Jason Young live blog: Defense presses key witness, and investigator details findings

NBC-17 is providing a live blog of the Jason Young murder trial in Raleigh in Wake County Superior Court. Thursday's highlights included riveting testimony in the morning by Gracie Dahms Calhoun, who insists she saw Jason Young in her convenience store the night of the murder, and a brutal retelling of the murder by the medical examiner.

3:05 p.m.: Terry Tiller, who delivered The New York Times in the Youngs' subdivision, remembered how the morning of Nov. 3, 2006, the Youngs' house was lit up.

"All the lights were on," Tiller testified.

She said she also saw a minivan across the street and an SUV parked roughly parallel to the yard. She thought that SUV was parked in an odd way.

She said she wasn't sure exactly what time she saw the house, but it was probably between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m.

2:44 p.m.: Valerie Bolick, who worked with Michelle Young at Progress Energy, is testifying now with court back in session.

Bolick remembers Michelle telling her she was pregnant in the spring of 2006. And then later she remembered finding out Michelle and Jason had been in a wreck. Michelle would lose that unborn child.

Bolick testified that Michelle definitely wanted another child, and later became pregnant again.

But Bolick said Michelle told her that on telling Jason she was pregnant, “She said she did not get the reaction out of Jason she had hoped to get.”

She also told the jury that Michelle had concerns about Jason going to Charlotte to stay with a girl. Bolick said Michelle refused to call that woman by name and wasn't happy about it because, Bolick recalled her saying, "you know why."

At the funeral, she said she saw Jason Young and went over to speak to him. She said the Fisher and Young families were in different places but she wanted to reach out to Jason.

"I said, 'I'm sorry for your loss.' His response was very odd. He said, 'Cassidy has been a real trooper,'"" she said tearfully.

12:19 p.m.: Dr. Thomas Clark, the medical examiner who did the autopsy, testified that Michelle Young died in a homicide. He said there were so many injuries that he had to divide the injuries into 10 "groups" so he could classify them.

He said his autopsy confirmed that she was strangled, and that were were multiple injuries across the left and back side of her head. 

While Clark's testimony could sound somewhat clinical, the brutality of the attack was evident when he described "teeth were missing or broken."

Clark is showing the jury pictures from the autopsy. Whew, you can't see it on the livestream, but it really sounds gruesome. (Sorry to be going over this at lunchtime, by the way) ...

One picture showed a fractured jaw. ...

Another confirmed she was hit by a blunt instrument. ...

"There is a large skull fracture across the base of the skull," he said ...

There were "faint finger nail marks" in one photo. ...

"You can see that teeth were missing ..."

Tearing of the thumb is a "blunt force injury," he said. ...

A photo of her brain, which was removed, showed "dark discoloration," which was blood ...

Asked his opinion of the murder weapon, Clark said, "It had to be a blunt object. It had to be a blunt object because it produced skull fractures. It's likely it had a rounded surface."

On cross examination by defense attorney Bryan Collins, Clark said some of the injuries could have been caused by someone's bare hands.

He said he did not have an opinion on whether the hand was in a glove.

11:17 a.m.: One of the key investigators in the Jason Young case is Detective Scott Ikard, who testified Thursday morning.

He went to Hillsville, Va., after the murder to see the Hampton Inn. There, he found a rock just outside the door on the west end which the clerk said was the one he kicked outside that had been jamming the door the morning of Nov. 3.

He also said he checked room 421 with Elmer Goad, the maintenance man. The room had been checked into at 10:56 p.m. on Nov. 2, but no one used a card to enter again until around 11:30 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 3, when housekeeping came.

He and another decective also canvassed the convenience stores between Hillsville and Greensboro. It was in King, N.C., that they found Gracie Dahms Calhoun at the Four Brothers convenience store.

“She stated she did recognize him from an incident the morning of the third. She stated Mr. Young was upset.”

Ikard also said, “She stated he was driving a white SUV.”

