The case
Ashley Young, 31, grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan, and was living in Kalamazoo in November 2018 when she drove to Grand Rapids to spend time with Jared Chance, a friend with a long criminal record. The two went out on the night of November 28. Her phone went quiet early the next morning, and she never showed up to meet her mother.
On December 2, 2018, a man living in the Franklin Street building where Chance rented an apartment traced a smell to the shared basement and found a woman’s torso wrapped under a tarp. Police found her arms and legs in a box on the building’s stairwell. Chance’s parents, James and Barbara Chance, had carried boxes in their Honda CR-V to their home in Holland and back, and investigators later found a saw and other evidence at the house. Ashley’s head, hands, and feet have never been recovered.
In September 2019, a Kent County jury convicted Jared Chance of second-degree murder, mutilating a body, tampering with evidence, and concealing a death. On October 10, 2019, he was sentenced to 100 to 200 years in prison, and the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in January 2021. In June 2020, Barbara Chance received 45 days in jail for perjury and accessory after the fact, and James Chance received 30 days as an accessory, each followed by probation.
Case photographs
Where it happened
Grand Rapids, where Ashley Young’s remains were found in December 2018