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Murder on Birchleaf Drive

Murder on Birchleaf Drive book cover

This week I review a book about domestic homicide, Steven Epstein’s Murder on Birchleaf Drive: The True Story of the Michelle Young Murder Case.  Intimate partners commit more than half (55%) of murders and most of the perpetrators by far are male.  Epstein’s 2019 book recounts one of those cases.  This book isn’t really a whodunnit; the “who” is obvious from the beginning.  The question was, would they be able to convict the S.O.B.

The Couple

Michelle Fisher grew up in the town of Sayville at the southern tip of Long Island.  After high school, she decided to attend North Carolina State University in Raleigh.  There she earned a master’s degree in accounting and landed a plum job in the Raleigh office of powerhouse accounting firm Deloitte & Touche.

Celebrating her birthday in 2001, Michelle met Jason Young, a native of the North Carolina mountains, at a local bar and the two soon began dating.  They made a curious pair.  Michelle was a meticulous planner while Jason was an overaged frat boy.  When Michelle discovered she was pregnant, the couple decided to marry.

But marriage and fatherhood did little to settle Jason down.  He and Michelle argued and fought frequently.  Even a second pregnancy failed to smooth the troubled waters.  Michelle and Jason appeared to be headed for divorce.

The Murder

On the afternoon of November 3, 2006, Jason called Michelle’s sister, Meredith Fisher, and cajoled her into retrieving some pages from the printer at his home.  When she got to the house, she discovered the body of her sister lying face down in a pool of blood beside her bed.  Shockingly, Michelle’s two-year-old daughter, Cassidy, emerged from under the bedcovers, explaining that Mommy “got boo boos everywhere.”

Two immense red flags are noticeable right away.  First, the brutal overkill indicated that this killing was intensely personal.  Second, killers often maneuver a third person into discovering the body, as Jason did with Meredith in this case.  Both facts pointed to Jason as the murderer and made his subsequent refusal to discuss the case with detectives even more suspicious.

The Book

Murder on Birchleaf Drive opens with the discover of Michelle’s body.  It then traces the background of the couple and the long path through their disintegrating marriage.  There is also coverage of the investigation.  Epstein devotes a significant part of the book to the trial—two trials, since the first resulted in a hung jury, not surprising since he is a veteran attorney and a partner in a North Carolina law firm.

Two things are interesting about the trials.  One is the dearth of physical evidence.  Prosecutors had to make a largely circumstantial case.  The other is Jason’s attempt to manufacture an alibi that involved sneaking out of and back into a hotel and tampering with security cameras.  It did take two trials, but a jury did convict Jason of murder in the first degree, in 2012, nearly six years after Michelle’s murder.  Judge Donald Stephens sentenced him to life without parole, saying he had “no quarrel” with the jury verdict.

Appeals

The verdict and sentencing were not the end of the Jason Young story, however.  On April Fool’s Day 2014, the Court of Appeals overturned Jason’s conviction based on an obscure technicality.  The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed this decision and reinstated the conviction the following year.  Jason’s lawyers made one more attempt to have the conviction set aside, this time based on a claim of “ineffective assistance of counsel,” but this effort ultimately failed.

My Take on the Book

I liked Murder on Birchleaf Drive for its deep-dive into the backgrounds of not only Michelle and Jason but of key family members as well.  Part of the story is the long fight over first visitation with then custody of custody of the Youngs’ daughter, Cassidy, on behalf of Michelle’s mother and sister.

I did find it a bit difficult to work through the chapters on the two trials.  They present the legal cases and arguments in fine detail, as one expects from an attorney turned author, but non-lawyers may find these chapters a bit tedious.

But overall, I liked the book and readily recommend it.

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Cold Blooded

Cold Blooded examines the 959 murders that took place in this house
Clutter house (SundanceTV)

Last week I mentioned Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as a candidate for the first modern true crime book. This week, I review a more recent look at the crime that inspired Capote. Cold Blooded is a four-episode documentary presented by SundanceTV.

The Crime and the Book

In the wee morning hours of Sunday, November 15, 1959, two ex-convicts broke into the home of Herb and Bonnie Clutter in the small village of Holcomb, Kansas. Richard Hickock and Perry Smith expected to find a safe stuffed with money. Instead, they left with barely $50 in cash, a pair of binoculars, and a transistor radio. They also left behind the dead bodies of Herb and Bonnie and two of their four children, Nancy and Kenyon (two older daughters no longer lived at home).

Capote read about the crime in the New York Times and decided it was the perfect subject for his concept of a “nonfiction novel,” a factual account using novelists’ techniques. He headed to Kansas with his friend, writer Harper Lee, in tow. The resulting book wasn’t published until 1965, six years after the crime. In Cold Blood was an instant sensation and a best-seller. It really put Capote on the map and made him famous. But not everyone back in Kansas was happy with the book or the 1967 film based on it.

