Young, 44, claims he and Jake Kelly were actually “good friends” and “like family.”
That is one of several questionable claims in a Feb. 22 motion asking Superior Court Judge Daniel Martin to modify Young’s release conditions. The motion downplays Young’s violent past and portrays his actions regarding Kelly’s killing in a favorable light.
Young; his wife, Shannon, 38; and their friend Angel Mullooly, 34, were arrested in November in connection with the slaying of Kelly, who was 49. The Youngs are each charged with one felony count of interfering with a police investigation, and Mullooly is charged with second-degree murder.
Shannon Young recently had her bond reduced from $50,000 to $5,000 and was released on bail. Mullooly is being held on a $1 million bond.
Cory and Shannon Young shared a house in North Phoenix with Kelly. The Youngs told Phoenix police that on the night of Aug. 27, they heard a loud noise outside their home, went to investigate and found Kelly in the driveway, beaten to a pulp. The pair told police they took Kelly inside, gave him a bath to try to revive him and then dressed him in dry clothes and placed him on a sofa.
Cory Young “did not witness Jake’s injuries,” the motion claims, but the trauma was “consistent with a person or persons injuring Jake.”
Why didn’t Young dial 911 immediately? The motion offers the following rationale: “Given Cory’s experience is (sic) witnessing people sustaining physical injuries from fighting and witnessing injuries resolve therein, Cory reasonably believed (having no medical training and/or direct medical knowledge) that Jake’s injuries would resolve.”
Instead of calling 911, the motion says, Young ran cold water over Kelly in a bathtub, then “placed him on the living room sofa so he could monitor Jake throughout the night.”
Approximately 16 hours later, Cory Young finally decided that Kelly was not improving and “elected to transport Jake to the emergency room.”
The motion claims that Young “had no direct knowledge of how Jake sustained his injuries,” and it downplays a photo obtained by police that shows Young holding up the head of Kelly as he lies seriously injured outside their house, with Shannon standing nearby.
According to court records, Mullooly texted the photo to an ex-girlfriend, prefaced by the comment, “I’ve fucked up Jake 2Xs, babe.”
Jake Kelly was beaten and left in the driveway of his north Phoenix home on Aug. 27. He died from his injuries on Sept. 8.
Courtesy Jan Kelly
A photo worth a thousand words
A witness informed police that Shannon Young had told her that Cory Young and Mullooly got into a fight with Kelly, the motion says. Young and Mullooly “fucked him up,” Shannon allegedly told the witness in a phone conversation.
Cory Young’s motion claims that the witness “beefed up” the statement to police in a second interview.
The motion makes no mention of a photo described in court documents as “Jake in the bathtub bleeding from his injuries,” which Phoenix police said Shannon texted to the witness.
The motion does, however, include a horrifying photo of Kelly taken by Cory Young several hours after Kelly was brought inside the house. In the photo, a limp Kelly sits on the floor, propped up against what looks like a TV stand, his head down, his eyes closed and his arms at his side. His body is covered in bruises, cuts and red abrasions. A small white dog can be seen licking at his wounds.
Thin and pale, wearing striped shorts, Kelly looks like what he was: badly injured.
The motion states that Cory Young texted the photo of Kelly to Young’s mom.
The victim’s mother, Jan Kelly, told Phoenix New Times that she was incensed by the motion and the photo.
“Why did he send it to his mother?” Jan Kelly asked. “Bragging rights?”
Jan Kelly likened it to the photo allegedly taken by Mullooly following Jake’s beatdown and wondered if both were “trophy photos.”
“I don’t understand why they’re showing that picture in the motion,” she said. “They’re trying to say that they thought he was going to be OK, but you can’t look at that picture and think he was going to be OK.”
She said her son suffered multiple fractures of his skull, face, sternum and ribs. He also received numerous internal injuries, underwent several surgeries and was placed on life support. He died on Sept. 8.
