Witness in Young case testifies of memory problems

RALEIGH -- The woman prosecutors have brought forth as their only eye witness to support their version of Jason Young's movements around the time of his wife's homicide testified this morning that she has been having memory problems in the ensuing years.

"I've had memory problems since '06 because I've been through a lot with my kids, my self and my husband," Gracie Bailey Dahms testified this morning.

Dahms took the stand Thursday, the day after Judge Donald Stephens agreed to let the defense team bring up a head injury the witness suffered after being struck by a delivery truck when she was 6 years old.

Bailey said she and some friends were playing ball at the time. She chased a ball into the street and can only rely on what her parents have told her to piece together what happened next.

"I don't know exactly what happened," Dahms said this morning. "I was told by my parents that when I got hit my brain was laid out in the street."

Dahms, testified in Young's first trial and again this week that she sold gas to Young at 5:30 a.m. the day his wife, Michelle, was found bludgeoned to death in the Youngs' Raleigh home.

Testimony from Dahms, a convenience store clerk in the small town of King at the time of the homicide, is crucial to the prosecution's contention that Young left a Virginia hotel room in the middle of the night, drove home and then returned to the hotel before dawn. In the first trial, defense attorneys noted Dahms' history of drug abuse to weaken her credibility. After a month-long trial in which Young testified, the jury deadlocked for acquittal 8-4.

Dahms testified that she remembered Young as a rude customer. She reiterated that again Wednesday and Thursday.

"It was still fresh in my memory of what happened that night," Dahms said. "I don't forget nothing like that when someone fusses at me or cusses at me or something like that."

The Four Brothers Food Store where she worked from September to December in 2006 is just off U.S. 52 in King, a North Carolina town about 120 miles northwest of Raleigh, estimated to be about a two-hour-and-15-minute drive. It's about 45 minutes south of Hillsville, Va., where Young was seen checking into a Hampton Inn shortly before midnight.

Dahms said Wednesday that when she worked the third shift alone, she often set the gas pumps so customers paying with cash had to come inside before filling their tanks. Her practice was to tell customers who weren't regulars that they could either pay in cash at the register or leave a credit card or photo ID with her before she would start the pump. That way, she said, she could prevent a "gas and go," a theft she would have to pay for personally.

Dahms said Young came into the store irritated that the pumps were off, threw down $20, huffed out, pumped some gas and drove off toward U.S. 52.

Young testified in June that he did not kill his wife, who was 29 and pregnant when her body was found in the master bedroom of the couple's home in the Enchanted Oaks neighborhood just south of Raleigh.

Young's movements

Prosecutors contend he drove back to Wake County from the hotel in Hillsville, Va., in the early hours of Nov. 3, 2006, bludgeoned his wife, who suffered at least 30 blows, then drove back to southwestern Virginia and proceeded with business calls later that day.

Defense attorneys claim the prosecutors' theory "makes no sense." They point out that Young, who was scanned for wounds by investigators within hours of his wife's death, had no visible scrapes or bruises except for one on a big toe.

Investigators did not find any blood in his white Ford Explorer, a detail highlighted by the defense.

Defense attorneys contend that Michelle Young's homicide case is not solved. They say DNA evidence and adult-size footprints found at the crime scene that cannot be matched to Jason Young implicate others.

Dr. Thomas Clark, a former deputy chief medical examiner for the state, testified today that Michelle Young died from blunt force injury to the head. He also said there were signs of strangulation. Not only was their bruising to her neck area, Clark said, there was evidence that Michelle Young scratched her neck while trying to move someone's hand away.

Michelle Young was 5-feet-6 and 124 pounds when the medical examiner's office did an autopsy. She had numerous wounds to her neck and head, Clark said.

"There had to be at least 30 distinct blows, and there may have been more considering all of the injuries including the hands," Clark said.

There was no sign of pneumonia in Michelle Young's lungs, Clark said, causing him to conclude that she did not languish, that she died quickly after her injuries.

Many of the injuries, Clark theorized, could have been caused by a heavy blunt object that likely had a rounded surface.

Defense attorney Bryan Collins asked Clark on cross-examination whether some of the injuries also could have been caused by a fist, particularly the blow that split open her lip and knocked out teeth.

Clark said he suspected the injury was caused by more than one blow by a fist to the lip, but it could have been one.

Howard Cummings, the chief assistant district attorney, asked whether the fist could have been gloved. Clark said he had no opinion on that.