At least a dozen investigators, some in white hazmat suits, were spotted sifting through trash at a Hartford incinerator Sunday morning as the grisly search for a missing Yale graduate student moved north.
Crews from the state police, Hartford fire department, and Metropolitan District Commission were on site at the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority plant, which is normally closed on Sunday.
State police dogs were also at work.
They were looking for clues about the disappearance of 24-year-old third-year pharmacology grad student Annie Le. Le was last seen entering a Yale medical lab building at 10 Amistad St. in New Haven at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Since then more than 100 law enforcement agents, including many from the FBI, have been in New Haven as part of what has become a nationally followed hunt.
New Haven Assistant Police Chief Pete Reichard Sunday confirmed the search and called it routine. He and Yale Assistant Vice President Linda Lorimer flatly denied a published report that the cops had a tip that Le’s body might have been dumped in Hartford. It appears to be the third false report published this weekend about the Le case.
“There was no tip coming in in any way,” Reichard said Sunday. “This [Hartford search] is standard procedure that was determined by the FBI. Trash in New Haven ends up in Hartford.”
CRRA spokesman Paul Nonnenmacher said state police called and asked permission to search through the trash at the plant. He was unable to confirm what authorities were searching for, but he did say the plant doesn’t usually accept trash deliveries on Sunday and is sometimes open for processing.
Investigators at work Sunday at the Hartford Waste Processing Facility, where trash from the 72 CRRA towns comes to be incinerated, did not comment.
FBI and Yale officials said at a Saturday press conference that they can’t yet determine whether this is a “missing persons case” or a criminal investigation. Initial speculation centered on Le’s upcoming wedding, planned for today. However, Lorimer said absolutely no signals have surfaced to suggest Le having second thoughts about the wedding. Meanwhile, initial clues appear to point to a more ominous conclusion: a report of bloody clothes found in the ceiling at the medical building (although they weren’t the clothes she was wearing the day she went missing, according to a Sunday report by the Register‘s Bill Kaempffer); the fact that Le left behind her cellphone and keys; no sign on security cameras of Le leaving the building.
Reported by Christine Stuart in Hartford and Paul Bass in New Haven.
Why are men murdering more women, and children...pregnant women are not safe either. Something must be done! Women are being slaughtered in the streets! This country is going to HIHB!