Police get DNA match in Yale slaying; arrest appears near

[MassLiberal]

Source: New Haven Register

NEW HAVEN - Police have obtained a DNA match that implicates Raymond Clark III, 24, in the slaying of Yale graduate student Annie Le, police sources said late Wednesday.

Police have obtained, or are in the process of obtaining, an arrest warrant, the sources said.

Police were in Cromwell, where Clark was staying in the Super 8 motel.

Read more: http://nhregister.com/articles/2009/09/16/news/new_have...

---

Edited to update link.

[MichiganVote]

1. Give him the chair. This case is beyond reason. Poor girl...

[IndianaGreen]

9. Annie Le weighed 90 pounds put up a fierce struggle with her attacker

Sources also said investigators are finding evidence that the pint-sized scientist who only weighed 90 pounds put up a fierce struggle with her attacker.

Blood spatter was found on a laundry cart, and a bead from her necklace was found on the floor of the basement lab where she was killed and stuffed into a wall panel.

Police also found a pair of bloody surgical gloves.

ABC News has also learned that Clark sent a text message to Le early Tuesday, Sept. 8, requesting a meeting to discuss the cleanliness of research mice's cages

http://abcnews.go.com/US/annie-le-suspect-raymond-clark...

[jennied]

13. Agreed. That bastard

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. What I want to know...

Why did he do this?

Horrifying.

[LisaL]

3. Who knows why some people do things?

Right now we could speculate about many possibilities, but speculation is all it would be.

[IndianaGreen]

5. We always try to figure out a motive because we don't think like a murderer

This was a horrible crime that has ruined many lives. I hope the culprit is quickly arrested and prosecuted.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

11. I read about him earlier,

and it mentioned that one of his high school activities - the stuff that's listed in the yearbook - had to do with things Asian.

My guess is he had an obsessed crush on her, that she barely noticed him, that his obsession grew as her wedding date got closer, and finally, the tension that generates and feeds this kind of pathology got the better of him and he made a move on her.

Maybe he just wanted to kiss her, or maybe he tried to rape her (what better way to "sully a bride" in his twisted mind?), or maybe he just wanted to kill her.

All murders are horrific. This one - her wedding day, her beautiful face, that big smile, her slight build, her youth, her academic and professional promise - makes it especially horrible..............................

[CaliforniaPeggy]

16. That's interesting...

Thank you, my dear Tangerine LaBamba...

It just makes me ill, thinking of her fighting for her life...on her wedding day.

[Moosepoop]

22. Her body was found on what would have been her wedding day...

But that wasn't the day she died.

Still horrible, though...

[CTyankee]

24. In the press conference a few minutes ago, the NH Police Chief stressed that this was a case

of "workplace" violence, not "domestic" violence. He also said that rumors about some kind of "romantic" relationship was untrue. What is he saying/not saying?

I also heard the mention of an "Asian Awareness" club at his high school. This is from a Google search: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090916/BREA...

Your guess on the Asian connection seems to be not unreasonable. That this happened so close to her wedding day is also interesting and kinda "fits" the scenario.

The warrant is sealed so there are still LOTS of questions out there. The police chief indicated that it could run a thousand pages before the investigation is over. While I think part of this is an attempt to erase the bad image of the NHPD left by the mishandling of the Jovin case, it will be interesting to find out...

[IndianaGreen]

33. Clark texted Le on the day of her disappearance that they should meet and talk about the 'dirty mice

ABC News reports that Raymond Clark texted Le, on the day of her disappearance, that they should meet and talk about the "dirty mice;" potentially referring to the animals she was working on in the lab for research

[Tangerine LaBamba]

38. "... seems to be not unreasonable..."

Is today your day to torture the English language? Or are you just feeling tricky?

I wrote for TV - crime drama shows - and you start seeing these patterns. There's really nothing new under the sun. Not where human behavior is concerned.

These days, it takes someone really crazy to do something that's new or unpredictable. This one - including the fact of the impending wedding and his rising tension and inability to control his obsession - is too easy....................

[mountainvue]

49. I do too. Why? It will be interesting

to see how the case plays out in court, if it goes to trial. I am heartbroken for her and her fiance's families.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

4. wonder if they've considered he might attempt suicide. n/t

[LisaL]

6. Even if they did, what could they possibly do about it?

Until and unless they obtain an arrest warrant, they can not keep someone under guard.

