Annie Le Found in Wall at Yale Lab

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/ny...e.html?_r=1&hp





She was intimidatingly smart and yet at the same time she was sweet and approachable

[Al in NYC]

Extremely sad...

but, politics?

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More events than politics. You think it belongs in the same category as tennis, football, movies and TV and restaurant reviews?

[Tom Storer]

It's undeniably an event--after all, it happened--but world event?

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It's undeniably an event--after all, it happened--but world event?

MY part of the world!

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September 18, 2009
Lab Technician Arrested in Death of Yale Student
By JAMES BARRON and SERGE F. KOVALESKI
A lab technician was arrested early on Thursday and charged in the murder of Annie M. Le, a Yale graduate student whose body was hidden in the wall of a university building after she was strangled, the police in New Haven said.

The technician, Raymond Clark III, 24, was taken into custody at a Super 8 motel in Cromwell, Conn., after DNA evidence linked him to Ms. Le’s killing, the police said. He did not resist. Bail was set at $3 million, said Chief James Lewis of the New Haven police.

Chief Lewis would not provide a motive, beyond saying it was “an issue of workplace violence.”

Mr. Clark had been described as a “person of interest” in the case earlier in the week, and had been taken briefly into custody, at which point DNA and hair samples were taken from him under court order. He was then released, but the police said they remained aware of his whereabouts at all times.

A law enforcement official said on Wednesday that Mr. Clark had scratch marks on his chest and on parts of his arms, where there were also bruises. This raised the suspicions of investigators, said the official, who declined to be identified because the case was still open.

Mr. Clark and Ms. Le worked in the same building, but little beyond that was known about whether there was any connection or relationship between them. Ms. Le’s body was found in a wall in the basement of the building on Sunday, the day she was to be married. She had been missing since the previous Tuesday.

The arrest capped 24 hours of fast-moving developments in the case.

On Thursday, the police had said that Mr. Clark was not the only person they were looking at in connection with Ms. Le’s her disappearance and death But he was the only one from whom they had taken DNA samples, and the only one whose car — a red Ford Mustang — they had hauled away to search.

Chief Lewis said that investigators had taken more than 200 items from the crime scene with potential DNA evidence that could be compared with the samples from Mr. Clark. Earlier in the week, Chief Lewis said the police had interviewed 150 people and watched 700 hours of surveillance video from cameras in and around the building where Ms. Le’s body was found — and where Mr. Clark worked.

The police said they did not question Mr. Clark on Tuesday night. They had questioned him earlier, Chief Lewis said, but he had invoked his right to a lawyer. He was represented by David H. Dworski of Fairfield, Conn., and the New Haven Public Defender’s Office was also providing counsel.

The public defender’s office declined to comment. Mr. Dworski said in a statement, “We are committed to proceeding appropriately with authorities with whom we are in regular communication.”

By Wednesday afternoon, about 12 hours after Mr. Clark had been released, Connecticut’s chief medical examiner released the cause of Ms. Le’s death, a finding he had withheld earlier in the week at the request of the state’s attorney in New Haven. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, said Ms. Le had been strangled — she died from “traumatic asphyxia” caused by “neck compression.”

Chief Lewis would not say whether she had been sexually assaulted.

It remained unclear whether there was any connection between Ms. Le and Mr. Clark beyond the fact that they spent time in the same building, Mr. Clark working as a technician, Ms. Le watching experiments with mice. A spokesman for the New Haven police, Officer Joe Avery, said there was no indication that she had complained of being stalked or harassed by Mr. Clark or anyone else in recent weeks.

Mr. Clark, who lives in Middletown with his girlfriend, also an animal research technician at Yale, had been a focus of the police for several days. On Wednesday afternoon, after removing boxes of items from Mr. Clark’s apartment, investigators were knocking on his neighbors’ doors seeking information about him.

Chief Lewis refused to discuss a police report from 2003, when Mr. Clark was a senior at Branford High School and the police were called about a dispute with his girlfriend at the time. According to the police document, reported Wednesday in The New Haven Independent, a news Web site, she wanted to break up but he did not, and tried to confront her. She complained to school authorities, who called the police, but did not press charges, according to the Web site.

Mr. Clark grew up in a rented gray house in a working-class neighborhood of aspirations when a nearby factory was humming. Jim Garrett, 65, who lives two doors down, said the house the Clarks lived in deteriorated as the years went by and the factory closed, and eventually Mr. Clark’s parents moved out. They went to a condominium in Cromwell, Conn., north of Middletown, where Mr. Clark’s mother works in the Wal-Mart across the street.

In high school, he joined the Asian Awareness Club, which made spring rolls for a faculty lunch and organized a trip to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year. He also joined the Interact Club, which focused on community problems like homelessness. And he played football and baseball, throwing long bombs as a quarterback and knuckleballs as a pitcher.

At Yale, Mr. Clark’s work habits were described by one researcher as “very officious and very demanding.” But Mr. Garrett remembered Mr. Clark as “industrious and busy.” More than once, Mr. Clark rang the doorbell with Mr. Garrett’s runaway beagle at his heels. “Your dog was loose,” Mr. Clark would tell him.

Mr. Clark was pictured several times in the Branford High School yearbook in 2004, his senior year. The first photograph was with the Asian Awareness Club; the second was with the Interact Club. He was also shown with the Cheers for Charity Club, which gave baby showers for two pregnant women. It also raised money for lymphoma and leukemia research, the yearbook said.

The last picture of Mr. Clark in the yearbook is with the baseball team. In contrast to the photographs on the club pages, where he is grinning, in the baseball picture, he looks stoic.

Teammates remembered Mr. Clark as a talented, versatile and competitive athlete. “He played sports hard,” said Michael Tamsin, 23, who was on the baseball and football teams at Branford High School. “On the field, he went about his business and he got the job done.”

Conor Reardon, 23, who was on the team with Mr. Clark, said that he and other teammates got Mr. Clark to succumb to a baseball rite of passage, chewing tobacco.

“But the next day, he came to school late because it had made him so sick that when he got out of his car that night he could barely stand up,” Mr. Reardon said, adding that Mr. Clark “ended up falling asleep in the bath tub in his baseball uniform after taking a shower fully clothed.”

[jesus marion joseph]

MY part of the world!

You're a Yalie?

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You're a Yalie?

The reason why they have such high security at Yale is to keep people like me OUT.

No, I am not a Yalie, but New Haven is just a couple of hours from me.

This story just hit a nerve is all, in part, probably because I have a daughter close to her age, also studying medicine, who is getting married soon.