A violent ex-con with a swastika tattooed on his chest, the 45-year-old Young pleaded guilty to hindering a police investigation into the August 2023 murder of Jake Kelly, a 49-year-old gay man who shared a North Phoenix house with Young and his wife, Shannon. Young was charged with a class 3 felony for concealing information about co-defendant Angel Mullooly, who is charged with second-degree murder in the homicide and is being held on a $1 million bond.
A trial for Mullooly, 35, is tentatively scheduled for January.
That's also when Young will be sentenced. As part of Young's plea agreement, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office waived its prerogative to take Young into custody immediately. Young is due back in court on Jan. 7. As Martin informed him Thursday, Young faces a sentence ranging from 2 to 8.75 years, though the judge said "probation is available."
So, Young will get to enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas with Shannon, 37, who also caught a count of hindering prosecution as part of the beat-down. She pleaded guilty on Oct. 4 and is set to be sentenced on Dec. 4. Court records indicate that as part of her agreement, she will be "sentenced to supervised probation."
Outside the courthouse after the hearing, Kelly's mother, Jan, seethed at the injustice of the situation. "I wish he was going to jail today," she told a small scrum of reporters. "Why should he be out?" While the Youngs get to spend the holidays with each other and their families, her murdered son cannot.
"That's a sad thing," she said. "It's sad that Jake's not here, that we won't get to see Jake. We won't ever have another Christmas or Thanksgiving or Fourth of July or May 17th, which was his birthday. We will never have a happy one of those again."
Jake Kelly was badly beaten at his north Phoenix home on Aug. 27, 2023. He died from his injuries two weeks later.
Courtesy of Jan Kelly
The murder
Shannon was not present in the courtroom, and until Thursday, was barred from seeing her husband. One of the conditions of the couple's release was that they were not supposed to have contact with each other. In court Thursday, Young's attorney Richard Gaxiola requested that their release conditions be modified. The prosecution opposed this, noting that GPS signals from their ankle monitors indicate that they've already violated the no-contact order.Martin acknowledged the objection, but he said that the co-defendants were "a family unit" and, in the court's view, "that should be supported." He granted the modification.
The Youngs were not charged with murder, but Kelly's mother holds them along with Mullooly responsible for what happened to her son. The married couple claimed they found Jake outside the house they were renting together, beaten to a pulp and unresponsive.
They did not call 911. According to court records, Shannon and Cory told police they brought Jake inside, bathed him and changed his clothing. They didn't take him to a hospital till the next day. Jake had multiple blunt force injuries, skull fractures and internal injuries, requiring multiple surgeries. He was placed on life support and died from his injuries on Sept. 8, 2023.
One witness told police that Shannon called her and told her that "Cory and Angel fucked Jake up," and texted her a photo of Jake lying in a bathtub. Court records show that police warrants for data from Mullooly's phone showed a message from Mullooly to someone else, stating, "I've fucked up Jake 2xs babe." Mullooly soon sent a photo to the same person of Jake outside on the ground at night, bleeding, with Cory holding his head up.
Jan Kelly said she blamed Young more than Mullooly, who has no criminal record. By contrast, Young has multiple convictions for aggravated assault, burglary and trafficking in stolen goods. According to court documents he was part of a skinhead prison gang affiliated with the notorious Aryan Brotherhood.
Disappointed
Jan Kelly speculated that Mullooly, Young and her son had been drinking at a pool party when the fight broke out. Asked if she believes Jake was targeted because of his sexual orientation, she said she wasn't sure."I know who Cory is, and I know what his beliefs are and how he works," she said Thursday. "And I'm going to say that that makes it probable, but I don't know that."
She said she believed the trio waited to take Jake to the hospital, in part to clean the crime scene and get rid of any physical evidence. Ironically, Jake and Shannon were once friends as well as roommates. Cory moved in later, and Jake officiated over their backyard wedding.
It's unknown if Jake knew about Cory's being a neo-Nazi. Cory's body is festooned with white supremacist tattoos, which he often keeps covered, as he did before the judge on Thursday.
Phoenix New Times interviewed Young in 2016 at a now-defunct tattoo parlor, Wolfskin Ink in Phoenix, where he was working as a tattoo artist. Young admitted that in prison he was "running with a lot of skinheads and the Aryan Brotherhood and stuff like that." Though he claimed neo-Nazism was "a dead cause," he said he retained some of the same opinions as he did in prison.
Kelly said she will speak to the court at the upcoming sentencing dates in the case. She conceded the outcome was "not fair, not adequate," but she's come to accept the situation.
"I've had over a year ... to digest this and what is going to happen as opposed to what should happen," she said. "So yeah, I'm disappointed, but I'm hanging in there."
