Michelle Young was five months pregnant when she was beaten to death inside her own home in Raleigh, North Carolina, in November 2006. Her two-year-old daughter was found hiding under the bed covers in the same room.
Michelle Marie Fisher was born on February 17, 1977, in New York. She grew up in Seville, graduated high school as co-captain of the cheerleading squad, and was known by everyone around her as driven, warm, and full of energy.
She moved to Raleigh to attend North Carolina State University, where she earned a master’s degree in accounting. After graduating, she began working as a senior financial consultant at a tax firm in Raleigh.
In February 2001, her friends took her out to a bar called The Poor House to celebrate her 24th birthday. A man knocked over her drink, apologized, and bought her another one. His name was Jason Young.
They quickly discovered they had both graduated from NC State and were both fans of the university’s football team, the Wolfpack. Jason was working as a salesman for Black and Decker at the time.
After that night, he started rearranging his schedule to spend more time in Raleigh, and eventually moved there to be with Michelle. The two moved in together.
By most accounts, they were very different people. Michelle was mature, hardworking, and focused. Jason had a reputation for being immature and was known to have been involved with other women before settling down.
Within two years of meeting, Michelle found out she was pregnant. Neither of them had planned for it. Michelle quickly accepted the news and wanted to have the baby. Jason took longer to come around, admitting he did not feel ready for fatherhood or marriage.
Eventually he did, and the two got married before the baby arrived, partly so Michelle could be added to his workplace health insurance, which was important given the cost of having a baby in the United States. Their daughter, Cassidy, was born on March 29, 2004.
Michelle took to motherhood immediately. She was devoted to Cassidy and settled into family life with the same enthusiasm she brought to everything else. Her sister Meredith moved to Raleigh around that time to be closer and help out.
In 2005, the family, along with their rescue dog Mr. G, moved into a large home in the Enchanted Oak subdivision on Birch Leaf Drive in Raleigh.
Michelle was very close with her mother, Linda. The two spoke almost every day on the phone and shared everything with each other, including the details of Michelle’s marriage. That closeness was a source of tension.
Jason and Linda did not get along, and Jason reportedly resented the fact that Linda was aware of every problem in their relationship. Linda visited frequently and had even discussed the possibility of moving into the home permanently, something Michelle welcomed but Jason did not.
The marriage had real problems. The couple fought often and openly. They argued in public, in front of friends, and in front of family. Their difficulties were not a secret to anyone who knew them.
On top of the constant fighting, Jason was unfaithful. Phone records would later show that he was in contact with at least one other woman as frequently as he contacted his own wife.
In early 2006, Michelle became pregnant again. This pregnancy was planned, and Jason’s reaction was reportedly much more positive than the first time. The couple traveled to Brevard, North Carolina, about 280 miles from Raleigh, to share the news with Jason’s family.
During that visit, while Cassidy was with her grandparents, Jason and Michelle went out for coffee. On the way, Jason drove off a mountain road and the car dropped roughly 100 feet before partially submerging in a river.
Both survived with minor injuries, but the physical and emotional stress of the accident caused Michelle to miscarry within days.
Later that year, Jason took a new sales job at a medical records software company. The improved income allowed Michelle to drop from full-time to part-time at her job. By autumn 2006, she was five months pregnant with a boy.
Around the same time, Jason had been in near-constant communication with a woman named Michelle Money, who had been a sorority sister of Michelle’s and had actually met Jason at their wedding.
In the month of October alone, the two had been in contact 980 times. Jason had also traveled to Orlando to visit her over the same weekend as his wedding anniversary with Michelle. He later told a friend he was in love with her.
He was also in contact with at least one other woman during this period. Just three weeks before the murder, he told a friend he was done with Michelle.
On the evening of November 2, 2006, Jason left the family home at around 6:30 p.m. for a work trip. He had a sales meeting the next morning at Dickinson Community Hospital in Clintwood, roughly a five-hour drive away.
His plan was to drive partway, stay the night at the Hampton Inn in Galax, Virginia, attend the morning meeting, then visit his mother in Brevard before returning home on Sunday. Friends were coming over that Sunday to watch a football game.
