NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A police spokesman says no arrests are imminent in the killing of a Yale graduate student whose body was found inside the basement wall of a university research building.
New Haven police Officer Joe Avery says that contrary to published reports, police do not expect to make an arrest Tuesday in the death of 24-year-old Annie Le.
“You guys made up the fact that we had somebody in custody, the media in general,” Avery told reporters outside the police department Tuesday. “We’re talking to a lot of people.”
He would not comment further.
Several news organizations reported that police were interviewing a possible suspect who failed a polygraph test and has defensive wounds on his body.
ABC News, WNBC-TV, The New Haven Register and the New Haven Independent cited anonymous sources in their reports. The Register and WNBC-TV identify the possible suspect as a lab technician.
The state medical examiner’s office says it plans to release the results of Le’s autopsy Tuesday afternoon. The office had been withholding its report to assist the police investigation. The state’s chief medical examiner ruled Le’s death a homicide Monday but declined to say how she died.
Police are analyzing what they call “a large amount” of physical evidence, but have not gone into detail.
At a meeting of medical school students and teachers Monday, Yale president Richard Levin said police have narrowed the number of potential suspects to a very small pool because building security systems recorded who entered the building and what times they entered, the Yale Daily News reported Tuesday. He said the appropriate people are being monitored, the newspaper said.
Yale spokesman Tom Conroy and Robert Alpern, dean of the medical school, did not immediately return calls Tuesday.
The killing took place in a heavily secured building accessible only to students and university employees. It was the first killing at Yale in a decade.
Hundreds of students attended a Monday night prayer vigil where Le’s roommate, Natalie Powers, recalled her friend as tenacious, caring and “tougher than you’d think by just looking at her.”
“That this horrible tragedy happened at all is incomprehensible,” she said. “That it happened to her, I think is infinitely more so. It seems completely senseless.”
Police found Le’s body about 5 p.m. Sunday, the day she was to marry Columbia University graduate student Jonathan Widawsky, lovingly referred to on her Facebook page as “my best friend.” The couple met as undergraduates at the University of Rochester and were eagerly awaiting their planned wedding on Long Island.
Police have said Widawsky is not a suspect and has helped detectives in their investigation.
She was remembered in her hometown of Placerville, Calif., for her brilliance and drive, a class valedictorian who was voted “Most Likely to be the Next Einstein.”
While in high school, Le worked alongside doctors at the Marshall Medical Center in Placerville to further her interest in pathology, the study of disease.
Dr. Gary Martin, director of operations for the hospital’s pathology department, called Le “a little stick of dynamite” and the best student he ever had in the volunteer program.
“It’s difficult when you’re a supervisor and the student is smarter than you,” he said.
The Yale building where Le’s body was found is part of the university medical school complex about a mile from Yale’s main campus. It is accessible to Yale personnel with identification cards. Some 75 video surveillance cameras monitor all doorways.
Her body was found in the basement in the wall chase — a deep recess where utilities and cables run between floors. The basement houses rodents, mostly mice, used for scientific testing by multiple Yale researchers, Alpern said.
Le was part of a research team headed by her faculty adviser, Anton Bennett. According to its Web site, the Bennett Laboratory was involved in enzyme research that could have implications in cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy. Bennett declined to comment Monday on the lab or Le’s involvement with it.
Yale closed the building Monday so police could complete their investigation, according to a message sent to Yale students and staff. Scientists are being allowed in only to conduct essential research projects, and only under the supervision of a police officer.
On Monday afternoon, Yale officials apologized for an e-mail sent out earlier in the day notifying students about a job-search workshop named “Killer Cover Letters.” The e-mail was distributed the same day the chief medical examiner’s officer identified Le’s body.
Philip Jones, assistant dean of Yale College, said the workshop’s title is common, but its use was inappropriate at the time. The university was not intending to cause more distress, Jones said.
The death is the first killing at Yale since the unsolved December 1998 death of student Suzanne Jovin. The popular 21-year-old senior was stabbed 17 times in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood, about 2 miles from campus.
 
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