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Video Weighs Heavily In New Port Richey Murder Trial

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By TODD LESKANIC

tleskanic@tampatrib.com

Published: January 23, 2009

Ryan Young

NEW PORT RICHEY - Ryan Young told a judge Thursday that he did not wish to take the stand in his own defense.

The problem for Young is that the jury deciding whether he killed his mother in 2007 might have already heard too much from him. The panel spent most of the morning watching a videotaped interrogation during which Young continually equivocated and changed his account.

Pasco County sheriff's Detectives Dean Quinlan and Jim Sessa interviewed Young on April 17, 2007, the same day 52-year-old Donna Young was found dead in her Hathaway Drive home. She was found in her bed with a pillow over her head; an autopsy showed she died of asphyxiation.

Ryan Young, 26, was arrested the following day and charged with first-degree murder. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating this morning. Young faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Ryan Young was questioned twice on the day of his mother's death, once at his mother's house and later at the sheriff's office. Both interviews were recorded and played for jurors this week.

The video showed Quinlan coaxing Young into telling him what happened inside his mother's house. Young was at first resistant, saying his mother was dead by the time he arrived at the house after 11 a.m.

But Quinlan gradually drew more out of Young, getting him to acknowledge he staged a robbery scene by opening drawers and cutting a back window screen.

Young eventually told Quinlan he put a pillow over his mother's face, but only because he thought she was dead by the time he got to the house. He told the investigator he was happy his mother was dead and he didn't want to look at her face.

Young remained consistent in one thing: he didn't mean to harm his mother.

"If I did it, I didn't mean to," he said on the video.

Medical examiner Christopher Wilson testified that someone would have had to hold the pillow over Donna Young's face for three to five minutes to kill her.

There has been no evidence that Donna Young struggled with her attacker. The 52-year-old was a slight 5-foot-7 and 114 pounds at the time of her death. She suffered from several ailments, including multiple sclerosis, and used a wheelchair.

Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis has said that Ryan Young killed his mother between 2 and 3 a.m., then left the house and returned after 11 a.m. the next day to call 911.

Shelagh Ricardo, one of the defense's two witnesses, testified that Ryan Young was at her home on Potomac Drive at 2 a.m. that morning. Ricardo said she and Young are good friends and she allowed him to move in to her house shortly before Donna Young's death because he was struggling financially.

That struggle is, in part, what prosecutors think led him to kill his mother. Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis has said Ryan Young knew he was sole beneficiary of his mother's estate. He also was angry that she didn't look favorably on his homosexuality, something he had informed her of only six months earlier, Halkitis said.

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (727) 815-1084.

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