Arrest Warrant For Roy Clark Released 2009.11.13

[Shlock Homes]

I agree the murder warrant doesn't necessarily have to have all the evidence to prove someone is totally guilty of a crime. I'm just pointing out that certain pieces of evidence stated, which probably won't change much at court time, on their own, don't really prove guilt. For example, as I've mentioned before, the investigator watching Ray cleaning the drain or switching the place of the box of Wipes could be construed as having clouded judgment if they made up their mind Ray was guilty. Meanwhile, someone else in another part of the basement could have been behaving even more 'suspiciously' hiding evidence. Why would Ray incriminate himself by cleaning evidence right in front of the officer? Did they question his work? And the moving of the box could have just been him straightening it up. It's not the same as 'hiding', and they've insinuated.

The number of card swipes also is unclear. Like I said, they've given two different accounts of his swipes. One indicates he did it 55 times, another account says he did it only 16 times in those two rooms that whole day. Hardly 'frenzied' behavior, especially if 2 out of five times were done for G-13 before noon. If Annie never scanned into G13 again after 10:11am that doesn't necessarily mean she didn't survive past 10:40am when Ray scanned in. It just means she either spent her morning in the room (there isn't any information as to how long she SHOULD have been working in there), or she went elsewhere in the lab and didn't bother scanning back into G13. She had no business going to G33 or G22.

So when could Annie have met her demise, if Ray was in G13 at those two times? Maybe after lunch, like he said, when he last saw her. She could have re-entered the room with someone else, without scanning in, and that's when the attack occurred? The murder might have occurred just before the alarm went off.

I suspect her body was mutilated because of the amount of blood they seem to be describing on the clothing and at various scenes. They said that the chase had blood smears throughout it. That means she had quite a lot of blood on the surface of her body and clothing.

I hope the December affidavit will give more information regarding the swipes so a more detailed picture of the room access could be given. Of special interest, if any of the rooms were accessed DURING the fire alarm when the building was supposed to have been cleared.

 

[Chanler]

I agree the murder warrant doesn't necessarily have to have all the evidence to prove someone is totally guilty of a crime. I'm just pointing out that certain pieces of evidence stated, which probably won't change much at court time, on their own, don't really prove guilt. For example, as I've mentioned before, the investigator watching Ray cleaning the drain or switching the place of the box of Wipes could be construed as having clouded judgment if they made up their mind Ray was guilty. Meanwhile, someone else in another part of the basement could have been behaving even more 'suspiciously' hiding evidence. Why would Ray incriminate himself by cleaning evidence right in front of the officer? Did they question his work? And the moving of the box could have just been him straightening it up. It's not the same as 'hiding', and they've insinuated.

The number of card swipes also is unclear. Like I said, they've given two different accounts of his swipes. One indicates he did it 55 times, another account says he did it only 16 times in those two rooms that whole day. Hardly 'frenzied' behavior, especially if 2 out of five times were done for G-13 before noon. If Annie never scanned into G13 again after 10:11am that doesn't necessarily mean she didn't survive past 10:40am when Ray scanned in. It just means she either spent her morning in the room (there isn't any information as to how long she SHOULD have been working in there), or she went elsewhere in the lab and didn't bother scanning back into G13. She had no business going to G33 or G22.

So when could Annie have met her demise, if Ray was in G13 at those two times? Maybe after lunch, like he said, when he last saw her. She could have re-entered the room with someone else, without scanning in, and that's when the attack occurred? The murder might have occurred just before the alarm went off.

I suspect her body was mutilated because of the amount of blood they seem to be describing on the clothing and at various scenes. They said that the chase had blood smears throughout it. That means she had quite a lot of blood on the surface of her body and clothing.

I hope the December affidavit will give more information regarding the swipes so a more detailed picture of the room access could be given. Of special interest, if any of the rooms were accessed DURING the fire alarm when the building was supposed to have been cleared.

Thanks for your response.

For several good reasons, testimony by police personnel on the scene is generally viewed by juries as reliable. For one thing, they are professionals on the scene trained and delegated to observe, gather evidence, and draw conclusions. In this case, it seems that police from more than one agency, including the F.B.I., saw Clark behave and perform in inexplicable ways at locations where evidence was subsequently found. That he returned to G13, for example, after he was asked to leave, and began cleaning a floor drain (logically the responsibility of janitors, not animal technicians) that looked already clean would seem suspicious to most of us.

