RALEIGH -- An eerie feeling haunted Shelly Schaad on the last night of Michelle Young's life.
The longtime friends were sitting on a couch in the family room of Young's home, chatting and watching an episode of "Grey's Anatomy." The spouses were away on business, and Cassidy Young, Michelle's 2-year-old daughter, had finally settled into bed.
Schaad, a friend of Young's since their sorority days at N.C. State University, testified Thursday in the murder trial of Jason Young, a 37-year-old medical software salesman she had counted among her friends.
She told the jury of seven women and five men that she sensed someone watching them from outside.
Jason Young is accused of bludgeoning to death Michelle Young, his wife of three years, inside their Wake County home on Nov. 3, 2006. She was 29, nearly five months pregnant and the mother of a toddler.
Young pleaded not guilty. His defense team contends his wife's homicide case is unsolved.
Schaad had recently returned from her two-week honeymoon in Italy when she headed to Michelle Young's home in the Enchanted Oaks neighborhood south of Raleigh on Nov. 2, 2006. Ryan Schaad, her new husband, and Jason Young had been housemates years earlier.
Shelly Schaad was aware of the troubles that Jason and Michelle Young had. Their personalities were different. Michelle was a Type A planner who liked things done in an orderly fashion. Jason, Schaad said, was more laid-back. He was a procrastinator who tried to cram in as much fun as he could before tending to a task. They argued in private and in public.
Jason Young also did things that raised eyebrows among his friends and family.
Once at pre-wedding party at Schaad's home, he took up a dare and urinated in his pants in the middle of the room in front of a crowd. Schaad's husband Ryan helped his drunk friend into the shower. Before he put on the change of clothes his friend offered, Jason Young, according to Schaad, got out of the shower and paraded through the party naked.
On other occasions, Schaad said, Jason Young exposed himself at parties in front of men and women. Occasionally, his wife was present.
Jason Young also was said to have swallowed the wedding rings of a woman visiting his house and insisted that she remain there until after the jewelry had passed through his body.
A hug goodbye
Schaad saw both Michelle and Jason Young on Nov. 2, 2006. He had not left for his business trip when she arrived. They spoke briefly about her wedding, then he was in his home office, packing for his trip, she said. Then he gave his wife a quick hug goodbye.
The heat pump wasn't working right. The Young's three-story house was cold. After eating dinner, the women snuggled Cassidy into pink flannel pajamas, an undershirt, a diaper and the socks she wanted to try first to put on herself. Michelle Young read her daughter a story, then let her watch a DVD in the bonus room before putting her into bed. The women went downstairs to talk. Cassidy made one trip downstairs, had at least one diaper change and eventually settled into bed.
The women settled in on the couch in front of the TV.
Their conversation hit on heavy topics. Michelle Young's father had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Tensions roiled between Jason Young and Michelle Young about plans for the approaching Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Jason Young and his mother-in-law clashed and he did not want her as a guest in their home for more than a few days.
No curtains
Schaad said she recalled feeling watched that night.
No curtains or shades covered the big windows in the family room. Michelle Young told Schaad that Jason Young had reported hearing noises outside recently.
Michelle Young told her friend she was not worried, that she couldn't prevent someone from breaking in and killing her if that was what they wanted to do.
Schaad recalled finding out about her friend's death the next day, then trying to find out from investigators what had happened.
Was it suicide? Was she stabbed? Was she shot? Was she raped? Schaad said she peppered investigators with questions.
Michelle Young, on the outside, appeared to many to be a happy person. But her friends and family also knew another side - a profound sadness occasionally welled in her.
But Schaad had not noticed a dark depression in her friend. She was nearly five months pregnant, expecting a son.
Schaad said she talked with Jason Young after his wife's death on several occasions
The first time was at Meredith Fisher's house in Fuquay-Varina hours after she heard the news. Jason Young was in a bedroom with his daughter Cassidy when she arrived. He hugged Schaad and uttered: "I'm so sorry."
Growing doubts
Initially Schaad said she was not troubled that Young wanted a lawyer present before talking with police. She and her husband had told him they had briefed investigators about his rocky marriage.
But she became suspicious, she said, as time went on and he still didn't talk with investigators.
Also Thursday, prosecutors began building a time line with a series of receipts and security camera images from places where Jason Young stopped on Nov. 2.
Young bought gas at a Han-Dee Hugo's in Raleigh about 7:30 p.m. Three-and a-half hours later, he checked into a Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Va., about 160 miles northwest of Raleigh, just over the state line.
Prosecutors contend that he checked into the Hampton Inn, then left shortly before midnight to begin a trip back to Raleigh.
The defense team contends that DNA evidence and adult-size footprints that cannot be matched to Jason Young were found inside the house. They contend, too, that no blood was found in Young's Ford Explorer and no fibers from the Hampton Inn were found in his Wake County home.
