Re: 4/25/01 - NH Regsiter: Former Yale lecturer fights to win back life
Former Yale lecturer fights to win back life
Walter Kita and William Kaempffer, Register Staff April 25, 2001
NEW HAVEN — Almost no one at Yale University uses the name James Van de Velde anymore — at least not without some prodding.
And when they do, a mention of Suzanne Jovin is sure to follow — a name now etched in stone on a memorial in the courtyard of her former residence hall, Davenport College.
It’s been more than two years since Jovin, a Yale senior majoring in political science, was found on a sidewalk in the city’s upscale East Rock neighborhood bleeding to death from 17 stab wounds.
Van de Velde — Jovin’s senior thesis adviser and the only person police have named as a suspect in the Dec. 4, 1998, murder — has from the outset denied any role in the crime. He has never been charged.
He’s now going public in a bid to restore his good name.
Speaking at length for the first time to the Register, Van de Velde talked about his fight to, in his words, "win back my life."
"A killer is still out there," Van de Velde said in a four-hour interview, during which he said he is an innocent victim of an incompetent city police force, an irresponsible press corps and an intractable Yale University administration more concerned with the school’s image than his constitutional rights. "I am innocent." "I’ll answer any question, any time, because I have nothing to fear," he said "The smartest thing to do is answer questions."
‘Amateur’ hour? Van de Velde repeatedly used one word to describe the city detective bureau’s handling of the case: "amateurish."
On the basis of nothing more than rumor and innuendo, Van de Velde charges, police branded him a suspect. Lacking evidence and eyewitness testimony, he maintains officers relied on other tactics — lying, intimidation and the solicitation of false testimony — in a bid to solve the high-profile murder.
"Is this any way to run a police a department?" he asked, his voice rising. "They (the police) keep saying they can’t remove me from the suspect list. Why? There will never be any evidence linking me to the crime."
Van de Velde said he believes he was already a target of the probe when he was summoned to police headquarters on the night of Dec. 8, 1998.
At the time, however, Van de Velde said he had no reason to believe he was a target.
Responding to a police request that he drop by to "look at a few pictures," he was taken to an upstairs interrogation room. Two detectives, Thomas Trocchio and Anthony DiLullo, were waiting for him.
For the first hour or so Van de Velde answered routine questions and studied photographs of some clients in the Best Buddies organization, a mentoring program for people with mental retardation. Jovin was a volunteer in Best Buddies through Yale’s Dwight Hall community outreach office.
The night she was murdered, she had hosted a pizza party for the group at Trinity Lutheran Church at 292 Orange St. The last time police confirmed seeing her alive was at about 9:25 p.m. at Yale’s Phelps Gate. She had dropped off a set of keys to a borrowed vehicle at the information office there. About 10 minutes earlier on Yale’s Old Campus, Jovin spoke briefly to a friend, Peter Stein, telling him she was tired and planned to return to her apartment to get some sleep.
A passerby found her near death about 30 minutes after she dropped off the keys, in a neighborhood two miles from Phelps Gate.
Van de Velde, who lived on St. Ronan Street, a few blocks from where Jovin was found, told Trocchio and DiLullo he didn’t know any of the faces in the photographs. Then, he recalled, the tenor of the questioning became more aggressive. Trocchio sat in front of him, DiLullo to his side.
Trocchio, he noted, made a particularly strong impression.
"He made a big show of taking off his jacket and exposing his nickel-plated revolver," said Van de Velde.
Because of his background as a Naval intelligence officer, Van de Velde said he recognized the officers were preparing to employ the "Reid Technique," a standard procedure used to extract a statement, or a confession, from a reluctant witness or a suspect.
The interrogation began with what Van de Velde called "softball" questions: "How well did you know Suzanne Jovin?" "What kind of student was she?" "Did you see her outside of class?"
Gradually, his two inquisitors turned up the heat, pursuing a line of inquiry that Van de Velde maintains was clearly intended to show his connection with Jovin went beyond the ordinary teacher and student relationship. Van de Velde said he calmly denied all their insinuations.
