Murder on Birchleaf Drive

by Steven B Epstein

  “We’ve learned that … he didn’t want his mother-in-law to live with him. That he and his wife argued a lot and that he made 28 phone calls to his mother on November 3. None of those things have any significance in and of themselves,” he insisted.

  “And I’m arguing to you,” Collins continued, “that the State is stringing together a bunch of innocuous events and trying to tell you that they mean something and that we somehow have convenient excuses for them. That’s what you do when you don’t have physical evidence. It’s called hindsight, and it’s not 20/20 in this case.”

  He suggested what the prosecutors had done was akin to taking video footage of Michael Jordan and stringing together his worst moments on the basketball court. “What if you put together a highlight reel of every time Michael Jordan missed a shot? Or every time he dribbled the basketball off his foot, or missed a pass, or fell out of bounds, or fouled somebody, and that’s all you showed somebody who has never met Michael Jordan. You’d think he was a terrible basketball player, ‘cause you hadn’t seen the whole picture.”

  Michael Jordan also became famous for his shoes, and, perhaps for that reason, Collins next transitioned to the shoe evidence. He suggested that Agent Morrow was actually a great witness. “You have to give her credit for her honesty because she admitted to you that the quality of the footwear impressions that she found that have anything to do with the Hush Puppy type shoe were poor.”

  He noted she had conceded the print could have been made by a Sealy, a Belleville, an Orbital, or “none of the above.” Its size could have been 11, 12, or 13.

  “She just doesn’t know and admitted, ‘I was not able to make a match.’ As she said ten times in her report, Collins reminded jurors, “Due to the limited detail, a more conclusive comparison could not be made. Limited detail, according to her, means no match. No match, I argue to you, is no evidence.”

  The defense lawyer then pivoted to his client’s decision not to cooperate with the police or talk with anyone. He argued Michelle’s death “broke him on the inside.” And when a traumatic event like that happens, he suggested, you rely on friends and family for guidance. Ryan Schaad, one of Jason’s best friends, told him the police were pointing a finger at him and that he needed to get a lawyer. “And then the lawyer said, ‘Don’t talk to anybody,’ and that’s what he did. And that’s all that evidence means.”

  Turning to the confounding enigma of Cassidy’s appearance the afternoon of November 3, Collins told the jury it was an “unanswered question that I don’t guess we’ll ever have the answer to.”

  She was two years old and “yet she was shockingly clean. She wasn’t wearing a diaper. No diaper for nine and a half hours and yet she did not have urine on her, she didn’t have any fecal matter on her, there was no urine in the bed, there was no fecal matter in the bed.”

  There “was blood all over that child at some point and yet she’s shockingly clean.”

  “How long must it have taken for someone to clean her up,” he asked, “and how many times must someone have changed her diaper and taken care of her? And how could that have possibly been Jason Young in the time he had to do that?”

  Collins connected Cassidy’s shockingly clean appearance to the different vehicles spotted at the house that morning. One between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. Another between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. And a third as late as 7:30 a.m., which was the account of Fay Hinsley, whose testimony was submitted to the jury through a written stipulation.

  Did the presence of those vehicles explain how Cassidy was cleaned up? Collins reminded the jury the last two vehicles clearly had nothing to do with Jason, who was in or near Wytheville, Virginia at 7:40 a.m. that morning.

  He then focused on the other enigma—Mr. Garrison. “The dog could have come and gone at will and yet that dog was clean as a whistle, and even more importantly, there’s no sign inside that house anywhere that a dog was in any blood … How can that be? Think about how long it would take a person to clean a dog up who had all that blood. Who took care of Mr. Garrison?” he pondered. “What happened to Mr. Garrison? How can that be? Think about that circumstance.”

  Collins then guessed the State would argue his client had help in pulling off the murder. “I argue to you that that borders on the ridiculous based on the evidence that you’ve heard, based on their forecast of the evidence about how he had this plan and he went in there and strangled her and then beat her to death.”

