Yale offers $10,000 reward for info on Annie Le
Annie Marie Le, 24, with her fiance Jonathan Widawsky. Credit: Handout
Yale University announced it is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of one of its own, Annie Le, a graduate student from California who vanished from a college lab on Tuesday - less than a week before she was to be married on Long Island.
>> Click to see photos from the Annie Le disappearance case
Officials announced the reward late Friday afternoon, urging people with information to call the 24-hour FBI hotline at 877-503-1950.
The monetary incentive comes after three days of searching for Le, 24, who was last seen entering a building housing the university laboratory where she worked on Amistad Street in New Haven.
More than 100 law enforcement officials from the Yale Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Connecticut State police and New Haven Police Department have scoured the environs and even searched through garbage cans for clues. Last night, police brought two German shepherds into the Amistad Street building.
They labored in the rain Friday, but reported no new information about their probe.
Le's roommate reported her missing Tuesday night when she didn't return home to their Lawrence Street apartment.
Missing-person posters with photos of Le dotted the campus Friday, where they were taped to the windows of the Yale research lab where she was last seen at about 10 a.m. Tuesday.
One of the photos in the posters shows her entering the building, carrying papers on the morning she went missing.
The doctoral student in pharmacology "has not been seen or heard from by family, co-workers and friends" since then, according to the poster.
Police have said that Le's fiance, Jonathan Widawsky of Huntington, a graduate student in physics at Columbia University in Manhattan, is in New Haven cooperating with police. A representative for North Ritz Club in Syosset, where the nuptials were to be held Sunday, said Friday that the wedding has been canceled.
"A family member called," said Vasilios Nerantzinis, a manager at the North Ritz Club, which is located on Jericho Turnpike. "It would have been canceled anyway because if we don't hear anything at this point a few days before the wedding, we cancel it."
Le used her university identification card to enter the lab building about 10 a.m., but left her purse, cell phone, credit cards and cash in her office, located in another Yale building about three blocks away, according to published reports.
Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesman, told the New Haven Register Thursday that "there's no evidence" at this time of foul play.
On the Columbia campus, Widawsky lives with roommate Theodore Kramer at 118th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Kramer was not available Friday.
Le, from Placerville, Calif., met Widawsky when they were undergraduates at the University of Rochester, said published reports.
She was a lively, hardworking student then, according to her mentor, Rocky Tuan, who supervised a selective National Institutes of Health undergraduate scholars program.
"She was a very happy person," Tuan told the Register. "Everybody got along with her. She's always smiling, laughing."
Le, 4-foot-11 and weighing 90 pounds, was last seen wearing a brown skirt, green short-sleeved T-shirt, brown shoes and a brown necklace.
Her cell phone voice message says: "Hey. You've reached Annie. Please leave your name, number and a brief message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Bye."
- With Sophia Chang and Pervaiz Shallwani
'A spark for them to escalate the fighting' A standoff between officials has stalled progress, eroded community patience and escalated the price tag for taxpayers. Newsday investigative editor Paul LaRocco and NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie report.
'A spark for them to escalate the fighting' A standoff between officials has stalled progress, eroded community patience and escalated the price tag for taxpayers. Newsday investigative editor Paul LaRocco and NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie report.
