The second floor was an altogether different story. Cassidy’s bloody footprints were all over the upstairs landing and her bathroom floor, including on a step-stool in front of her sink and on a green bathmat. Blood was smeared on the walls of her bathroom at toddler height, including behind where the open bathroom door would have come to rest.
Bloody footprints were visible on that corner of the floor. Logically, at some point following the murder, the toddler had been in the bathroom with the door closed. One of her bloody socks was on the bathroom floor along with a yellow hooded towel that also contained blood. A drop of blood was found on the side of her bathtub and another on a white towel. Yet there was no evidence of any blood within the bathtub, toilet, or sink.
There was little doubt Michelle had been attacked in her own bed—blood on the bed linens had dripped down onto the floor. Close by, just to the left of Jason’s closet doorway near Michelle’s side of the bed and about a foot above the floor, an oval-shaped gouge had been notched into the wall. The gouge mark appeared to be freshly made and included a fresh deposit of blood.
On the floor directly beneath the gouge mark, running along the baseboard and extending into the closet doorway, a large pool of partially coagulated blood had soaked through the carpet. Splotches and spattering of blood dotted the wall, baseboard, and door molding between the gouge mark and the floor.
Michelle’s body was lying—facedown—diagonally across the floor with her head pressed up against Jason’s open closet door, where a second thick pool of blood had formed under her severely battered face. Her legs were angled toward the middle of the bed. She was wearing black sweatpants and a white zip-up hooded sweatshirt with red and pink stripes rimming the bottom. A small patch of skin was visible below her sweatshirt, which was hiked up just above her left hip.
Michelle’s left elbow and forearm were lying at the edge of the pool of blood directly beneath the oval gouge mark, the left sleeve of her sweatshirt soaked in blood. In her left hand—resting palm up by her waist against a decorative pillow—was a single strand of hair, caked in blood. A larger clump of hair was sandwiched between her body and the carpeting. Michelle’s right arm was stretched beneath her body, with her right hand resting underneath, and just beyond, her left elbow, palm facing upward, fingers curled in.
Michelle’s feet were bare, her right foot under the bed and her left foot resting against her right leg. A pink-and-white sock was found on the floor near her left leg. Decorative pillows of various shapes, sizes, and colors were strewn about on the floor to the left of her body and near the foot of the bed.
Cassidy’s dark red, bloody footprints covered the carpeting just inside of Jason’s closet doorway. One of her baby dolls was lying outside the door opening with its head placed inches from Michelle’s. The child had likely been standing just inside her father’s closet when she placed the baby doll in that position.
After investigators moved Michelle’s body and closed Jason’s closet door, it became apparent the blood spatter pattern on the wall next to the closet continued onto the exterior surface of the door. It appeared she had been beaten while the door was closed. Her killer must have moved her body to open the door.
What perhaps were the most important clues were left on a rectangular, white, embroidered pillow found next to the footboard beside Michelle’s side of the bed. Investigators discovered two distinct adult-sized, bloody shoeprints on the surface of the pillow.
They also discovered that two of the three drawers from Michelle’s wooden jewelry box, which was on top of a dresser near the bedroom’s entrance—beside a framed wedding photo of Jason and Michelle kissing—had been removed. The only other items noted to be missing were Michelle’s engagement and wedding rings, which weren’t on her ring finger. Nor were they found anywhere in the house.
In the master bathroom, crime-scene investigators used a chemical—phenolphthalein—which enhances traces of blood the naked eye is unable to detect. They fully expected one of the dual sinks, bathtub, or shower to reveal evidence of blood, if not the assailant’s bloody fingerprints.
But to their surprise, they couldn’t detect even a speck of blood anywhere in the bathroom. The only bloody fingerprints investigators found anywhere in the house belonged to Cassidy. Every drop of the blood found at the house—including on the downstairs kitchen doorknob—was confirmed to be Michelle’s.
