called back to let Jason know he had secured a high-profile criminal defense lawyer, Roger Smith, who would meet with him on Monday. Until then, Ryan warned, Jason shouldn’t speak with the police.
Jason’s family then headed for Meredith’s home. When they arrived, Meredith and Linda—who had quickly arranged a flight from New York that afternoon—were standing outside by the front door. Ignoring Linda, Jason went straight to Meredith, hugged her, and sobbed. When she reiterated the police wanted to speak with him, her brother-in-law replied he wouldn’t be talking with anyone until he met with his attorney.
“Where’s Cassidy?” he asked.
“In the bedroom,” Meredith answered.
Jason went straight to her bedroom, saw his daughter peacefully asleep in the bed, took off his shoes, and snuggled up next to her.
• • • • •
The following Thursday, nearly 200 of Michelle’s friends and family members gathered for her funeral. Many of them had attended her w
edding just three years earlier. There was nothing but happiness and hope then. Now, they were filled with anguish, sadness, and a profound sense of loss of a life cut short, another never lived, and the smile and grace that had touched so many of them so often. It was excruciatingly painful for Michelle’s family and friends to accept she would no longer be part of their lives.
Jason selected orange and yellow Gerbera daisies for the top of the casket. Those were the flowers Pat and his older sister Kim had scattered across the front yard the day Jason and Michelle brought Cassidy home from the hospital. Jason also had Gerbera daisies planted next to the mailbox when they moved into their Birchleaf Drive home. He knew how much his wife loved them.
As the funeral drew to a close, Jason and his family walked up to the open casket together. Jason dropped to his knees and began to gently rub Michelle’s stomach, his way of saying goodbye to the son he would never get to know. His head slumped, and he cried softly. As he got up, he took a small piece of paper out of his wallet and placed it into his wife’s cold, lifeless hand. It was something Michelle had slipped into his wallet to surprise him before they were married, the words his mom sang to him when he was a boy:
I love you a bushel and a peck
A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck
A hug around the neck and a barrel and a heap
A barrel and a heap and I’m talkin’ in my sleep
About you, about you
‘Cause I love you a bushel and a peck
You bet your purdy neck I do
A doodle oodle oh
A doodle oodle oh doo
4
Michelle Marie Fisher
Sayville is a quaint hamlet located on the south shore of Suffolk County, Long Island, centered nearly precisely between the skyscrapers of Manhattan—some fifty miles to the west—and the luxurious, beachfront homes in The Hamptons—nearly fifty miles to the east. The Great South Bay beachfront, formed by the Atlantic Ocean, serves as the town’s southern boundary. At barely more than five square miles, Sayville provides true small-town charm and comfort. The restaurants and small shops lining
Main Street are a popular draw to a place which, in 1994, was anointed as the “friendliest town in America.” When Michelle Fisher graduated from Sayville High the following year, about 16,000 people called the predominantly white town “home.” Alan Fisher made a good living as an auto dealer. Linda was a schoolteacher at Sayville Junior High, where she taught math and coached the cheerleading team. Alan and Linda had two daughters: Michelle, born in 1977, and Meredith, born in 1980. They lived a middle-class life in a modest home not far from the beach. Like most siblings, Michelle and Meredith could sometimes fight like cats and dogs. Michelle’s weapon of choice was her incredibly strong fingernails. Meredith became quite adept using her teeth to even the odds against her big sister.
Michelle was very nurturing, even as a child. Linda would sometimes find her in her room caring for her Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. She excelled in everything and was one of the most popular kids in school. Linda instilled in her elder daughter the importance of academics, and they came easily to her. She also got both girls into cheering at an early age and proudly coached them at Sayville Junior High.
But all was not hunky-dory at the Fisher home. By the time Michelle was fourteen, her parents lived in separate bedrooms and barely spoke to one another. They had decided to stay together for the sake of their girls, but the fractured relationship was difficult for Michelle and Meredith to ignore. Michelle coped with the acrimony and tension between her parents by pouring her energy into school and her friends.
At Sayville High, not only was she one of the most popular students in her class, Michelle was a member of the National Honor Society, became fluent in Russian and French, co-captained the cheerleading squad, and participated enthusiastically in talent shows and plays. In her senior year, the cheerleading team Michelle led won the Long Island Cheerleading Association’s championship.
By the time Michelle graduated, she had a full semester of college credits racked up from completing AP courses. The pages of her high school yearbook were filled with photos of her in action. Her senior portrait perfectly captured her radiant smile and beautiful, long, lush, brown hair. A common refrain from those who knew her well was that her smile would “light up a room.”