Why would Clark behave in such incriminating ways before officers? Simply put, because he was a nervous wreck trying to divert the search and prevent the building from becoming a crime scene and himself becoming a prime suspect. This supposedly perfect crime was messy and improvised: The bloody struggle and his attempt to conceal the body was obviously not the work of a skilled professional. That Clark was still attempting unsuccessfully to clean up two days later indicates that he hadn't planned this murder.

Clark's alibi would almost necessitate that he see Annie Le leave G13, with its blood like wall splatter, where it is mostly likely she was killed, because he was apparently the last one in the room with her. We can all cobble together stories where she supposed went with her mouse food and notebook, but we only have Raymond Clark's alibi to say that she went anywhere else at all. And if Annie wasn't killed in G13 and the sock is hers as the Yale Daily News has asserted more than once, it means that the phantom killers were not only planting evidence stolen from Clark; they were transporting evidence from a body located elsewhere. Pretty busy gremlins.

Apologists for Clark fail to mention that he was the only one to enter G22, where much evidence was found, in this critical period.

It should not surprise us that the crime scene was bloody. Sudden confrontations or falls frequently are. (I once accompanied a woman to the ER whose single head wound from a fall drenched both of us and the back seat of a cab.) Clark is a large, athletic man who seemed to like physical sports. Annie Le was a very diminutive woman who had a reputation for being feisty. In such an uneven pairing, even a seemingly moderate push by a larger man could lead to a tumble, an injury or wound, a threat of firing, and then more escalation.

The card swipe question obscures the fact that, at the minimum, Clark was entering G22 an extraordinary number of times. The difference between 3 visits in 12 days and 11 visits in a single day is significant. And the difference between G13 access is equally striking: only a single visit in 12 days and 5 visits on the day of the murder. The possibility that there are even more visits or quick swipes does not diminish these numbers or their significance.

 

[Shlock Homes]

The problem with judging the significance of the card swipes or the cleaning in G13 (in front of viewing investigators, not behind their backs) is that Clark was an employee in the lab. He wasn't a student. So his behavior could be indicative of someone doing their job. They judge his scanning times on Sept 8 in the affidavit, but they don't mention whether that day was a busy first day for students as well. If the volumes of people and work increased on the day after Labor Day for Clark, then naturally his entry into rooms would have increased. They should have also looked at card swipe records for the next couple of days to see if they were the same or different for Clark.

G22 may have been a supply closet of sorts for all the rooms. The presence of blood is damning, provided that no one else entered that room without scanning (which is possible). Also, you have to rule out that the evidence could have been transported there because Clark had stepped in it not realizing it was human blood, or that the beads were stuck to his shoes. In other words, the body may not have been transported into G22, but the evidence may have been unwittingly carried into that room and G33 on the bottom of Clark's shoe? Did they check the hallways for a trail of cleaned up blood?

As an animal tech, he was responsible for the cleanliness of the rooms. How can the investigators say his cleaning was uncharacteristic if they didn't work there? Do they know the behavior of an animal tech or what they specifically looked for when they kept the rooms straight?

I haven't heard anywhere if they found Annie's books or the bags of mouse feed. I think those would also be important pieces of evidence. Did she carry those into the room she was murdered in? Or are those kept in a locker or storage area so they don't contaminate the mouse rooms? If that image of her that was captured shows her walking with those items into the lab, then where are those now? If she carried them into G13, were they still there when the investigators showed up days later? Would the killer know it was all her stuff? Would they even bother hiding those along with the body, unless they saw her with them in her hands? If they were not found in G13, even though she would have carried them in there that morning, then Clark's story could be true about her leaving with those items in her hand. Unless she had those items specifically labeled with her name, the killer, even if it was someone who knew her, would not know those items were her's unless they saw her walk in with them, or she pointed them out, or she was carrying them just before the attack occurred.

 

[PatientOne]

I wonder if (or why) Annie -- or anyone -- would leave the Amistad building with 2 bags of mouse food since that's where the mice are housed?

I wonder why RC told LE he saw her leaving with the food? He could've just claimed to have seen her leave, so it seems there's something significant about the mouse food. Why did RC feel he had to account for 2 bags of mouse food? This may turn out to be somehow incriminating.