Investigators did find the eBay printouts Jason had asked Meredith to retrieve. Just as his voicemail had indicated, they were lying on the printer in the second-floor office. The only other clue investigators initially found significant was a garden hose in the middle of the concrete pathway by the back deck. Water was trickling out the nozzle and a small patch of the pathway was wet. But not a single drop of blood was found on the hose, deck, or pathway. And despite their best efforts, investigators’ search for a murder weapon—at 5108 Birchleaf Drive or anywhere in the neighborhood—came up empty.
• • • • •
The autopsy left little doubt that Michelle had been beaten repeatedly—and forcefully. It also revealed the 29-year-old pregnant mother actively defended herself and struggled with her assailant, before finally succumbing to the brutality of the attack. Her right hand was covered in scrapes and bruises. Her left arm had bruising from the forearm down to the thumb and fingers. The Medical Examiner was certain these injuries resulted from Michelle trying to fight off the blows.
His report noted Michelle’s head sustained more than twenty separate blunt-force injuries. Lacerations were found all over the back of her head—some as long as four inches, and a few deep enough to expose her skull. Others, also very deep, were noted on the left side of her head, the longest just shy of four inches. The Medical Examiner concluded that, based on the crescent shape of the lacerations, the attacker’s weapon was a heavy, blunt object with a rounded surface.
The blows fractured Michelle’s skull in multiple places and resulted in hemorrhaging of her brain. She suffered another blow to the front of her face, resulting in both her lips being cut and several teeth being knocked out. She was hit so hard across her left jaw that there was a clean break of her jaw bone through her skin.
The Medical Examiner also documented extensive hemorrhaging to the soft tissue on Michelle’s neck, around her thyroid gland—leading him to conclude her killer had tried to strangle her. Fingernail marks visible on the left side of her neck, he believed, were made by Michelle’s own fingers, as she desperately tried to free herself from her assailant’s choke-hold.
Despite the enormity of the beating inflicted on Michelle, the autopsy revealed no evidence of sexual assault. She was wearing panties beneath her sweatpants. Not a single scratch or bruise was detected anywhere below her neck.
Though the Medical Examiner was able to determine the cause of death—blunt-force injury to Michelle’s head—he was unable to determine the time of death. Based on her body temperature and the degree to which her blood had coagulated, Michelle had clearly succumbed to her injuries several hours before her sister arrived around 1:15 p.m. that afternoon. But beyond that, it wasn’t possible to determine when.
• • • • •
Ryan Schaad and Josh Dalton were correct—investigators had begun to focus on Jason as the primary suspect long before he arrived at Meredith’s home the evening of November 3. Within seconds of his arrival, uniformed Sheriff’s deputies seized his Ford Explorer and brought it to downtown Raleigh to conduct a thorough search. They expected it to be chock-full of clues linking Jason to the murder scene.
But it wasn’t. Once again, investigators relied on phenolphthalein to assist them in detecting traces of blood. Yet after hours of scouring the vehicle, not a single drop was found. Not inside the Explorer. Not on its exterior surface. And not on or inside of Jason’s luggage, its contents, or any of his family’s luggage.
Investigators did find several pieces of paper inside the SUV—the MapQuest directions Jason had printed prior to leaving for Vir
ginia, three different gas receipts, a check-out receipt from the Hampton Inn, and the weekend edition of the USA Today newspaper, which bore a sticker from the hotel. They also found a Rand McNally road atlas opened to a page that showed Virginia and North Carolina highways. A handwritten telephone number at the top of the page was determined to be Meredith’s cell phone number.
• • • • •
Now that investigators knew the exact location of Jason’s hotel, a group was dispatched to Hillsville, Virginia. They arrived the afternoon of November 4 and began interviewing the hotel manager and staff. To the extent Jason had an alibi, it was the hotel. Investigators therefore wanted to learn everything they could about his arrival on November 2, the time of his departure, and everything he did in between.
