New Haven Independent

Cops Take DNA From Annie Le Target

by Melissa Bailey | September 15, 2009 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

(Updated 10:52 p.m.) Police served search warrants Tuesday night on a target in the murder of a Yale graduate student.

State cops searched the Middletown home of the target. As reported in the Independent Monday, he is an animal lab technician in the building where student Annie Le’s body was found Sunday.

Cops also had a second warrant to obtain a DNA sample from the target Tuesday night. They had him in custody. They later released him after obtaining the sample.

“We’ve known where he was at all along,” Police Chief James Lewis said at a press conference late Tuesday night at police headquarters. He spoke before a throng of video cameras.

Police named the target of the search, calling him a “person of interest.”

Lewis was asked whether cops should conclude by the end of the week whether to arrest the target.

“I think by the end of the week we should have an idea,” Lewis said, nodding.

He didn’t rule out pursuing other potential targets. At the time of the press conference it wasn’t clear whether the target is cooperating with the cops.

Like the target, his girlfriend has been working at Yale as an animal lab tech. She does not work alongside the suspect, according to Lewis. The suspect and girlfriend were recently engaged to be married, according to a post on a blog she set up in their names. Read about that here.

Annie Le went missing last Tuesday; State police Sunday found Annie Le’s body in a wall in the basement of a lab building where she worked at 10 Amistad St.; it was supposed to be her wedding day. No arrests have been made in her murder.

After Le’s disappearance, more than 100 law enforcement agents swarmed the city for clues to her death. The media swarmed into town, too, as a transfixed nation has watched the murder mystery unfold.

Lewis said investigators have reviewed 700 hours of video from security cameras. They have interviewed over 150 people and collected more than 150 pieces of evidence. “Much of it is at the lab,” Lewis said.

On Tuesday afternoon, reporters traipsed up and down outside the Middletown apartment where the target and his fiancée live. They knocked on neighbors’ doors in search of clues to his identity.

In other developments, the Courant reported Tuesday that Annie Le was asphyxiated. The state medical examiner originally planned to release a report Tuesday on the cause of death, then changed his mind.

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Posted by: watchdog | September 15, 2009 10:48 PM

You promised not to say "grisly" again.

Posted by: k | September 16, 2009 12:43 AM

NHPD - PLEASE don't release him tonight after you take samples! If they were leaving w/ suitcases on Sunday, this proves he is a flight risk!!! I am begging you!

Posted by: observer | September 16, 2009 1:54 AM

Maybe it's already been mentioned: Is it a possibility that when the fiancee wrote on myspace, "He has a big heart and tries to see the best in people ALL THE TIME! even when everyone else is telling him that the person is a psycho or that the person can't be trusted," that she is referring to herself--that others tell Ray that his girlfriend is psycho but he gives her the benefit of the doubt? When she wrote, "My boyfriend, Ray, if you don't know him, has no interest in any of the other girls at YARC as anything more than friends," does she sound a little possessive or like a cat marking her territory? It's just that some of her comments just seem over the top, just too extreme, but I don't know why. Is it possible that she was the one who didn't like Annie and that Ray possibly murdered Annie to please her or make her feel more secure? Or on the other hand, is it possible that she is making excuses for her boyfriend, either because she is trusting him blindly or because she has doubts about his trustworthiness and is staking her territory in hopes that any potential female threats will back off?

Posted by: Reynaldo | September 16, 2009 8:57 AM

Yale University should consider renaming the research lab facility at 10 Amistad Street after Annie Le as a means of honoring her memory...

Posted by: Our Town | September 16, 2009 11:24 AM

Reynaldo...I was thinking the very same thing. What a loss, to the family and friends, and to us all. I bright star...gone.

Posted by: Our Town | September 16, 2009 12:29 PM

Sorry..."I bright star...gone". - supposed to read "One bright star...gone"...when will they let us edit our responses?

Posted by: JohnSmith | September 18, 2009 8:19 PM

Never gonna happen. Buildings on university campuses are only named after sports stars, coaches, or million-dollar donors/alumni.

Posted by: Free Credit Repair | September 21, 2009 1:51 AM

Le was last seen on a Yale security camera entering the building in the university's medical complex at about 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Authorities have not found footage of her leaving the building, despite some 75 surveillance cameras operating around the complex. Her ID, money, credit cards, cell-phone and purse were found in her office in another Yale building a few blocks away. Hopefully, the police can identify the creep that caused her to die from traumatic asphyxiation, and said creep can't get enough fast cash to get a lawyer that can get him off.

Cops Take DNA From Annie Le Target

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