Murder of Annie Le

{{Infobox civilian attack

| title = Murder of Annie Le

| image = Le missing person flier crop.jpg

| image_size =

| caption = Images from missing person flyer released by New Haven police. Right: September 8, 2009, surveillance image taken upon Le's entrance of the research facility where she worked. Left: Undated and uncredited closeup of Le also on flyer.

| location = 10 Amistad Street
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.

| date = {{Start date and age|2009|9|8}}

| time =

| timezone =

| type = Murder by strangulation, attempted sexual assault

| victim = Annie Marie Le

| perp = Raymond John Clark III{{cite news | url=http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2009/09/17/clark-charged-in-le-grd-13-murder/ | title=Clark Charged in Le Grd '13 Murder | newspaper=Yale Daily News | date=September 17, 2009 | access-date=2009-09-17 | first1=Issac | last1=Arnsdorf | first2=Harrison | last2=Korn | first3=Zeke | last3=Miller | first4=Paul | last4=Needham}}

| verdict = Pleaded guilty

| convictions = Murder, attempted sexual assault

{{Infobox event

| title =

| child = yes

| sentence = 44 years imprisonment

}}

On September 8, 2009, 24-year-old Annie Marie Thu Le was murdered on the New Haven, Connecticut, campus of Yale University. Le was a doctoral student at the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology. She was last seen working in a research building on the New Haven campus. On September 13, the day that she was to be married, she was found dead inside the building.{{cite web|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32810822 |title=Clues point to inside job in Yale killing|work=NBC News |date=September 14, 2009|access-date=September 14, 2009}}

On September 17, police arrested the perpetrator, Raymond J. Clark III, a Yale laboratory technician who worked in the building.{{cite news|url=http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/17/yale.student.le/index.html|title=Yale lab worker arrested in student's killing, police say |work=CNN|date=September 17, 2009|access-date=September 17, 2009}} Clark pleaded guilty to the murder on March 17, 2011.{{Cite web|url=https://abcnews.go.com/US/raymond-clark-pleads-guilty-murder-yale-grad-student/story?id=13158057|title=Clark Pleads Guilty to Murder of Yale Student|date= March 17, 2011|website=ABC News|access-date=September 20, 2017}} Clark was sentenced to 44 years imprisonment on June 3.{{cite news| url=https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-yale-lab-technician-gets-44-years-for-killing-student | work=Fox News | title=Former Yale Lab Technician Gets 44 Years for Killing Student |date=June 3, 2011|access-date=June 3, 2011}} The case generated frenetic media coverage.

Disappearance and death

On the morning of September 8, Le left her apartment and took Yale Transit to the Sterling Hall of Medicine on the Yale campus. At about 10 a.m., she walked from Sterling Hall to another campus building at 10 Amistad Street, where her research laboratory was located. Le had left her purse, cell phone, credit cards, and cash in her office at Sterling Hall. She entered the Amistad Street building just after 10 a.m., as documented on footage from the building's security cameras. Le was never seen leaving the building. At approximately 9 p.m. that night, when Le had still not returned home, one of her five housemates called police to report her missing.

Because the security footage did not show Le exiting the building at Amistad Street, police closed the whole building for investigation. Police also searched through refuse at the Hartford dump, where Yale's garbage is incinerated, looking for clues as to Le's whereabouts. The FBI, the New Haven Police Department and the Connecticut State Police were all involved in the search.

On Sunday, September 13, her planned wedding date, authorities discovered Le's body in a cable chase inside the wall of a basement laboratory in the Amistad Street building.Amy Herman, Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), p. 118. Herman noted that the FBI discovered the body not through visual clues but from the smell of Le's decomposing body which had been detected not at the supposed crime scene but in the men's bathroom. Bloody clothes had previously been found above a ceiling tile in the same building, which is monitored by about 75 security cameras. The entrance and the rooms inside the building require Yale identification cards to be opened and accessed. The basement where Le's body was found houses animals that are used for experiments and research. Due to the high security measures in the building, authorities and Yale officials maintained that it would be extremely difficult for someone without a Yale ID card to enter the basement lab, leading them to focus their investigation on Yale employees and students.{{cite news | url=http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2009/09/14/body-identified-as-annie-le-grd-13/ | title=Body Identified as Annie Le Grd '13 | date=September 14, 2009 | access-date=2009-09-22 | first1=Harrison | last1=Korn | first2=Paul | last2=Needham | newspaper=Yale Daily News}}

The Connecticut medical examiner's autopsy found that Le's death was a result of "traumatic asphyxia due to neck compression". On September 17 police arrested Raymond Clark, a 24-year-old laboratory technician who had been working in the same building. The previous day he was taken into custody after police obtained a warrant to collect his DNA; he was released after providing a sample.

