Yale Student Homicide "Person Of Interest" Quizzed & Released...Rich Kid Perhaps?

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(A 24-year-old lab technician at Yale University was taken into custody for questioning. NBC’s Jeff Rossen reports.)

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Lab tech released from custody in Yale killing

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - New Haven police say they have released a Yale University animal research technician they questioned in the killing of a graduate student after collecting DNA samples from him and searching his apartment.

A police department spokesman, Officer Joe Avery, says Raymond Clark left the station with his lawyer at about 3 a.m. Wednesday.

Clark has not been charged in the killing of 24-year-old Annie Le, whose body was found stuffed behind a wall Sunday in a Yale laboratory building where both she and Clark worked. Police are calling him a "person of interest."

On Tuesday, Clark was escorted out of an apartment building in Middletown, Conn., and into a silver car. Neighbors leaned over the apartment building's iron railings and cheered as police led him away.

New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said police were hoping to compare DNA taken from Clark's hair, fingernails and saliva to more than 150 pieces of evidence collected from the crime scene. That evidence may also be compared at a state lab with DNA samples given voluntarily from other people with access to the crime scene.

"We're going to narrow this down," Lewis said. "We're going to do this as quickly as we can."

Police have collected more than 700 hours of video tape during the probe and sifted through computer records documenting who entered what parts of the research building where Le was found dead.

Investigators began staking out Clark's home on Monday, a day after they discovered 24-year-old Annie Le's body hidden in the basement of a research building at Yale's medical school. She had vanished Sept. 8.

Just some guy

Clark shares the apartment with his girlfriend, Jennifer Hromadka, whom he is engaged to marry in December 2011, according to the couple's incomplete wedding Web site. Middletown is about 20 miles north of New Haven.

Neither the couple nor Clark's parents returned repeated telephone calls Tuesday.

Clark moved to Middletown from New Haven six months ago, according to former neighbor Taylor Goodwin, 16.

"I never really talked to him much, he was just some guy," Goodwin said.

It was unknown how long Clark worked at Yale or his duties. Clark's supervisors at Yale would not comment Tuesday.

Le worked for a Yale laboratory that conducted experiments on mice, and investigators found her body stuffed in the basement wall of a facility that housed research animals.

Autopsy report withheld

Authorities had been tightlipped since Le was reported missing Sept. 8, just a few days before her wedding day. Police say they have ruled out her fiancee, a Columbia University graduate student, as a suspect but have provided little additional information.

Officials had promised Tuesday to release an autopsy report that would shed light on exactly how Le died. But then prosecutors blocked release of the results out of concern that it could hinder the investigation.

Investigators usually have reasons for keeping information secret during a criminal probe, said David Zlotnick, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Secrecy helps police confront possible suspects with little-known evidence about a crime and makes it harder them to fabricate a cover story.

Le's body was found Sunday, the day she would have been married on New York's Long Island. Her remains had been crammed into a wall recess where utilities and cables run between floors.

Family asks for privacy

The Le family issued a statement Tuesday through a family friend, the Rev. Dennis Smith, that thanked friends and the Yale community for their support during their grieving. The family also asked for privacy.

"The entire Yale community as well as our extended families and friends have been very supportive, helpful and caring," said Smith, speaking for the family. "Our loss would have been immeasurably more difficult to cope with without their support."

The secrecy surrounding the case has bred confusion in some quarters, and officials have repeatedly denied media reports.

Along the way, various media have reported that Le was stabbed, that police found her bloody clothes and that a professor was a prime suspect — virtually all claims unconfirmed by police or met by flat denials.

The lack of information has also led to some measure of fear at Yale, which last dealt with a homicide in 1998 — the sensational and still-unsolved stabbing death of 21-year-old Suzanne Jovin about two miles from campus.

Completely senseless

New Haven police said they would restrict information even more in coming days after an NBC producer was injured Tuesday as reporters outside the police department pushed to surround a spokesman during a briefing.

The building where Le's body is accessible to Yale personnel with identification cards. Some 75 video surveillance cameras monitor all doorways.

Her body was found in the basement, which houses rodents, mostly mice, used for scientific testing by multiple Yale researchers, Alpern said.

"That this horrible tragedy happened at all is incomprehensible," said Le's roommate, Natalie Powers. "That it happened to her, I think is infinitely more so. It seems completely senseless."



