By JUSTIN STORY

justin.story@bgdailynews.com

A Warren County judge set a trial date for next year in the case of a man accused of attempting to engineer a plot to murder his then-estranged wife.

Jeffrey Allan Young, 53, appeared in Warren Circuit Court on Friday for a hearing in a case involving charges of criminal solicitation to commit murder and first-degree fleeing or evading police.

Young was indicted after an informant provided the Warren County Sheriff’s Office in 2022 with two recordings that purport to depict Young discussing ways to stage his wife’s murder.

Warren Circuit Judge J.B. Hines set three days aside for a jury trial for Young beginning July 30.

Also at Friday’s hearing, Hines directed the Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office to obtain the confidential informant’s medical records dating back to Jan. 1, 2021, and provide them to the defense for review.

Young’s attorney, Alan Simpson, had requested the records, saying in a motion filed in June that, while meeting with Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Kori Beck Bumgarner, it had been represented to him that the informant had a cancer diagnosis and that her testimony might have to be taken during a deposition rather than at trial.

Simpson said Friday he was reluctant to go forward with a deposition without reviewing the informant’s medical records to verify that her illness was serious enough to have her testimony put on the record before a scheduled trial.

If the medical records show no evidence of a terminal prognosis, then the informant’s credibility as a witness would be called into question, Simpson said.

According to court records, WCSO detectives viewed text exchanges between Young and the informant, who told law enforcement she was confident Young wanted his wife dead.

A recording from Sept. 6, 2022, purports to depict Young suggesting possible scenarios for staging the homicide, and that Young needed time to make it appear that he and his wife were happy together, in order to divert suspicion from him, an arrest citation said.

Young allegedly tells the informant in the recording that he wants the death to look accidental.

A second recording from Sept. 12, 2022, allegedly features Young telling the informant he went to his wife’s workplace over the weekend while she was gone to make sure that no cameras were there, mentioning to the informant that she usually works up front and that her brother keeps a gun in the business that she does not know how to use, Young’s arrest citation said.

Young also mentions being willing to get money to the informant either that same day or the next day, according to court records.

WCSO detectives asked Young after he was detained if he had ever been in the location where the conversations with the informant are alleged to have taken place, at which point Young said he had never been to that location and did not know anyone from that area. He then requested an attorney, his citation said.