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Pastimes : Murder Mystery: Who Killed Yale Student Suzanne Jovin? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (92)	12/18/1999 1:07:00 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1397

Re: More never before revealed information to ponder I think I owe people a fuller explanation about why I was led to believe Suzanne had a backpack. A long while back in one of my early conversations with Jim (Van de Velde) we discussed the police interrogation of him. I can't and won't speak for Jim, but if I had been the one whose name was splattered across the papers and evening news as the primary suspect in a murder I knew I didn't commit the first thing I'd want to know is why in the hell do they think I did it?! In this particular investigation the police obviously had been banking on the theory Jim had been having a secret affair with Suzanne, so much so that they even released his name to the press. Most of their questions were along these lines and, as we've read, they intimated this to students presumably as a ruse to get them to "open up" on the subject. Needless to say since this wasn't true they got nowhere with this approach and then faced with egg on their face decided that rather than admit they made a mistake they'd try to find some other way to make the crime fit Jim. OK. Enough with that. Here's the baffling part: At some point in the interrogation the police tossed down in front of Jim a copy of the Yale publication called the "New Journal". They then said something along the lines of "this is why you did it." No, it wasn't Jim's paper and no, he hadn't seen it before. Therefore, unless tossing down red herrings is a police trick designed to get a "revealing" reaction, we can presume it had something to do with the crime. But what? Recall Peter Stein said Suzanne was carrying 8 1/2 x 11" white paper(s) in her right hand. He said he is pretty sure had it been a campus publication he'd have recognized it as such, so presumably Suzanne wasn't carrying the New Journal, at least at that point. Did she pick one up after that, perhaps at Phelps Gate? If she did pick one up, where might she have put it? This is why we both thought perhaps she had a backpack. We now know from Peter Stein she didn't. Could she have stuffed it in her sweater? Might the police have found the publication on or near Suzanne at the crime scene? Might they have found it when they entered Suzanne's apartment? If so, why choose that item? If Jim's name had been scribbled on it they surely they would have pointed that out to Jim yet they did not. Maybe it was a story written in the New Journal? No, I don't know what issue the police used, but presumably it was the most current issue, which would have been 11/30/98 (the murder was on 12/4/98). Here is a link to that issue: yale.edu. I don't see anything unusual. Anyone have any ideas about all this? - Jeff