  There was all kinds of evidence, he insisted, that Jason was alone—at the Handy Hugo, the Cracker Barrel, and the Hampton Inn. There were no unexplained phone calls, emails, or texts. Was he acting in concert with his own mother—or with Meredith? Collins asked facetiously.

  He then pulled up a PowerPoint presentation on a TV monitor to walk the jury through Jason’s travels on November 2 and 3 and his use of gas.

  “I’ve thought about this for a long time,” Collins said.

  Pointing to the screen, he traced Jason’s travels from the Handy Hugo in Raleigh, to the Cracker Barrel in Greensboro, and to the Hampton Inn in Hillsville and calculated the mileage.

  “Gets up to the Hampton Inn, he heads to Clintwood, he gets turned around a little bit, and then he gets to Clintwood. The actual distance between the Hampton Inn and Clintwood is 145 miles. I’m guessing—estimating—that it was twenty miles that he got lost.” Following his meeting he stops in Duffield and purchases 19.452 gallons of gas. “So in that trip, correct my math if I’m wrong, but I think that’s right: 380.3 miles on 19.452 gallons of gas. That’s 19.55 miles per gallon.”

  He then traced his client’s travels on his second tank of gas—to the Transylvania Regional Hospital, his mother’s house, and then to Burlington, where his brother-in-law Joe purchased 18.441 gallons of gas after traveling 359.8 miles. The gas mileage on that tank of gas—amazingly—was 19.54, almost identical to his first tank. Collins acknowledged this was Jason’s version of events, but suggested the exact match had to make his version of events correct.

  He then pulled up slides tracking the prosecution’s theory about Jason’s gas usage. “We start at Handy Hugo’s with a full tank of gas. We go to the Cracker Barrel. We go to the Hampton Inn … We go back to the house … and then we head back to the Hampton Inn to try to cover ourselves with this alibi and we get to Four Brothers.”

  He calculated 458.7 miles on that first tank of gas. “That’s 20.386 miles to the gallon, and that doesn’t seem like a whole lot more than 19 and a half until you do this math: he would have run out of gas 18.8 miles before he got there and been sitting on the side of the road. Okay?”

  Collins calculated that under the State’s theory, Jason would have purchased 6.944 gallons of gas at the Four Brothers gas station, based on a $15 purchase at the price that day of $2.16 per gallon. From that point, Jason would have traveled another 260.6 miles until he filled up again in Duffield “on less than seven gallons of gas. That’s 37.53 miles a gallon. That’s not what happened. There’s no way that that happened,” he argued.

  Content he had disproven the State’s theory about Jason’s travels, Collins put the PowerPoint aside and, one by one, addressed arguments he expected the prosecutors to make.

  “You’re likely to hear how beautiful and how smart and how wonderful, caring, and great a mother Michelle Young was and we agree with that—all of that. You may hear that she was a shining light that’s been brutally extinguished. That’s true. You may hear how tragic and how sad all of this is and that’s true.” He agreed, “This case is awful. It’s sad and it’s awful and that doesn’t have anything to do with who killed her.”

  He predicted the prosecution team would ask what happened to the Hush Puppies Orbitals. “To that I say to you, where’s the blood in the Ford Explorer?” And if they were to raise the missing shirt from the Hampton Inn, Collins continued, “To that I say to you, where’s the blood on the blue jeans? You may hear about Gracie Dahms Bailey. To that I say to you, Cindy Beaver. Cindy Beaver, the neighbor who saw two
people leaving the Youngs’ home at 5:30 that morning and who was relentlessly challenged for her statement.”

  “You may hear, ‘Use your common sense,’” he told jurors. “I invite you to use your common sense. I practically beg you to use your common sense. But that doesn’t mean fill in the gaps. That doesn’t mean, ‘Help us with the evidence that we don’t have.’ That’s not like winking at you and saying, ‘Well, you know, who else could have done it? Use your common sense.’ That’s not what ‘use your common sense’ means.”

  Nearing the end, the Public Defender’s passion reached a crescendo: “You may hear that these lawyers represent the People of the State of North Carolina. They really represent the Government of the State of North Carolina. You are the People of the State of North Carolina. As taxpayers, you pay for this courthouse. You pay for the chair you’re sitting in. You don’t owe your government anything other than to follow the law, which you have sworn to do.”