Memorials were held in California and Huntington, New York, and the funeral was broadcast live on the Internet. The Yale community also publicly mourned Le's death. The Yale Daily News reported that professor and Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis called September 14 the "saddest day to open class" since the day after the 9/11 attacks.{{cite news | first=Isaac | last=Arnsdorf | title=Gaddis: Saddest day to hold class since day after 9/11 | url=http://yaledailynews.com/crosscampus/2009/09/14/gaddis-saddest-day-to-hold-class-since-day-after-911/ | newspaper=Yale Daily News | date=September 14, 2009 | access-date=September 17, 2009}}

Personal life

Le was born on July 3, 1985 in San Jose, California, to a Vietnamese-American family. She spent her childhood in Placerville, California, with her aunt and uncle.{{Cite book |last=Sands |first=Stella |title=Murder at Yale: The True Story of a Beautiful Grad Student and a Cold-Blooded Crime |date=June 29, 2010 |isbn=978-1429988612 |pages=25–35}}[http://vnexpress.net/GL/The-gioi/Nguoi-Viet-5-chau/2009/09/3BA137E6/ Cô gái gốc Việt thông minh và hài hước trong mắt bạn bè]. VnExpress (2009-09-15). Retrieved on 2010-12-27. She was valedictorian of her graduating class at Union Mine High School in El Dorado, California,{{cite news |last1=Bass |first1=Carole |title=The death of Annie Le |url=https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/2632-the-death-of-annie-le |access-date=August 27, 2020 |work=Yale Alumni Magazine |issue=Nov/Dec 2009 |language=en}} and voted "most likely to be the next Einstein".{{cite news |last1=Barron |first1=James |title=Killing of Yale Student Not a 'Random Act', Police Say |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/nyregion/15yale.html |access-date=August 27, 2020 |work=New York Times |date=September 14, 2009}} After earning approximately $160,000 in scholarship money, she attended and graduated from the University of Rochester in New York.{{cite web|url=http://rochester.edu/president/memos/2009/le.html|date=2009-09-15|title=University Community Mourns Alumna's Death|access-date=2009-09-17|archive-date=2009-09-22|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090922194659/http://www.rochester.edu/president/memos/2009/le.html|url-status=dead}} Her major was cell developmental biology with a minor in medical anthropology.{{cite web|url=http://www.wfsb.com/news/20817193/detail.html|title=Yale Student Vanishes Days Before Wedding|date=September 10, 2009|access-date=2009-09-21|publisher=WFSB|work=wfsb.com|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090914035120/http://www.wfsb.com/news/20817193/detail.html|archive-date=September 14, 2009}}

In September 2007, Le was accepted into a graduate program at Yale that would have led to her earning a doctorate in pharmacology. Her research had applications in the treatment of diabetes and certain forms of cancer. Since July 2008, Le was engaged to Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student in applied physics and mathematics at Columbia University and was due to be married on September 13, 2009, in Syosset, New York.[http://www.columbia.edu/~lv2117/people.htm Latha Venkataraman]. Columbia.edu (1999-02-22). Retrieved on 2010-12-27.{{cite news|first1=Kristen|last1=Hamill|first2=Eliott C. |last2=McLaughlin|url=https://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/09/10/missing.yale.bride/index.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090923174813/http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/09/10/missing.yale.bride/index.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=September 23, 2009|title=Police: Yale student, reportedly bride-to-be, disappears|publisher=CNN|date=2009-09-10| access-date=2020-06-30}}

She had previously written an article for Yale Medical School's B Magazine titled "Crime and Safety in New Haven", published in February 2009.{{cite news|url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-09-13-yale-missing_N.htm|title=Official: Person of interest identified in Yale homicide|date=September 14, 2009|first1=Christina|last1=Crapanzano|first2=Donna|last2=Leinwand|newspaper=USA Today}}{{cite web| last=Le |first=Annie |title=Crime and Safety in New Haven |url=http://bbs.yale.edu/images/B10_1.pdf |date=February 2009 |work=B Magazine |publisher=Yale University |access-date=2009-09-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090920071037/http://bbs.yale.edu/images/B10_1.pdf | url-status=dead |archive-date=2009-09-20 }}

Media coverage

The case of Annie Le generated frenetic media coverage, with a news producer trampled in a rush to a briefing.{{cite web |first=Paul|last=Bass |title=NBC Producer Trampled At Annie Le "Briefing" |url=http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/09/nbc_producer_tr.php |date=15 September 2009|publisher=New Haven Independent |access-date=17 September 2009}} Some commentators suggested that the attention given by the media was inappropriately disproportionate to that given to other murder victims.{{cite news |title=Media frenzy over Yale murder draws criticism |first=Kristen|last=Chick |url=http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/09/18/media-frenzy-over-yale-murder-draws-criticism/ |publisher=Christian Science Monitor Global News Blog |date=2009-09-18 |access-date=2009-09-18}} Slate contributor Jack Shafer opined that "Journalists almost everywhere observe this rough rule of thumb: Three murders at a Midwestern college equal one murder at Harvard or Yale."{{cite news |title=Murder Draped in Ivy: Why the press can't get enough of Harvard or Yale murders |first=Jack|last=Shafer |url=http://www.slate.com/id/2228705/ |publisher=Slate |date=2009-09-17 |access-date=2009-09-18}} Connecticut Post columnist MariAn Gail Brown argued that there is a "pecking order in many things", including the investigation of crimes, and that Le's murder attracted media attention because she was an Ivy Leaguer and "[s]omeone who might earn beaucoup bucks, [s]omeone who possesses sky's-the-limit potential, [v]ivacious and attractive, too."{{cite news |title=On the edge of Yale, murder's not a new story|first=MariAn Gail|last=Brown |url=http://www.ctpost.com/default/article/On-the-edge-of-Yale-murder-s-not-a-new-story-124970.php |publisher=Connecticut Post |date=2009-09-14 |access-date=2010-09-13}}