 

[Chanler]

The problem with judging the significance of the card swipes or the cleaning in G13 (in front of viewing investigators, not behind their backs) is that Clark was an employee in the lab. He wasn't a student. So his behavior could be indicative of someone doing their job. They judge his scanning times on Sept 8 in the affidavit, but they don't mention whether that day was a busy first day for students as well. If the volumes of people and work increased on the day after Labor Day for Clark, then naturally his entry into rooms would have increased. They should have also looked at card swipe records for the next couple of days to see if they were the same or different for Clark.

G22 may have been a supply closet of sorts for all the rooms. The presence of blood is damning, provided that no one else entered that room without scanning (which is possible). Also, you have to rule out that the evidence could have been transported there because Clark had stepped in it not realizing it was human blood, or that the beads were stuck to his shoes. In other words, the body may not have been transported into G22, but the evidence may have been unwittingly carried into that room and G33 on the bottom of Clark's shoe? Did they check the hallways for a trail of cleaned up blood?

As an animal tech, he was responsible for the cleanliness of the rooms. How can the investigators say his cleaning was uncharacteristic if they didn't work there? Do they know the behavior of an animal tech or what they specifically looked for when they kept the rooms straight?

I haven't heard anywhere if they found Annie's books or the bags of mouse feed. I think those would also be important pieces of evidence. Did she carry those into the room she was murdered in? Or are those kept in a locker or storage area so they don't contaminate the mouse rooms? If that image of her that was captured shows her walking with those items into the lab, then where are those now? If she carried them into G13, were they still there when the investigators showed up days later? Would the killer know it was all her stuff? Would they even bother hiding those along with the body, unless they saw her with them in her hands? If they were not found in G13, even though she would have carried them in there that morning, then Clark's story could be true about her leaving with those items in her hand. Unless she had those items specifically labeled with her name, the killer, even if it was someone who knew her, would not know those items were her's unless they saw her walk in with them, or she pointed them out, or she was carrying them just before the attack occurred.

Thanks for your note.

By the minimal traffic in G13 indicated by card swipes that morning, it seems not to have been a busy day in the laboratory. And the students weren't just students: They were Ph.D. researchers [almost certainly on scholarships or fellowships] with task responsibilities far more important and exacting than those of Clark. The three researchers who swiped in after Annie Le were all interviewed by law enforcement on the scene. If it was such a busy day why weren't other researchers, animal technicians, or other workers apparently present on the scene?

If somebody gained access into G22 without scanning during the critical period, they did so with Clark's assistance. If Clark innocently and unknowingly carried blood and beads (!) into the room, you might also believe that he inadvertently attempted to clean up the blood, which seems to have been the case.

Raymond Clark was not a janitor; he was an animal technician. (Law enforcement would certainly make job description inquiries.) As a stickler about his job description, he would have known that. And to say that he cleaned up in front of the officers is to beg the question on two counts: If he cleaned up behind their backs (as he did), he would not have been seen. And, in the instance of the wipes, he appeared to the FBI Special Agent to act surreptiously. With law enforcement in the building and a corpse rotting behind a nearby wall, he had no choice but to do everything he could to not prolong the investigation inside the building.

According to the arrest warrant, Clark stated she was carrying a notebook, not books. Distinguishing mouse food packets from one another in a lab building would be next to impossible. As for the hypothetical notebook, one doesn't know its contents or whether it is was her only notebook. In any case, no Annie Le notebook has been found elsewhere (One assumes that such a notebook, if found in another room, would instantly attract attention.) In any case, Clark's airy alibi requires us to believe that Annie Le left his presence (and the bloody crime scene) and vanished, rodent food in hand, into thin air.

 

[Chanler]

I wonder if (or why) Annie -- or anyone -- would leave the Amistad building with 2 bags of mouse food since that's where the mice are housed?

I wonder why RC told LE he saw her leaving with the food? He could've just claimed to have seen her leave, so it seems there's something significant about the mouse food. Why did RC feel he had to account for 2 bags of mouse food? This may turn out to be somehow incriminating.

Thanks for your pleasing note. Personally, I think that Raymond was winging it. He had to convince LE that Annie Le had exited the lab or else it would become the focus of the investigation. As it did, to his everlasting regret.

