Murder on Birchleaf Drive

by Steven B Epstein

  When she first moved to North Carolina and didn’t have a car, Meredith said, she had been borrowing one of brother-in-law’s cars. “I would smoke cigarettes in there to or from work and he was not happy about that,” she told jurors. “I had never seen him smoke and, you know, family functions that people go outside and smoke a cigarette or a cigar or whatever, he had never joined anyone that was smoking.”

  Returning to the custody situation, Holt asked what efforts the defendant had made to contact and visit with Cassidy since he had been released from jail in late July 2011. Meredith testified Jason first spoke with Cassidy by phone at the end of August. His first supervised visit with her, she said, didn’t occur until October 16. Eight such visits had occurred—every other Sunday afternoon for one hour.

  During his cross-examination, Collins asked Meredith if her sister made it a practice “to gather up old clothing and donate it to charity”—an attempt to bolster Jason’s testimony that his wife had probably donated his Hush Puppies Orbital shoes prior to the murder. Meredith agreed it wasn’t unusual for Michelle to bag up and donate old clothing.

  The Public Defender asked her about the custody lawsuit she and Linda had filed against Jason. Surprisingly, he read aloud the complaint’s allegation that, “In the early morning hours of November the 3, 2006 the defendant brutally murdered Marie Fisher Young at their residence.”

  “You swore that was true in 2008, right?” he asked.

  “Correct,” Meredith answered.

  “And he wasn’t even charged with the murder at that time, was he?”

  “Not yet, no,” the prosecution witness agreed.

  Collins pressed her. “You knew he wasn’t going to answer this lawsuit, didn’t you?”

  Meredith responded she really didn’t know if he would, but had “a feeling he wouldn’t.”

  Jason’s lawyer also pushed back on Meredith’s testimony that his client had little contact with his daughter after being released from jail. He got her to agree that, as part of his conditions of release, Jason was ordered not to have any contact with either her or Linda.

  She agreed if Jason had called them, he would have gone back to jail. And in contrast to the picture she painted during her direct examination, Collins had Meredith confirm Jason actually asked to visit with Cassidy every Sunday, rather than every other Sunday.

  “And you said no?” he asked.

  “We kept with the custody order as close as we could. Every other weekend,” she responded.

  Collins spent considerable time going through Meredith’s 911 call to emergency dispatchers, pointing out several answers she provided that didn’t directly address the questions she was being asked. Picking up on that topic, on redirect examination, Holt focused Meredith on her statement to the dispatcher that Cassidy was “very smart for her age. She’s two and a half, but I think that she’s saying that there was somebody in the house.”

  “What was going on that led you to say that?” the prosecutor asked.

  In a brand-new revelation, Meredith responded that while she was on the phone with the dispatcher, Cassidy “referenced her father and then, when I asked her further questions, she was saying ‘he.’” As they sat together in the fire truck that afternoon, Meredith testified, she asked her niece additional questions, and Cassidy “continued to talk about her father.”

  • • • • •

  The first few days of the retrial also included testimony from Hampton Inn employees, who provided the second jury similar information as in the first trial, including about the rock that propped open the emergency exit door and the tampering with the western stairwell security camera. But the new jury also heard, from Howard Cummings’ direct examination of the hotel’s general manager, that November 3, 2006, wasn’t the first time that camera had been tampered with. The general manager said sometime before then, the camera had been “knocked up” when some people were sneaking in and out of that hallway exit door.

  Shelly Schaad testified about her interactions with Michelle—and Jason—the evening before the murder, as well as the weekend of her wedding a few weeks earlier. Under Holt’s questioning, she also provided some interesting new details. The evening she learned of Michelle’s death, Shelly testified, she and Ryan had gone over to Meredith’s house to comfort Jason and his family. When she entered the bedroom where Jason was lying in bed with Cassidy, Jason got up and hugged her. His words, though, were peculiar.

  “I’m so sorry,” he told her.

  As in the first trial, Shelly testified that when she went to Jason’s hotel room a few days later, he asked her whether his living will would stand up. Holt asked her what the context of that discussion was. Shelly replied, “Like if he goes to jail, will Cassidy still go to his sister and Joe?”

  The Assistant DA also asked Shelly whether she continued to maintain contact with Jason following Michelle’s funeral.

  She didn’t, Shelly responded. “When this first happened,” she said, “I told myself that, you know, there was, I think, very quickly speculation, I think. Even my husband’s first words were, ‘I hope to God he didn’t do it,’ which never even crossed my mind at the time.” Rather, she decided to support Jason, telling herself that “in time his true colors will show and it will become apparent. And just over time, there’s just a lot of things that happened the day his wife was murdered that he can’t explain. I mean how unlucky can one man be to have a series of events …”

  It wasn’t until Shelly was mid-sentence that Klinkosum realized she was about to tell the jury she believed Jason had killed Michelle. He jumped to his feet and objected. Though Judge Stephens sustained the objection, the bell the jury had just heard was unlikely to be un-rung. And to make sure it wasn’t, Holt asked the witness what happened thereafter.