He said Calhoun said there were cameras “but they were not operational.”

Asked how positive Calhoun was about the man who came into the store being Young, Ikard said, “She said she was almost positive. She stated she remembered him becuse she was cursed at. He wasn’t a regular customer, and he was very angry at her this morning.”

Ikard said he also went to Dickinson Community Hospital, which is where Jason Young had a business appointment on Nov. 3. Young has said he got lost, which is why he was late.

Ikard said he made only one minor wrong turn there, but, “We found the hospital without any problem.”

10:24 a.m.: The defense for Jason Young pressed a key witness hard on Thursday morning, setting the stage for whether Gracie Dahms Young’s memory is accurate when she says she saw Jason Young early in the morning Nov. 3, 2006.

Dahms was the night clerk at the Four Brothers convenience store in King, N.C., that night.

Defense attorney Mike Klinkosum pushed to show that her memory was less than reliable. He asked about the seven times she had met with investigators, and pointed out inconsistencies in whether there were, or were not, cameras at the convenience store.

She had previously said the cameras were not working. On Thursday, Calhoun said, “There ain’t been no video cameras at all.”

He showed her transcript of her testimony, and Calhoun said she “can’t remember” if there were cameras or not.

Either way, there are no pictures of Young at the store that night.

Klinkosum also asked her about a devastating injury she suffered as a 6-year-old, when she was hit by a truck driven by a drunk driver.

“Me and a couple of my friends was out playing ball,” she said. “The ball went across the street. One of my friends pushed me to go get it.”

She saw the truck coming and was hit.

“I don’t know exactly. I was told by my parents that when I got hit my brain was laying out on the street,” she said.

The doctors, she said, “told my mama I’d be like 2 years old when I was 20 years old.”

She said, with a touch of pride in her voice, that that had not turned out to be true. But she did say she was a “slow learner” and told Klinkosum she has received disability through Social Security since she was a child.

“I’ve had memory problems since ’86,” said Calhoun, who is 35. “I’ve been through a lot with myself, my kids and my ex-husband.”

But she insisted her memory was not faulty when it came to the night of Nov. 3, 2006. She identified Young to investigators only a few days later.

Under questioning from prosecutor Becky Holt, Calhoun said, “It was still fresh in my memory that night. I don’t forget nothing like that when somebody cuss me,” she said. “I’ve been through a lot like that with my ex. I know the steps on that. I don’t forget people that does it.”

Klinkosum, the defense attorney, followed up. He asked about multiple other purchases on the morning of Nov. 3, 2006, and Calhoun didn’t recall any of them.

He also said Calhoun had testified the man she identified as Young was “a bit taller” than her. She is only 5 feet tall and Young is significantly taller.

On a follow-up from Holt, she indicated that to her, “a bit taller” was a more general term, and she gave the example of her son, who she would describe as a bit taller but who is in fact much taller.

8:40 a.m.: Testimony Thursday should be critical to the prosecution as it tries to prove Jason Young killed Michelle on the night of Nov. 2, 2006.

The prosecution has to tie Young to the scene, and he insists he was in Hillsville, Va., at a Hampton Inn that night.

On Wednesday, Gracie Dahms Calhoun testified that she saw Young around 5:30 a.m. at the Four Brothers convenience store in King, N.C. King is north of Winston-Salem and between Raleigh and Hillsville.

If Calhoun’s testimony is true, that means  Young’ story can not be true. And the prosecution needs ways to tie Young to the crime scene.

But you can expect the defense to launch a vigorous attack on Calhoun’s memory today. She insists she remembers him because she wouldn’t turn on the pump outside at the store early that morning. Overnight, people had to either pay with a credit card or pay cash first.

Young, if he were trying to cover his tracks, would not want to pay with a credit card, of course. He finally came into the store, threw down a $20 bill, and cursed Calhoun, she testified.

She also said she watched his car leave, and it was a white SUV – which would match what Young was driving at the time.