Medical examiner says Yale student was suffocated; police await evidence tests

Medical examiner: Yale student was suffocated

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A Yale graduate student found stuffed in the wall of a research center had been suffocated, the medical examiner reported Wednesday as police awaited DNA tests on evidence taken from a lab technician who worked in the building.

Police call Raymond Clark III a “person of interest” in the slaying of Annie Le. Authorities hoped to compare DNA taken from Clark’s hair, fingernails and saliva with more than 150 pieces of evidence collected at the crime scene on the Ivy League campus.

Investigators said they expect to determine within days whether Clark should be charged in the killing. He was escorted in handcuffs from his apartment in Middletown, Conn., and released early Wednesday into the custody of his attorney, police said.

Clark’s attorney, David Dworski, said his client is “committed to proceeding appropriately with the authorities.” He would not elaborate.

A police lab is expediting tests on Clark’s DNA. University of Connecticut genetics professor Linda Straus Baugh says testing can be done in days if a case gets top priority.

Clark’s job as an animal-services technician at Yale would probably put him in contact with Le, who worked for a Yale laboratory that conducted experiments on mice. She was part of a team researching enzymes that could have implications for cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy treatment.

Clark, his fiancee, his sister and his brother-in-law all work for Yale as animal lab technicians.

Le’s body was found Sunday stuffed behind the wall of the basement where lab animals are kept. The Connecticut state medical examiner said Wednesday that Le died of “traumatic asphyxiation.”

Authorities released no details on how she died, but traumatic asphyxiation could be consistent with a choke hold or some other form of pressure-induced asphyxiation caused by a hand or an object, such as a pipe.

Clark and Le were both 24 years old, but Clark has a muscular build that contrasts sharply to Le’s 4-foot-11, 90-pound frame. Clark also reportedly had a troubling brush with the law in high school after being accused of harassing a girlfriend.

Until recently, Clark’s family lived in nearby Branford, a small middle-class suburb of New Haven. In September 2003, when he was a senior at Branford High School, Clark reportedly upset a girlfriend so much that police warned him to stay away from her.

The New Haven Independent reported that when the girl tried to break up with Clark, he attempted to confront her and wrote on her locker.

The girlfriend and her mother told a detective that she had been in a sexual relationship with Clark and that he once forced her to have sex. The relationship continued after that incident, according to the Independent, a news Web site.

The young woman did not pursue the case, and no charges were filed. The Independent reported that Clark was warned in 2003 that police would pursue criminal charges against him if he contacted the girl.

Branford Police Lt. Geoffrey Morgan told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his department would not release the unsubstantiated 2003 report. Morgan would neither confirm nor deny the news report, citing cooperation with police investigating the killing.

Clark played baseball at Branford High School, where longtime athletic director Artie Roy remembered him as a quiet student who threw a mean knuckleball.

“He was a seriously good pitcher and a good infielder,” Roy said. “He wasn’t a typical off-the-wall knucklehead kind of kid who bounced all over the place,” he said.

On her MySpace page, Clark’s fiancee, Jennifer Hromadka, calls Clark was a “wonderful boyfriend.” She added that she’s not perfect, but cautioned people not to judge her.

“Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I’m not perfect and I don’t live to be, but before you start pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean!!” the 23-year-old wrote.

The date of the MySpace posting is unclear. The page has since been taken down.

Police are not commenting on a possible motive.

Yale technicians like Clark help care for the research animals used by labs around the Ivy League campus. They tend to rodents, mostly mice, used in experiments. They also monitor breeding and weaning and help with paperwork.

Since researchers generally try not to move animals from their housing for testing, students and faculty conducting experiments often visit the building where Le was found dead, school officials said.

The basement where Le’s body was discovered houses mostly mice, which her faculty adviser uses in his experiments.

The Le case has some parallels to the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Suzanne Jovin about 2 miles from the Yale campus. The slaying is still unsolved.

In that case, a professor was named as a suspect early in the investigation and was later fired. He was never charged, and authorities never presented evidence against him.

Noting that “tragedy has again struck Yale,” Jovin’s parents released a letter to Gov. Jodi Rell pleading for more funds for the state’s forensic science lab. Thomas and Donna J. Jovin said they share the agony of Le’s loved ones.

“We hope that the person guilty of this terrible crime can be apprehended quickly,” they wrote, “which was unfortunately not to be true in the case of our daughter.”

Associated Press writers Susan Haigh and David Collins in Hartford, Pat Eaton-Robb in Middletown, and news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York City contributed to this report.