[Psephos]

8. If he's guilty, it would solve a number of problems...

...for himself as well as others.

I've always found it bizarre how much effort is spent to prevent suicide among those who look to it as deliverance or expiation.

[aquart]

15. Drano would work.

I don't mind a bit if that selfish prick dies in agony.

[BoneDaddy]

32. I could care less

he could borrow my belt.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Police monitoring motel where Clark is staying

Wednesday, September 16, 2009
8:39 p.m.

Police monitoring motel where Clark is staying
BY PAUL NEEDHAM

A team of New Haven Police Department officers is surrounding a Super 8 Motel in Cromwell, Conn, where Raymond Clark III, a person of interest in the murder of Annie Le MED ’13, is believed to be staying.

In an interview, Cromwell Police Department Captain Roy Nelson said "Our officers are aware of that and we are assisting them in any way that we can." Nelson said he did not know whether an arrest was imminent.

Cromwell is less than 10 miles from Middletown, Conn., where Clark has an apartment and where authorities detained him on a pair of search warrants Tuesday evening.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/crosscampus/2009/09/16/pol...

[Plaid Adder]

10. This has got to be one of the worst-written newspaper articles I've seen in a long time.

And the headline appears to be misleading. It seems...as far as I can tell...from the article that they do not *yet* have a DNA match with Clark, but have obtained some DNA and are hoping they can get a match when they compare it with the DNA from the crime scene.

Seriously, I know times are tough in the newspaper industry...but couldn't they find someone with a better command of the written word to cover this story?

The Plaid Adder

[Tangerine LaBamba]

14. Can you believe this?

I had to go over the article twice, and look back at the headline.

It's a bogus headline - it's just not true.

And they wonder why newspapers are biting the dust...............

[LisaL]

18. If they don't have a DNA match, why would the article say

police have obtained the DNA match that implicates him? It appears they pieced together some older information with some newer information.Somebody wrote a little bit and just added it on top of the older article, thus updating the old material.
Of course the whole thing together might not make a lot of sense.

[CTyankee]

25. The NH Register is not a very good newspaper.

We get it just to keep abreast of issues in the New Haven area, but the NH Independent is better for quality of writing, IMO. It is now online only. You might want to go it for clearer reporting and writing...http://www.nhindependent.com/

[IndianaGreen]

12. New Haven's Channel 8 report: Clark last person to see Le alive.

Watch the video at the link:

ABC News reports that Raymond Clark texted Le, on the day of her disappearance, that they should meet and talk about the "dirty mice;" potentially referring to the animals she was working on in the lab for research

http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/new_haven_cty/crime_wtnh_n...

[IndianaGreen]

17. Police Surround Raymond Clark's Motel

Police Surround Raymond Clark's Motel

Officers Wait Outside Cromwell Super 8 Motel

POSTED: 8:04 pm EDT September 16, 2009
UPDATED: 11:57 pm EDT September 16, 2009

CROMWELL, Conn. -- New Haven and Cromwell police officers surrounded the motel of Raymond Clark, the person of interest in the death of Yale graduate student Annie Le, on Wednesday night.

Officers remained outside the Super 8 motel on Industrial Park Drive at 11 p.m.

http://www.wfsb.com/news/20953818/detail.html

[mackerel]

19. I still don't get why he's at a Motel 8

[wroberts189]

20. I would guess to avoid the reporters at his apt. .

[MassLiberal]

23. His landlady evicted him

Can't find the link.

[IKnowItAll]

37. Maybe because they leave the lights on?

[Piewhacket]

21. Just hold up there, a dern minute chillun... learn how to read the lying media...

first, the story said:
"Police have obtained a DNA match that implicates Raymond Clark III"

did they say what kind of dna evidence... noooo.
did they say it was semen from le, for example? nooo.
should they have said that if they knew it? oh yea.
so its pretty obvious they have NO idea what they are talking about.

the story generates prejudicial heat, but virtually no light.

so are you now expecting to hear they recovered dna from the
lab where he worked? whoop de flippin do, what does that mean.

the police are probably not releasing actual information, they are just
feeding red meat to the media. its why people can't get fair trials
in this country.

but be assured. if they match semen or fingernail scraping on le with Clark,
they WILL arrest him (within minutes). so listen up for that.
ever since oj the police have been touchy about getting high profile
cases sewn up before an arrest, but they don't wait one minute past that.

