Re: 2/29/00 - Van de Velde tells "20/20" he did not kill Suzanne Jovin
Note: the following is from the 11pm news on ABC affiliate WTNH in New Haven.
Van de Velde tells "20/20" he did not kill Suzanne Jovin
(WTNH, Feb. 29, 2000) _ The murder of Yale student Suzanne Jovin remains unsolved, and now the only man New Haven police have publicly named a suspect speaks out. We have exclusive, new information tonight on the lie detector tests former lecturer James Van de Velde has taken, all in an attempt to clear his name for a murder he's never been charged with. News Channel 8's Christina Defranco joins us live at the New Haven Police Department with the latest on the case.
Suzanne Jovin, found dying, brutally stabbed, in one of New Haven's elite neighborhoods in December of 1998. Shortly after her murder, her professor and advisor Jim van de Velde is named as one of the suspects.
Interview with James Van de Velde, 1998: "They're talking to me because they don't have any leads....they're talking to all her professors."
But more than a year later, Van de Velde is still the only suspect named publicly by the police. In an exclusive "20/20" interview, Van de Velde continues to deny his link to the murder of his beautiful and brilliant student.
John Miller,"20/20" reporter: "Did you kill Suzanne Jovin?"
James Van de Velde: "Now they're accusing me of murdering her."
Yale cancelled his classes shortly after he was named as a suspect, and Van de Velde has been living under a cloud of suspicion to this day. But he maintains his innocence.
John Miller: "Do you carry a knife?"
Van de Velde: "No one who knows me could state I'm a violent person.. creepy weirdo...does unusual things... No one could possibly state that."
Excerpt from Interview with Tom Jovin, Suzanne's father: "I feel like I've died with my daughter."
James Van de Velde: "I can't imagine their pain."
Just recently, the Jovins made a public appeal for Van de Velde to take a lie detector test. He did. But not with police.
James Van de Velde: "I'm not going to act like a circus seal. Everything New Haven police have done, I've lost all confidence in them solving this crime. It makes it questionable, let me put it that way."
Criminal justice Professor James Adcock has been a criminal investigator for the army for 20 years. He's relied on polygraph tests in dozens of cases. But he has some questions about this one.
James Adcock: "Obviously he's not being asked whether he was there...whether he saw her that evening or was with her that evening and is not being asked if in fact he killed her, which are direct questions which as an investigator I would want covered."
Christina: "Would it mean anything to you that he took a polygraph test and passed...
Adcock: "No, not unless I'm able to validate it through another examiner."
Adcock says the fact that two of Van de Velde's tests were inconclusive doesn't address whether he's guilty.
Adcock: "Maybe there was a relationship, maybe he knew her or had seen her in class...there's a lot of different things that could come into play those cause emotions."
wtnh.com
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Here is a video clip of the 6pm news with different material:
video.wtnh.com |