  Collins recognized jurors might have “unanswered questions. You might not be convinced that he’s innocent.” For that reason, he drilled home the State’s burden of proof, noting they could find Jason guilty only if they were “fully satisfied” and “entirely convinced” of his guilt. “That’s following the law, as all of you promised that you would do. It’s your duty. It’s that law that will let you come back in here and render your verdict with your head held high, not owing any person an apology. You can do that proudly and with confidence that you have done your duty and done it right, and no one will fault you.”

  With that, he paused, and with a solemn expression, uttered the final words the jury would hear from the defense, “We will never know what happened at 5108 Birchleaf Drive that night. We’re just never going to know. This case is not solved. The evidence is not clear. Do your duty and find Jason Young not guilty. Thank you.”

  Collins sat down. Together he and Klinkosum had covered a lot of ground, raising doubt after doubt about the State’s evidence. They had done their level best to push the needle toward acquittal. The prosecutors had their work cut out for them if they were to convince all twelve jurors that there was no reasonable doubt—that Jason was the one who had killed his beautiful wife.

  David Saacks went first, beginning his argument by displaying an enlarged photo of Michelle—with her radiant smile—on the TV monitor.

  “Michelle is no longer with us,” he said, in a somber tone. “She can’t tell us anymore what happened to her on that night. She was taken from us. She was taken from us way too soon in a truly brutal and vicious way. There will be no football games for Michelle Young. There will be no McBroads’ trips. There will be no more megawatt smile from this beautiful young lady.”

  He argued the case was “exponentially worse” because Cassidy was in the house, found her mother in a pool of blood, and walked through her blood. He tugged on jurors’ heart strings when he described Cassidy laying her baby doll next to her mom to comfort her. And even more, when he reminded them Michelle was five months pregnant with Rylan.

  Saacks focused next on the autopsy results. “Dr. Clark told you it had to be at least, at least thirty different, distinct blows. Thirty … And that there had to be a weapon used, the skull fractures, back and the side—that couldn’t be caused except for a weapon being used. You saw when they shaved her head, the nature of a lot of those wounds, and some of them cutting down all the way to the skull.”

  To him, Michelle’s jaw fracture was “absolutely amazing”—she had been struck with such force the bone had come through her skin, making it appear as if she had been stabbed from the bottom of her face. “There was a weapon used and she was beaten mercilessly,” the prosecutor asserted.

  The brutality of the crime, the Assistant DA contended, made clear that it wasn’t a robbery. “This crime speaks of a personal and passionate nature.” It was “clear overkill” by an assailant who wanted Michelle dead. “What intruder,” he asked rhetorically, “would come in and continue and continue and continue to beat on her when she’s down on the floor by that closet?” What intruder, he pondered, would leave a witness in the house completely unharmed? This “was a targeted killing. This was a planned and intentional murder. Whoever did this, just from seeing Michelle in that room, you know wanted Michelle dead.”

  Saacks then addressed each of the key points Klinkosum and Collins had made. The blood evidence actually pointed to Jason’s guilt, he argued. He reminded the jury how the blood spatter in the bedroom established that Jason’s closet door was closed during the attack, but had to have been opened afterward.

  “What killer would have a reason to go into that closet?” he asked. The answer was obvious: Jason. The defendant, he posited, would have had blood all over his clothing following the murder and therefore needed to get into his closet to change into clean clothes. An intruder, on the other hand, wouldn’t have needed to get into Jason’s closet.

  The prosecutor turned Collins’ focus on Mr. Garrison on its head, asking, “What unknown intruder would come into the house and do all this with a big Labrador just sitting there?” The killer must have known the dog personally, he argued, so that it “would not go crazy, would not be barking, would not be trying to protect Michelle, would go into a room when asked or ordered to, would not be walking around in this pool of blood and making tracks all over the place.” The killer, he insisted, had to be someone Mr. G knew and trusted.

