(Updated with document.) Key clues that led police to solve the murder of a Yale grad student included a green ink pen, a pair of boots, and blood-stained sock. And a suspicious encounter with Raymond Clark involving a bloody box of “Wipe-Alls.”
The hunt for clues that led to the arrest of the alleged killer of Annie Le is detailed in a 13-page arrest warrant affidavit released to the public Friday morning after a two-month delay.
DNA testing on the sock and the pen allegedly linked the suspect to the victim — and gave cops the evidence they felt they needed to obtain a warrant.
Click here to read the affidavit, minus two small blacked-out portions.
Police found the body of Annie Le (pictured above) on Sept. 13 in a mechanical chase behind a toilet in the basement of a Yale medical building at 10 Amistad St.
The redacted warrant details the basis on which police arrested Raymond Clark, a 24-year-old Yale lab technician, on Sept. 17. Police charged him with murdering Le, a 24-year-old graduate student, on Sept. 8. Clark has entered no plea.
According to the arrest warrant affidavit:
A day before Le was found, on Sept. 12, police found some key clues, including a blood-stained sock. Police found the sock stashed in a ceiling in a hallway at 10 Amistad. The sock showed “a mixture” of DNA from both Clark and Le, linking the two together. The sock also matched a sock that was found in a wall where Le’s body was found hidden.
Hidden in the ceiling along with the bloody sock were a rubber glove with blood stains and “a pair of Vikings brand work boots with blood-like stains labeled, ‘Ray‑C.’” At least one boot was missing its shoelaces.
The warrant was written by city cop Scott Branfuhr, the lead detective on the case.
It Started With Wipe-Alls
Two days after Le was reported missing, police got their first break in an odd encounter with Raymond Clark. The story suggests Clark was a person of interest to the cops from the outset.
According to the affidavit, a graduate student who worked with Annie Le, Rachel Roth, approached Yale Officer Sabrina Wood with a box of “Wipe Alls” on a steel cart outside lab room G‑13 — “the last room the victim [Le] logged into.”
The box had “what appeared to be blood spatter on it.”
Wood contacted the FBI, “stood guard,” and waited.
Meanwhile, Clark, who’s a lab tech, “came in and out” of the room “several times.” At one point Wood saw him “walk over to the cart and look at the box of wipes. Clark then stood between Officer Wood and the cart, and then turned and faced Officer Wood.
“While turning towards Officer Wood, Clark moved the box of wipes from the corner to the far right corner and turned the box so that the blood splatter was facing to the right hand side of the cart away from plain sight.”
Clark moved the box, then “leaned up against the cart and made small talk” with Wood. Wood concluded that Clark was making a “deliberate attempt” to “block her view of the box.”
Clark later returned to the room, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. He “began scrubbing the floor grate/drain with the SOS pads and cleaning solution.” Wood’s conclusion: that was “unusual.” Why? The drain “did not appear to need cleaning.”
The box was sent to a state police lab for testing. The DNA of the blood on the box matched DNA taken separately from Annie Le’s home — from a toothbrush and a Maxi-Pad.
Police also found an XL lab coat in a recycling box in the building’s north hallway. The lab coat had blood on it. The blood ended up matching Annie Le’s DNA.
A Second Suspicious Encounter
The warrant describes a second alleged police encounter with Clark that raised suspicions from the start of the case:
On Sept. 8, the day Le was first reported missing, a fire alarm went off at 10 Amistad St. at 1:55 p.m.
Yale cop Jennifer Garcia discussed that fire alarm in a subsequent conversation she had with Raymond Clark, a conversation she relayed to FBI agents investigating Le’s disappearance.
She told them that Clark had “approached her and stated he knew the victim.” Clark allegedly told Garcia that he had left the building well before the fire alarm, at 12:45 p.m. Then he allegedly added that Annie Le had left the building even earlier, at 12:30.
However police review of surveillance tapes revealed that Le had never left the building.
The Green Ink Pen
Another key piece of evidence, according to the warrant: a green ink pen.
Clark repeatedly signed in various lab rooms important to the case on Sept. 8, using a green inked pen to write “RC.”
When police found Annie Le’s body, they also found a green ink pen beneath her.
The state police lab tested the pen. It found a DNA match to Annie Le in a blood stain on the pen itself. They found a match to Clark’s DNA on a “swabbing of the pen cap interior and portion of the barrel,” according to the affidavit.
Clark allegedly had a violent struggle with Le in a lab room, then stashed her body in the wall of a locker room.
The Redacted Parts
Two small sections of the affidavit were blacked out before being released to the public Friday.
One comes in a paragraph describing how state police dogs led cops to Annie Le’s decomposing body inside the mechanical chase.
The sentence immediately before the redacted part reads: “It was observed that insulation was removed from the inside opening of the mechanical chase concealing the body.”
The sentence immediately after the redacted part reads, “They also noted that she was wearing surgical gloves with her left thumb exposed.” The redacted section appears to run a bit over three lines on the page.
The second redacted part, on the following page of the affidavit, appears to run two lines. It concerns the autopsy of Annie Le’s body.
The sentence immediately before the redacted part begins, “Dr. [Wayne] Carver, the Chief State of Connecticut Medical Examiner, performed the autopsy and determined that the manner of death was a Homicide and the cause of death was strangulation…”
Then the words are blacked out.
The following sentence: “Affiant Branfuhr recovered from the Medical Examiners’ office the clothing she was wearing.”
