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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 (1087)	5/31/2002 8:50:55 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1397

Re: 5/31/02 - New Haven Register: One embarrassment after another Opinions LETTERS One embarrassment after another Letter to the Editor May 31, 2002 Why are the New Haven Police Department and the state's attorney's office attempting to block the release of files in the Suzanne Jovin murder case? What are they afraid of? Perhaps they are afraid we will discover they have no real evidence against James Van de Velde. We already know that the police department has a propensity for crying "wolf." This is the same department that named three suspects (excluding the one most recently arrested) in Concetta "Penney" Serra's murder with little or no real evidence against them. They arrested one of those suspects, Anthony Golino, even though his blood type didn't match the killer's. In reference to Van de Velde, the police chief said, "If we have to ruffle some feathers, disrupt some people's careers, we will." What they won't do, apparently, is provide any justification for ruining this man's life. We know that Van de Velde took a polygraph test. If the police department is going to continue to publicly name him as a suspect, is it really asking too much for the public to see the evidence upon which the police are basing their accusation? Perhaps they are afraid we will discover just how incompetent this homicide department and prosecutor's office is. We already know that one member of this department, Sgt. Edward Kendall, "forgot" that evidence in the Philip Cusick murder investigation was sitting in his desk. We know that this prosecutor's office tried three times, but could not successfully prosecute the Patty Konesky murder case. They say they are afraid of compromising the investigation. What investigation would that be? They waited two years before looking for a van that was parked near the murder scene and three years before looking at DNA from Jovin's associates. Regarding this case, DNA expert Stephen O'Brien of the National Institutes of Health said that it is "important for communities to have knowledgeable forensic investigators to collect evidence right away. That evidently was not the case here." The police department had the services of Henry Lee, one of the country's most respected forensic experts, available to it, but did not request his assistance for more than a year. Two years after the murder, the police department asked Lee to reconstruct the crime scene, but Lee said, "You cannot reconstruct the abstract. You have to have physical evidence." Is it really possible to further compromise this hapless investigation? I suspect that the real reason for fighting the release of these files is to shield themselves from embarrassment. With what we already know about this case and the other high profile murders of young women in New Haven's history, this department deserves to be embarrassed. David Agosta Hamden ©New Haven Register 2002 newhavenregister.com