In the weeks before George Young was fatally shot on his front porch, Harvey Timothy Lee was searching for snake venom and black widow spider breeders online, a Gwinnett County detective testified Tuesday.
Lee, 39, and Tia Young, 43, are on trial in her husband’s killing. The two were having an affair at the time of George Young’s November 2017 death, and Lee, a family friend, had been living in the Young home for about two years. George Young was shot in the face and the chest as he came home from work late on Nov. 16, dying before police or medical personnel arrived.
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In forensic searches of both defendants’ phones, police found Lee searching for terms including “black mamba venom” and “black widow breeding,” the two animals being the most venomous snake and spider known to man, Cpl. David Smith explained to jurors in his second day on the witness stand. Lee also searched for a 2004 Gwinnett County murder case in which a dentist killed his wife and another woman four hours after George Young was shot, his phone’s web history showed.
Searches of the phones also showed emails from Tia Young to Lee discussing their relationship. Tia Young also saved multiple humorous and sexual memes and cartoons about affairs, Smith said. One cartoon featured a fortune teller telling a woman “Your husband will meet a violent end.” The woman replies: “Will I get convicted?”
Tia Young extensively read news coverage of her husband’s killing, which Assistant District Attorney Stephen Fern argued was an attempt for her to keep her cover story in line with the information police had publicly released. Lawyers for both Tia Young and Lee objected to the admission of the evidence regarding the news stories, memes and some of the search history.
Smith’s Tuesday testimony, interspersed with multiple videos of interviews he conducted with Lee and Tia Young, focused on how police came to believe the two were in a relationship and had something to do with the killing. Smith is expected to be questioned by the defendants’ attorneys beginning on Wednesday.
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