Re: 9/24/09 - USA Today: '98 slaying of Yale student unsolved
'98 slaying of Yale student unsolved
By Martha T. Moore and Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Eleven years ago, long before Yale graduate student Annie Le was found strangled in a basement lab, pretty, popular and accomplished Yale senior Suzanne Jovin lay bleeding to death on a street in an upscale New Haven neighborhood.
Jovin's case is unsolved.
Last week, as the campus mourned Le, 24, and the police charged Yale lab technician Raymond Clark with her murder, Jovin's still-grieving parents wrote a poignant letter to Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell asking for more money for the state crime lab so investigators can examine evidence from unsolved crimes such as their daughter's murder.
"Almost 11 years after the savage murder of our daughter Suzanne Jovin ... another young woman in the prime of life, Annie Le, has met the same fate," Thomas and Donna Jovin wrote. "On the basis of our own experience, we agonize and lament with the family and close friends of this latest victim."
Jovin, 21, spent the evening of Dec. 4, 1998, at a pizza-making party she had organized at a local church for Best Buddies, a group that connects students with the mentally disabled. A passerby found her bleeding on a street corner at 9:55 p.m. She had been stabbed 17 times in the neck and head.
New Haven police publicly identified her thesis adviser as a suspect but never charged him.
The case grew cold.
Yet state and local police have not forgotten it. In 2007, State's Attorney Michael Dearington assembled a team of retired Connecticut State Police detectives to study the case and seek new leads.
The team would review DNA evidence found underneath Jovin's fingernails and other evidence, the prosecutor said. He asked the public for tips.
"The case that involves our daughter is an ongoing case," said Thomas Jovin from his office in Göttingen, Germany. "It's 11 years down the line."
In their letter to the governor, the Jovins said they learned on a recent visit to New Haven that some DNA tests on evidence were not done "due to shortcomings" in the state's crime lab.
The lab, they wrote, "is suffering from understaffing and inadequate funding. As a consequence, the unit is struggling to satisfy the needs of ongoing and emerging investigations, not to speak of 'cold cases,' such as the murder of our daughter."
Rell, a Republican, said in a response that she is "very mindful of the deep pain that the Jovin family feels every day since their beloved daughter was taken from them."
The state targeted $2 million in federal stimulus money to add four crime lab positions to focus on cold cases and speed DNA processing, she said.
New Haven Police Chief James Lewis has said the unsolved Jovin investigation did not influence how the department handled Le's case. Yet as police prepared to arrest Clark, Lewis emphasized they were still investigating. "We don't in the future want to be accused of tunnel vision," he said.
Jovin's case stands in stark contrast to the quick arrest in Le's killing, Yale history professor John Lewis Gaddis said. "What was so traumatic about that one was that it remains unsolved," he said.
Leinwand reported from Washington
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