Re: 12/7/08 - New Haven Register: ‘What ifs’ haunt those near Jovin slaying site
‘What ifs’ haunt those near Jovin slaying site
Police fliers asking for information about the killing of Suzanne Jovin were once common in the East Rock area. (Register file photo)
Sunday, December 7, 2008 10:37 AM EST
By William Kaempffer, Register Staff
NEW HAVEN — A year ago, a state prosecutor proclaimed that everyone and, at the same time, no one was a suspect as a group of retired state police investigators took a fresh look at the murder of Yale University student Suzanne Jovin.
That’s not the case anymore, although Assistant State’s Attorney James Clark wouldn’t say whether the team is any closer to making an arrest in the cold case that made international headlines.
"There are people we’ve looked at and eliminated but we’re not going to get in a game and tell you who they are," said Clark in a recent telephone interview. "It’s time to include and exclude people who might be the killer."
It was 10 years ago last Thursday that Jovin, 21, a Yale senior and daughter of American scientists working in Germany, was brutally stabbed 17 times in the back and neck and left for dead at a street corner in the upscale East Rock neighborhood.
No one ever was charged, although a former Yale lecturer, Jovin’s senior thesis adviser, was identified as being in a "pool of suspects." James R. Van de Velde, now 48, has been fighting for a decade to clear his name.
DOCUMENT: Van de Velde civil lawsuit
E-MAIL: Van de Velde to the Register
Last week, the student newspaper, the Yale Daily News, ran a front-page article about the anniversary. The university Friday issued a one-sentence statement.
"There’s still a great deal of sadness about her death and hope that the case might yet be solved," said spokeswoman Gila Reinstein.
But, as with everything else, time passes and memories fade. Most undergraduates at Yale now were in grade school when the killing occurred.
Students who spoke to a reporter were only vaguely aware, if at all, of the anniversary. Sophomores Gabrielle Gaule and Ryan Carter, both Chicago natives, were 9 when it happened and didn’t recall much discussion about the crime on campus, they said. Gaule said the name Suzanne Jovin "doesn’t ring a bell."
It was a statement repeated by other undergraduates.
For long-time residents who live near the murder scene, however, memories are still vivid. Some expressed a degree of guilt, driven by what-ifs — what if I had stayed outside a few minutes longer? Or been in the front room instead of at the rear of the house hiding from the drone of a steady stream of traffic?
"I feel very guilty," said Nancy Dennett, who has lived at 189 East Rock Road since 1983, "because we didn’t hear anything. If we were outside, maybe we could have stopped it or seen who was running."
The site where Jovin was slain — the corner of Edgehill and East Rock roads — is in clear view from her son’s bedroom window by his computer, but he wasn’t home that night. Dennett didn’t even realize anything had happened on the unseasonably warm December night until she woke up for her morning run and saw the crime scene tape. She didn’t know it was a murder until she got to work, and someone said, "You live on East Rock Road. Did that happen near your house?"
"I don’t feel proud of not knowing what was going on. I wish I did know. I still pass the spot where she was found," she said. "It’s difficult."
Priscilla Kellert, of 57 Edgehill Road, recalled that she was standing on her front porch, about 20 yards from the murder scene, no more than 15 minutes before the killing. She and her husband had left a Yale hockey game early. He wasn’t feeling well and she dropped him off at home. All was quiet when she returned to Ingalls Rink to pick up the remainder of her group. When she returned, the corner had already been transformed into a crime scene.
"It’s sad, but you always wonder, ‘What if I had only been here 15 more minutes?’" she said.
A decade later, the case remains intriguing. Suzanne O’Malley, an author who investigated the Andrea Yates infanticide case in Texas and, by her account, saved the woman who drowned her five children from death row, came to New Haven Thursday to pay her respects at the Jovin memorial at Davenport College. In a chance encounter at a Starbucks, she told a reporter that the case has piqued her interest, although she had not decided whether it would be her next project.
O’Malley also is a part-time lecturer at Yale.
For Van de Velde and his supporters, there is a cast of villains and victims in the saga.
His life and career was ruined by false accusations and police leaks to the media, he says, and he has for years, without success, pressed police and prosecutors to publicly remove his name as a suspect.
Before returning to his alma mater, the Yale graduate served as a White House appointee in the George H.W. Bush administration in Geneva, Switzerland, as part of a strategic arms control delegation and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Intelligence Reserves.
At the time of the killing, he was a lecturer in Yale’s political science department. In the media frenzy that followed, his spring semester classes were canceled and, ultimately, his one-year contract with Yale was not renewed.
In the aftermath, he claims, he was denied various assignments through the Naval Reserves and had others terminated as a direct result of being publicly "branded" a suspect in a notorious murder. Ultimately, his security clearance with the Department of Defense was withdrawn, effectively ending his career as a naval intelligence officer, he said.
Van de Velde sued Yale administrators and city police officers in 2001. The case was dismissed in 2004 but, after a motion to reconsider was granted this year, Van de Velde’s attorney and friend David Grudberg filed a new complaint.
The case is still pending and, on Friday, Grudberg was busy crafting responses to motions attacking the federal complaint.
Among the defendants are Yale President Richard Levin and Richard Brodhead, the former dean of Yale College who now is president of Duke University.
"What is especially disturbing … is that, by refusing to accept any responsibility for their actions, Presidents Levin and Brodhead are positioning themselves as the defenders of Jovin’s murderer, given that no one could likely be arrested and convicted of the crime without the university and city acknowledging branding me and only me a suspect was wrong," Van de Velde said in an e-mail to the New Haven Register.
He has consistently criticized the handling of the investigation, contending that while wrongly focusing on him they let the real killer get away and failed to pursue other leads.
Private investigators were hired by Yale. In 2006, the case was turned over to the state cold-case squad and last year the state announced that four retired state police investigators had taken over.
Clark, the prosecutor assigned to the Jovin case since 2000, said the team has received some useful information from people since it started about 18 months ago.
In that time, the team also has made several public pleas for information. This summer, they released a drawing of a man seen by a motorist running across Whitney Avenue, about two blocks from the killing, in the general time frame.
Then, the investigative team released for the first time details of an e-mail sent by Jovin less than an hour before she was killed. The subject was a classmate’s GRE study materials, which Jovin had borrowed and then lent to "someone," according to the e-mail. Jovin indicated she would retrieve the items and return them to the classmate.
So far, the identities of the classmate and the "someone" remain mysteries.
"We’re still hoping that members of the public will recognize something about what we call the ‘running man,’ the one that was connected to the sketch, and we’re hoping people will bring us whatever information they have."
As for the "someone" mentioned in Jovin’s e-mail, Clark said, "We don’t have any new information on who that is."
Likewise, the source of DNA found under Jovin’s fingernail remains unknown. It was compared to a sample from Van de Velde and was not a match.
Clark said as long as it remains unidentified, investigators don’t know what, if any, significance to attach to it, noting that it could be "completely random or innocent or casual contact."
The investigation, he stressed, is still very active.
"We meet once a week but that doesn’t mean something isn’t happening in between. I would say it is as active as it has been at any time in the last five years," said Clark. As is his custom, he wasn’t inclined to go into specific detail.
"We’ll let you know when there’s somebody we can arrest," he said.
William Kaempffer can be reached at wkaempffer@nhregister.com or 789-5727.
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