THE GROUNDS around the pharmacology laboratory of Yale University looked as pristine yesterday as might be expected from this pillar of the Ivy League, with freshly cut lawns and a blaze of late summer flowers. Only the yellow crime scene tape that surrounded the complex betrayed a sense of profound unease.
As students and faculty members hurried by, they carried with them the news that a body had hours earlier been found hidden behind a wall in the basement of a laboratory. Police have yet to confirm the identity, but the body is presumed to be that of Annie Le (24), a postgraduate student from California who disappeared on Tuesday when she was last seen entering the building.
The body was found on Sunday, the day on which Le had been planning to marry.
The recognition that what began as a missing persons case had turned into the first murder inquiry at Yale since December 1998 was greeted with fear and consternation around the university’s training hospitals and medical research facilities that are concentrated in the vicinity of the pharmacology lab.
Melissa Nguyen, a developmental services worker, said she had thought twice before coming in to a meeting close to the laboratory. “It preys on your mind. Everybody is a little guarded right now, being cautious about where they go and who they go with, particularly women. Le was a young, vulnerable woman and it’s a tragic loss.”
Last Tuesday morning Le took a Yale bus from her home, arriving at the laboratory at Amistad Street, about a mile from the core of Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut, at about 10am. The building is one of the most high-security premises in the university, by dint of its sensitive research into medical drugs.
One of its 75 video cameras recorded Le entering the building, but to the puzzle of investigators, no footage was seen of her leaving.
Her possessions, including money, credit cards, mobile phone and ID, were found in her third-floor office. She also had a desk in the basement where she was carrying out experiments as part of a PhD into the role of proteins in metabolic diseases such as diabetes.
A colleague who worked with Le at the laboratory and described her as a “clever, beautiful, active and very hard-working girl”, said she had been conducting experiments on mice. The colleague said that because of the controversy surrounding animal experiments, the basement of the building was particularly securely guarded and Le would have had to use her ID card to gain access.
The body is understood to have been found stuffed behind a wall in the basement. Police are also analysing bloodstained clothes, that may not be Le’s, which were found hidden behind ceiling tiles in the lab.
The dean of the school of medicine, Robert Alpern, told the student paper Yale Daily News that the level of security was such that it suggested the murderer was someone with entry permission to the basement. “It certainly would be extremely difficult for someone from outside Yale to get into that space. Not impossible, but extremely difficult.”
Further weight was given to the theory of an inside killer by police, who attempted to assuage fears among students by saying the murder was not a random act and that no one on the campus was in danger. A spokesman for New Haven police would not comment on whether any suspect had been identified.
The tragedy of Le’s presumed murder was heightened by the fact that the body was found on her wedding day. She had been due to marry Jonathan Widawsky, a physics graduate student at Columbia University, in a ceremony in Long Island.
In the days leading up to her disappearance, Le had been studying Hebrew, as her fiance is Jewish. On Facebook she wrote: "Lucky I'm in love with my best friend :) - Less than one week til the big day!" Police have said that Mr Widawsky is not a suspect and has been co-operating with the investigation. – ( Guardianservice)