The motion contends that “despite what the media continues to incorrectly portray, Cory and Jake were like family.” Young’s motion supports this assertion by including photos from Facebook, previously reported on by New Times, of Jake Kelly officiating at the Youngs’ marriage in a backyard ceremony in March 2023.
Jan Kelly confirmed to New Times that these photos were taken around the time of the Youngs’ marriage. She said her son moved in with Shannon after being introduced by a mutual friend. Shannon needed help with the rent, and Jake needed a place to stay. She didn’t know exactly when Jake moved in. Cory Young moved in sometime after Jake.
The relationship between the Youngs and Jake went south as the year progressed, she said. Jan Kelly regularly talked to her son, and the week before his death, he was depressed and had recently moved into a trailer behind the house he shared with the Youngs.
Jake also had broken down crying at his job at a local Italian restaurant, and his boss had given him three weeks off to deal with whatever was troubling him, she said. He told his mother that he was very unhappy.
“I said, ‘Do you want me to come to Arizona? Do you want me to come get you?'” she recalled. “He finally said, ‘That’s OK, Mom, I’m going to get a new place to live this week. I’ll talk to you next weekend.’ I never heard from him again.”
Jan Kelly scoffed at the motion’s statement that there is “no evidence whatsoever that Cory is a threat to her or anyone in the community.”
At a hearing in November to determine Cory Young’s bond, Jan Kelly asked the hearing commissioner to keep Young in jail over his alleged involvement in the killing of her son. She also feared for safety if Cory Young received a bond.
The commissioner said she could not make him nonbondable, but she did make electronic monitoring a requirement if Young was released.
Jan Kelly outside the Maricopa County Superior Court building in downtown Phoenix after three people charged in connection with her son’s death appeared in court on Nov. 22.
Stephen Lemons
Prison enforcer
The motion states that Cory Young “has not been convicted of any crime” in connection with Jake Kelly’s slaying and is “presumed innocent under the law.”
Still, Young has experience inflicting serious injuries upon others, according to records from the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.
In 2003, Young was doing a 10-year stint in prison for several felony charges, including burglary and aggravated assault, when he attacked another prisoner with his fists, leaving his victim in “a pool of blood.”
Court records state that Young struck his victim “eight or nine times in the head.” In addition to other wounds, the victim “sustained several facial fractures, which eventually required surgery.”
As a result, Young was charged with aggravated assault and convicted in 2004, adding three years to his sentence.
In June 2007, Young and another prisoner allegedly attacked a fellow inmate. An ADCRR report on the incident described how Young and another attacker were “simultaneously striking their victim with closed fists in the head and face area.” The attack continued “even after their victim had fallen to the ground prostrate” and despite prison staff commanding them to stop.
“Force (chemical agents) was required to stop this assault,” the report said.
A supplemental report cited interviews with “many Caucasian inmates who align with the Skinhead Security Threat Group,” as well as “Aryan Brotherhood-affiliated” prisoners. According to the report, the assault was ordered by “white inmates on the yard” to punish a prisoner who had been recruiting for a rival skinhead group.
Young’s body is a patchwork quilt of neo-Nazi and white supremacist tattoos, including a large Nazi swastika in the center of his chest.
New Times interviewed Young in 2016 while he was working as a tattoo artist with Wolfskin Ink in Phoenix, which is no longer in business. Young was honest about his affiliations. “I was running with a lot of skinheads and the Aryan Brotherhood and stuff like that,” he said about his time behind bars.
He claimed neo-Nazism was “a dead cause” but admitted to still having some of the same views as he did when he was in prison.
Young continued plying his trade as an ink slinger. According to court records, he was arrested for his alleged involvement in the Kelly homicide while he was at the Glendale tattoo parlor where he had been working.
He was a popular tattooist, judging by the praise he received for his work on the business’s Facebook page. That same tattoo parlor recently announced on a Facebook post that it will be closing its doors on March 16.
A trial date for the Kelly homicide has not been set. Martin recently rescheduled a hearing from March 20 to July 22 to determine the trial date.
Stephen Lemons
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