New Haven Independent

That was the upshot as a few new clues, two apparently wrong tabloid stories — but no breakthroughs — trickled out about the disappearance of third-year Yale pharmacology graduate student Annie Le.

Le, 24, has been missing since Tuesday, last seen at a Yale medical building on Amistad where she did lab experiments. More than 100 law enforcement agents have descended on the city to try to solve the mystery.

FBI Special Agent Kimberly Mertz (pictured) confirmed at a Saturday afternoon press conference that “items that could potentially be evidence have been seized” at the scene at 10 Amistad in the Hill neighborhood. (Watch the press conference here.) She wouldn’t confirm numerous media reports Saturday that the items included bloody clothing stashed in a ceiling, or that the evidence can be tied at this point to Annie Le.

Investigators don’t yet have lab results on the blood — or even word of if it’s human blood.

Mertz also confirmed that, after reviewing tapes from 75 security cameras in the area, authorities have found no evidence that Le ever left 10 Amistad. State police experts are doing “video enhancements to make sure we have not missed anything,” Mertz told reporters.

She stressed that no body has been found, and that at this point authorities can’t say whether this is a “missing persons case” or one involving “criminality.”

But the new developments — combined with the visit of New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington to 10 Amistad Saturday afternoon — are leading to a sense that a grisly crime might have taken place right at Amistad.

Yale Vice-President Linda Lorimer (pictured) also said at the press conference that investigators have found no reason to suspect that Le was unhappy about her upcoming wedding, scheduled for this Sunday, and was therefore trying to get out of it.

First Blush: A Kidnapping?

When Yale first approached the FBI to help with the case this week, “we approached them to help with a kidnapping,” Lorimer said in a phone conversation later Saturday night. The feds opened the investigation as a kidnapping case, she said.

She definitively rejected reports in New York tabloids that investigators had found a body or that they were zeroing in on a professor who had canceled a class Tuesday in which Le was enrolled, or that the cancellation of the class is considered in any way relevant to the case.

That’s “a story you can replay in your mind,” Lorimer said, referring to the botched 1998 murder investigation of Yale undergraduate Suzanne Jovin. Police identified a professor as a “person of interest” in that case; no evidence subsequently emerged implicating that professor, who said the incident did great harm to his career.

Authorities stressed they do not have a “person of interest” in the Annie Le case so far.

At Saturday’s press briefing, Lorimer and the FBI’s Mertz were asked about a fire alarm that cleared the Amistad building at around 1 p.m. Tuesday. Le has not shown up in any of the security camera footage of people leaving the building.

No one pulled an alarm. Rather, “a human being open[ed] up a device that let the steam up,” the way steam on a stovetop can set off an alarm at home, they said.

Yale Police Chief Jim Perrotti Saturday repeated the offer of $10,000 for information leading to Le’s whereabouts. People can call a tip line at 1-877-503-1950.