The hotel was 169 miles from the Youngs’ Raleigh home. Detectives had already determined from cell phone records that Jason’s phone pinged a cell phone tower in Wytheville, Virginia—27 miles northwest of Hillsville—at 7:40 a.m. on November 3.
Based on the distance between Hillsville and Raleigh, it would have taken Jason at least six hours to drive to Raleigh to commit the murder, return to the Hampton Inn long enough to retrieve the check-out receipt and newspaper, and then to drive on to Wytheville.
Investigators needed to confirm the last time he could be placed at the hotel and determine whether that timeline left even the slightest possibility Jason could have been Michelle’s killer.
They also wanted to determine if any evidence from the murder scene—blood in particular—could be detected in his hotel room. But a search of Room 421, which had been assigned to Jason upon his arrival, turned up no such evidence, even aided by the use of phenolphthalein.
Though the room had been cleaned by maid service prior to the investigators’ arrival, the chemical should have permitted them to detect trace amounts of blood had any been deposited the prior day.
Security video captured by surveillance cameras revealed that Jason first appeared at the hotel’s front desk between 10:49 p.m. and 10:51 p.m. on November 2. The grainy, black-and-white video showed him wearing a light-colored, long-sleeved, pullover shirt with buttons from the mid-chest area to his neck. He arrived at his room at 10:56 p.m., which was the only time he used his plastic keycard to unlock the door.
At 11:59 p.m., security video revealed Jason at the front desk a second time, wearing a different shirt—a dark-colored, long-sleeved, pullover shirt with a light-colored, thin stripe across the chest.
Less than a minute later, another security camera captured him headed toward the side exit at the western end of the hotel, adjacent to a stairwell. That was the last time Jason’s presence at the hotel could be documented—right at midnight. That left him a little over seven and a half hours to have driven to Raleigh, committed the murder, returned to Hillsville, and driven as far as Wytheville. Very possible, the detectives reasoned.
Additional evidence discovered at the hotel made this scenario even more plausible. At about 5:00 a.m. on November 3, a hotel employee discovered that a small red landscaping rock had been placed in the door jamb at the western emergency exit to prevent the door from closing.
He kicked the rock out and the door latched closed. There was a sign next to the glass door beside the emergency exit door that let guests know they would need a keycard to reenter the hotel through that door between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. If Jason had wanted to avoid using his keycard upon returning to the hotel following the murder—had he anticipated returning prior to 6:00 a.m.—keeping the emergency exit door propped open would certainly have allowed him to do so.
Another discovery by hotel employees that morning further intrigued investigators. The security camera in the western stairwell—just a few feet from that same emergency exit door—had been unplugged.
The last image that camera produced prior to the morning of November 3 was at 11:20 p.m. on November 2—about twenty minutes after Jason entered his room. The camera had apparently been unplugged from then until a hotel employee plugged it back in at 5:50 a.m. on November 3.
Less than an hour later, however, the same camera was tampered with a second time. From 5:50 a.m. until 6:34 a.m., it appeared to be functioning properly and produced a running stream of video footage of the western stairwell. But at 6:35 a.m., the camera suddenly began capturing footage of the ceiling.
When a hotel employee went to investigate the problem, it appeared to him as if someone had shoved the camera upward toward the ceiling. The employee repositioned the camera to face the stairwell, and it worked perfectly well thereafter.
If Jason had returned to the hotel at about 6:35 a.m., he could have walked through the glass door without using a keycard, pushed the camera toward the ceiling, and taken the stairs to his fourth-floor room without being detected. And if he had made sure not to let the door to his room lock when he left the prior evening, he could have reentered the room without needing his keycard to unlock the door. While at the hotel, investigators confirmed it was possible to make the door to Room 421 appear to be closed without causing it to lock.
The hotel had no record of Jason checking out, but it wasn’t uncommon for guests to leave without taking the time to check out at the front desk. Check-out receipts were slipped under guests’ doors between 3:00-5:00 a.m. A USA Today newspaper was hung on the outside handle of each guest’s door in the same time frame.
