A longtime friend who had been with Michelle Young the night she met Jason Young had a strange feeling when she visited Michelle on Nov. 2, 2006 – the night before her bludgeoned body was found.
Shelly Schaad's testimony highlighted the second day of testimony in the murder trial of Jason Young at Wake County Superior Court. Also Thursday, four employees from the Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Va. took the stand.
Schaad, a sorority sister of Michelle's at N.C. State who roomed with her after college, knew well the rocky relationship between the Youngs that continued once they were married and had their first child, Cassidy. She said Jason often expressed frustration with their lack of intimacy, and Michelle was frustrated by his frosty relationship with her mother.
Schaad visited Michelle at her home in the Enchanted Oaks subdivision south of Raleigh on Nov. 2, 2006. She was surprised Jason Young was there – she thought he'd already left on a business trip – but he left not long after that.
Michelle told Schaad about a recent argument she'd had with Jason about the up-coming holidays. The Youngs planned to visit Jason's family in Brevard for Thanksgiving, and Michelle was upset that Jason did not want Michelle's mother, Linda Fisher, to come.
They were also arguing about Christmas, Michelle told Schaad. Linda Fisher wanted to come into town for two weeks from New York, but Jason did not want her to stay in their home. Michelle was trying to figure out if her mother could stay with Michelle's sister, Meredith Fisher, most of the time and perhaps a few days at her house.
Michelle seemed despondent, and Schaad had an odd feeling about the night.
"Something was weird to me that night," she said. "I just had a weird feeling there. Sitting in front of open windows -- an eerie feeling. I said, 'Do you mind walking me out to my car?' And she did. And she walked me to my car and I gave her a hug and I left."
Young, meanwhile, told her he was headed to Virginia on a business trip. She had brought dinner for Michelle from an Italian restaurant in Raleigh's Cameron Village, but Jason said he planned to stop at a Cracker Barrel in Greensboro.
That night he checked into the Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Va. The computer records there showed he checked in at 10:54 p.m. One desk clerk remembered checking him in shortly before 11 p.m.
Much of the remainder of the testimony involved the time line after that. A night auditor who arrived at the hotel after 11 discovered, between 3:30 and 4 a.m., a camera in the west stairwell had been shut off. He went to check and saw a rock propping up the side door.
He couldn't reach the camera, so maintenance man who arrived around 5 a.m. fixed it. Shortly after that, the camera was tampered with again, this time shoved upward so it wouldn't show the staircase.
Michelle Young was discovered on Friday, Nov. 3, by Meredith Fisher.
The trial continues Friday at 9:30 a.m.
NBC17.com is providing live updates from Wake County Superior Court as Jason Young is on trial for murdering his wife, Michelle. Here is our Live Blog on all Thursday's testimony.
3:50 p.m., Door ajar, camera altered: Keith Hicks, who worked the night shift at the Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Va., said he remembered seeing an unplugged surveillance camera and a door with a rock stuck in it in the early morning hours of Nov. 3, 2006, the day Michelle Young was discovered dead.
Jason Young had checked into the hotel Nov. 2 at 10:54 p.m., a previous employee testified. Hicks said he came in a little before 11 p.m. on Nov. 2 and was there overnight doing reports and manning the front desk.
He said during his shift, he noted one of the screens was blank for a surveillance camera. He went to fix the camera sometime between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m., but couldn’t reach it. He also noticed a rock was stuck in the exit door about four feet away.
“I thought it was weird that they were propped open,” he testified. “I also thought it was weird the camera was unplugged.”
He kicked the rock out. When the maintenance man came in later, probably between 4:30 a.m. and 5 a.m., he told him about the camera and the maintenance man fixed it. About 15 minutes later, Hicks noticed, the camera was showing black again. This time, someone had shoved the camera up so it was only showing the ceiling, and not the area around the door.
Hicks said he told his supervisor about it when she arrived at 7 a.m.
He also testified he didn’t remember anything in particular about Jason Young, which was in the hotel that evening.
Two other hotel employees followed Hicks to the stand, including the maintenance man who came in and plugged the camera back in and general manager Jennifer Marshall.
One point the defense pressed - the time stamps on the video cameras were off and did not exactly match the time the photos were taken. The cameras in the hotel took rapid-fire pictures, not video.
The defense, on re-direct, pushed to establish that the cameras were only about 3 to 5 minutes off. For example, a photo of Jason Young after he checked in and was at the elevators was time-stamped 10:51 p.m.
However, the computer from when he checked in showed he arrived at 10:54 p.m., and that time was in the computer and was accurate.
3:05 p.m., establishing a timeline: Daniel Morgan, who worked at the front desk of the Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Va., just testified that Jason Young checked into that hotel, which is 2 and a half hours from Raleigh, at 10:54 p.m. on Nov. 2, 2006. On cross-examination, Morgan said Young made no impression on him at the time.
2:55 p.m., evidence: The jury just looked at video and photographs looking to establish where Jason Young was. The state just called Daniel Morgan, who was the front-desk clerk at the Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Va., where Jason Young stayed the night of Nov. 2, 2006.
1:05 p.m., cross examination: The defense is cross-examining Shelly Schaad now, going over some of the specifics of her testimony.
One point the defense pushed - that Jason and Michelle appeared affectionate at one point during Schaad's wedding weekend in October 2006.
Schaad remembered Jason being affectionate with his wife, and saying, "My wife's crazy, but I love her."
Court is dismissed until 2:15 p.m.
12:30 p.m., a weird feeling: Shelly Schaad, a longtime friend of Michelle Young’s, said she had an odd feeling on the night before Michelle was murdered, when she went to Michelle’s home in the Enchanted Oaks subdivision south of Raleigh to watch a television show with her.