[CTyankee]

26. Police cuffed him when they detained him to get the physical evidence earlier this week.

Reported on WTNH this morning, the reason he was cuffed was so that he couldn't remove the DNA from under his fingernails.

I would think that if you were the killer, the first thing you would do is scrub under your fingernails with a stiff brush and maybe some alcohol...

[Piewhacket]

29. Correct. Arrest would be illegal without probable cause...

which they might have already had, but were holding off to
solidify their case.

Also, in a high profile case it is VERY BAD press to arrest someone
then have to release them because the dna says they are innocent.

Instead they used a special procedure to preserve evidence. Some evidence
was possibly on Clark, so he was necessarily detained, the evidence preserved, and he was
promptly released. Although he was in custody, it wasn't an arrest, it was
a detention, as you point out.

I think it possible that Le's dna might still be under Clark's fingernails, but if I were
doing the forensic I'd be first looking for HIS dna under HER fingernails. That with the
scratchmarks(?) he is reported to have, plus the opportunity, would pretty much nail
the prosecution case coffin shut. That's what I think they might have. We'll see.

[shanti]

30. hmmm

wouldn't the dna they're looking for be under HER nails? i mean, she's the one who scratched HIM, not the other way around.

[Piewhacket]

31. right. as I said..

"I'd be first looking for HIS dna under HER fingernails."

but it could also be the other way around too, as you pointed out.
he could have scratched her as she was struggling, leaving her dna
on his fingernails. either discovery would be pretty damning for him. not
conclusive necessarily, but very bad. depends on the quality of the evidence,
but probably way enough cause to get him charged for the murder.

[CTyankee]

34. Well, since they have her body I'm sure that's been done.

Maybe they were just trying to cover every angle. Having it certainly doesn't HURT their case and if they have both they have a very solid case, IMO...

[Piewhacket]

35. Of course, quite right. Cautious. They used the 'detention' to get his dna. Then the arrest....

we can conjecture for now that the police actually do have some
incriminating dna, that is, dna that links him firmly to the crime.

its a guess, it seems likely and consistent with the police actions.

still they might not have a dna link, but they have enough other
probable cause to arrest him anyway. he was there, after all
and if no one else was there its the "locked room" scenerio where
two people enter a room that is "locked", then you open the door
to discover one of two has been murdered. either aliens did it
or the survivor is the guilty one. circumstantial proof. duh.

we'll have to wait and see.

[CTyankee]

36. The NHPD are being extremely cautious. After their stunning debacle with the Jovin

case, where they targetted a professor unfairly and without sufficient evidence, they have probably been determined that it should never happen again. They also neglected to gather evidence properly in the Jovin case and the Jovin family has been extremely vocal in their condemnation of the PD (they also made public a message to the Governor about sloppy police work just a few days ago).

Of course, the two cases are very different. Jovin was killed on a public street in New Haven and not in the more controlled building that Le was in.

At today's press conference, there was much kumbaya among the 3 law enforcement bodies: NHPD, Yale PD and FBI. And the Pres. of Yale is being very proactive with his public statements, basically saying Yale is still a great place, yadayada (are you listening, major donors to Yale?). Well, that's what they pay him for...

[Piewhacket]

39. Its the way they work... police are basically bureaucrats...

in a machine. compartmentalized... and sometimes unsupervised.
like all machines, they sometimes break down,
and like a computing machine, garbage in, garbage out.

unfortunately, when they break down they sometimes grab the
nearest innocent bystander to fabricate a case on. to save face
and their phoney baloney jobs.
too often that works.
but sometimes not.

its been estimated by a RW whackout law and order former USAG Thornberg
(who apparently never met a defendant who wasn't guilty) that about 25% of the people
in Federal prisons are actually innocent of the crimes they were convicted of.
He seemed to have no problem with that, btw. RW philosophy at its finest.

they just get lazy, sloppy, bureaucratic. it sometimes
takes high voltage wire to wake them up and pay attention.
then their work is pretty good.