That same evening, Michelle’s friend Genevieve Schaad arrived at the house at around 6:30 p.m. Jason was still there when she arrived, and the women offered to include him in dinner. He declined, said he would grab something on the way, and left.
Michelle and Genevieve spent the evening eating dinner, getting Cassidy bathed and ready for bed, and then watching Grey’s Anatomy and talking.
Their conversation included the ongoing tension between Jason and Michelle over Linda’s planned extended visit during the Thanksgiving and Christmas period.
Genevieve left between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m. As she walked to her car, she had an unsettling feeling, as though the house or the surrounding area was being watched. She asked Michelle to walk her out and mentioned the feeling.
Michelle told her that she and Jason had recently been hearing strange noises around the house.
When Genevieve asked if she was scared to be alone, Michelle’s response was that if someone intended to break in and harm her, there was not much she could do to stop it. That was the last time Genevieve saw her friend alive.
Jason, meanwhile, had stopped for fuel in Raleigh at around 7:30 p.m., had dinner at a Cracker Barrel in Greensboro at around 9:30 p.m., and checked into the Hampton Inn in Galax at 10:54 p.m.
Surveillance footage confirmed his arrival. He used his key card to enter his room at 10:56 p.m., and that was the only time it was recorded being used for the rest of the night.
The following day, at around 12:10 p.m. on November 3, Meredith received a voicemail from Jason. He asked her to stop by the house and collect some printed pages he had left in the upstairs home office.
He explained they were printouts of a Coach handbag he had been looking at on eBay as an anniversary gift for Michelle and that he did not want her to stumble across them and ruin the surprise.
Meredith drove over and let herself in through the garage, which had a broken door that could be lifted without a key. Michelle’s car was parked inside. On the kitchen counter sat Michelle’s purse and keys. Every sign pointed to Michelle being home.
But the moment Meredith stepped inside, she knew something was wrong. The house was dark, cold, and completely silent except for the sound of Mr. G whimpering somewhere she could not locate.
She called out to Michelle and got no response. As she made her way upstairs, she noticed what she initially thought was red hair dye smeared across the hallway floor and into the bathroom.
At the top of the stairs, the primary bedroom door was open, and from there she could see her sister lying on the floor in a pool of blood. When she reached her, Michelle’s body was cold and rigid.
Beside her was a doll, believed to have been placed there by Cassidy in an attempt to comfort her mother.
What Meredith had mistaken for hair dye in the hallway and bathroom were tiny bloody footprints. Blood was also on the bathroom walls at toddler height, on a small step stool inside the bathroom, and on the inside of the bathroom door, indicating that at some point the child had been closed inside.
As Meredith stood processing the scene, she heard movement from the bed. Cassidy came out from under the covers, dressed in clean pink pajamas, physically unharmed, and confused.
She clung to Meredith and told her that her mommy had “boo-boos” all over. Meredith immediately carried Cassidy outside and called 911.
When officers arrived and examined the scene, they confirmed Michelle had been dead for several hours. Her body was found face down on the floor between the bed and the open door of Jason’s closet.
There was blood on the outside of that closet door but none on the contents inside, which suggested the door had been shut during the attack and opened afterward. Bloody shoe impressions were found on two decorative pillows on the floor.
One matched a size 12 Hush Puppies shoe and the other matched a size 10 athletic shoe. Two drops of Michelle’s blood were found on the door handle leading from the kitchen to the garage.
Two drawers from her jewelry box were missing, as were her engagement and wedding rings, neither of which she ever took off. Those rings were never recovered. Empty bags found scattered on the floor suggested someone had begun cleaning the scene and then abandoned the effort.
A single strand of hair was recovered from Michelle’s left hand, and a small clump of hair was found beneath her body. Testing confirmed both samples came from the same person. There were no signs of forced entry anywhere in the home.
Michelle’s autopsy revealed she had been strangled and had sustained 13 lacerations to the back of her head. She was struck with a heavy, likely round object at least 30 times, causing multiple skull fractures and brain hemorrhaging.
Several of her teeth had been knocked out. The murder weapon was never found. Investigators determined, based on the evidence including her treadmill being switched on but not in use, that the attack most likely took place between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m.