Reached Friday, public defender Joe Lopez, who’s representing Clark, declined to comment on his feelings about the redaction.
Paul Guggina, who’s representing four media outlets who sought to unseal the affidavits, also declined comment.
Electronic Trail
Cops also made use of a secure system where they could track the suspect and victim’s movements throughout the building.
Electronic key-card records reveal Clark traveling in unusual patterns throughout the building during the 10 days leading up to Le’s disappearance. Rooms inside the secure part of the lab are only accessible by key card. From Aug. 27 to Sept. 8, he scurried around with increased frequency between two lab rooms where a crime scene was later found, rooms G13 and G22.
On the day that Le is believed to have been killed, Clark used his key card to enter rooms G13 and G22 a total of 55 times, according to the affidavit.
Le swiped into room G13 at 10:11 a.m. on Sept. 8 and never swiped out. Clark followed her into the room at 10:40 a.m.
In that room, investigators would later find “a possible medium velocity blood-like spray pattern on the wall” — a stain that someone tried to clean up after the fact.
Clark was the only one to access Room G22 during the time of the suspected crime, the warrant states. In that room, investigators found blood stains, as well as hairs and two beads from what police believe is Le’s necklace. The beads matched one that was found next to Le’s body.
The key card records, and the DNA evidence on the lab coat, bloody sock and the green pen were enough to establish probable cause that Clark was the killer, Brafuhr wrote.
Weighing The Public Good
Superior Court Judge Roland Fasano decided last Friday that the warrant could be unsealed.
In doing so, Fasano balanced two competing legal imperatives: the public right to know and a defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Fasano issued the ruling in response to a motion by the Hartford Courant, New Haven Register and New York Times, and the Associated Press. The press outlets asked the judge to make public the warrant that justified Clark’s Sept. 17 arrest, as well as eight search warrants related to the case.
The search warrant affidavits, also redacted, are expected to be released next week.
The affidavits had been under seal by request of the state and defense, under order of the judge. Le’s family also requested they remain sealed.
Fasano issued a ruling Friday stating that the warrants would be redacted and released to the public, allowing time for appeals.
In most cases, “Connecticut courts do not seal or limit disclosure of arrest and search affidavits beyond the investigative stages,” Fasano noted. However, he saw fit to withhold some information in the affidavits, mainly in order to protect the defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Fasano will keep under seal not just the unredacted documents — but also his written conclusion justifying the specific redactions.
He did give three reasons for keeping some of the material under seal: Some of it is “inflammatory.” Some would prove “unfairly prejudicial to the defendant.” And some is “material that constitutes an invasion of privacy unnecessary to the public’s understanding of the criminal process.”
Clark’s public defenders had asked the judge to keep the warrant sealed. They argue its release would prejudice potential jurors because of all the media attention the case has received, and will continue to receive. The Courant‘s lawyer argues that the public has a right to know the details contained in the warrants.
Click on the play arrow to watch attorney Guggina, the media outlets’ lawyer, make the case for the documents’ release, during an impromptu press conference outside the courthouse last month.
Previous coverage of the Annie Le case:
Friday, Nov. 6
• Annie Le Documents To Be Unsealed
Tuesday, Nov. 3
• Hearing Continued For Annie Le Suspect; Judge Will Rule By Week’s End On Warrants: Live Blog
Tuesday, Oct. 20
• Annie Le Suspect Enters No Plea; Warrants Remain Sealed
Tuesday, Oct. 6
• Live Blog: Lawyer For Annie Le Murder Suspect Wants To See The Evidence
Friday, Sept. 25
• Warrant In Annie Le Murder To Stay Sealed
Thursday, Sept. 24
• Cops Back At Annie Le’s Lab Building
Monday, Sept. 21
• What Annie Le Story?
• Public Defender: I Don’t Want Annie Le Reporters Investigated
Thursday, Sept. 17
• After Annie Le Murder, Union Chief Sends Rallying Call
• Annie Le Suspect Knew Cops Were On His Tail
• Cops Arrest Lab Tech In Annie Le Murder
• Suspect Arraigned (live blog)
Wednesday, Sept. 16:
• Ex-Girlfriend “Shocked” About Annie Le Target
• Cops Stake Out Annie Le Target’s Motel
• Annie Le Case: It’s Coming Down To The DNA
• Annie Le Was Strangled
Tuesday, Sept. 15:
• City, Yale Learned From Jovin In Annie Le Case
• Suspect In Annie Le Case Has Fiancee
• NBC Producer Trampled At Annie Le “Briefing”
• Cops Take DNA From Annie Le Target
• Was That Annie Le’s Killer?
Monday, Sept. 14:
• Body Identified As Annie Le
• “Serious” Suspect In Annie Le Case
• You Can Get In The Wall With A “Butter Knife”
• Lab Building Shuts Down
Sunday, Sept. 13:
• Remains Of Annie Le Believed Found; “A Time For Compassion,” Levin Says
• Annie Le Hunt Extends To Hartford
Saturday, Sept. 12
• Focus In Annie Le Probe Less On “State Lines”
Friday, Sept. 11
• City Cops Join Search For Annie Le; $10,000 Reward Posted
Pictured: Raymond Clark being brought to his arraignment on the day of his arrest.
This was a horrific piece, so sad to hear how she died, and the manner it was done indicates that there was severe trauma ( blood splatters ). I hope [the killer]gets the death penalty.