RALEIGH -- Michelle Young was found slain, lying face down in a pool of blood in her home Nov. 3, 2006. Three years have passed, but no criminal charges have been filed, and no one has been arrested.
"We have an investigator working on it every week," Sheriff Donnie Harrison said Monday afternoon. "We have an investigator working on it as we speak."
Harrison said his office is working in tandem with the SBI and Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby to bring Young's killer to justice. Harrison said his investigators met last week with Willoughby, and he will meet with Willoughby next week to review the evidence that has been collected throughout the investigation. The sheriff said he expects to wind up the investigation "very soon," but he stopped short of saying that an arrest will be made.
"At some point in time, some decisions have to be made," Harrison said.
The day Meredith Fisher discovered her sister strangled and bludgeoned to death, she also found her 2-year-old niece, Cassidy. The child was unharmed, but had tracked her mother's blood throughout the couple's home at the Enchanted Oaks subdivision.Earlier this year, a civil court judge ruled her husband, Jason Young, was responsible for his wife's death and ordered him to pay his wife's family more than $15million.
Jason Young also has been the central focus of the criminal investigation.
Detectives seized his 2004 Ford Explorer and its contents. He was ordered to submit a DNA sample. A series of search warrants in the months that followed indicated that investigators found blood in Young's Explorer. They also learned that he was involved in an extramarital affair with a woman living in Florida.
More recent search warrants indicated the Young marriage was a volatile union riddled with "huge" and "loud" fights that would go on for hours.
But Jason Young told sheriff's detectives that he was away on a business trip the night his wife was strangled and bludgeoned to death.
Jason Young's lawyer, Roger Smith Jr., was unavailable for comment Monday.
Wake sheriff's detective R.C. Spivey III said at the March civil trial that Michelle Young's body looked as if it had been in a serious traffic accident. Her jaw was broken.
On March 16, a judge ordered Jason Young to pay $3.89 million in actual damages - including loss of income and companionship, pain and suffering and funeral expenses to his late wife's family. Young, who was not present at the proceeding, also was ordered to pay $11.6million in punitive damages.
Jason Young had been the custodial parent of Cassidy, now 5, since her mother's death, but the Fishers initiated the process in February to take over primary custody.
Michelle Young's mother, Linda Fisher of Sayville, N.Y., said Monday that Cassidy is living with her. "She's doing beautifully. She's healing me. She's healing Meredith, and being here with us is healing her as well."
Although the Fishers were responsible for filing the civil suit on behalf of Michelle Young's estate, Linda Fisher declined to comment Monday on whether she felt Jason Young murdered her daughter.
Meanwhile, Harrison said his office does not check on Jason Young each day, but the sheriff said his investigators "know that he's out there."
"I'm sure if he went out of the country, somebody would tell us."
