Re: 11/6/01 - Hartford Courant: Van de Velde Demands Apology
Van de Velde Demands Apology
November 6, 2001
By GARY LIBOW, Courant Staff Writer
NEW HAVEN -- James Van de Velde demanded Monday that city police acknowledge he is no longer a suspect in the 1998 killing of Yale University senior Suzanne Jovin.
Van de Velde, Jovin's thesis adviser, also demanded an apology from Police Chief Melvin H. Wearing. He called for an independent investigation of a department he charges has engaged in gross negligence, if not criminal misconduct, in botching the Jovin investigation and labeling him a suspect for close to three years.
Wearing declined to comment.
It was Van de Velde's first public statement since New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington revealed on Oct. 26 that DNA taken from under Jovin's fingernails did not match a DNA sample Van de Velde provided months ago. Dearington has said that no suspect can be eliminated merely because his DNA does not match.
Jovin was found repeatedly stabbed on Dec. 4, 1998, in the East Rock section of the city, blocks from Van de Velde's apartment. Days following the killing, Van de Velde was questioned for hours by police and named a suspect.
David Grudberg, Van de Velde's attorney, has charged that New Haven police have ruined his client's life. Van de Velde blasted both Wearing and Yale in his statement, e-mailed to The Courant.
"It is obvious to me that from the outset of this high profile case, the New Haven Police Department and Yale University [have] been conspiring to scapegoat an innocent person to feign competence and progress in the case," Van de Velde wrote. "My lawyer has written New Haven Chief of Police Melvin Wearing three times since the crime, demanding communication and that he clear me from it. Chief Wearing has refused to communicate back to my lawyer or me in any manner and has made no requests to see me, ever."
Van de Velde charged New Haven police initially lied to the public by claiming there were no witnesses or forensic evidence in the case. He points to the DNA found on Jovin's hands and a request by police for information about a brown or tan van reportedly near the crime scene.
Police have questioned two men about a van, which sources say was confiscated months ago and held inside the department's training facility. Police sources said forensic testing was conducted on the vehicle.
Dearington said investigators are asking colleagues, friends and acquaintances of Jovin to provide DNA samples. He stressed that until and unless a match is found, investigators will not know whether the source of the DNA was an innocent acquaintance or a suspect.
The sampling, Dearington said, is intended to either match the DNA with a man Jovin would have encountered through normal circumstance or rule out those men. If friends and acquaintances are ruled out, it increases the odds that the DNA belongs to her killer, he said.
Van de Velde's DNA sample was taken in Grudberg's office in April. A lecturer whose contract was not renewed by Yale, Van de Velde said he was willing to provide police with a DNA sample the night he was questioned by investigators soon after the slaying. But police declined the offer, he said.
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