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Yale Student Murder Possibly Committed By Another Yale Student...What's The Motive?

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Clues point to inside job in Yale killing

(Although police haven’t made an arrest, they are reported to be closing in on a suspect. NBC’s Jeff Rossen reports.)

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(TODAY’s Ann Curry talks to one of Le’s high school friends, Laurel Griffeath.)

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NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Clues increasingly pointed to an inside job Monday in the slaying of a Yale graduate student whose body was found stuffed inside a wall five days after she vanished from a heavily secured lab building accessible only to university employees.

Police on Monday sought to calm fears on the Ivy League campus, saying the death of 24-year-old Annie Le was a targeted act but would not say why anyone would want to kill the young woman just days before she was to be married.

"We're not believing it's a random act," said officer Joe Avery, a police spokesman. No one else is in danger, he said, though he would not provide details other than to say that police believe no other students were involved. He also said no suspect was in custody.

Law enforcement sources told WNBC-TV their main suspect is a lab technician who works at the building. He was interviewed by police earlier in the week and failed a polygraph test. He also had scratches on his chest that made cops suspicious when they first spoke to him, according to WNBC.

Sources told the station they aren't sure about the motive yet, but an arrest is expected to happen as early as Tuesday.

Students on alert

Yale officials said the building where Le worked would reopen under increased security. Still, some students worried about their safety.

"I'm not walking at nights by myself anymore," said student Natoya Peart, 21, of Jamaica. "It could happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere."

Michael Vishnevetsky, 21, of New York, said he did not feel safe when he made a late trip to his lab Sunday in a different building. "It felt very different than how I usually felt," he said.

Twenty-year-old Muneeb Sultan said he's shocked that a killing could take place in a secure Yale building.

"It's a frightening idea that there's a murderer walking around on campus," said Sultan, a chemistry student.

Police found Le's body about 5 p.m. Sunday, the day she was to marry Columbia University graduate student Jonathan Widawsky, lovingly referred to on her Facebook page as "my best friend." The couple met as undergraduates at the University of Rochester and were eagerly awaiting their planned wedding on Long Island.

Police have said Widawsky is not a suspect and helped detectives in their investigation.

Never left building

The building where the body was found is part of the university medical school complex about a mile from Yale's main campus. It is accessible to Yale personnel with identification cards. Some 75 video surveillance cameras monitor all doorways.

The body was found in the basement in the wall chase — a deep recess where utilities and cables run between floors. The basement houses rodents, mostly mice, used for scientific testing by multiple Yale researchers, said Robert Alpern, dean of the Yale University School of Medicine.

Le was part of a research team headed by her faculty adviser, Anton Bennett. According to its Web site, the Bennett Laboratory was involved in enzyme research that could have implications in cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy. Bennett declined to comment Monday on the lab or Le's involvement with it.

Le's office was on the third floor of the five-story building, where authorities found her wallet, keys, money and purse.

Campus officials have said that the security network recorded Le entering the building by swiping her ID card about 10 a.m. Tuesday. She was never seen leaving.

Yale closed the building Monday so police could complete their investigation, according to a message sent to Yale students and staff. Scientists are being allowed in only to conduct essential research projects, and only under the supervision of a police officer.

Police activity continued at the crime scene early Monday evening, as uniformed officers with police dogs and workers wearing white suits to protect them from hazardous materials went in and out of the building.

Extra Security

When the building reopens, there will be extra security both inside and outside, said Yale Secretary and Vice President Linda Lorimer.

Police are analyzing what they call "a large amount" of physical evidence.

A friend said Monday that Le never showed signs of worry about her own personal safety at work, though she did express concerns about crime in New Haven in an article she wrote in February for the medical school's magazine.

"If she was concerned about (it) she would have said something to someone, and they would have known," Jennifer Simpson told CBS' "The Early Show." "And Jon (her fiance) would have known, her family would have known, friends would have known."

Simpson said Le, a pharmacology student from Placerville, Calif., was friendly to everyone.

"A People Person"

"She was a people person," Simpson said. "She loved people. She loved life. We just can't imagine anybody wanting to harm Annie."

In the Sierra foothills community east of Sacramento where Le went to high school, she was seen as a high achiever who knew early on that she wanted a career in medicine.

In a Union Mine High School yearbook from 2003, Le said her long-term goal was to become a laboratory pathologist and said it would require about 12 years of higher education.