"The more hostile they got, the more calm I became," he said.
The detectives also asked lots of questions about Jovin’s thesis, which according to her friends and family appears to have been a matter of growing contention between adviser and student.
"It consumed her for the last month of her life," said one of Jovin’s former classmates who asked not to be identified. "She was very upset."
In the view of this student and others who knew her, Jovin was angry because she believed Van de Velde wasn’t devoting sufficient time to helping her with her essay on Arab terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
As the deadline drew nearer, Jovin’s friends say she became increasingly worried about her grade on the essay
The thesis, a requirement for graduation, was due on Dec. 8, the Tuesday following her murder.
Van de Velde said he returned a draft with his recommended changes to her — not, as she expected, on Monday, Nov. 30 — but on Wednesday, Dec. 2.
Numerous times toward the end of the semester, Van de Velde said, he sent her e-mails to arrange a discussion about the paper. With their busy schedules neither was able to find a mutually convenient time, he said.
The two met finally on Friday, Dec. 4, in the late afternoon, Van de Velde has said. The meeting, he recalled, was brief. They discussed the paper for no more than five or 10 minutes before she left.
If she was angry with him about his handling of the thesis, Van de Velde said she didn’t appear so.
"If she was as upset as some people say she was because I returned the paper to her two days later than she expected, I think that says more about her than it does about me," said Van de Velde.
Potential leads: Van de Velde accused police of ignoring numerous leads that could clear him, including:
• A Fresca soft drink bottle bearing Jovin’s fingerprints was found near her body at Edgehill and East Rock roads. It was a brand sold only in one area market, Krauszer’s at 264 York St., near the campus, according to Van de Velde. (Police say it is sold at a few other area stores.) Van de Velde’s contention is that the police time line, a key piece of their case against him, is wrong.
If she had stopped to pick up the soda, Van de Velde said, she could not possibly have arrived in the East Rock neighborhood in the time police had allotted on their time line — unless someone picked her up.
"Did they (police) try to find out who might have been with her when she bought it?" Van de Velde said.
• At least one East Rock resident reported seeing a brown van parked in the area where a passerby discovered Jovin’s body.
"Why haven’t they checked the registration of every brown van in the area?" Van de Velde asked. "You know how they (the police) checked it out? They showed up in the (Yale) political science department and asked if I drove a brown van." (Van de Velde drove a red Jeep Cherokee.)
Police Chief Melvin H. Wearing bristled at the suggestion his investigators bungled the case. While he would not provide details, he dismissed Van de Velde’s claim that police targeted him without just cause.
"The brown van . . . the bottle . . . that’s Homicide 101 — we passed that test," said Wearing.
"We’ve interviewed hundreds of people. On the basis of everything we have been able to develop, he is a legitimate, bona fide suspect."
Wearing said he was confident the department can solve the case despite the passage of more than two years, noting that 14 of the 15 murders recorded in the city in 1998 ended in an arrest.
"We have a young detective bureau, but they are talented," said Wearing, the city’s former chief investigator. "There’s a reason the officers here are under my tutelage — because I’m the best. We don’t need his (Van de Velde’s) help solving investigations."
Wearing again urged Van de Velde to submit to a police-administered lie detector test. Van de Velde early on volunteered for such a test but police never took him up on the offer. He’s since passed three lie detector exams arranged through his attorney.
A community’s sorrow: Yale officials from President Richard C. Levin on down never seem to tire of pointing out that Yale’s job is to train leaders. And by all accounts Suzanne Jovin was destined for a leadership role.
Raised in Germany by her scientist parents Thomas Jovin, and stepmother, Donna Jovin, she had a vibrant, generous spirit, recalled her oldest sister, Ellen. In an open letter to the Register on the first anniversary of her sister’s death, she wrote of her sister’s seemingly boundless energy.
