Re: 8/24/06 - NH Register: Jovin murder case turned over to state
Jovin murder case turned over to state
David McClendon, Register City Editor
08/24/2006
-NEW HAVEN — The murder of Yale student Suzanne Jovin, unsolved for nearly eight years, will be investigated anew by the state’s Cold Case Unit, officials said Wednesday.
State’s Attorney Michael Dearington said he and city Police Chief Francisco Ortiz Jr. made the decision to turn over the investigation to the state by Sept. 8 after concluding that it was an opportunity for a fresh, new review of the evidence that could lead to the arrest of the killer.
City police, through a spokeswoman, declined comment.
"Despite the thoroughness and tenacity shown by these investigators, the available evidence is not considered, at this time, to be sufficient to effectuate an arrest," Dearington said.
Dearington added that the Jovin family was aware of the latest development. Family members could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
The only person named as a suspect in the case was James Van de Velde, a former lecturer at Yale and Jovin’s senior thesis advisor in 1998. He has vehemently maintained his innocence and even hired private investigators to find the killer.
Van de Velde’s attorney, David Grudberg, said Wednesday that he was pleased that the Jovin case would soon be looked at by fresh eyes. He is eager to see his client cleared.
"What has been done to him is absolutely outrageous and now that the case is being forwarded to someone else, I hope they have the courage and integrity to say that he is not a suspect and he never was a suspect," Grudberg said Wednesday night.
The Jovin case drew international media attention. She was a 21-year-old Yale senior who was killed Dec. 4, 1998 shortly after leaving a pizza party she helped host for mentally disabled adults at a local church.
Her body, stabbed 17 times, was found by a passer-by on the corner of East Rock and Edgehill roads.
Early in the investigation, police identified Van de Velde, as a suspect, but never charged him and no arrests were ever made.
City cops were able to recover a sample of DNA from under the fingernails of Jovin’s left hand. Authorities said the genetic material did not match a DNA sample Van de Velde provided to police.
Van de Velde has accused police of incompetence and botching the investigation from the outset.
He sued, among others, the city police department and officials at Yale, including university President Richard Levin and Secretary Linda Lorimer, for violating his 14th Amendment right to equal treatment by releasing only his name to the public and not the names of other potential suspects.
The lawsuit also alleged the defendants, by naming Van de Velde as a suspect, violated his 14th Amendment right to confidentiality in personal matters and due process, and his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure, referring to the seizure of his good name without probable cause.
All the claims, however, were dismissed by a federal judge in 2004. Van de Velde earlier that year won an $80,000 settlement against Quinnipiac University in Hamden. In that lawsuit, he claimed he was wrongfully dismissed from a broadcast journalism graduate program because of news reports linking him to the Jovin slaying.
That lawsuit further claimed Quinnipiac spread defamatory statements about him to the media to explain his dismissal.
Grudberg, Van de Velde’s attorney, for years demanded that the case be turned over to the Cold Case Unit, but Dearington declined.
In 2004, Van de Velde made an attempt to once and for all clear his name. He hired detectives to investigate the case and put up posters in the East Rock neighborhood to remind people of the $150,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Jovin’s killer.
Yale officials also hired private investigators to look into the killing.
Jovin, who was from Germany, studied political science and international relations at Yale.
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City Editor David McClendon can be reached at dmcclendon@nhregister.com , or 789-5730.
©New Haven Register 2006
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