*** Welcome New Haven Register Readers (case summary)
Who killed Yale student Suzanne Jovin? Was it someone she knew or was it a senseless act of random violence? Here are the facts as I know them based on my own lengthy investigation. You decide.
Suzanne Jovin spent the evening of December 4, 1998, at a pizza-making party she had organized for the local chapter of Best Buddies, an international organization that brings together students and mentally disabled adults. By 8:30pm she was driving another volunteer home in a university station wagon she had borrowed for the occasion. At about 8:45 she returned the car to the Yale owned lot a block north of her second floor apartment at 256 Park Street, upstairs from a Yale police substation.
Sometime prior to 8:50, Jovin declined to accompany several friends who were on their way to the movies, saying she was planning to work that night. At 9:02, she logged onto her Yale e-mail account and told a friend she was going to leave some books downstairs in the lobby for her. At 9:10 she logged off. It is uncertain if she made or received any calls; calls within Yale's telephone system are supposedly not traceable.
Almost immediately thereafter, Jovin headed out on foot to the Yale police communications center under the arch at Phelps Gate to return the keys to the car she had borrowed. She wore the same soft, low-cut hiking boots, jeans, and maroon fleece pullover she had worn at the pizza party. It is not known what she dropped off or took with her but the police report her wallet was later found in her apartment although they would not reveal its contents. Jovin likely headed through one of the locked Yale residence gates across the street from her, down the Pierson College walkway, across York Street, down the walkway between Jonathan Edwards and Branford Colleges, across High Street, and finally across Yale's Old Campus.
Shortly before reaching her destination, likely between 9:17-9:20pm, Jovin encountered a male classmate who was out for a walk. The classmate is quoted by the Yale Daily News as saying "She did not mention plans to go anywhere or do anything else afterward. She just said that she was very, very tired and that she was looking forward to getting a lot of sleep." He told the police that the only thing Jovin was holding was a piece of white 8 ½ x 11 inch paper in her right hand. She was not wearing a backpack or carrying a handbag. He also said Jovin was walking at a "normal" pace and did not look nervous or excited.
Jovin likely dropped off the keys a few minutes later, between 9:20-9:25. Rather than retrace her steps to go home, she apparently continued through Phelp’s Gate and took a left, heading north onto College Street, where, according to the New Haven police, she was last seen alive, between 9:25-9:30pm, by another female Yale student who was returning from a Yale hockey game.
At 9:55, someone dialed 911 and reported a woman bleeding at the corner of Edgehill and East Rock Rd. When police arrived they found Jovin fatally stabbed 17 times in the back of her head and neck and her throat slit—nearly two miles away from her last reported sighting.
So, what happened to Suzanne Jovin between roughly 9:30 and 9:55pm?
Our first clue, as reported by the Hartford Courant, is a Fresca bottle with Jovin’s fingerprints on it found in a bush near her body. The only store open that night in the area that sold that unusual brand of soda was the former Krauszer’s Market on the corner of York and Elm Streets. Had Jovin made a left turn from College onto Elm Street, she’d likely have reached the store, which was only two blocks away, by about 9:30-9:35pm.
At this point, Jovin was only about four minutes from completing a roundabout trip back to her apartment—exactly where she implied she planned to be to everyone who had asked. Her most likely route would have been to continue up Elm Street, past the dark, boarded up Daily Caffe, and finally left onto Park Street.
After leaving the market and heading home, Jovin still would have been about two miles away from where 15-20 minutes later she would eventually be found stabbed. It seems logical at this point that Jovin entered a vehicle.
What might have compelled Suzanne Jovin to get into a vehicle at that hour of the night, so close to home? Did she encounter someone she knew or a complete stranger?
Our next clue is perhaps the most important one. According to a March 27, 2001, NHPD press release, “witnesses have said that as they approached the corner of East Rock and Edgehill Roads, they saw a tan or brown van stopped in the roadway facing east, immediately adjacent to where Suzanne was found.” Note that more than one person saw this mysterious van and it was not parked in front of a driveway or house.
Shortly after the murder, the NHPD did question several people at Yale if they knew anyone who drove a tan or brown. So why, then, did it take two a half years to inform the public that witnesses might have seen the vehicle driven by Jovin’s killer? Is it because it was not the vehicle driven by their only named suspect and thus would have raised serious questions about their investigation very early on?
When I asked Detective Norwood about the van he said it was a full-size passenger van with no markings on the side. Given the seemingly extreme importance of it, why have the NHPD not released a sketch of it to aid in its discovery?
As was reported in the Register last month, the police did impound a van last April that they have secreted away. Unfortunately, as much as I’d hoped this might be a big break in the case, subsequent police action, as well as information I’ve obtained on my own, make it very unlikely it’s the one which may have been used in the crime.
Upon approaching the Daily Caffe, Jovin would have been walking against the oncoming traffic. She likely would have passed by parked vehicles. Might one of these have been a tan or brown van?
If Jovin knew her killer, what might that person have said to entice her into his vehicle? Want a ride home? She was a block away from home. Want to go for a drink? Dinner? She had just bought a drink and already had dinner.