 

[Shlock Homes]

I wonder if (or why) Annie -- or anyone -- would leave the Amistad building with 2 bags of mouse food since that's where the mice are housed?

I wonder why RC told LE he saw her leaving with the food? He could've just claimed to have seen her leave, so it seems there's something significant about the mouse food. Why did RC feel he had to account for 2 bags of mouse food? This may turn out to be somehow incriminating.

With her missing, I'm guessing he did his best to remember everything. He remembered she was wearing a brown skirt. Didn't they gather the information on Sept 10th from the people who were around Tuesday, just to find out who last saw Annie?

 

[Shlock Homes]

Thanks for your note.

By the minimal traffic in G13 indicated by card swipes that morning, it seems not to have been a busy day in the laboratory. And the students weren't just students: They were Ph.D. researchers [almost certainly on scholarships or fellowships] with task responsibilities far more important and exacting than those of Clark. The three researchers who swiped in after Annie Le were all interviewed by law enforcement on the scene. If it was such a busy day why weren't other researchers, animal technicians, or other workers apparently present on the scene?

I guess by 'busy', that particular room might not have had the researchers going in and out often. Maybe they stayed in there, maybe they didn't. What about other rooms along that same hallway? Were there people in those rooms?

Also, have they ever indicated what washroom was accessed to store the body? Was it a woman's or men's washroom?

If somebody gained access into G22 without scanning during the critical period, they did so with Clark's assistance. If Clark innocently and unknowingly carried blood and beads (!) into the room, you might also believe that he inadvertently attempted to clean up the blood, which seems to have been the case.

If he was cleaning up a mess, he might not have known it was blood. We don't know the extent of the blood that was in G22 and G33. If there was a footprint sized stain, then there should have been stains along the hallway too. Nothing has been mentioned about blood being found along any hallway.

Raymond Clark was not a janitor; he was an animal technician. (Law enforcement would certainly make job description inquiries.) As a stickler about his job description, he would have known that. And to say that he cleaned up in front of the officers is to beg the question on two counts: If he cleaned up behind their backs (as he did), he would not have been seen. And, in the instance of the wipes, he appeared to the FBI Special Agent to act surreptiously. With law enforcement in the building and a corpse rotting behind a nearby wall, he had no choice but to do everything he could to not prolong the investigation inside the building.

They said they observed him cleaning, which sounds like it was in front of them. I'm assuming they spent most of the day in G13, or at least long hours. If he really was cleaning 2 days later, does that really make sense? If he was a stickler, and he knew about the presence of blood, wouldn't he have already completed all the cleaning he needed to do before the investigators showed up? I can't explain the blood on the wipes. Again, if he was such a stickler, and he murdered her, then he would have removed that evidence on the day of or at least by the next day.

According to the arrest warrant, Clark stated she was carrying a notebook, not books. Distinguishing mouse food packets from one another in a lab building would be next to impossible. As for the hypothetical notebook, one doesn't know its contents or whether it is was her only notebook. In any case, no Annie Le notebook has been found elsewhere (One assumes that such a notebook, if found in another room, would instantly attract attention.) In any case, Clark's airy alibi requires us to believe that Annie Le left his presence (and the bloody crime scene) and vanished, rodent food in hand, into thin air.

She left his presence, but where did she go after is definitely a question. And when did those other people access the room? Did they access it any time before the fire alarm went off? I agree that distinguishing the food bags would be hard to figure out, unless she put her name on them. Even so, why bother tossing her notebook and feed bags? What would that accomplish? It would make sense if that had happened, and he claimed he NEVER saw her. But he said he saw here up until around 12:30pm, and she walked out with her stuff, so where did all of that go? Maybe she returned to the room without them, and that's when she was murdered. And she didn't have to scan if someone else scanned her in.

I've noticed huge differences between the fire alarm times. On the affidavit it says 13:55. Then it says Clark said the alarm cleared the building between 13:00 and 13:30. But when I've been reading articles from a day or two after she disappeared, they say the alarm was around 12:40pm.

I was looking at some of the old missing persons articles and found this interesting part:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/city-news/2009/09/09/medical-student-goes-missing/

"Pharmacology Department chair Joseph Schlessinger said he first learned of Le’s disappearance from her faculty advisor Anton Bennett, an assistant professor in the pharmacology department."

"Schlessinger said that Bennett e-mailed him yesterday around noon informing him that Le had not come in to work and that no one knew where she was."

