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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 (522)	3/5/2000 11:28:00 AM
From: Janice Shell	Respond to of 1397

Could one blow from a 4-5 inch knife do that? A five-inch knife is not a toy. The kitchen knife I described last night could do a great deal of damage with one blow. But I've had an idea. Don't know if it's workable at this point, but I do think it's something the police should have done immediately. The killer would, I assume, have got rid of the knife quickly: the broken tip would have ruined the blade, and, more important, would have been damning evidence of the crime. Well, if he were someone who habitually carried a pocket knife, he'd need another one, wouldn't he? The knife he used to kill Suzanne was unusual, in that the blade was made of carbon steel, not stainless. Was that his preference, for some reason? People can be very fussy about personal stuff like pens and, I assume, pen knives. Would he have looked for a replacement identical to the original? Has anyone checked local stores in an attempt to discover whether someone bought a knife answering to this description shortly after the crime was committed? Of course I doubt he'd have paid with a credit card (or, for the same reason, that he'd have ordered the knife from a catalogue), but you never know.

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (522)	3/5/2000 12:53:00 PM
From: Janice Shell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1397

If she wasn't limp she'd have obviously tried, perhaps even instinctively, to cover her head with her hands. Yes, I'd think she would have done that, too. I also just can't see someone jumping on top of and stabbing a limp body in the head 15 more times. As I recall, according to 20/20, only one wound was fatal. By that did they mean "potentially fatal", in the sense that it resulted in nearly immediate death? After all, theoretically one could die of exsanguination caused by a number of nonfatal wounds. So we don't really know what this "new" information means. Were most or all of the blows to the head postmortem wounds? That would explain why Suzanne didn't attempt to defend herself, and may also suggest that the killer first cut her throat. Why the continued frenzy? Hatred is one explanation. Panic is another. Now here's a highly improbable scenario, but it's interesting nonetheless: We still know almost nothing about Best Buddies and the pizza party. Presumably the "buddies" left the church at about 8:30 or even earlier; I'd guess that Suzanne and the other organizers had some cleanup to do. Who are the "buddies"? Yes, retarded adults, but are they institutionalized? Do they live in supervised halfway houses? Do they live with family members? What if one of the "buddies" lived at home, and "home" was near the scene of Suzanne's death? He (or she) might have asked Suzanne to meet him there, saying that he wouldn't be able to leave the house for long. (And of course he wouldn't have had access to a car.) Maybe Suzanne had inadvertantly offended him, or he'd taken offense at some imagined insult, and so, in a childlike way, decided that she should be punished. In this case, the murder would indeed have been premeditated, but by a person who was mentally incompetent to understand its consequences. What if he had a crush on Suzanne--the retarded, after all, have normal sexual urges--and she rejected him? He felt it was because she thought he was "dumb". In a weird way, that might explain all those blows to the head. And of course his family might well have done everything possible to protect him...