Some have speculated that perhaps Jovin’s killing might be related to her thesis on Osama bin Laden. However, all of her sources were from published material and she never ever hinted to her thesis advisor otherwise.
Given her long and varied route, it is highly unlikely Jovin was stalked. She certainly didn’t appear to have planned to secretly meet anyone. It seems far-fetched that someone Jovin trusted enough to get into his car would happen to have knife that he would quickly use to ruthlessly stab her.
It appears more likely that Jovin was forced into a vehicle. Most likely she was accosted and overwhelmed by more than one person who threatened to kill her if she screamed or ran instead of quickly getting into it. Given the boldness and rarity of an abduction, the assailants likely did not think they would be recognized and thus were not likely New Haven residents, but still familiar with the city.
There are several routes the driver may have taken to the crime scene, but at some point he likely headed up Prospect Street away from New Haven before taking a right turn onto East Rock Road, a well-known thoroughfare that cuts through a posh section of town en route to East Rock Park. This is precisely the direction witnesses reported seeing the tan van facing.
Jovin was found lying on her stomach, fully clothed, feet in the road, body on the grassy area between the road and the sidewalk. ABC’s 20/20 program reported Jovin was wearing a watch and earrings with a "crumpled up" dollar bill in her pocket. Recall her wallet was later found in her apartment.
A witness at the scene told me no one was "working on her" and no one was in any hurry to rush her into a waiting ambulance, the inference being she was already dead (Jovin was officially pronounced dead at 10:26 at Yale New Haven Hospital). Newspaper accounts as well as witnesses I’ve talked to report no blood drops in the street, no trail of blood, or much blood at all for that matter. The police reported there were no signs of defensive wounds or a sexual assault.
Based on all the available evidence, it appears to me that Jovin had become the random target of a robbery. She was abducted and killed in that vehicle by someone who flew into a horrible (perhaps drug induced) rage upon finding they had picked the one person that night who wasn’t carrying her wallet with her. The vehicle stopped briefly before the intersection of Edgehill as the driver made sure the coast was clear. He then proceeded through the stop sign and pulled over just long enough for someone to drag the body out, which would account for the position in which she was found.
Those who have followed the Jovin investigation are probably wondering what role her thesis professor, James Van de Velde, is alleged to play in all this. I’d like to know, too. The fact is, the NHPD have not released a single detail – ever – that explains why he was ever considered a suspect, let alone the focus of their investigation.
To be clear, the police have no blood, hair, fiber, bodily fluid, fingerprints, etc., nor even a plausible motive, that implicates Van de Velde. To the contrary, recent tests on DNA taken from Jovin’s fingernail scrapings do not match Van de Velde, not to mention he has passed two lie detector tests and has cooperated fully with the police from day one. For example, he immediately went so far as to submit himself to four hours of police interrogation without asking for a lawyer, offered to give blood and take a polygraph test, and gave police permission to search his car and apartment.
What more could you expect from an innocent person with nothing to fear? What would you do in similar circumstances? What would you do if, despite no matter what you did, you saw your name being splashed throughout the front pages of the world as the prime suspect in the grisly murder of an intelligent, well-liked, and pretty co-ed? And what would you do, despite no matter what you tried, if the police still refused to drop your name as a suspect saying they can’t rule you out—logic that could apply just as easily to a space alien?
What exactly do the New Haven police really know about the murder of Suzanne Jovin? Why did they not launch an all-out search for the tan or brown van from day one? Why did they not inform the public that Jovin had likely been to Krauszer’s market and ask if anyone in the vicinity of it or the Daily Caffe had seen anything suspicious that night? Why did the police not avail themselves of the most modern DNA testing procedures until two and a half years after the crime?
It is my contention given all that I’ve learned and observed that the Jovin murder investigation by the NHPD has been, at best, a sterling example of gross incompetence, and, at worst, a giant cover-up. A year ago one wouldn’t dare speculate about something so sinister as a police cover-up, but given the recent Grand Jury finding that the top cop assigned to the Jovin case, Captain Brian Sullivan, had withheld evidence in another high-profile murder -- a crime for which he was subsequently arrested -- it almost seems obvious (not to mention that Sullivan and another cop active in the investigation, Detective Thomas Trocchio, have been accused by the New Haven Advocate newspaper of withholding evidence in yet another alleged murder).
Nevertheless, strides have been made to solve the case—one for which Yale and the State have offered a $150,000 reward. About a year ago, Yale hired a private investigator who has gotten the full cooperation of the assistant state’s attorney’s office. It now appears the NHPD is no longer afraid to have it be known that they might be pursuing a murder scenario that somehow doesn’t involve Van de Velde. And, in early October, the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission agreed, for a second time, to review the Jovin investigation case file in an effort to hopefully make much of the material available to the public.
Lastly, on Friday, December 7, Van de Velde sued the New Haven Police Department for violation of certain of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Yale Daily News quoted New Haven Corporation Counsel Thomas Ude as saying “I think it's highly unlikely that the city will be settling.” I look forward to the trial and the opportunity to finally get some long-awaited answers.
- Jeff |
