Lab Technician Is Charged in Yale Grad Student's Killing

A Yale University lab technician was charged with murder Thursday in the strangling of Annie Le, a graduate student who did research at the lab where the suspect worked.

Raymond Clark III, 24 years old, of Middletown, Conn., was arrested Thursday at a motel in Cromwell, Conn., about 25 miles north of the New Haven campus. He had been staying there following his release from custody early Wednesday after police obtained search warrants for evidence linking him to Ms. Le's death.

The arrest warrant was sealed and there were no other suspects, New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said.

Mr. Lewis declined to speculate about a possible motive for the crime. But police said there were no romantic ties between Ms. Le and the suspect and portrayed the alleged incident as an example of "workplace violence."

Mr. Clark was arraigned in Superior Court in New Haven and will be asked to enter a plea to the charge at a later date. He is being held in lieu of $3 million bond. Mr. Clark's attorney, David Dworski of Fairfield, could not be reached for comment.

The arrest came four days after police found the body of Ms. Le, 24, stuffed into a wall cavity in a basement lab where she and Mr. Clark worked. Ms. Le, who had planned to be married last Sunday, was a doctoral candidate in the pharmacology program. Mr. Clark was employed as a technician charged with caring for animals used in research.

A university official said Mr. Clark has been suspended from his job at Yale, where he has been employed since December 2004, and barred from the campus. His identification card will not allow him access to any Yale buildings, the official said.

Mr. Clark's supervisor reported that nothing in the technician's five-year work history at Yale had signaled that he was capable of violence, Yale President Richard Levin said in a statement.

"This incident could have happened in any city, in any university, or in any workplace," Mr. Levin said. "It says more about the dark side of the human soul than it does about the extent of security measures." He added that the university will be taking suggestions on how it might improve campus security.
Yale began conducting background checks on employees in 2007, said spokesman Tom Conroy. Since Mr. Clark was hired before that, he would not have been subject to that requirement.

Workplace homicides are rare and have declined steadily since the early 1990s. There were 517 homicides in U.S. workplaces in 2008, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is half the number of annual workplace homicides committed in the early 1990s.

The Connecticut medical examiner's office found that Ms. Le died of "traumatic asphyxiation" through neck compression. She was reported missing on Sept. 8, after video cameras last captured her entering the Amistad lab on the university's medical school campus.

Police were able to review the movements of Ms. Le and Mr. Clark through the laboratory building as both had magnetic cards coded to unlock specific doors. Her body was found in a restricted basement area.

Earlier this week, police gathered DNA evidence from Mr. Clark's body and his belongings. News Courtesy By The Wall Street Journal