OH...some people may not realize that dna from the crime scene
must be compared with dna from the target. you can't identify anyone
just from a dna sample alone, its a comparison technique. sometimes
we assume people know that, but it isn't really something a non-scientist
would just know unless it had been explained.

[CTyankee]

40. The other reality is political. Yale is just too powerful a presence in the city of New Haven

for sloppy police work. Our mayor (an arrogant and incompetent person, IMO) finally got the message after the Jovin mess and the uproad it caused for Yale. This time it wasn't gonna happen that way...it's all about Mayor DeStefano coming out of it smelling like a rose...no way, in my book (Ricci v. DeStefano was enough for me!).

[Piewhacket]

42. Ah... a local. Very nice.

I'm pretty vicious in criticizing the police when they f^ up.
Sometimes it seems half the police force believes they are "Judge Dread"
(vigilante cop) , and the other half just doing "duck and cover" to retirement. But I must confess that
in the Yale case, I have not seen any impropriety. It looks like its being handled carefully,
tight lipped, and "by the book". It doesn't mean there isn't some impropriety, mind you, its just not apparent.
Its kind of refreshing to see the police actually obeying the law, huh? That seems as rare as hens teeth.

But remember we only get the police side in the news prior to trial. Newspapers are notoriously abusive and sensational.
You already know just how misinforming that can be. So I will never EVER in my life, granting that at one time
(in my grossly misinformed youth) I might have seen it differently, I NEVER EVER conclude the merits of a criminal
case before I see the arguments and evidence, and especially particularly the defense case.

It does look like the police are building a solid case against Clark.
But a local tends to stay alert to stuff in their back yard. So I for one would be interested in seeing
what comes up in the case. Perhaps you would be kind enough to keep an eye on it for DU?

[CTyankee]

43. Oh, don't worry. I'm on DeStefano's case all the time.

Also, the Jovin case was 11 years ago and much of the police force is different. I just don't credit DeStefano with anything because of his corruption and cronyism. That's not the way to achieve excellence in public service for any agency of government. The buck stops with the top guy, IMO.

[Piewhacket]

44. Gracias. I look forward to your commentary as the case progresses.

[LisaL]

27. He has been arrested.

Jeez.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Blue_Tires]

41. i would be curious to know the motive

if he did do it, he had to have known there was no chance of getting away with it...

[CTyankee]

45. They're reporting that his friends called him a "control freak." My guess is that means he

was a control freak at work about the lab conditions, but that doesn't make too much sense with regard to Le. There has to be more than just her not cleaning the mouse cages sufficiently for him to fly into a rage and strangle her.

None of this makes sense in the context of her murder. It's just not working for me. Something else must have driven him. The mouse cages were just a pretext for something else...don't know what...

[LisaL]

46. Honestly we have no idea, but even a little thing can set someone

off. There was a case several years ago where a man killed a 15 years old boy because that boy walked on the man's lawn.
The man apparently really loved his lawn.
Certainly most people would agree that it isn't a good reason to kill someone, but that boy is just as dead. And so is the man, he was convicted and killed himself while in prison.

[undeterred]

47. I'll bet he had a crush on her.

And maybe he knew she was getting married soon and figured this was his last chance to put the moves on her. So he asked her to meet with him about work stuff, and instead he made a pass at her. Which she firmly rejected. With that he flew into a rage, and the rest was homicide.

I'd be surprised if he had planned to kill her ahead of time- anyone would have made a much better plan.

[jumptheshadow]

48. NY Daily News columnist writes it was probably work rage

His job was to enforce cleanliness and ethical standards for the treatment of mice. He sent her a message requesting a meeting to request improvements. She replied in a conciliatory way. They met, and from there, it's a matter of speculation. Apparently police believe he felt she had dissed him. It was not the nature of her personality to be disrespectful, so they also theorize that she had her mind full of impending wedding issues, and might have said something like "I will get around to it."

They have him coming and going. Card swipes show he was in the room where she was murdered for an hour at the time she was murdered. Then a steady progression of swipes appears to echo a pattern where he was looking for someplace to put the body. The video showing him coming out of the building confirms that he was distraught and was holding his head with his hands.

The article ran yesterday.

[Quantess]

50. Thank goodness she isn't blonde.

This means it's suitable for discussion at DU.