A two-year-old girl, who stood by as her murdered mother bled to death, spoke of her father on a 911 call, a court heard- although he claims to have been hundreds of miles away on a business trip.
Jason Young, 37, is on trial for first-degree murder in the death of his wife Michelle Young.
The 29-year-old was five months pregnant with their second child in 2006, when she was found face-down in a pool of blood in their North Carolina home.
The couple's two-year-old daughter, Cassidy, now seven, was in the house and found hiding in her parents' bed the next day, her bloody footprints surrounding the body.
But today, in sensational new testimony, Michelle's sister Meredith said, for the first time, that the toddler spoke of her father during the 911 call.
Prosecutors pointed out that in the tape of the call, Cassidy is heard in the background.
During the call Meredith Fisher asked the toddler what happened to her mother and if anyone had been in the house.
On the original call Fisher can be heard telling the dispatcher she didn't think the child understood what was happening.
According to NBC prosecutor Becky Holt asked Fisher: 'What was going on that led you to say that?'
Fisher responded: 'Earlier in the phone call, she had referenced her father. When I asked her further questions, she was saying 'he.'
'Did you talk to Cassidy? Holt probed, according to NBC.
'There on that day, when we were in the fire truck, she continued to talk about her father,' she said. 'And later when we got back to my house, a child psychologist was there, but she had just shut down.'
The fresh allegation has emerged as Young, a software salesman goes on trial for first degree murder in the death of his wife for the second time.
The salesman was jailed in 2009, but released on bond of $900,000 in July last year, after a jury failed to reach a verdict in his first trial. If convicted this time he could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In a civil lawsuit in 2009 a judge declared that Jason killed Michelle, awarding her mother $15.6 million in compensation and punitive damages. He was barred from receiving any life insurance payout, or assets as a result of his wife's death.
In his first criminal trial, in 2011, prosecutors said that the businessman killed his wife because they were having marital problems, ABC News reported. Two women took the stand to say they'd had extra-marital sex with him in the months leading up to his wife's murder.
Young has always claimed that the night his wife was murdered he was 160 miles from home staying at a hotel in Hillsville, Virginia, while on a business trip.
ut in his first trial the the prosecution argued that Young drove through the night to kill his wife Michelle, and then interfered with the hotel security devices to conceal his actions.
Jason Young allegedly left the hotel through an emergency exit, wedging the door open so as to avoid using his key card to get back inside, prosecutors say.
'The defendant had a plan. His plan was to murder his wife, and his plan was to get away with it,' Holt told jurors in the first trial.
In his original trial Young made the unusual move of testifying in his own defence. Speaking though tears, he said that, although he was not a exemplary husband, he loved his wife and had no hand in her death.
This time the prosecution’s opening statement portrayed Young as an juvenile man who didn't want another baby around, ABC News reported.
'He was the free spirit. The adventure lover. The irresponsible. The immature. The life of the party. The jokester. The salesman,' Holt said, according to CNN.
But the defence’s opening statement argued that the state’s case is mainly circumstantial, and without direct evidence linking Young to the crime scene.
Attorney Mike Klinkosum conceded that the Youngs were having problems in their marriage, but argued that did not make Jason Young a killer.
Klinkosum said. 'I am not here to tell you that he was a good husband. He was far from it,'
'He's acted like an obnoxious, juvenile jerk. But what you've got to remember ladies and gentlemen, is that we don't convict people of murder, just because they act like jerks.'
Meredith Fisher discovered her sister's lifeless body after getting a voice mail from Jason Young asking her to go to the house to look for some papers about an anniversary present for Michelle.
She yesterday remembered the heartbreaking moment of finding her dead sister, with her small child nearby. She told the court: 'That's the small of her back, that I touched her and felt that she was cold.'
When Fisher arrived at the Young house 'the dog was freaking out,' she said in the 911 call played back in court yesterday. Lights were on in the porch and the gate was open. When she got upstairs there was blood everywhere.
Holt described the horrific scene that greeted Meredith: 'She found little footprints in blood. She found them around Michelle’s head. She saw them as she was coming up the stairs in Cassidy’s bathroom. She found baby dolls. A baby doll by Michelle’s head.
Source : www.dailymail.co.uk