As for Cassidy, she had clearly been in contact with her mother’s blood at some point. Tiny bloody footprints traced a path from the bedroom toward the bathroom, where they stopped, then resumed inside the room.
This suggested someone had picked her up and carried her in. There was no blood in the bathtub, but blood was present on the floor, walls, step stool, and inside of the bathroom door.
Only trace amounts of blood were found on Cassidy herself, on her toenails and the bottom hem of her pajama pants, too small to see with the naked eye. She was wearing clean pajamas and had no diaper, despite not yet being potty trained.
Meredith confirmed she had not changed or cleaned Cassidy in any way before calling 911. Someone had done that before leaving the scene.
Investigators quickly focused on Jason. He had been uncooperative from the start, refusing to answer any questions from police, declining to do a walkthrough of the home, and never once asking about the circumstances of Michelle’s death or the wellbeing of his daughter.
There were no other suspects. No one could be identified who had any reason to want to harm Michelle.
Detectives were also troubled by the evidence surrounding Jason’s hotel stay. A hotel employee named Keith Hicks testified that he had found a small red rock propping open an emergency exit door, which was normally locked between 11:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
When he reviewed surveillance footage, he discovered that a camera positioned near that exit had stopped working at 11:20 p.m. the night of November 2. When a maintenance worker went to investigate the following morning, he found the camera had been unplugged.
He restored it at 5:50 a.m. on November 3. That same camera was then manually angled upward toward the ceiling at 6:34 a.m., making it impossible to capture footage of the exit.
Hicks testified the camera had never been tampered with during his time working there, except for one previous occasion years earlier when guests had unplugged it to sneak in and out of that same emergency door.
Jason stands at 6 feet 1 inch, and the maintenance worker confirmed that anyone over 6 feet could easily reach and unplug the camera.
A fuel station employee named Gracie Calhoun testified that between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. on November 3, a man driving a white SUV pulled up to the furthest pump at her station, which was located along the route between Galax and Raleigh.
When the pump did not activate, the man came inside and became aggressive and used profanity toward her. She explained that during those early morning hours, customers were required to present a card and ID before a pump would be turned on.
The man threw $20 in cash at her, went back outside, pumped $15 worth of fuel, and drove off without collecting his change. She identified him as Jason Young from a photo lineup.
Two other witnesses separately reported seeing a light-colored SUV near the Young residence in the early morning hours of November 3.
Jason Young was arrested on December 14, 2009, and charged with first-degree murder. His first trial began in June 2011. The prosecution laid out the timeline of inconsistencies and called witnesses including Gracie Calhoun, the hotel employees, neighbors who spotted the SUV, and several people who knew the couple.
Jason’s former fiancée testified about incidents of physical aggression during their relationship. Michelle Money testified about the extent of her contact with Jason in the weeks before the murder.
A daycare teacher described Cassidy reenacting a violent scene with dolls days after her mother’s death, saying “mommy is getting a spanking” and “mommy has red stuff all over.”
Jason testified in his own defense, denying any involvement and offering explanations for the camera and the propped door, claiming he had gone out to retrieve his laptop charger and later to smoke a cigar, propping the emergency exit open because he had left his key card in the room.
The first trial ended in a hung jury. Eight members voted for acquittal and four for conviction, resulting in a mistrial. A second trial began in February 2012. By that point, Michelle’s family had won a civil wrongful death lawsuit against Jason, who had not contested it.
A default judgment of $15.5 million was awarded to her family. Jason had also relinquished full parental rights of Cassidy to Meredith during a custody dispute in which Michelle’s family had fought for access to the child after Jason had cut them off entirely following the funeral.
Evidence from both the civil trial and the custody proceedings was admitted at the second criminal trial. After six hours of deliberation, the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Jason Young was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
His defense filed an appeal arguing that allowing the civil trial outcome and the custody arrangement as evidence had been prejudicial, pointing out that the only significant difference between the two trials was that additional evidence, and that the verdict had shifted from 8 to 4 in favor of acquittal to 12 to 0 for conviction.
An intermediate court agreed and ordered a new trial. However, in May 2015, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned that decision, allowing the first-degree murder conviction to stand permanently.
As of now, Jason Young remains incarcerated at Piedmont Correctional Institution in Salisbury, North Carolina.