The article is dated Sept 9th, so the email was sent Sept 8th. I think it may have been mentioned before: Does anyone know what time Annie Le was scheduled to be at her work? 'Around noon' could mean 12:30pm to 1pm. After looking around, it turns out she was scheduled to teach a pathology class, but I haven't been able to find information as to what time that would have been. If she was supposed to teach at noon, it's odd that Ray had seen her 12:30pm or so. It would make sense, though, if she was supposed to teach at 1pm.

Here's the image of Annie Le captured on surveillance on Sept 8th. It looks like she's wearing socks that differ from the description of the ones in the affidavit.

 

[Chanler]

My responses in brackets:

I guess by 'busy', that particular room might not have had the researchers going in and out often. Maybe they stayed in there, maybe they didn't. What about other rooms along that same hallway? Were there people in those rooms?

[Annie Le's lab, the apparent site of her murder, seems not to have been busy or crowded that day. The stories and movements of her three Ph.D. coworkers have been checked to the satisfaction of the FBI and New Haven police. Police investigation seems not to have yielded any evidence in those other rooms.]

Also, have they ever indicated what washroom was accessed to store the body? Was it a woman's or men's washroom?

[One would assume that even the most genteel killer would care less about the gender specifications than about whether the washroom was empty.]

If he was cleaning up a mess, he might not have known it was blood. We don't know the extent of the blood that was in G22 and G33. If there was a footprint sized stain, then there should have been stains along the hallway too. Nothing has been mentioned about blood being found along any hallway.

[So at this point we have Raymond Clark "innocently" cleaning up bloodstains in both G13 and G22 and "innocently" tracking blood and a bead (!) on his shoes into G22. Wouldn't the absence of blood being found in the hallway argue against such "innocent" tracking?]

They said they observed him cleaning, which sounds like it was in front of them. I'm assuming they spent most of the day in G13, or at least long hours. If he really was cleaning 2 days later, does that really make sense? If he was a stickler, and he knew about the presence of blood, wouldn't he have already completed all the cleaning he needed to do before the investigators showed up? I can't explain the blood on the wipes. Again, if he was such a stickler, and he murdered her, then he would have removed that evidence on the day of or at least by the next day.

[Again you seem to be arguing paradoxically that because Raymond Clark didn't commit a perfect murder, he must not be the killer. The crime scene seems to have been bloody. There are multiple instances of cleaning and concealment in three rooms, clothing changes, and it is also possible that Clark removed other evidence from the building in his several trips out. As numerous professional killers have learned to their dismay, completely purging a murder scene of forensic evidence is extremely difficult. In any case, nervously cleaning up an apparently clean grated floor drain in a building with police from three agencies roaming around was only one aspect of Clark's ever escalating predicament: With his worries heightening, he had to remain as unobtrusive as possible and he had to deal with the ever increasing possibility that Annie's rotting carcass would place him irrevocably in the center of a homicide prosecution.]

She left his presence, but where did she go after is definitely a question. And when did those other people access the room? Did they access it any time before the fire alarm went off? I agree that distinguishing the food bags would be hard to figure out, unless she put her name on them. Even so, why bother tossing her notebook and feed bags? What would that accomplish? It would make sense if that had happened, and he claimed he NEVER saw her. But he said he saw here up until around 12:30pm, and she walked out with her stuff, so where did all of that go? Maybe she returned to the room without them, and that's when she was murdered. And she didn't have to scan if someone else scanned her in.

[I can't believe we're still discussing the generic rodent morsels and a completely unparticularized notebook. (Although I must admit I am wondering why on earth Annie would be taking mouse food to a pathology class.) Saying that he never saw her would make little sense: Since she was not known to have gone elsewhere, it would reinforce the idea that she had remained in the room with him. Clark might have decided, not unreasonably, that creating an alibi with a few inconsequential details was better than feigning complete ignorance. Your alternative is that we simply accept his story and posit that some one apparently spotted her in the hallway, lured her back into G13, murdered her after a bloody struggle, somehow cleaned up the scene sufficiently not to alert Clark when he returned, then moved the body down to a nearby room which only Clark entered after Annie arrived that day and then transported her lifeless body to a locker-room/toilet even closer to the second room. Then with Clark "innocently" cleaning up and transporting blood down the hallway, the murderer or murderers unknown found the opportunity to steal Clark's pencil before he returned to the building, place it near Annie's body; plant his DNA on Annie's sock and blood on a jacket that might be associated with him.]

