DNA sought from Raymond Clark's fiancee in Annie Le slay
Jennifer Hromadka and her fiance, Raymond Clark. Clark, a lab tech at Yale University, is the prime suspect in the Annie Le slaying case. Credit: MySpace.com
The fiancee of a lab technician accused of fatally strangling Yale grad student Annie Le will have to give a DNA sample to the police, her defense attorney said Wednesday.
It's not clear why the authorities have sought the sample from Jennifer Hromadka, 23, but several search warrants for Clark executed in September and unsealed Wednesday indicate that investigators found blood in the Middletown, Conn., apartment she shared with the suspect, Raymond Clark III.
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Hromadka, who also worked at the lab building where Clark is accused of murdering Le, intends to comply with the signed search warrant compelling her to give the DNA sample, said Robert Berke of Bridgeport, her lawyer.
Clark was arrested Sept. 17 and charged with killing Le, the 24-year-old doctoral student in pharmacology who was to wed a Huntington man in Syosset days after she went missing. Le's body was found hidden behind a wall on what would have been her wedding day.
Much of the case against Clark relies on DNA evidence linking him to both the crime scene and Le's body, according to the warrants.
Clark hasn't entered a plea, but one of his public defenders has said Clark will plead not guilty. He is jailed at the high-security MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in South Suffield, Conn., on $3-million bond.
Hromadka "isn't a suspect," her attorney, Berke said authorities told him.
Berke described the impact of Clark's arrest on his client as "terrible" and "devastating." Berke declined to say if the two have broken off their engagement to be married in 2011.
The unsealed search warrants for Clark, who documents say had e-mailed Le on his BlackBerry, reveal that Clark and Hromadka were seen leaving a coffee shop together near the lab hours after Le's Sept. 8 disappearance.
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