Surviving family members felt the book and the film didn’t portray the Clutters’ lives fully or even accurately, and instead sensationalized their deaths. Some also felt that Capote was overly empathetic to Hickock and Smith at the expense of their victims. Nor surprising, perhaps, because the writer spent considerable time interviewing the two killers.

A New Documentary — Cold Blooded

SundanceTV released the four-episode documentary, Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders, in 2017. It uses archival film, audio clips, and interviews with surviving friends and members of the Clutter family to tell a more complete story.

The first episode presents the Clutters in a level of detail that In Cold Blood didn’t. It deals with the murders, of course, but is sympathetic to the victims. Friends and relatives also relate their reaction to the news of the deaths.

Episode two follows the hunt for the killers. The names of Hickock and Smith emerged early in the investigation, offered up by a former cellmate of Hickock’s who found the reward money too tempting to resist. Identifying suspects was easier than finding them, although police arrested the pair in Las Vegas, Nevada barely just five weeks after they violated the Clutter home.

Hickock’s and Smith’s trial is the subject of the third episode. Held in Garden City, the largest town near Holcomb and the seat of Finney County, the trial was of immense local interest although it attracted little national attention at the time. Given that Hickock confessed shortly after his arrest, naming Smith as the actual triggerman, it was hardly surprising that the jury returned two convictions for first-degree murder. Judge Roland H. Tate sentenced the pair to death by hanging.

The final episode tracks the case through Hickock’s and Smiths appeals and execution. It also examines the effect that the book and film versions of In Cold Blood had on the Clutter family and the town of Holcomb.

Evaluation

Cold Blooded is a balanced account of a tragic event and how it affected the people involved. The participation, anonymously, of a Clutter granddaughter and great-granddaughter lend an air of accuracy that is sometimes missing from Capote’s book. Viewers see how the crime affected friends, family, and neighbors.

The series is also the story of the investigation. It focuses largely on Alvin Dewey, the lead investigator from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Even though two suspects quickly emerged thanks to Hickock’s former cellmate, locating, tracking, and arresting the fugitives is an interesting story in itself.

Recommendation

The Clutter family that viewers meet in Cold Blooded is three-dimensional and human, more than simply victims.  It is a worthy epilogue to In Cold Blood and is worth watching.

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What Do We Like About True Crime?

Welcome to my blog post, Old Crime is New Again.  This blog is about true crime.  Since almost all good true crime stories are what we might call “old news,” I thought this would be a good title to capture the spirit of what I intend to write about.

Who doesn’t like a movie “based on a true story?”  And if the story is a whodunnit, people seem all the more interested.  You can find books, movies, podcasts, and blogs devoted to true crime literally everywhere.  You might notice that even though we tag the genre “true crime,” it might be more accurate to call it “true murder,” because murder cases make up the vast majority of true crime offerings, especially if they’re serial murders.

Why this fascination with what often are pretty awful events?  There are many theories.  Mental Floss posted an easy to read page on the subject in 2018 that is worth a look.

My own interest in the subject came from an early fascination with detective stories, notably the Sherlock Holmes books from Arthur Conan Doyle and the Perry Mason mysteries by Erle Stanley Gardner.  It was a short leap from fictional crime to true crime.

Why do I like true crime?  For one, true crime stories are almost always about the investigation of a crime and, hopefully, prosecution of the criminal.  The puzzle-solving aspect of collecting evidence and putting together a court case appeals to me.

Crime, especially murder, is a messy disruption to the neat arrangement of life that offends my sense of order.  Reading (or watching or hearing) about the solution to the crime gives me a comfortable feeling that we can re-establish some semblance of order, even if things can’t be put back quite the way they were before.

It also helps that many true crime writers are quite good storytellers. If the story is good enough, even the most gruesome subject matter can be appealing.  And there are numerous examples of true crime classics that demonstrate superb storytelling.

Some credit Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood with being the first serious true crime book. Despite the factual problems that have emerged with this book recently, it remains a true crime classic. But true crime as long fascinated people. London’s Metropolitan Police Service established the Police Gazette in 1772 and the National Police Gazette debuted in America in 1845. These early publications along with numerous “true detective” magazines acquired a slightly seedy reputation over the years and often ventured into areas other than police matters.

Critics say non-fiction crime can be disrespectful to victims and their families. This is a valid concern, but factual reporting and some common sense can make it less of a problem.

At least one study suggests that consuming too much true crime can increase the fear of being a victim and cause a decrease in respect for the criminal justice system. Common sense is your friend here, too. As they say, everything in moderation.

So if you enjoy true crime, do so without guilt. Just don’t overdo it. And follow this blog for more posts on crime, justice, and the law.

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