Here's the passage to which you are referring, taken from Suzanna Andrews' Vanity Fair article:
Suzanne was seen again, between 9:25 and 9:30, walking north on College Street. If she was going home, it appeared she was taking a roundabout way. The witness who says she saw her close to 9:30 was a student who had left the Yale-Princeton hockey game early and was walking, alone, to an off-campus party, She passed Jovin, but didn't think much of it until the next night, when she read about the murder in the Yale newspaper. Nearly hysterical, she called the police at two in the morning, "They told me to write down everything I saw, everything," she recalls. What she saw was "a Hispanic or black guy in a hooded sweatshirt" going north. Behind him, also walking north, was Jovin, and walking in the same direction several paces behind her was, she says, a blond man with glasses... a white guy dressed nicely."
So, apparently she was on the same side of the street, not across it. Like I said, we agree it much more likely to recall seeing someone you knew than trying to describe someone you've never met. The fact she didn't blurt out the other descriptions on the phone and, quite the opposite, was asked to provide other details only after giving it some thought is consistent to me with someone not trying to embellish for attention.
I suppose you could argue she felt obligated to come up with something thus tainting her memory. Even if so, to answer your other question about what importance it might have, I'd argue very little. We know for a fact Jovin walked across the Old Campus. Even if we assume one of these mysterious people trailing Jovin was stalking her -- evading detection by Peter Stein in the process -- where was their car parked? Without a car we have no way for the stalker to get Jovin to the crime scene hence the odds one might be her killer are small.
So....if we eliminate that witness, does it change anything?
Not really. It would just make it more likely, IMO, Jovin retraced her steps across the Old Campus to reach Krauszers rather than walking along the road. It would also thus totally eliminate any vehicle coming into play until she reached the market which doesn't help all that much because in order to obtain the Fresca she'd have had to make it to Krauszers no matter which route she took.
As for the van, I'm not sure an immediate investigation would have yielded much. Colors are very hard to distinguish in dim light.
When I asked then head of the investigation, Brian Norwood, what sort of van it was, he said "full-size" like the type you might see at CT Limo, although he stopped short of saying it was "commercial." I took that to mean it didn't have any signs painted on it. The van the police eventually took into custody was a Dodge B250, so I would presume that came close to matching what the witnesses described. The point is that full-size vans are not the type used by families, so that narrows the field down considerably. I still can't figure out why if they really cared about information on vans they didn't provide a sketch of what they were looking for.
- Jeff |