  Saacks then pivoted to the absence of blood in Jason’s Explorer, suggesting he had gotten clean clothes from his closet. He reminded jurors Michelle’s blood was found on the kitchen doorknob and that garbage bags were conveniently located in the garage on the other side of that door.

  He pointed to the running garden hose found by the back deck. Saacks theorized Jason had washed his hands, shoes, and perhaps even Cassidy’s feet with the garden hose, and the blood on the ground would have washed away during the nine plus hours the hose was left running.

  He disagreed with Klinkosum’s contention Jason’s body bore no evidence of a struggle, pointing to the bruise on his left big toe. Because the bruise was at the base of the toenail, it was new, Saacks asserted, and is exactly what would be expected if Jason had been using a weapon to beat Michelle and had inadvertently struck himself on the way down.

  The absence of scratches or bruises on Jason’s arms and legs, he suggested, was easily explained by his clothing. “The only thing not covered are face and hands, okay?” Since he was using a weapon, rather than his fists, there was no reason for his hands to have been scratched or bruised. And he certainly could have been wearing gloves, Saacks argued. “Yes, there are no marks but the one on the defendant. Does that mean he could not have done it? Absolutely not.”

  The prosecutor next addressed the enigma of Cassidy’s shockingly clean appearance, first noting she was potty trained and knew how to take off her own diaper. He hypothesized the smearing of blood on her bathroom walls likely was from her feet, not her hands. “Nobody’s saying she’s Spiderman, right. She’s laying on her back and just hitting her feet on the wall or playing, messing around. That’s what’s on the wall. It’s not hands,” he contended. “It’s feet.”

  Responding to Klinkosum’s argument about the lack of carpet fibers from the Hampton Inn at the murder scene, Saacks told the jury, “There’s a common saying in the forensic world that says ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’”

  Hotel carpet fibers, he asserted, wouldn’t have been transferred into the house because hotel rooms are cleaned and vacuumed daily. Fibers would therefore not collect on a guest’s shoes. But even if they had, once the guest walks outside, across the parking lot, and into his car, he argued, the chances of the fibers being transferred to another location were actually quite small.

  He attempted to explain away the mysterious DNA on the jewelry box, noting LabCorp was provided only two known standards to test against—Jason’s and Michelle’s. And it found a mixture that didn’t belong to either. LabCorp didn’t tr
y to determine if the DNA belonged to anyone else. Saacks told jurors they could ignore the DNA on the cigarette butts and hair on the picture frame because not a single witness told them when or where those items were collected. The DNA on the jewelry box could have been from the salesman who sold it, the cigarettes from a repairman, and the hair from a party-goer, he argued.

  Turning to evidence from the Hampton Inn, the Assistant DA speculated the DNA on the water pipe and camera probably came from Elmer Goad, the maintenance man who got on the ladder to fix the camera and had to steady himself while doing so. LabCorp, he reminded jurors, didn’t have Goad’s DNA to test against. More importantly, however, and not mentioned at all by Jason’s lawyers, was the landscaping rock from near the emergency exit door. That rock was also sent to LabCorp—and it had DNA on it matching Jason’s—Saacks contended, embellishing the forensic testimony on that point.

  The prosecutor shifted his focus to Jason’s testimony that he left his room door open—with his keycard in his room—when he left the hotel to go to his car. He argued that was “amazing in and of itself for someone who is such a frequent traveler such as he, to walk out of a hotel room, knowing that you had your computer and your phone and your clothes and everything else in your room not to take your key with you and close the door.”

  Equally incredible, Saacks contended, was his story about grabbing a twig from a nearby bush to prop the door open. In a mocking tone, he suggested Jason was “Mr. Fantastic” to have stretched that far. “Wouldn’t it be easier, and wouldn’t it be quicker, if he did what the evidence shows, and that is, come through this door and just grab a loose rock and catch the door before it closes back to hold it open?”

  As for Jason’s testimony he was eating breakfast in the lobby that morning, Saacks asked, incredulously, “Where on Earth in any of the surveillance footage that you saw did you see him coming out a second time or eating breakfast in the lobby area?” And if he had left the hotel twice, as he testified, why was there security camera footage of him leaving just one time?