Cops in Annie Le case won't call Clark a suspect
Cops searched the home of Yale lab tech Raymond Clark, whom they identified as a "person of interest" in the Annie Le slaying. Credit: MySpace.com
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Pressed to clarify whether animal lab technician Raymond Clark is a "suspect" or "a person of interest" in the slaying of a Yale graduate student, a New Haven assistant police chief raised his arms and twice flexed his index and middle fingers to make air quotation marks.
"Uh," New Haven Assistant Chief Peter Reichard said, "person of interest."
The three-word label, often invoked by law enforcement agencies to stop short of calling a person a suspect, has sometimes led to words of regret from authorities and court settlements.
Clark, 24, police insist, is not a suspect in Annie Le's killing, though he was seized late Tuesday in handcuffs from his home by police with a warrant that publicized his name and address, then scraped under his fingernails, cut locks of his hair and swabbed for his saliva. That DNA will be compared to evidence from the lab where Le's body was found Sunday.
Asked by Newsday why the authorities publicly named Clark as a "person of interest" in a police news conference, the state's attorney in New Haven, Michael Dearington, replied that he hadn't seen the event but that it was the media that first leaked Clark's name.
New Haven's police chief, James Lewis, declined to comment on why Clark is a person of interest.
In 1996, law enforcement used the term to describe Richard Jewell, a security guard who authorities wrongly tied to the bombing at the Olympics in Atlanta, He was later exonerated but said his life was ruined by the public association.
Steven Hatfill, the government scientist referred to by that term by authorities in the post-9/11 anthrax mailings, was proved innocent years later and eventually sued, then settled his suit against the government.
And in New Haven, the last time a Yale student was slain - a 1998 unsolved stabbing of student Suzanne Jovin, who was found dead on a street corner - police named Yale teacher James Van de Velde as a person of interest, according to the Yale Daily News. He has never been charged with the crime.
With Keith Herbert
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