"Before she began her freshman year (at Yale), Suzanne spent a few weeks traveling around the East Coast," Ellen Jovin wrote. "Even on vacation, she was amusingly thorough. In Manhattan, she visited every room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which took two days and proved that the energy of her toddler years had survived intact."
She also wrote of the last time she saw Suzanne alive, in November 1998. They met in New York.
After an event-filled day around the city, they ate dinner in a Greenwich Village restaurant. Then they parted.
"Suzanne gave me one her wonderful hugs — warm, sturdy, loving — that I now miss so much," Jovin said of her sister. "I had no idea as I waved to her on that busy city sidewalk, that I would never see her again."
David Blum, a friend of Jovin’s who came from Germany with her to attend classes at Yale, said "she was an intelligent, generous young woman and a tremendous friend. We all miss her very much."
Van de Velde himself was quoted praising her in a Register story from Dec. 8, 1998, ironically the day he was later questioned by police.
"She was a remarkable student — very intelligent, very enthusiastic," he said at the time. "This is a great tragedy."
Four snapshots: Instead of scaring him, Van de Velde said, the detectives’ grilling that night had quite another effect.
"It was the most static use of the Reid Technique I’ve ever seen," he said, indicating he felt little pressure to end the interview. "It’s a little embarrassing to say, but I was mildly entertained by it."
As Trocchio and DiLullo continued to pepper him with questions, Van de Velde said one of the men reached across to take hold of his wrist, testing for an elevated pulse. The Reid Technique prescribes it as one of methods to determine if a suspect is lying, said Van de Velde.
Though by that point he was keenly aware this was no routine interview, Van de Velde said he maintained his composure. During the fourth hour of his interrogation, Trocchio placed four Polaroid snapshots in front of him.
The pictures were of Suzanne Jovin’s body stretched out on a gurney at the medical examiner’s office, awaiting autopsy.
"I remained calm," he said, recalling his reaction to the photographs.
Van de Velde said in the four hours he was interrogated by police he can’t recall if either detective ever asked him directly: "Did you kill her?"
"I never hurt her," Van de Velde said he told them.
Van de Velde, who is single, said he told police he was home alone watching television at the time of the killing.
Cancelled classes: Van de Velde holds Yale responsible for pressuring the police to identify him as a suspect in the slaying, despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime.
Van de Velde said his life as an academic effectively ended on Sunday, Jan. 10, 1999, about a month after he acknowledged in news media reports that he had been questioned by police.
That day he received two phone calls from Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead on his home answering machine. In each, Brodhead’s tone was urgent. His words were brief: "Jim, I need to see you in my office immediately."
Van de Velde, who had been out with a friend much of the afternoon, retrieved the messages and arrived at Brodhead’s office to find the dean and Yale University Secretary Linda Lorimer waiting for him. The meeting, he recalls, lasted no more than 20 minutes.
It began with what he describes as a "rambling soliloquy" from Brodhead about the presumption of innocence.
"He made it clear, there would be no discussion, no debate," Van de Velde said.
Then, according to his account, the dean handed him a letter. It stated Van de Velde would be allowed to stay on at Yale to do research, but the two classes he’d planned to teach that spring semester would be canceled.
Stunned, Van de Velde said he asked Brodhead if he’d thought about the consequences of the move, the bad publicity Yale might get for removing him from his job when he hadn’t been charged with a crime.
Then he asked the dean if he’d considered what the university would say in a press release to justify such a move. Lorimer, who Van de Velde recalls said little during his exchange with Brodhead, then spoke.
"She said something like ‘a press release . . . that’s a good idea,’ " Van de Velde recalled. "’Would you be interested in helping us craft it?’ My reaction was, ‘My God, what are you thinking!’ What a ridiculous suggestion."
Shortly before Jovin’s Yale classmates graduated in May 1999 without her, the school notified Van de Velde he wouldn’t be coming back for the fall semester. His one-year lecturer’s contract hadn’t been renewed.