I've noticed huge differences between the fire alarm times. On the affidavit it says 13:55. Then it says Clark said the alarm cleared the building between 13:00 and 13:30. But when I've been reading articles from a day or two after she disappeared, they say the alarm was around 12:40pm.

[One would assume that the police report, which sourced exit surveillance photos, would be more accurate than anecdotal accounts.]

I was looking at some of the old missing persons articles and found this interesting part:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/ci...-goes-missing/

"Pharmacology Department chair Joseph Schlessinger said he first learned of Le’s disappearance from her faculty advisor Anton Bennett, an assistant professor in the pharmacology department."

"Schlessinger said that Bennett e-mailed him yesterday around noon informing him that Le had not come in to work and that no one knew where she was."

The article is dated Sept 9th, so the email was sent Sept 8th. I think it may have been mentioned before: Does anyone know what time Annie Le was scheduled to be at her work? 'Around noon' could mean 12:30pm to 1pm. After looking around, it turns out she was scheduled to teach a pathology class, but I haven't been able to find information as to what time that would have been. If she was supposed to teach at noon, it's odd that Ray had seen her 12:30pm or so. It would make sense, though, if she was supposed to teach at 1pm.

["Around noon" does not generally mean "around 12:30 or 1 p.m." unless, of course, one is trying to fudge a little. She was a teaching assistant, not a teacher. Clark places Le's leaving at 12:30 to 12:45. He is less exact and apparently less accurate about the time that the alarm sounded. Of course, if the professor is remembering the time of the email correctly, Annie's very uncharacteristic absence could be explained by her being dead. In any case, none of this supports Clark's assertion that she left at 12:30 or 12:45. It simply suggests that by the time the class started, Annie had been murdered.]

Here's the image of Annie Le captured on surveillance on Sept 8th. It looks like she's wearing socks that differ from the description of the ones in the affidavit.

http://media.yaledailynews.com/media...0x2000_q85.jpg

[I've looked at this grainy image in various forms and the clearest seems to show the low horizontal line that I mentioned. As I noted, the Yale paper indicated more than once that they are Annie's socks.]

 

[Shlock Homes]

I still don't believe the white socks were Annie's. The Yale Daily News is the only place that says they were Annie's. Pretty much every article from around the time of the discovery of the clothing in the ceiling said that they didn't belong to Annie. The affidavit never indicates they belonged to the victim, and I think it would have.

As I was reading through comments in the Yale Daily News in articles around the time of Annie's disappearance, at least one person indicated that it was the first week of classes. They also said it was strange that they would have cancelled her class that first week. My guess that the week would be significant not only for the students, but also the labs where the PhD workers like Annie did their research, hence the increased scanning activity by Ray.

I don't feel he would have been clearly cleaning up in front of the police. Again, that wouldn't make sense. If he did murder Annie, unless he was a complete psychopath, or he had experience murdering before, he would have been a nervous wreck with cops crawling around. He would have avoided contact with them as much as possible. If anything, he would have avoided going into the room where the murder took place, just to not arouse suspicion. His behaviour to me indicates he wasn't aware of someone having died in that room.

The washroom question is significant. Whoever killed Annie and hid the body needed to already know, in their mind, that a chase was located behind a toilet. If they were a man, then they'd see that chase every day if it was in the mens washroom. There's no way a male murderer would know about a chase in the womens washroom, or think of using that.

I think with all the blind corners required to move the body around, this couldn't have been the work of one person. One person acting alone could not safely move a body around without worrying someone could be walking around the corner the next second. Unless the concealment of the body took place during a time when people were gone, like the fire alarm. But even then, there would be no guarantee everyone followed the alarm. Someone would still need to be a lookout.

Another interesting thing pointed out in the comments of the Yale Daily News was the fact that since Annie left her belongings in her office in the other building, that meant she never intended to be away from her office very long. But what does that really mean? Could she be parted from her phone for a half hour? One whole hour? Maybe her intention was to go to the mouse lab for only a few minutes then head back. Ray Clark didn't enter the room until 10:40am, so she would have been there for about a 1/2 hour by that point. That's a long time for her to be there if she was just quickly taking care of things.

