Re: 4/23/00 - Horror continues for other victim in Jovin killing
FORUM: Horror continues for other victim in Jovin killing
Meg van de Velde April 24, 2000
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
- the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
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On Dec. 4, 1998, a tragic murder took place near Yale University that ended the beautiful life of Suzanne Jovin, a Yale student. Much has been compassionately written of this terrible loss, and rightfully so. Such a loss is overwhelming and inexplicable for family and friends.
There is another victim whose professional and personal life has been shattered in the wake of this crime.
Little has been heard about the atrocities and losses suffered by James Van de Velde, my brother. Imagine yourself in this situation:
You are a well-respected and admired member of an elite institution with a long history of tradition and honor. Your character and life experiences are above reproach. You go to work one day and learn that a younger colleague from work, one whose work and life ethic you admired and one who you professionally guided, had been brutally murdered in a nearby neighborhood.
In the following days, you find yourself being suspected by law enforcement authorities of this horrific crime for reasons unknown to you, and unstated. It is so unbelievable that it all seems surreal. You cooperate fully with the authorities, answering hours of pointed, personal, insinuating questions in an attempt to assist in finding the true perpetrator.
You voluntarily offer your apartment and vehicle for police search. You volunteer to take a lie detector test and offer blood samples to cement your innocence in their minds. Your offers of assistance are rejected.
Your name is leaked as a suspect in this murder to the media by your employer and law enforcement personnel, and is given front-page coverage.
Your employer informs you that your employment is terminated because of your association with the murder.
You have been charged with no crime, but your presence would present a "distraction" in the workplace.
Your home and the homes of your family and friends are descended upon for the next several weeks by journalists fighting for a sound bite, a reaction, a response in a media feeding frenzy. Your private life is now peeled open, layer by layer, by a media eager to scoop the next detail of this living nightmare and print any rumor no matter how false or ridiculous.
For over a year, your life lies in ruin. You have been transformed from a pillar of society to a professional and social pariah through the actions of the media, your employer and law enforcement. You have been followed by law enforcement authorities. Your friends, co-workers and acquaintances have been questioned at length by the police. You can no longer walk the streets without feeling the judgmental glare of suspecting citizens. All attempts at employment are futile,met with suspicion and rejection.
There has been no hint of evidence against you; there has been no suggestion of a motive for this crime; there have been no charges filed and the police refuse even to tell you why you were named a suspect.
The police chief refuses to remove your name from the list of suspects, while also refusing to name any other suspects even though he claims there are others. He defends his actions by claiming, "If we have to ruffle some feathers, disrupt some people?s careers, we will."
You are caught in this limbo of suspicion and innuendo, bolstered by law enforcement press conferences and media hype. You try desperately to clear your name, to prove your innocence, in a country founded on the principle that you are innocent until proven guilty. You, however, are not being afforded this right. Your confidence in the local law enforcement system has been so eroded that you are without a single shred of trust in their abilities, motives or ethics.
Jim Van de Velde has been experiencing this living hell for over 16 months. Police Chief Melvin H. Wearing had little to report in the progress of the investigation at a New Haven Police Department press conference marking the one-year anniversary of this unsolved murder. He did, however, take this opportunity to request that Jim, and only Jim, take a lie detector test. Jim did this with a former FBI polygrapher with 30 years? experience, and passed.
Although he never learned what questions Jim answered, Wearing dismissed the tests, stating: "We would want him to take a polygraph with police detectives who were assigned to the case. We have a series of questions we need answered."
Wearing then rejected the validity of polygraph tests as a whole, claiming that even if Jim were to pass a New Haven-administered exam, he would not remove him as a suspect in the crime. Why, then, would anyone take a New Haven polygraph?
Our family has remained proud of the manner in which Jim has carried himself throughout this trying ordeal. He has maintained his dignity and integrity in circumstances that would test the moral foundation of any man. He has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence at every opportunity.
The family of James Van de Velde hopes and prays that now the New Haven Police Department will demonstrate that its objective is, in fact, justice.
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Meg Van de Velde is the sister of James Van de Velde. Readers may write her in care of the Register, 40 Sargent Drive, New Haven 06511.
¸New Haven Register 2000
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