Authorities: Annie Le death was 'workplace violence'
Raymond Clark III, inset, has been charged with murder of Yale graduate student Annie Le, right. Credit: Composite Image: New Haven Mayor's Office / Facebook.com
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - A lab technician who cleaned cages and prepared experiments in the same building as slain Yale graduate student Annie Le was arrested on charges that he strangled her in what authorities are calling a case of "workplace violence."
Police say the suspect, Raymond Clark III, knew Le because he worked in the science building where she did animal research on mice - the same building where her body was left hidden behind a wall. Her body was found Sunday, the day she was to be married in Syosset to a Huntington man.
Clark, who was apparently tied to the crime by DNA evidence recovered at the scene, did not enter a plea here at Superior Court, where Judge Jon Blue ordered him held on $3 million bond in what he called "obviously . . . a serious case."
The 24-year-old from Middletown, Conn., whose forearm tattoos were visible in his shirt-sleeve polo shirt, did not enter a plea. Leg shackles manacling Clark, who is 5-foot-9 and 190 pounds, jangled as he entered the courtroom.
Thursday morning - moments after Clark's dramatic arrest earlier at a Super 8 motel that police had staked out all night in anticipation of an arrest warrant - New Haven Police Chief James Lewis offered no detailed motive for the slaying, but he said he does not believe the two were romantically involved. "This is not about urban crime. It is not about university crime or domestic crime, but an issue of workplace violence," Lewis said.
The 4-foot-11, 90-pound Le, also 24, died of what the state medical examiner earlier this week called "traumatic asphyxiation" caused by "neck compression."
Published reports have said that Clark failed a lie-detector test given early on in the investigation and had defensive wounds on his body; FBI Special Agent Kim Mertz wouldn't confirm or deny those reports. She would say only that the agency's polygraph unit was involved in the investigation.
The Associated Press reported that co-workers told police that Clark was a "control freak" who viewed the laboratory and its mice as his territory, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing probe.
While in jail on the $3 million bond, Clark will be held in solitary confinement for his own protection because of the case's notoriety, a correction officer at the New Haven Community Correctional Center said Thursday.
"We don't know who's out there maybe wanting to take action against him," said Lt. John Bernard, the correction officer.
Clark was to be taken to another state facility, the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in South Suffield, Conn., because his bond, $3 million, is so high, authorities said.
"He's just somber. It's his first time in jail," said Bernard. "He hasn't spoken. He didn't cry. This is all new to him," Bernard said.
The body of Le - who was to be married to Jonathan Widawsky of Huntington - was found behind a narrow basement wall housing wires and plumbing.
Clark appeared to be the focus of the investigation from the beginning although authorities said they did not have "tunnel vision."
With John Valenti
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