Investigation Continues In Yale Homicide

Police said yesterday that the death of Annie Le—the Yale graduate student whose body was discovered stuffed into the basement wall of her lab building—was a targeted killing and not an act of random violence, though officials declined to name a suspect as the investigation continued.

“We’re not believing it’s a random act,” police spokesman told the Associated Press, as investigators sought to ease student fears on campus.

ABC News and NBC News reported yesterday that investigators are focusing their efforts on a suspect who failed a lie detector test and has what appear to be defensive wounds.

Citing an unidentified source, NBC News reported that the suspect was a student, though not necessarily one enrolled at Yale.

Annie Le’s body was found in an area that housed utility cables for the four-story lab building at 10 Amistad St., located 10 blocks from Yale’s main campus.

An autopsy yesterday confirmed that the body found in the Yale Medical School building was Le.

This tragic discovery came just hours after Le was expected to marry Columbia University graduate student Jonathan Widawsky in an outdoor ceremony at the North Ritz Club on Long Island. The families canceled the wedding last Friday—three days after Le first went missing.

“Our hearts go out to Annie Le’s family, fiancé and friends,” wrote Yale University President Richard C. Levin in an e-mailed statement to the Yale community Sunday night.

Security cameras and swipe access records showed that Le, a 24-year-old pharmacology student, last entered the lab building on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. There was no record of her leaving the building.

After Le’s disappearance was first noted later on Tuesday, suspicions of a runaway bride soon turned to alarm about possible foul play. By Thursday, a $10,000 reward had been posted for Le’s whereabouts, while investigators searched every corner of the lab building.

On Saturday, police officers found bloody clothes above the ceiling tiles in the lab building, though later reports said that the clothes were not those Le was last seen wearing when she entered the building last Tuesday.

Peter Reichard, the assistant New Haven police chief, said in a news conference Sunday night that no more details can be disclosed in the ongoing homicide case.

Yale’s last campus murder occurred in December 1998, when senior Suzanne N. Jovin, 21, was stabbed to death in a wealthy neighborhood about 2 miles from campus. Her death remains unsolved.

—Staff writer Manning Ding can be reached at ding3@fas.harvard.edu.