Prosecution

After his arrest, Clark was held on $3 million bail at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Suffield, Connecticut. He appeared in Connecticut Superior Court on October 6, 2009, but did not then enter a plea to the charges.{{cite news |title=Yale Killing Suspect Appears in Court|first=Serge|last=Kovaleski|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/nyregion/07Yale.html |date=2009-10-06 |access-date=2009-12-22 | work=The New York Times}} His hearing was delayed until January 26, 2010, since not all of the materials in the case had been made available to the lawyers.{{cite news |title=Clark hearing put off until January | first=Esther | last=Zuckerman | url=http://yaledailynews.com/crosscampus/2009/12/21/clark-hearing-put-off-until-january/ | newspaper=Yale Daily News | date=2009-12-21 | access-date=2009-12-22}} Clark initially pleaded not guilty on January 26.{{cite news|url=http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/26/connecticut.yale.killing/|title=Suspect in Yale killing pleads not guilty|date=January 26, 2010|publisher=CNN|access-date=January 26, 2010}} His pretrial hearing was scheduled for March 3, 2010, in New Haven[http://www.jud2.ct.gov/crdockets/CaseDetail.aspx?source=Pending&Key=bfd16236-8d07-42e4-a23a-0c9347656b48 Pending Criminal / Motor Vehicle – Search by Defendant], State of Connecticut Judicial Branch with pretrial evidence processing scheduled for July 26.{{cite news|url=https://newhavenindependent.org/article/family_stands_by_annie_le_murder_suspect|title=Family Stands By Annie Le Murder Suspect|date=June 16, 2010|publisher=New Haven Independent|access-date=June 18, 2010}}

In October 2010, Clark's case was continued and another hearing was scheduled for February 9, 2011.{{cite news |title=Yale killing suspect due back in court |url=http://www.courant.com/community/new-haven/hc-ap-ct-yalekillingfeb06,0,6401077.story |access-date=February 8, 2011 |newspaper=Hartford Courant |date=February 6, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121009155525/http://www.courant.com/community/new-haven/hc-ap-ct-yalekillingfeb06,0,6401077.story |archive-date=October 9, 2012 |url-status=dead }} In March 2011, Clark entered a guilty plea in Le's murder in exchange for a 44-year prison term. On an additional charge of an attempted sexual assault of Le, he entered an Alford plea, a guilty plea that does not admit the facts but concedes the sufficiency of the evidence against him.{{cite news|title=Yale lab tech faces sentencing for killing student|url=https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-yale-lab-tech-faces-sentencing-for-killing-student-2011jun03-story.html|access-date=9 July 2020|date=June 3, 2011|work=San Diego Union Tribune|agency=Associated Press}}[http://news-herald.com/articles/2011/03/15/news/doc4d8018dc1a8be759607925.txt Raymond Clark expected to plead guilty in slaying of Yale's Annie Le] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120313012737/http://news-herald.com/articles/2011/03/15/news/doc4d8018dc1a8be759607925.txt |date=2012-03-13 }}, herald.com. Accessed November 12, 2022. Clark officially entered the pleas on March 17 and he was formally sentenced to 44 years' imprisonment on June 3. At his sentencing, Clark took responsibility for his actions and expressed remorse for the murder.{{Cite web |date=2011-06-03 |title=Yale lab tech Raymond Clark sentenced to 44 years for Annie Le murder - CBS News |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yale-lab-tech-raymond-clark-sentenced-to-44-years-for-annie-le-murder/ |access-date=2023-08-29 |website=www.cbsnews.com |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=Gideon |first=Gavan |date=2011-06-03 |title=Raymond Clark III sentenced to 44 years |url=https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/06/03/raymond-clark-iii-sentenced-to-44-years/ |access-date=2023-08-29 |website=Yale Daily News |language=en}}

Clark is serving his sentence at the Cheshire Correctional Institution, and is scheduled for release on September 16, 2053.[http://www.ctinmateinfo.state.ct.us/detailsupv.asp?id_inmt_num=371189 Connecticut Department of Corrections: Inmate Information Search website]. Accessed November 12, 2022.