  She responded that she cut off all contact with Jason. “I just personally withdrew myself,” Shelly told jurors. “My husband remained in contact, but I personally didn’t want to speak to him or see him.”

  • • • • •

  The last witness to testify that Wednesday afternoon was Gracie Dahms. The former convenience-store worker appeared to be a completely different person than the woman who had testified back in June. Her hair was significantly shorter and was professionally styled. She was wearing makeup, dangling silver earrings, a long silver necklace, and silver bracelets. A sharp-looking checkered dress coat covered her black blouse. It looked as if she had received a complete makeover. She even had a new name—Gracie Calhoun—which she acquired upon her recent remarriage. Yet her testimony on direct examination was largely the same, both in substance and delivery—monosyllabic, poor grammar, and little observable emotion.

  Though there were no new revelations during Calhoun’s direct examination, her cross-examination was a different story entirely. For starters, when Klinkosum asked her about details of her meetings with law enforcement officers, she volunteered, “I have been through a lot of stuff myself … So my brain—I can’t remember half of what went on and then I can sometimes … Because I’ve been through a lot with myself since ’06.”

  But that wasn’t the only significant testimony about her brain. Klink asked whether she had been hit by a truck when she was six years-old.

  The prosecution witness acknowledged she had, and her parents later said her brain “was laying out on the street.” But she denied suffering a brain injury, testifying, “They told my mama I’d be about like two years-old when I’m 22 years old and I’m not even that far off the bench.”

  Calhoun agreed with Jason’s lawyer, however, that she had been collecting Social Security disability benefits since she was a little girl because of her disability, which she described as “slow normal.” Though she conceded she had memory problems, she attributed them to problems she had been having with her ex-husband and children since 2006, rather than her brain having fallen out of her head as a child. “I’m going through a hard time myself,” she explained.

  On redirect examination, Holt
tried her best to rehabilitate her star witness. She asked Calhoun if she had received any medical treatment in the 29 years following the truck accident.

  “As far as I can remember, no,” she responded. She acknowledged, though, she couldn’t remember half of her childhood because of the accident.

  The Assistant DA also asked Calhoun about her testimony that the man who cursed at her was just a little bit taller than her.

  “And what do you mean when you say ‘a little bit taller’ than you?” Holt inquired.

  “On that, ‘a little bit taller than me,’ anybody that’s about as tall as me is just a little bit taller than me,” Calhoun responded. “I can give a sample. My son’s about 5’11” and that’s about I’d say about how tall the guy was.”

  “And so would you describe your son as being ‘a little bit taller’ than you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Klinkosum wasn’t about to let the witness—and Holt—get away with their attempt to turn 6’1” Jason Young into someone just “just a little bit taller” than Calhoun’s five-foot-tall frame. On re-cross examination, he asked her to focus on the May 2011 pretrial hearing.

  “And you didn’t say anything about actual height like 5’11” or anything, correct?” Klink asked.

  “Correct,” she responded.

  “Okay. You didn’t say anything about your son being 5’11”, correct?”

  “Correct,” she agreed.

  “And then you were asked that question again at last year’s trial and you said the person was a little bit taller than you, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And I asked you how tall you were and you said five feet tall, right?”

  “Yes,” Calhoun replied.

  “And at that time … you didn’t say anything about being five—the person being 5’11” or compare them to your son, correct?”

  “Correct,” she acknowledged.

  “You really didn’t—you didn’t say anything about the height of the person until you were interviewed last Friday? Is that correct?” Klinkosum asked.

  “Correct.”

  Smelling a rat, he asked, “And that interview last Friday was with Sergeant Spivey, correct?

  “Correct.”

  “Who’s sitting here now. He’s in the back right there. And Ms. Holt and Mr. Cummings, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And that was after you had testified twice about the person being a little bit taller than you, right?”

  “Yes,” Calhoun agreed.

  With that, Jason’s lawyer was satisfied he had made his point. Holt, Cummings, and Sergeant Spivey may have succeeded in dressing up their star witness and adorning her with fancy jewelry, but they couldn’t change the basic facts: the third-shift convenience-store worker had indeed testified the man who threw the $20 bill at her was just a little bit taller than five feet—not someone over six feet tall, like Jason. And by her own admission, her memory wasn’t very reliable.

  • • • • •

  Once again, Dr. Thomas Clark, the Medical Examiner, testified about Michelle’s autopsy. Cummings had him describe in meticulous detail the thirty or more wounds she sustained to her face and head. Dr. Clark told the jury about the bruises and abrasions on the victim’s hands, which he explained had likely resulted from her efforts to defend herself. He also shared his opinion that most of Michelle’s injuries had been inflicted by a heavy, blunt object.

  Although his testimony included no new revelations, Cummings broke some new ground by having Dr. Clark display the clothing Michelle was wearing at the time of her death. The Medical Examiner first held up for the jury her white sweatshirt, which was covered in her own blood. He then showed the jury the bloody T-shirt she had been wearing underneath, and her black sweatpants.

  It was almost as if Michelle’s badly beaten body were being reconstructed before the jury’s eyes. This display left jurors with a deeper sense of the beating she had sustained than the two-dimensional autopsy photos could ever convey. Just as Cummings had planned.

