Technician in custody in Yale grad student slaying

[September 16, 2009]  NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Police have taken a Yale University animal research technician into custody to collect DNA samples and searched his apartment for evidence that might link him to the death of a graduate student who worked in the same lab.

More than 20 police officers and FBI agents searched the apartment of 24-year-old Raymond Clark III Tuesday night and led him away him as neighbors leaned over the building's iron railing and cheered.

New Haven Police Chief James Lewis described Clark as a person of interest, not a suspect, in the death of Annie Le. The 24-year-old graduate student's body was found stuffed behind a wall in a campus research building Sunday, the day she was to be married.

Police said Clark would be released after they obtain evidence they need from him and his Middletown apartment. Investigators are hoping to figure out within days whether Clark can be ruled out as the killer.

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 videotape 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 Monday, a day after they discovered Le's body hidden in the basement of a research building at Yale's medical school. She vanished Sept. 8.

Clark shares the apartment with his girlfriend, Jennifer Hromadka, whom he is engaged to marry in December 2011, according to the couple's wedding Web site.

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

Clark moved to Middletown from New Haven six months ago, where he shared an apartment with his girlfriend and three cats, according to former neighbor Taylor Goodwin, 16.

Police have said Clark is a lab technician at Yale. It's unclear how long he worked there and Clark's supervisors 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.

Authorities had been tightlipped since Le was reported missing, 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.

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.

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

Keeping information secret during an investigation helps police confront possible suspects with little-known evidence about a crime and makes it harder for them to fabricate a cover story, said David Zlotnick, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

The lack of information also has 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 2 miles from campus.

Yale President Richard Levin was more forthcoming to Yale medical students, telling them Monday that police have narrowed the number of potential suspects to a small pool because building security systems recorded who entered the building and what times they entered. Some 75 video surveillance cameras monitor all doorways.

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.

"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."

[Associated Press; By RAY HENRY and PAT EATON-ROBB]

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., and AP news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.