Blood linking Jason Young lacking, agent says
A crime scene agent testified Tuesday that, despite the bloody crime scene at Jason and Michelle Young's home, he found little blood elsewhere in the house and none whatsoever at other places where the investigation led him.
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Jason Young, 37, was arrested in December 2009 in connection with his pregnant wife's beating death. He is on trial for a second time after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in his first trial last summer.
Michelle Young was found facedown in front of Jason Young's closet in the master bedroom on Nov. 3, 2006.
Despite all the blood, he said Tuesday, numerous items, including the drains of the sinks in the house and items in Jason Young's white Ford Explorer, had no blood on them. The only exception was blood discovered on the knob of a door leading from the Youngs' house to their garage.
Defense attorneys say their client was out of town on business, that there is no physical evidence linking him to the crime and that the case has not been solved.
Prosecutors, however, contend that Jason Young's marriage was in trouble and that he did not want to be married anymore.
They allege that he traveled to Hillsville, Va., about three hours from Raleigh, checked into a Hampton Inn hotel and then returned to Raleigh to commit the crime.
Hotel employees testified to finding an emergency door propped open with a landscaping rock and a security camera in the same hallway unplugged and later pointing toward the ceiling during the time that the state says Jason Young would not have been at the hotel.
Galloway testified that he visited the hotel on Nov. 4, 2006, and found no forensic evidence there either. It was unlikely though, he said, since the room had been cleaned after Young checked out.
Galloway returned to the hotel on two other occasions to test investigators' theories about how Jason Young might have been able to get in and out of the hotel and his room unnoticed and without having to use his electronic key card, which a hotel maintenance employee testified had been used only once.
He was also present on Nov. 7, 2006, when investigators had Jason Young strip naked and photographed him for any injuries that might have occurred during the course of his wife's beating death.
With the exception of a bruise in the nail of the big toe of Jason Young's left foot, Galloway said, he didn't observe any other bruises, scratches or cuts on Young's body.
Wake County sheriff's investigator Al Sternberg also testified Tuesday. He searched through documents found at the Young home in an effort to provide a complete financial picture of the family.
Among the items Sternberg said he found that were of interest to investigators was a greeting card postmarked Oct. 7, 2006, from Orlando, Fla., where Jason Young has admitted to being with another woman on his Oct. 10 wedding anniversary.
Sternberg also showed jurors a suitcase belonging to Jason Young that investigators seized when he returned to the Triangle on Nov. 3, 2006.
Sternberg testified that the dark-colored shirt that Jason Young was seen wearing in hotel security images on Nov. 2, 2006, was not in the suitcase, which contained other pieces of clothing and a packet of condoms.
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