Re: 11/12/07 - NH Register: Van de Velde urges more intensive probe of Jovin slaying
Van de Velde urges more intensive probe of Jovin slaying
By Randall Beach, Register Staff
11/11/2007
New Haven Det. Thomas Trocchio, left, and Anthony Dellulo place fliers up near the site of Suzanne Jovin's murder. (New Haven Register/John Mongillo photo)
NEW HAVEN - Nearly nine years after the slaying of Yale University student Suzanne Jovin, the only named suspect in the case, James Van de Velde, is ironically one of two people publicly calling for the state's Cold Case Unit to move more aggressively in solving the crime.
Van de Velde, who was a Yale lecturer and Jovin's senior thesis adviser when the 21-year-old senior was killed the night of Dec. 4, 1998, has never been charged with her slaying. But within a few days of the crime, the New Haven Register and other media said New Haven police had interviewed him about his possible involvement.
The community was shocked by the brutal killing. Jovin, who was last seen walking on College Street next to the Yale campus, was discovered a half-hour later lying on a street in the East Rock neighborhood, nearly two miles from campus. She had been stabbed 17 stab times.
A month later, Yale officials canceled the classes Van de Velde was to teach in the spring semester, saying city police had informed the school "that he is in a pool of suspects in the murder." A university spokesman said Yale presumed Van de Velde was innocent but his presence in the classroom would be "a major distraction for students."
Van de Velde twice was questioned early on by police: on Dec. 7 when he gave them a copy of her thesis, and then again on Dec. 8, an interview that turned into a four-hour interrogation, at which time he denied killing the student. Van de Velde told detectives he left his office at about 8:15 p.m., went home to his apartment at 305 St. Ronan St. and remained there for the rest of the evening.
Van de Velde, himself a Yale graduate, said his academic career was ruined, as he was unable to get another teaching job. He left New Haven and moved to the Washington, D.C., area, where he was hired to do work for the State Department as a foreign service officer.
He also has done anti-terrorism work for the U.S. government, including interrogating suspects at Guantanamo Bay. He is now married, has a son, and lives in suburban Washington where he is a consultant on national security affairs for a private company.
While Van de Velde began a new career, New Haven police continued to investigate Jovin's slaying but were unable to make an arrest or name another suspect. Van de Velde began a public campaign to push the police department to take specific forensic measures that might help them crack the case.
Police have never publicly removed Van de Velde from the "pool of suspects," even after their disclosure in October 2001 that a sample of DNA from under Jovin's fingernails did not match the DNA sample he provided to police.
Cold Case Unit
When the crime remained unsolved, Van de Velde, Yale political science professor David Cameron and journalist-author Donald Connery called for the case to be turned over to the state's Cold Case Unit. In December 2003, the fifth anniversary of the slaying, State's Attorney Michael Dearington said of this idea, "It's not going to be done" because he had confidence in "the people working on it now."
However, Dearington later changed his mind. In September of last year, the state unit took it over.
But Van de Velde and Connery remain frustrated over what they perceive to be a lack of progress and poor public outreach. They note the Cold Case Unit, overseen by Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane, has not included the Jovin case on its Web site listing of open cases. Nor does the Web site note the $150,000 reward offered for help solving the slaying.
Kane told the Register the Jovin case "is being actively investigated." He added, "We're working on it. It is being investigated to the best that it can be."
Kane declined to comment on why the case and the reward information are not on the unit's Web site.
Dearington stated, "It is being diligently investigated by the Cold Case Unit on a weekly basis. I know for a fact that this is being re-investigated by superbly-qualified investigators. Guaranteed."
Van de Velde is not convinced. Last August he wrote to Kane, noting, "It has been nearly a decade since a talented undergraduate I taught and mentored, Ms. Suzanne Jovin, was stabbed repeatedly and left for dead on a New Haven street corner."
He charged, "The investigation of her murder by the New Haven Police Department was a travesty. Relying on nothing more than faulty intuition to single me out as a person of interest, the detectives leaked my name to the press as their prime suspect ..."
Van de Velde included with his letter a detailed list of 12 "avenues to investigate" in the slaying. He told Kane, "As both a citizen wrongly accused by the police and an analyst in the national intelligence community, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the case and how it might be solved ... I have been, since the beginning of the case, the most vocal advocate for a vigorous and truly professional police effort to solve the crime."
Van de Velde's suggestions include examining the Fresca soda bottle found at the crime scene, near the corner of Edgehill and East Rock roads. He said since it had two fingerprints, Jovin's and that of an unidentified person, investigators should try to discern the DNA of the person who left the other print. (DNA can be discerned from the oil in a fingerprint).
In addition, Van de Velde noted several witnesses reported seeing a van parked near the crime scene at the time of the slaying. He said investigators should check out abductions known to have been carried out by Connecticut men driving vans to see if they might have also gone after Jovin.
'A Straight-Arrow'
Van de Velde contacted the Register in September, enclosed a copy of his letter to Kane and noted Kane had not responded. "I feel as though I am absolutely, positively Jovin's only vanguard for justice," Van de Velde said in an e-mail message.
Jovin's parents, Thomas and Donna Jovin, naturally have maintained a keen interest in solving their daughter's slaying. The Register sent them two e-mail requests for comment on the Cold Case Unit, but they did not respond.
One of their other daughters, Ellen Jovin, did not return a phone call.
Van de Velde said Connery had also written to Kane last February, with no response.
Connery, a Kent resident who once worked for Time and Life magazines and has written extensively about criminal justice, said in his letter he was concerned about the unit Web site's shortcomings on the Jovin case. He too made a series of suggestions about investigating the crime, many of them similar to Van de Velde's.
Speaking from his home office, Connery noted Van de Velde's high-security government clearances, saying this bolsters his firm belief Van de Velde had nothing to do with Jovin's death.
"This is a completely innocent person with a straight-arrow history," Connery said. "There is not a shred of anything to connect him to the crime."
"He got identified by the overzealous police department and he's been twisting in the wind ever since," Connery added. "That is a crime against him. He deserves, at a minimum, to be exonerated."
Connery said the Jovin case "was mishandled from the very beginning, then shifted to the Cold Case Unit. And there it disappeared into the back locker of the deep freeze. Some murders are too embarrassing to properly investigate."
But Cameron said he does not agree with the assumption that because Kane did not answer the letters or the Web site has limitations that the Cold Case Unit is not investigating the case.
"I think they probably are working on it," Cameron said. "The problem is they have very little to go on because the case was badly botched by New Haven police.
They (the Cold Case personnel) were given a very bad hand."
New Haven Police Chief Francisco Ortiz Jr., who was named to that position in June 2003, declined to comment. He said Dearington should be the one to do so.
Connery remarked, "This case is not going to go away. Van de Velde won't give up."
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com, or 789-5766.
©New Haven Register 2007
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