Always the planner, Michelle started contemplating her college selection not long after beginning high school. Using a school computer to help navigate her choices, she narrowed her list to four colleges. Linda took Michelle and Meredith on a road trip to visit each. When they arrived in Raleigh, North Carolina, Michelle and her mother instantly fell in love with N.C. State. With her stellar grades and resume, Michelle had no problem getting in, even though the university admitted very few out-of-state students.
Michelle flourished at N.C. State, earning straight As nearly every semester. It was of little wonder she made the Wolfpack cheering squad as a freshman—she and her pom poms were on the sidelines for football and basketball games during the 1995-96 season. When Michelle was chosen as a cheerleader for the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, she was elated. Her mom couldn’t have been prouder.
The Summer Olympics was both the pinnacle of the decade Michelle devoted to cheering as well as her last hurrah; she decided to focus her remaining time at N.C. State on her studies. That didn’t mean she would stop cheering for the Wolfpack, however. As a student and huge fan, she attended nearly every home football and basketball game throughout her college years.
Without cheering filling so much of her schedule, Michelle decided to rush a sorority in the fall of her sophomore year. On the “rush bus,” she met another girl named Michelle—Michelle Sauter. Not only did they share a name, both were from Long Island. They became fast friends and decided together to join Alpha Delta Pi.
The Michelles formed a clique with three other women in the sorority who affectionately referred to themselves as the “McBroads”—a sisterhood that would continue long after their respective graduations, even as they dispersed as far away as Massachusetts and Florida. As adults, the McBroads communicated frequently, attended one another’s weddings, and got together at least annually for Wolfpack football games or to vacation in Myrtle Beach.
Just before Michelle’s sophomore year, with money Linda obtained from her divorce with Alan, Linda purchased a condo just a few minutes away from the N.C. State campus. Michelle lived there with different combinations of her friends and sorority sisters—including Shelly Doub—until completing her master’s in accounting in 2000 and taking the CPA exam, a four-parter she passed on her first try. She began her accounting career at Deloitte & Touche in downtown Raleigh.
To that point in life, Michelle had succeeded at virtually everything she tried. Quitting was not in her vocabulary. Once she committed to taking something on, she was “all in.”
“She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She was determined, She was completely Type A, so much so that we called her the ‘camp director,’” Shelly would later say.
As she began to chart her career as an accountant, the only blemish in Michelle’s life seemed to be her tattered relationship with her father. After Alan and Linda divorced in June of 1995—just as Michelle was graduating from high school—she and her father maintained some semblance of a relationship. But that changed quickly after he married June, his second wife, who Michelle would soon refer to as her “evil step-monster.” For reasons that never became clear to Michelle, June detested her and forbade her to enter the New Jersey home she and Michelle’s father shared. Faced with the choice between his new wife and his first-born, Alan chose the former. As a result, Michelle had very little contact with her dad thereafter. A new man, however, would soon enter her life.
• • • • •
In February 2001, Michelle celebrated her 24th birthday with Shelly and some friends at the Pour House, a downtown Raleigh watering hole. Jason Young was at the bar, hanging out
with some of his old college friends. While horsing around with the guys, he accidentally knocked over Michelle’s glass of wine. He offered to buy her another glass and they began to talk. They discovered they were both recent N.C. State graduates and passionate Wolfpack fans.
Though there were no fireworks that night, there was certainly a spark. At the time, Jason was living with his mother and stepfather in Brevard while working as a salesman for Black & Decker. It wasn’t long, though, before he was making frequent weekend trips to Raleigh to spend time with Michelle. Jason ultimately decided to move back to Raleigh and rented a townhome with his friend Ryan Schaad.
He got a job as a pharmaceutical sales representative with Pan American Labs.
If ever there were a couple that epitomized the idiom “opposites attract,” it was Michelle and Jason—Michelle, the pretty, brunette city girl with a thick, New York accent; Jason, the handsome, blond mountain boy with a pronounced Southern drawl.
Ever the consummate planner, Michelle was attracted to Jason’s wild and whimsical nature, his incessant practical jokes, and how he flew by the seat of his pants. His “bad boy” image and penchant for vulgarity somehow added to his appeal. Though he often acted more like a college frat boy than a man several years removed from school, Michelle enjoyed the playfulness and charisma that always made Jason the life of the party.
Pat Young very much enjoyed meeting Michelle, finding her to be just as beautiful as Jason had described, with a lovely smile and great personality. Michelle sat in Pat’s kitchen and the two chatted about their common interest in cooking. She seemed completely at ease talking with her new boyfriend’s mom about her childhood, cheerleading, and growing up. Pat felt an instant connection.
Murder on Birchleaf Drive Page 3