RALEIGH — Several weeks before his wife was killed, Jason Young had a one-night stand with a woman he had known since he was her counselor at a Brevard summer camp.

It was October 2006, the same month he had a weekend fling with Michelle Money, one of his wife's sorors in Florida. The month before that, Young sent an email messageto his former fiancée, professing his continued love for her and his desire to see her again, even though they both were married.

Young is accused of killing his wife on Nov. 3, 2006, by bludgeoning her so violently that her teeth were knocked out and blood splattered the walls.

He maintains that he is not guilty, and his lawyers argue that Michelle Young's homicide remains unsolved.

On Thursday, prosecutors worked to show a pattern of infidelity and violence by calling Carroll Anne Sowerby, the woman with whom Jason Young had a one-night stand in October, and Genevieve Cargol, a woman he was once engaged to marry.

Cargol said she and Young were in Grapevine, Texas, for a wedding in 1999 when they argued over the amount of beer he drank at lunch, going "one-for-one" with a buddy.

The argument escalated into a physical fight, she said. He threw her from bed to bed in the hotel room, jumped on her with all his weight and pulled her arms back so far that she worried they might pop out of their sockets.

He demanded that she give back the engagement ring he had given her, but Cargol said it was a half-inch too small and difficult to slide off her finger. Young pulled the ring so hard, she said, that it cut her finger.

Cargol recalled the look on Young's face.

"His eyes were glazed over, and he didn't show any emotion," she said.

The two broke off their engagement not long after the incident, but continued to see each other off and on in the ensuing months. She eventually moved away, but that was not her last contact with Young.

Cargol had begun to develop a relationship with the man who eventually would become her husband, when she encountered Young in Maryland where he made vulgar comments about the new man in her life. She blocked email from him after that, she said.

But in September 2006, Young sent email, professing his undying love and desire to see her again, to the school where she used to work. She didn't know about the message until prosecutors showed it to her this week, she said, because she had quit that job several months before the birth of her first child.

Sex after drinks

Tearful and choked with emotion, Carroll Anne Sowerby haltingly testified that she and Young had sex on his living room couch in October 2006 after a night of drinks.

They had gotten to know each other when he was an instructor at a Brevard summer camp and she was a camper. They kayaked together, became friends and continued their friendship for years after that, going kayaking with a group. After she moved out of state for college - first to Georgia and then Montana - they kept up with each other and got together on occasion when they were in the same state.

Each married. Jason Young married Michelle Young in October 2003 when she was pregnant with their daughter, Cassidy. Sowerby had gotten married in April that same year.

In October 2006, Sowerby contacted Young about a class she planned to attend in Raleigh. She found out either shortly before her visit or right after arriving that Michelle Young was traveling out of town on business the first day or two while she was there.

Sowerby spent several nights at his house, and Jason Young talked a lot about his joy in being a father. One night, Sowerby said, she awoke on a couch to discover that Jason Young had drawn a goatee and mustache on her face with a marker. They went out to dinner, and they had drinks at his home.

But after they had sex, she said she immediately worried about its effect on her husband and Michelle Young.

"I remember saying we couldn't tell because I didn't want to hurt him or her," Sowerby said between sobs.

During that same visit, Young asked Sowerby for her wedding ring and when she wouldn't give it to him, he took it from her and put it in his mouth.

"He either swallowed it or pretended to swallow it," Sowerby testified. "I was told I couldn't get it back until it had passed."

She did get it back the next day.

Sowerby said she returned to Montana after the brief trip, then learned about Michelle Young's death from a mutual friend. Sowerby contacted Young and they saw each other again, in Montana.

She told prosecutor Becky Holt that she asked Young what he thought might have happened to his wife, who might have done something like that. She testified that she did not directly ask him whether he murdered his wife.

"He didn't really want to talk about it," Sowerby said. He told her he had been advised not to talk with anybody about it.

Sowerby eventually cut off contact with Young because her father, who had talked with investigators about the homicide, had asked her and her sisters to stop the conversations with him.

Evidence at murder scene

The tearful testimony capped a morning in which prosecutors called several witnesses to talk about evidence found at the Young house.

Detectives found shoe prints in the master bedroom where Michelle Young was found lifeless and face down in a bloody mess. Medical examiners say she suffered 30 blows so violent that her jaw was fractured. Broken teeth were found around the bedroom floor.

An SBI investigator said she found impressions from a pair of size-10 Franklin athletic shoes and a pair of size-12 Hush Puppies on pillows, bedding and papers collected from the crime scene.

Investigators never found the shoes, but Investigator Greg Tart testified that a review of records revealed a pair of size 12 Hush Puppies, made specifically for the discount chain DSW, had been purchased on the Youngs' DSW account in July 2005.

Clothes never found

Investigators also testified Thursday that they never found clothes that Jason Young is seen wearing on images captured by security cameras in a Virginia hotel lobby on Nov. 2, 2006. Young told friends and family he was traveling for business in Virginia on Nov. 2 and 3.

He checked into a Hampton Inn in Hillsville, Va., shortly before 11 p.m. Nov. 2. A hotel security camera shows an image of him leaving the lobby shortly before midnight. Key card readers did not record another guest entry into the room booked under his name after that.

Prosecutors contend Young drove back to Raleigh that night and killed his wife.

Defense lawyers contend Jason Young loved his wife and child and could not have committed such a violent act

anne.blythe@newsobserver.com or 919 836-4948