Also, the part about her work appointments is interesting. The class that Bennett was teaching was listed as being Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30am to 12pm. Around noon, Bennett sends an email to Schlessinger that Annie didn't show up to work. I'm assuming it was HIS class. Would she not have been aiming to be there by 10:30am? Unless it was broken up, with a break halfway in for her to show up and take over. But I don't recall in my time at school that a 1 1/2 hr class had a break. Usually if it was 3 hours there was a break. 1 to 1 1/2 hrs seems like something that would run straight through, so Annie would most likely have aimed to show up for 10:30am to be there at the beginning?

It's not clear which class was cancelled by the professor. Did she have an afternoon class she was supposed to teach? When did the class get cancelled? 10 to 20 minutes after the start of it when she didn't show up? Or was it cancelled beforehand, which would be odd since Annie could have turned up.

I still can't explain Ray being quoted as saying he saw her leaving the lab at 12:30pm. That would mean she was still alive. And that she had intentionally missed the 10:30am class. He was quoted as saying he saw her when he returned from lunch. But, again, if she was dead earlier, why not just say he never saw her? Unless he was protecting someone. It's difficult to comment on his behavior or what he said without us seeing it or having been there. I wonder if there were any people who didn't show up that first day the police came? Whether they be co-workers of Clark or the PhD people? Professional jealousy could be a valid motive for murder. Apparently Annie's research will continue without her, so someone is going to gain something from that.

I'd still like to know the times when those other three students scanned into G13. I think that information would be significant. Did they scan in before Ray? The affidavit never says that Ray was the only person to scan into G13 after Annie did.

I agree that if Ray innocently tracked the blood from room to room on his shoe, then it should also be on the floor. By the same token, if he was carrying a body dripping blood, that left blood evidence on the floor in two rooms other than G13, then drippings should have been found on the hallway floor. But nothing has been mentioned of such drippings. Would a janitor be washing those hallway floors on a daily basis? Somehow the body was transported from room to room without leaving drippings along the way. And it seems odd that one of the rooms he possibly transported the body into, G33, was not one that required scanning, yet he signed in?!! If he's carrying a corpse, is he going to bother signing in? Also, if he was signing into so many rooms and scanning into so many rooms before the fire alarm, when did he have time to conceal the body and clean up not only the room, but also his blood covered clothing? Mind you, he also took a break during that time.

 

[PatientOne]

A few thoughts:

I think the socks may belong to RC. The affidavit states that his DNA as well as Annie's was found on the one hidden above the ceiling tiles. My guess is RC may have removed his bloody boots and walked around the corridors in these socks (which had some blood stains on the cuff area of the one found above the ceiling tiles) to prevent making bloody tracks. If not, it's quite possible that routine janitorial mopping could've cleaned up any evidence that RC failed to clean himself in the corridors.

Not only did RC approach Yale LE to volunteer that he'd seen Annie leave the building, he also told the FBI when they interviewed him and said he saw her gather up her things and leave room G13. These are very telling and incriminating lies since he not only fabricated a time of her departure but also claimed to have seen her with "her things".

If Shlock is correct that the class Annie was to have taught was scheduled to begin at 10:30AM, and RC didn't enter G13 for the first time until 10:40AM (a half hour after Annie arrived), he may have stumbled upon what could be the precipitating factor for the violence: perhaps RC was late for their appointment and threw Annie off her schedule. She may have admonished him for this which triggered his violence.

 

[Chanler]

Thanks, Shlock Homes, for your post. Again my responses in brackets:

I still don't believe the white socks were Annie's. The Yale Daily News is the only place that says they were Annie's. Pretty much every article from around the time of the discovery of the clothing in the ceiling said that they didn't belong to Annie. The affidavit never indicates they belonged to the victim, and I think it would have.

[I’d like to see all those articles that say that the socks didn’t belong to Annie. I’ve been reading the press since early in the case and I’ve never seen such statements. There is a difference between not specifying ownership or possible ownership and stating specifically that they did not belong to A or B or C.

By their very nature, arrest affidavits disclose only information required to establish probable cause; for well established strategic reasons, they do not disclose anything more than necessary. The affidavit successfully secured Clark’s arrest.]