“Something was weird to me that night,” she said.
“I just had a weird feeling there. Sitting in front of open windows - an eerie feeling. I said, ‘Do you mind walking me out to my car?’ And she did. And she walked me to my car and I gave her a hug and I left.”
Schaad said she talked to her husband, Ryan, the entire time on the way home. Michelle was found dead the next day – Nov. 3, 2006.
Schaad had gone that night to the home to visit with Michelle, a former roommate both in and out of college. She was surprised when she got to the house and Jason Young was there. Schaad had thought Jason would be out of town.
Jason explained that he was heading to Virginia for a business meeting and left that night, leaving Michelle and Schaad to put the Youngs’ daughter, Cassidy, to bed and to have a chance to talk.
Michelle, Schaad said, was down because her father had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. The Youngs had hoped he would come to town that weekend to watch their daughter while they went to an N.C. State football game, but he called that Thursday night to say he would not be coming.
Michelle told Schaad about a recent argument she’d had with Jason about the upcoming holidays. Jason Young clashed with his mother-in-law, Linda Fisher. The Youngs planned to visit Jason’s family in Brevard for Thanksgiving, and Michelle was upset that Jason did not want Linda to come.
They were also arguing about Christmas, Michelle told Schaad. Linda Fisher wanted to come into town for two weeks from New York, but Jason did not want her to stay in their home. Michelle was trying to figure out if her mother could stay with Meredith Fisher most of the time and perhaps a few days at her house.
11:31 a.m., boorish behavior and a difficult relationship: Jason and Michelle Young fought often and bitterly, a close friend testified Thursday, describing a rocky relationship that included Michelle being despondent at the friend's rehearsal dinner and Jason urinating in the living room of their friends’ home and then running naked through a party with mixed company.
Shelly Schaad, a sorority sister with Michelle Fisher at N.C. State and later her roommate out of college.
“She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She was determined. She was completely type-A, so much that we called her ‘The Camp Director,’” Schaad said. “She was a planner. She knew what she wanted and she went after it.
“She was very happy to those who met her. But there was also a very sad side to Michelle that a lot of people did not get to see.”
Schaad was there the night Jason and Michelle met. “It’s very vague. But I do remember we were out at a bar. I don’t how which bar. I just remember driving home, Michelle was driving us home. It was pouring rain.”
The two were soon dating steadily, and Michelle eventually moved into a townhouse that Jason purchased with a male friend, Ryan, that Shelly eventually married. But Jason and Michelle never had a cheerful relationship.
“Volatile. Good days, bad days. It seemed to be a lot more bad. A lot of arguments, I guess, is how I would sum that up,” Schaad said in describing their relationship. “They both seemed to just … I don’t know … to ‘one up’ the other. Just very childish sometimes in their arguments.”
Schaad said Michelle came to see her with a sonogram, showing that she was pregnant, and that she and Jason were getting married. Michelle eventually gave birth to their first child, Cassidy.
Schaad said the problems continued after the marriage.
“Jason made it every well-known he was upset about the lack of sex in the relationship. The tension just grew,” she testified.
“They were such silly arguments over things that in the grand scheme things did not matter.”
She also said Jason had an extremely strained relationship with Michelle’s mother, Linda. They fought over whether Linda should stay in their home – Jason did not want her to – and how holidays would be handled.
Schaad said Michelle met her for lunch in the summer of 2006 and was ecstatic to be pregnant with a second child. But the fall brought more difficulties. Schaad got married in Winston-Salem in October 2006 and she said Michelle was in “a very sad state” that weekend.
Another time, she said, she and Ryan had people at their home, and Jason Young embarrassed the couple by urinating on the rug in their living room. Ryan took him upstairs to take a shower, and “Next thing, he came running out in his birthday suit.”
Prosecutor Becky Holt asked if it was unusual for Jason to expose himself in mixed company, and Schaad firmly replied, “No.”
At that point, Judge Donald Stephens interrupted and said it was time for a 15-minute break
10:40 a.m., close friend on the stand now: Shelly Schaad is on the stand now. She was there the night Michelle Fisher met Jason Young in a bar. Shad as a sorority sister of Michelle's at N.C. State and later lived with her.
Jason and Michelle continued to date steadily, but there's was a contenious relationship from the beginning.
Asked to describe the relationship, she said, "Volatile. Good days, bad days. It seemed to be a lot more bad. A lot of arguments, I guess, is how I would sum that up.”
10:30 a.m., paramedic testifies: Paramedic Scott Hughes just testified that he saw a “copious” amount of blood around Michelle Young’s body.
He said he noticed Young’s legs – and he thought both legs, not just one – were up on the bed like she had rolled out of bed onto the floor. As for blood on the bed, he said, “I think there was a small amount on the bed. On the left side.”
10:16 a.m., deputy testifies: Scott Earp, a Wake County Sheriff’s Deputy, testified that he was one of the first two officers to the scene of the crime. He saw Michelle Young’s bloody body and was surprised to see one of her leg’s still up and on the bed.
He testified that he was surprised the woman holding a child – that is, Meredith Fisher, the sister of Michelle Young – did not appear to be “upset” at the scene.
He also noticed there was no blood on the child, which was Cassidy, the Young’s 2-year-old.
“I threw the question out there, ‘Have you cleaned the child?’” he testified. “When she said no, it caught me off guard.”
Earp said he did not do any in-depth investigations because he knew other investigators were on the way and his primary mission was to secure the scene.
9:40 a.m., trial resumes: The second day of testimony is underway at the Jason Young trial. Judge Donald Stephens is back in the courtroom, and NBC17.com will be blogging live as events unfold again today.
A deputy from the Wake County Sheriff’s Office will be the next witness.
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