"I knew when I left Brodhead’s office that day (Jan. 10, 1999), it was probably the last time I would walk out of the Yale College dean’s office," he said.
‘Difficult choices:’ Yale officials declined the Register’s request to be interviewed about the case.
Instead, Lorimer issued a five-paragraph statement.
"By early January 1999, we were aware that Mr. Van de Velde was a suspect in Suzanne’s murder and that students and faculty would be questioned about Mr. Van de Velde when second semester commenced," the statement reads.
"We were faced with a difficult set of choices; we made the best decision we could on the basis of the information we had and the values we hold for the institution," Lorimer said. "We decided to continue Mr. Van de Velde’s employment through the full term of his contract; he received full pay and full benefits; he kept his title; he could continue fully his research and have access to university facilities.
"We did cancel his classes for that semester. As we explained then, it was our best belief that his presence in the classroom, under the circumstances, would be a distraction to students," Lorimer added.
"We also stated explicitly at that time, and publicly thereafter, that ‘In changing his assignment, the university presumes that Mr. Van de Velde is innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with the murder of Suzanne Jovin.’ "
In the school’s January 1998 press release, Yale officials said New Haven police had informed them Van de Velde was "in a pool of suspects in the murder."
When Yale President Richard C. Levin was asked Monday about Van de Velde during a news conference devoted to other matters, he said, "We did what was right and responsible at the time."
Levin said Van de Velde’s contract was not renewed at the end of the spring semester in 1999 because, "He was hired as a replacement for somebody on one-year leave. I don’t think there’s any reason to presume he would’ve been hired under any circumstance."
Levin also said it was Wearing, not Yale officials, who named Van de Velde as a suspect. "Chief Wearing’s statement preceded our decision," he said. "We were responding (to Wearing’s statement)."
Lorimer concluded her written statement: "Our continuing concern has been to support in every way appropriate the ongoing investigation of this murder with the goal of bringing the perpetrator to justice and having this horrible crime solved. That primary goal was what led us to fund a private investigator in recent months to augment the work of the prosecutor and to triple the reward offered by the State of Connecticut (to $150,000). We continue to hope and pray for a break in this case which will bring it to resolution." Pressing questions: The final figures in what Van de Velde describes as his 2-plus year ordeal to remove himself from the cloud of suspicion are the members of the Connecticut news media.
By uncritically accepting much of what Jovin’s family, the police and Yale have said about the murder, by trafficking in rumor and innuendo, the press has made it impossible for him to find a teaching job, he charged.
Van de Velde has several times complained about the Register’s handling of the case, citing, in particular, a story published on Dec. 9, 1998. The story reported that police had identified a "Yale male teacher" as the lead suspect in Jovin’s murder. The story did not name Van de Velde.
That day several TV reporters showed up to interview Van de Velde.
"Are you the teacher in the story?" they wanted to know. Van de Velde said that, yes, police had interviewed him. He also told them he had nothing to do with Jovin’s murder. He made similar statements to the Register that day.
Van de Velde said the life he had imagined for himself became impossible. After a 28-month investigation that has resulted in no arrests, Van de Velde said he is left only with unanswered questions and a fervent desire to reclaim his reputation.
Van de Velde filed two lawsuits in January.
He accuses Quinnipiac University of defamation by wrongfully dismissing him from a graduate journalism program he had enrolled in with the goal of becoming a foreign affairs TV analyst. Van de Velde alleges in his suit that the school, which cited academic reasons for its action, dismissed him after his name emerged as a suspect in the crime.
He has also sued The Hartford Courant for libel.
Van de Velde repeated a pledge he and his attorney have made often in the last several months — that he intends to sue Yale, the New Haven Police Department and perhaps other parties. He declined to identify them.
And he’s taking his case to the public.
"I am a man of integrity," Van de Velde said. "I have nothing to fear." Register reporters William Kaempffer and Randall Beach contributed to this story.
©New Haven Register 2001
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