Annie Le found murdered on her wedding day

Annie Marie Le, 24, with her fiance Jonathan Widawsky. Their wedding was set to be on Sunday in New York City.

The body of a graduate student was found in a wall duct in a laboratory building at Yale University on what should have been her wedding day.

The discovery followed a six-day search for Annie Le, 24, who was studying for a PhD in pharmacology. She had swiped her ID card to enter the lab about a mile from the main campus of the Ivy League university in New Haven, Connecticut, at 10am last Tuesday.

She was last seen wearing a knee-length brown skirt, bright green short-sleeve T-shirt, brown shoes and a brown necklace.

She left her handbag, containing her mobile phone and money, in her office at another Yale building three blocks away and was recorded entering the lab at 10 Amistad Street on CCTV.

Police viewed images from 75 CCTV cameras around the building but found no trace of her leaving after a fire alarm was sounded on Tuesday afternoon. Friends and family had thought Ms Le’s disappearance might be a case of a “runaway bride” who got cold feet over her Sunday wedding.

Le, 24, was to be married Sunday in Long Island, New York. Her fiance, Jonathan Widawsky, is a graduate student at Columbia University in New York.

But on Saturday police searching the laboratory building with bloodhounds found blood-stained clothes stuffed above a ceiling panel. Over the weekend, investigators searched a rubbish incinerator. Ms Le’s body was later found in a cable duct in the lab basement. She was 4ft 11in (150cm) tall and weighed 6st 6lb (41kg).

Annie Marie Le, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants

Police questioned one of Ms Le’s professors after the sudden cancellation of his class last Tuesday, it was reported, but police have not said that he is a suspect.

Speculation was rife yesterday that an arrest might be imminent, however, after reports that the bloodied clothing belonged to the murderer, not the victim. Police said that the clothing did not match the knee-length brown skirt, green short-sleeved T-shirt and brown shoes that Ms Le was wearing when last seen.


“We’re not believing it’s a random act,” a police spokesman said. TV networks reported that police had a suspect who had suffered “defensive wounds” and failed a lie detector test.

The fire alarm at the building was set off by steam and was not considered vital to the investigation.


Ms Le was the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants in California, where her mother owns a chain of nail salons. The young scientist aspired to work for the US National Institutes of Health, where she held a scholarship for two summers as an undergraduate.


Ms Le was going to marry Jonathan Widawsky, her college sweetheart, on Long Island. Police say that Mr Widawsky, a physics graduate student at Columbia University in New York, is not a suspect. He has been helping investigators in New Haven and last week handed out flyers in the search for his betrothed.



Friends say Ms Le had spoken excitedly of her wedding while working overtime in the weeks leading up to her death. “Lucky I’m in love with my best friend,” she wrote on her Facebook profile. Ms Le had addressed concerns about safety at Yale in an article in the February issue of the medical school’s magazine, headlined “Crime and Safety in New Haven”. She concluded: “In short, New Haven is a city and all cities have their perils. But with a little street smarts, one can avoid becoming yet another statistic.”



The murder left Yale students shaken as they contemplated a killer on the loose. Yale has offered a $10,000 (£6,000) reward for information. It is the first time the university has done so since a final-year undergraduate, Suzanne Jovin, was found dead in 1998. Her murder remains unsolved.



Missing Yale student : Body found in the basement at Amistad medical research building

UPDATE:



Police investigating the murder of Yale graduate student Annie Le searched the apartment of a "person of interest" overnight Tuesday.
No arrests were made, but police took Raymond Clark, a 24-year-old technician at the Yale lab where Le's body was found Sunday, into custody. Clark, who is not a Yale student, cooperated and was released around 3 a.m., police said.


















MORE UPDATE:17 SEPT 2009

The arrest warrant charges Clark with murder and set bail at $3 million.
ABC News has also learned that Clark sent a text message to Le early Tuesday, Sept. 8, requesting a meeting to discuss the cleanliness of the the cages of the mice in the research lab.

Le, a 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate, used the mice in her research. Clark, also 24-years-old, is not a student at the university and had more of a custodial role in the lab.

Police were able to track Clark's movements by reviewing the data from his digital key card, which shows he entered the building no fewer than 10 times, including after hours, on the day Le went missing, according to law enforcement sources.

Jennifer Hromadka, her lover Raymond Clark , disagree with the rumors that her bridegroom has a relationship with other women in the study of animals of the Yale.


According to a news website about the wedding, Jennifer and Raymond plan to married on December 20, 2011.