  • • • • •

  Terry Tiller found herself back on the witness stand early in the second trial—this time as a prosecution witness. Though her testimony was largely the same as in the first trial, she did provide a couple of interesting new details. First, she testified she drove by 5108 Birchleaf Drive not once—but twice—between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m. the morning of the murder.

  Holt asked her to describe the SUV she saw parked at the home. Tiller described it as a “medium-sized” SUV. The prosecutor asked the witness if she was familiar with a Ford Explorer. Tiller indicated she was. Asked to describe the size of a Ford Explorer, she replied, “I would classify that as medium.”

  With the exception of Calhoun’s testimony, the prosecutors had to be pleased with how the retrial had begun. They had been more focused, more detailed, and—most importantly—more aggressive. This time, they would leave nothing to chance in their quest for justice for Michelle.

  20

  Parade of Women

  Linda Fisher didn’t need to wait nearly as long for her turn in the second trial. The State called her to the witness stand early on, before any crime scene or forensic evidence was presented. Her testimony about her son-in-law was more direct and forceful than it had been in the first trial.

  She told the jury she found Jason to be “very immature.” During her month-long stay at the Birchleaf Drive home in the summer of 2005, Linda testified, he was in a basketball league and a softball league and actually wanted to play in two leagues of each. In view of the responsibilities he should have been shouldering for his one-year-old child, she found that selfish and irresponsible.

  Howard Cummings discussed with her at some length her visit to Raleigh in October 2006—which began the day of Michelle’s and Jason’s third wedding anniversary. He asked her where Jason was at the time. “Well, I thought he was on a business trip,” Linda responded.

  The Assistant DA followed up, asking if she had heard his testimony at the first trial about being in Orlando at the time and whom he was with.

  “Right. He was having an affair,” Linda retorted, in utter disgust.

  Cummings then asked her about the evening of October 12, when her daughter and son-in-law went out for a belated anniversary dinner. Linda told jurors Michelle was the only one who entered the house when they returned that evening. Her daughter was crying and was very upset. The couple’s fight, Linda testified, had apparently begun when Jason told his wife she would have to find her own ride to Ryan’s and Shelly’s wedding because he was going to play golf with the guys.

  According to her elder daughter, Linda said, “By the time when Michelle walked out of Progress Energy and got into the car, Jason was on the telephone and stayed on that telephone until they drove to the restaurant, got seated at the restaurant, and then once they were seated he finally hung up.”

  When he was back in the house later that evening, she told the jury, there was a full-on “screaming match,” with doors slamming throughout the house.

  During the evening of November 3, Linda said, she and her son-in-law were seated together in Meredith’s living room and began a conversation. Jason said “two things that I can clearly remember,” she told jurors. “He said, ‘My lawyer told me I can’t talk to anyone, not even you,’ which what do you mean, your lawyer? Here we are and he’s got a lawyer? … And then the other statement was, ‘I’m going to take a hit on the house.’ And that was another, ‘Like what? What do you mean, you’re going to take a hit on the house?’ And all I’m thinking about is Michelle’s dead.”

  Cummings pivoted to the difficulties Cassidy’s grandmother and aunt had trying to visit with her following Michelle’s death. The prosecution witness claimed—in contrast to what Jason and Heather had each said during the first trial—that Cassidy had been whisked away to Brevard before her mom’s funeral. And after a couple of initial visits, Linda testified, Jason and his mother were never allowed add
itional visitation. “Whenever I asked Pat, she would always say she’d have to ask Jason. And it would never happen.”

  She described the confrontation at Pat’s home that led to Jason and his mother cutting off visitation, conceding, “I got loud to say the least. And I was disagreeing with a comment about Jason having an affair.”

  Pat and a friend of hers had apparently remarked, “‘You don’t know that he had an affair.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do,’ and so it was getting a little loud … And Meredith continued the conversation with some girl that was there who told us that if we didn’t stand up behind Jason publicly,” visitation with Cassidy would be cut off. And then it was, Linda said.

  When Cummings completed his direct examination, Collins told Judge Stephens—unlike in the first trial—there would be no cross-examination. Relieved to hear that, Linda stepped down from the witness stand and resumed her seat in the front row of the gallery. This time, she hoped, her testimony would help convince all twelve jurors of her son-in-law’s guilt.

  • • • • •

  The State called three women to the witness stand who hadn’t testified during the first trial: Valerie Bolick, a coworker of Michelle’s at Progress Energy; Jennifer Powers, one of her best friends from New York; and Kimball Sargent, a mental health counselor Michelle had seen a week before her death. Each provided powerful new evidence.

  Bolick got to know Michelle at Ernst & Young in 2001, where she was an intern and Michelle was a junior accountant. By 2003, they were working together again at Progress Energy. Bolick testified they had become good friends, and would often socialize together, both at and outside of work. Just before Memorial Day weekend in 2006, Michelle told her she was pregnant. The following Tuesday, when her friend didn’t report to work, Bolick learned she and Jason had been involved in a car accident in the mountains.