Re: 12/7/08 - New Haven Register: BEACH: The Jovins’ long, tormenting wait for justice
BEACH: The Jovins’ long, tormenting wait for justice
Police fliers asking for information about the killing of Suzanne Jovin were once common in the East Rock area. (Register file photo)
Sunday, December 7, 2008 6:43 AM EST
By Randall Beach, Register Columnist
TEN YEARS. It’s stunning to think it was 10 years ago — Dec. 4, 1998 — that those horrible events were set in motion and Suzanne Jovin, just 21, with a promising life ahead of her, was found dying at the corner of East Rock and Edgehill roads.
I live a few blocks away from there. While the murder was taking place, I was reading bedtime stories to my daughters, who were very young then.
I think I heard the sirens.
Within the next day or two, the details started to emerge. I recall doing my usual running route down Edgehill Road and seeing the New Haven Register headline in an honor box: "Yale Senior Found Slain."
Even to this day, I find it almost impossible to run past that intersection without thinking of her and wondering if her killer ever will be found. As time goes by, I despair of this happening.
Over the past decade, I have written dozens of stories about the murder investigation. For a few years I also developed an e-mail relationship with Suzanne Jovin’s parents, Thomas and Donna, who live in Germany.
As a parent myself, I can begin to imagine their pain and suffering — but only barely.
We are trained as reporters to provide "just the facts," to get the true information and report it objectively. But readers sometimes need to be reminded that reporters have feelings, too, that many reporters are parents and empathize with other parents undergoing traumatic loss.
The Jovins’ sorrow is magnified by the fact that nobody has ever been arrested, let alone convicted for this crime. Knowing that your daughter’s killer is still out there, living the free life, or went to his grave unpunished, must be unbearable.
Sometimes people ask me to speculate in private conversation about who committed this crime. I generally don’t have much to offer and I am not going to do that here. My focus today is on Suzanne’s parents and the rest of her family.
Although I have lost contact with Thomas and Donna Jovin over the past several years, I have held onto copies of their e-mail messages from 1999 and 2000. During that period, I learned to choose my words very carefully.
Shortly before Thanksgiving 2000, as the second anniversary of Suzanne’s death loomed, I wrote to the Jovins for comment about the state of the investigation. I made the mistake of beginning my message this way: "I hope you are doing well."
"No, we are not doing well," Thomas Jovin wrote back. "The fact and manner of our daughter’s death are as vivid and incomprehensible to us today as they were two years ago. We agonize over her loss and suffering and we miss her terribly."
And then he told me, "There have been new developments in the investigative effort that renew our hope that the case will indeed be solved. Apprehending the culprit is not only a matter of concern to our family. There are numerous individuals in New Haven (and elsewhere!) who feel that achieving justice is essential for the good of the institutions represented in the case, namely Yale University and the City of New Haven."
Jovin of course was too discreet to tell me what these "new developments" were, but clearly they didn’t lead to daylight. The Jovins always have been supportive of the Police Department’s efforts and have seemed to work well with police officers, detectives and prosecutors.
The Jovins have also consistently appealed to the public to come forward with any leads that might point the way to their daughter’s killer. In February 2000 they sent me an "open letter" to the community, asking anybody who might have information to "become involved and come forward. They owe it to Suzanne and to us; they owe it to everyone."
They remarked that their daughter’s murderer "must have been lucky" to commit the crime and not be caught. "However, he will not succeed in evading justice."
"The police and prosecutors are absolutely committed to this cause," the Jovins added. "And so are we, not out of a sense of revenge or hatred but rather from a feeling of responsibility to our daughter, to Yale and New Haven, and to society as a whole."
They concluded their letter by saying: "We are tormented every day by the senseless loss of our daughter, above all by the brutal denial of her most basic right, the right to life."
In May 2000, during a phone interview, Thomas Jovin was characteristically forthright in response to my question, "Do you feel OK with the investigation?"
"The only thing that would make us feel OK," he replied, "would be if an arrest is made, a trial held and somebody is convicted."
All these years later, the Jovins are still waiting.
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 789-5766.
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