If Jason had returned to the hotel at around 6:35 a.m.—after driving back from Raleigh—both would have been there waiting for him. He would then have had more than thirty minutes to shower, shave, gather his belongings, and drive the 27 miles to Wytheville by 7:40 a.m.
• • • • •
There was a significant problem with this theory, however. Math. And fuel. Chronologically, the first gas receipt found in Jason’s Explorer was from a Handy Hugo near downtown Raleigh at 7:32 p.m. on November 2. The second was from a Get-It Mart in Duffield, Virginia at 12:06 p.m. on November 3. Investigators didn’t find any evidence of fuel purchases between those two points in time.
Yet it simply wasn’t possible for one 22.5-gallon tank of gas—the size of the Explorer’s gas tank—to have lasted Jason the 532 miles he would have traveled between 7:32 p.m. on November 2 and 12:06 p.m. on November 3 if the investigators’ theory were correct.
In that time, Jason would have made two 169-mile round trips between Raleigh and Hillsville, a 144-mile trip from Hillsville to Clintwood, and a final 50-mile trip from Clintwood to Duffield. Jason’s Explorer likely would have run out of fuel before making it back to the hotel the second time. If investigators were going to prove their theory, they had to find a gas station at which Jason had refueled between Raleigh and Hillsville, likely between 4:00-6:00 a.m. on November 3.
So on Monday, November 6, several Sheriff’s investigators were dispatched to canvass gas stations along the main highways between Raleigh and Hillsville. Armed with photos of Jason and his Ford Explorer, they spoke with every gas station manager and cashier they could find who was on duty between 4:00-6:00 a.m. on November 3. They were hoping someone would recall a 30ish-year-old white male in a white Explorer who used cash that morning to buy gas. Miraculously, they hit pay dirt within hours.
Gracie Dahms Bailey was a cashier at the Four Brothers BP station on Highway 52 in King, North Carolina, just north of Winston-Salem, and about fifty minutes south of the Hampton Inn. She was on duty during the early morning hours of November 3. When Sheriff’s investigators asked whether she remembered a man filling up a white SUV early that morning—and paying with cash—she answered without any hesitation or equivocation. “Yes, I do,” she replied.
The convenience-store worker told investigators a man had pulled his white SUV up to the pump farthest away from the store and repeatedly tried to get the pump to work. When he couldn’t, the man came into the store—frustrated and angry—and cursed at her for refusing to cut the pump on.
Bailey explained to him, at that time of day, she needed customers to provide
identification, or cash or a credit card, before she was permitted to turn on the pumps. The man threw a $20 bill at her and went back outside while she activated the gas pump. He filled his SUV with only $15 worth of gas and quickly drove off, Bailey said, without returning for his change.
Investigators showed her a photograph of Jason. “That’s the man!” Bailey exclaimed. She told them she remembered him vividly because no customer had ever cursed at her like that. His language made such an impression she couldn’t forget the early-morning incident.
As they looked through the store’s receipts to confirm her account, the investigators discovered one cash purchase of gas at 5:27 a.m. for $15 and a second at 5:36 a.m. for $20. One of those, they believed, was Jason’s.
That timing fit neatly within their working timeline, which had Jason tampering with the Hampton Inn’s western stairwell security camera about an hour later. More importantly, if Jason had been purchasing gas in King, North Carolina at about 5:30 a.m. on November 3, the only logical explanation for his being there was that he was on his way back to the hotel after killing his wife.
• • • • •
Revelations from the Hampton Inn and Four Brothers BP station weren’t the only puzzle pieces that began falling into place during the investigation’s first few days. Jason’s cell phone records provided a bonanza of additional information—much of it incriminating. It wasn’t terribly surprising that the most frequently called and texted telephone number listed in those records belonged to a woman named Michelle. Yet that particular phone number wasn’t the one assigned to Michelle Young. Rather, it belonged to Michelle Young’s sorority sister and fellow McBroad, Michelle Money.
Murder on Birchleaf Drive Page 6