GRAND RAPIDS, MI – When Konrad Chance and his parents picked up his brother on a Saturday morning last month, Jared Chance appeared “very disturbed,” his brother recalled.

Before the day ended, Konrad Chance learned – apparently from his brother – that Jared Chance had killed and dismembered Ashley Young, a 31-year-old Kalamazoo-area woman last seen alive two days earlier.

“Yes, I knew that she was dead,” Konrad Chance, 27, told a prosecutor on Thursday, Jan. 10.

“Cut up into pieces?” he was asked.

“Yes sir.”

Jared Chance, 29, faces charges of open murder, tampering with evidence, mutilation of a body and concealing a death.

He has a probable-cause hearing on Friday, Jan. 11, in Grand Rapids District Court.

His parents, James Chance, 76, and Barbara Chance, 63, had probable-cause hearings on Thursday on charges of perjury and accessory after the fact.

She waived her right to the hearing and had her case bound over to Kent County Circuit Court. Her husband had a hearing that included testimony from Grand Rapids police detectives and crime-scene investigators as well their son, Konrad.

Assistant Kent County Prosecutor Lawrence Boivin cautioned Konrad Chase that he could not testify at his father’s hearing about what his brother told him because it would be hearsay testimony. Judge Michael Distel also reminded that he did not have to incriminate himself in answering questions.

Konrad Chance testified that he and his parents, who live in Holland, showed up at his brother’s two-unit apartment, at 922 Franklin St. SE, early on Dec. 1. They were taking him back to their place for the weekend.

When asked how his brother appeared, he said: “Very disturbed.”

The family helped Jared Conrad carry out boxes, including a cardboard box lined with a black bag “with something in it,” the brother said.

They took a trash bin and a mop, too.

On the way to Holland, they stopped at Young’s car. Jared Chance got something out of the car and put it in the back of his parents’ Honda CR. Konrad Chance figured his brother had stolen the car.

He did not remember stopping at Costco on the way home but said his family was shown on surveillance video. Once they got home, the brothers went to a nearby party store for beer, stopped at a friend’s house then went to their basement and smoked marijuana, Konrad Chase testified.

At some point, he testified, he learned that his brother had killed and dismembered Young. The next day, they returned to Grand Rapids. They brought the boxes, trash bin and mop with them, and put them on the landing of his brother’s second-floor rental home.

Konrad Chase said he didn’t have any idea what was in the boxes. He didn’t want to know, either, he said. On the way back to Jared Chance’s home, the father and suspect son stopped at Grand Rapids Police Department.

They were only there a couple of minutes.

Defense attorney Laura Joyce said the father, a retired Illinois police sergeant, wanted to turn his son in but first wanted to make sure he had legal representation.

The father, after leaving the police station, took his family to Jared Chance’s home and they put the boxes on the landing near the front door.

Later that day, the man who lived in the apartment below Jared Chance called police after spotting blood in the basement while investigating an odor that permeated the home.

Police found the victim’s torso. A forensic pathologist determined that a saw was used to cut the body. Police found two saw blades outside of Jared Chance’s home, and later found a saw, with blood and tissue on it, hidden under a couch in his parents’ home.

The prosecution contended that the father told police they went to his son’s house at night, rather than the morning, and said they didn’t stop anywhere on the way back, to throw off investigators.

Boivin, the prosecutor, speculated that body parts could have been disposed of at Costco. If police had known they stopped at Costco, they could have searched the garbage bins, he said.

He contended that the father expected his son to continue cutting up the body into smaller pieces that would be easier to dispose of.

Joyce, the defense attorney, said that it was outrageous that her client faced a potential life sentence for a faulty memory. She noted instances where police testified they did not remember answers to questions.

“The human mind is fallible,” Joyce said. “He might have mis-remembered what happened but he didn’t lie about it.”

Detective Sgt. John Purlee said the father was aware of the killing and dismemberment on the weekend he picked up his son.

He was afraid of what the containers held, Purlee said.

The father told police “that he feared he would be accused, in his words, of aiding and abetting,” Purlee said.

The father also did not look closely at the garbage at his own home.

Purlee thought it odd that the father, a former cop, told police he was glad he wasn’t working the case because it was a tough one.

The prosecution contended that false statements by the father hampered investigators.

Detective Erica Fannon said that “time is of the essence” in such cases. Body parts before they can be destroyed. Surveillance video isn’t saved long, either. Police did recover video of the homicide suspect buying two bottles of ammonia and other items at nearby Miss Tracy’s party store.

Police also found the victim’s purse in a garbage container. The container was supposed to have been emptied the day before the purse was found but someone had parked in front of it.

Her mother, Kristine Young, and other family members and friends, have attended every hearing and endured difficult testimony. Friends described Ashley Young as a positive, happy young woman.

“If you knew Ashley, she was literally the sunshine of your life,” a friend once said. “She was just amazing and beautiful. She could make anyone laugh.”

Young, who lived in Oshtemo Township, worked at a call center for a bank. For many years, she was as a caregiver for developmentally disabled people. She also was attending Kalamazoo Valley Community College.