"I just hope that all that hard work is going to pay off and I'm really going to enjoy my job," she said.

No one answered the door Monday at the Widawskys' gray, ranch-style home in Huntington, N.Y.

"He is a very nice young man," next-door neighbor George Mayer said of Jonathan Widawsky, a 24-year-old seeking his doctorate in physics. "His family, they're all just wonderful people — very, very nice people."

The university held a candlelight vigil Monday evening.

The death is the first killing at Yale since the unsolved December 1998 death of Yale student Suzanne Jovin. The popular 21-year-old senior was stabbed 17 times in New Haven's East Rock neighborhood, about 2 miles from campus.



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White Fire Fighters Win Reverse Discrimination Case, 5-4 Vote...U.S. Supreme Court Case Overturns Sotomayor's Decision

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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

Kennedy's opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.

But the appellate judges have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.

"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.

As the court wraps up for the summer, decisions are also expected today in two other high profile cases.

One involves campaign finance law. The court is considering whether a movie that was critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton during her presidential campaign should be subject to the same regulations as campaign ads.

The scathing 90-minute documentary about the former New York senator and current secretary of state was made by a conservative group. It wanted to air television ads in important Democratic primary states and makes the movie available to cable subscribers on demand, without complying with federal campaign finance law.

The Federal Election Commission and a lower court in Washington have said the not-for-profit group, Citizens United, must abide by campaign finance restrictions. The high court's conservative justices appeared especially skeptical of that view when the case was argued in March.

The other case concerns states' ability to investigate alleged discrimination in lending by national banks.

The Obama administration says federal law prohibits states from looking at the lending practices of those banks, even under state anti-discrimination laws.

Federal courts have so far blocked an investigation begun by New York, which is backed by the other 49 states, of whether minorities were being charged higher interest rates on home mortgage loans by national banks with branches in New York.

President Obama's proposed overhaul of financial regulation could make the outcome of the case less important. The proposal would create a consumer protection office and states would be empowered to enforce their own laws, with some degree of coordination with the new federal agency.

In addition to the three pending decisions, the court also is expected to announce whether it will hear several important cases in its term that begins in October.

Among those cases are:

* A plea by victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to reinstate a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia and several Saudi princes over charitable donations that allegedly were funneled to al-Qaida.

* A request by Chinese Muslims who continue to be held at Guantanamo Bay that the court put teeth into last year's ruling granting detainees some rights by allowing a judge to order their release into the United States. The 13 Uighurs who remain at the U.S. naval base in Cuba may be sent to the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, a move that probably would end their court case.

* A bid by convicted cop killer Troy Davis of Georgia to get a new court hearing so that he can present evidence suggesting his innocence. Seven of nine key witnesses against Davis have recanted their earlier testimony, but state and federal courts have so far refused to order a new hearing.

* Once their work is done, four justices are heading to Europe for teaching gigs. Roberts will be in Galway, Ireland. Justice Samuel Alito will travel to Innsbruck, Austria. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is heading to Rome. Justice Anthony Kennedy will spend July in Salzburg, Austria, for the 20th straight year.

* In keeping with his practice of shunning the spotlight, Souter is expected to return to his home in New Hampshire with little fanfare.


Supreme Court Overrules Sotomayor's Firefighter Decision, 5-4 Vote

A group of 20 New Haven firefighters won a major victory from the U.S. Supreme Court Monday morning in their reverse discrimination lawsuit against the city.

On a 5-4 vote, the court ruled with the firefighters. One Hispanic and 19 white firefighters (the Ricci of Ricci vs. DeStefano) say they were denied promotions after passing an exam. The city of New Haven (and Mayor John DeStefano) threw out the test results because no minorities scored high enough for a promotion. That, the city expressed, would leave them open for discrimination lawsuits from black firefighters.

The court resolved the city's fear of litigation can not justify the refusal to apply the test, reports Scotusblog.com.

"We conclude that race-based action like the City’s in thiscase is impermissible under Title VII," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion.

The case is expected to have wide-ranging implications for employment law.

Monday is also Associate Justice David Souter's final day on the court. President Obama's choice to replace Justice Souter, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, was part of a three-judge panel that rejected an appeal by the group of New Haven firefighters. This decision reverses the panel's verdict that the city was correct in dismissing the test results.


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