Re: 10/6/02 - New Haven Register: Aging Jovin case, built on wobbly footings, needs restructuring
Opinions
Aging Jovin case, built on wobbly footings, needs restructuring
David R. Cameron October 06, 2002
In two months, the investigation of the murder of Yale student Suzanne Jovin will enter its fifth year. Neither four years of investigation by the New Haven police nor two years of investigation by investigators retained by Yale have solved the mystery of who killed Jovin.
In the days following the murder, no one would have predicted it would be unsolved nearly four years later.
Because Jovin was killed in a residential area nearly two miles from the campus and only a half-hour after having been seen on the Old Campus, the police knew she must have been driven there. Several people in the vicinity of the crime scene saw a full-size, tan or light brown van parked immediately adjacent to where she was found — a part of the road where, because of the configuration of the streets, vehicles are seldom if ever parked.
Several individuals in the area heard a man and a woman arguing about the time Jovin was attacked. Some were close enough to hear some of the woman's words. At least four people, including the person who made the 911 call, were close enough to hear her screams. Two of those people were within roughly 25 to 30 feet of Jovin as she was being attacked.
A Fresca soda bottle with Jovin's fingerprints and those of one or more other persons was found at the scene. Lab tests revealed traces of male DNA in blood obtained from the fingernails of her left hand. A fragment of the murder weapon was found in her body.
The police possibly could have tracked down the van using DMV records. They didn't.
They could have asked the public for assistance in finding the van when memories were fresh. They didn't ask the public for assistance until more than two years later.
They could have used the fingerprints on the soda bottle and the bar code and other information on the container to track where Jovin had purchased it. Indeed, it probably would have taken one detective walking around the central campus no more than an hour to identify, among the handful of convenience stores that were open that evening, the place where she had purchased it.
They didn't identify the other fingerprints, and some six weeks later they were still making inquiries about locations of soda machines some distance from the central campus.
Knowing, as they did, when she logged off her computer that evening; approximately when and where she ran into a classmate on the Old Campus on her way to the Phelps Gate police substation to return a set of car keys; and through which gate she most likely entered the Old Campus; the police could have deduced the likely route she took from her apartment and determined whether she would have had sufficient time to purchase the soda on her way to the Old Campus.
If she did not have sufficient time, that would mean she purchased it after she left Phelps Gate. Then, she may have encountered the murderer at or near wherever she purchased the soda, rather than College Street in the vicinity of Phelps Gate, the last place she was seen on the central campus. Apparently they didn't test that possibility.
If the fingernail scrapings had been tested immediately for possible DNA, the results might one day have allowed for a conclusive match with a suspect. But, as the state's attorney acknowledged in late 2001, they weren't tested immediately. Because strands of DNA break down over time, vital forensic evidence was allowed to disintegrate.
They could have subjected the fragment of the murder weapon to advanced metallurgical testing that might have allowed them to determine the brand and manufacturer and eventually track down the weapon. They didn't.
Above and beyond these failures, the police made several decisions that are inexplicable.
Late in the evening of Dec. 4, 1998, after hearing of the murder, Dr. Henry Lee, the renowned forensic scientist who at the time was the state commissioner of public safety and the director of the state's forensic lab, called New Haven police and offered to arrange for state forensic scientists to come to the scene the next morning. The police turned down his offer. The city has a small forensics unit that lacks the full range of expertise available to the state.
For months, the police did not provide Lee with materials and information he requested to reconstruct the crime. In late 2000, he made it known he had never received the materials and, as a result, had been forced to abandon his effort at reconstruction.
The police failed to interview all residents in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. They did not interview immediately all who heard Jovin's screams as she was being attacked.
It took three weeks for posters to be put up asking for information, and when they appeared they used an old photograph of Jovin and included no information about her height, weight, hair coloring, and clothing — information that would have been essential to anyone who didn't know her but had seen her that evening.
Jovin headed a Yale Best Buddies chapter for whom she had arranged a pizza party earlier the evening she was killed. According to the host site coordinator of the organization that provided housing, care, and transportation for the persons with disabilities who participated, neither she nor any of the staff — as many as 19 people in all — were interviewed by the police.
Within four days of the murder, city and Yale officials and the local media learned police suspected James Van de Velde, a lecturer in political science who was one of Jovin's teachers and her senior essay adviser.
At the time, police had no evidence of any kind linking him to the crime. They did have unsubstantiated speculation based on events unrelated to the murder.
After he was publicly identified as the "prime" or "lead" suspect on Dec. 9-10, 1998, the police received a tidal wave of information, rumor, gossip, innuendo, and speculation about Van de Velde. But they received no credible information linking him to the crime, and to this day they have no credible information linking him to the crime.
Whether Yale and the city will finally, after four years of investigation, acknowledge there is no evidence supporting that early suspicion remains to be seen.
In the fall of 2000, a complex arrangement was worked out by which Yale agreed to pay the fees and expenses of a retired New York City homicide investigator and his associate. As part of the arrangement, the state's attorney's office and the city agreed to give them full access to the case records and the ongoing investigation.
The private investigators found no evidence Van de Velde had any connection to the crime.
Van de Velde's DNA did not match that found in the fingernail scrapings.
They found nothing to corroborate any of the accounts of several would-be eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen him possibly at various locations the evening of Dec. 4, 1998.
They found nothing to challenge his account that he left his office at about 8:15 P.M., went home, and remained at home the rest of the evening.
New Haven police and the Yale investigators continue to work on the case. But by any reasonable definition, including the one used by the chief state's attorney's office to describe the purpose of its "cold case unit" — "to focus special investigative efforts on crimes that have gone 'cold,' that is, unsolved for a prolonged period of time" — this is a "cold" case.
Indeed, nearly two years ago, Lee publicly stated he regarded it as a "cold" case. More recently, a member of the state's Freedom of Information Commission who reviewed and recommended the release of the entire 4,000-plus pages of the police file likewise declared it to be a "cold" case.
Since its creation in 1998, the state's "cold case unit" has solved, alone or in cooperation with other agencies, a number of very difficult cases. Its investigations have led to six convictions in homicide cases.
Participation by the unit in an investigation does not guarantee an arrest and conviction. But it does have access to resources and information that are not readily available to either the New Haven police or the Yale investigators.
And it takes a fresh look at all the evidence — badly needed in a case that went astray by the fourth day of the investigation.
The "cold case unit" does not enter an investigation unless the chief state's attorney takes over from local law enforcement (as eventually occurred in the Penney Serra case) or the latter requests its assistance.
Thus far, the chief state's attorney has left the Jovin investigation in the hands of local law enforcement authorities. They, in turn, have refused to request the assistance of the "cold case unit."
Perhaps local authorities fear bringing the unit into the investigation would constitute an embarrassing admission of their inability to solve the case and would call attention to their conduct of the investigation. Perhaps they don't think it would do any better.
Whatever the rationale, involvement of the "cold case unit" is long overdue. Those who wish to see the case solved should insist that it be brought into the investigation without further delay.
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David R. Cameron of New Haven is a professor of political science at Yale University. Readers may write him in care of the Register, 40 Sargent Drive, New Haven 06511. His e-mail address is david.r.cameron@yale.edu .
©New Haven Register 2002
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