As I was reading through comments in the Yale Daily News in articles around the time of Annie's disappearance, at least one person indicated that it was the first week of classes. They also said it was strange that they would have cancelled her class that first week. My guess that the week would be significant not only for the students, but also the labs where the PhD workers like Annie did their research, hence the increased scanning activity by Ray.

[Rodents do not take vacations. They continue to eat and void even on national holidays. Similarly, the scans indicate that Raymond Clark performed his animal technician feeding and clean-up tasks whether students were in class or not. Ivy League labs conducting important research on diabetes also continue their operations whether or not classes are in session. In fact, the labs might be slightly busier before classes begin because the Ph.D. researchers have not yet begun their teacher assistant jobs.

Rumors that Annie’s class had been cancelled seem to have been based on the mistaken notion, sometimes repeated here early on, that Annie was a teacher, not a teacher’s assistant.]


I don't feel he would have been clearly cleaning up in front of the police. Again, that wouldn't make sense. If he did murder Annie, unless he was a complete psychopath, or he had experience murdering before, he would have been a nervous wreck with cops crawling around. He would have avoided contact with them as much as possible. If anything, he would have avoided going into the room where the murder took place, just to not arouse suspicion. His behaviour to me indicates he wasn't aware of someone having died in that room.

[Your contention seems to be that if Raymond Clark is the killer, he would be nervous, but not too nervous to do anything that didn’t make sense. Actually, avoiding contact with the police was only one of his worries. And obviously he was acting impulsively: For example, he aroused suspicion by approaching an officer to offer a self-serving description of Annie Le. By September 10th, he knew that law enforcement, including the F.B.I., were busy gathering evidence and statements. Better than anyone else, he knew that discovery of blood evidence in G13 would extinguish any hope that the search would move beyond his killing field. It was shortly after the discovery of the blood-marked hand-wipes that he went in and out of the room repeatedly and, according to an law enforcement officer on the scene, on one of those visits, he moved the hand-wipes so that the blood splatter would not be in plain sight. He returned to the room to perform his baffling janitorial drain and floor clean-up even after he was told to leave the room by an F.B.I. Special Agent.]

The washroom question is significant. Whoever killed Annie and hid the body needed to already know, in their mind, that a chase was located behind a toilet. If they were a man, then they'd see that chase every day if it was in the mens washroom. There's no way a male murderer would know about a chase in the womens washroom, or think of using that.

[Given the age, relatively small size of the Amistad building and the limited key swipe access to the basement, it’s quite possible that the basement didn’t have separate male and female bathrooms. In any case, you’re hypothesizing a male who strangles a small woman, but is too squeamish to search for hiding places while others are gone.]

I think with all the blind corners required to move the body around, this couldn't have been the work of one person. One person acting alone could not safely move a body around without worrying someone could be walking around the corner the next second. Unless the concealment of the body took place during a time when people were gone, like the fire alarm. But even then, there would be no guarantee everyone followed the alarm. Someone would still need to be a lookout.

[If the small 90-pound body was temporarily concealed in G22, as some have surmised and blood evidence seems to suggest, moving it to its next, even closer resting place would be possible for a healthy, athletic male such as Clark. Certainly, he would have more of an opportunity to wait for the proper moment than would conspirators moving it from a more public locked area further away. Hiding bodies is inherently risky, but this restricted basement area was not bristling with activity.]

Another interesting thing pointed out in the comments of the Yale Daily News was the fact that since Annie left her belongings in her office in the other building, that meant she never intended to be away from her office very long. But what does that really mean? Could she be parted from her phone for a half hour? One whole hour? Maybe her intention was to go to the mouse lab for only a few minutes then head back. Ray Clark didn't enter the room until 10:40am, so she would have been there for about a 1/2 hour by that point. That's a long time for her to be there if she was just quickly taking care of things.

[Annie was already carrying a large armload to the lab; leaving a cell-phone and a purse behind on a busy day when the office is just a few blocks away might have been an impulsive decision, an oversight, or no decision at all. She was a very task-oriented young woman: Perhaps she just didn’t want to distracted by personal calls while she was in the lab or the classroom.]

Also, the part about her work appointments is interesting. The class that Bennett was teaching was listed as being Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30am to 12pm. Around noon, Bennett sends an email to Schlessinger that Annie didn't show up to work. I'm assuming it was HIS class. Would she not have been aiming to be there by 10:30am? Unless it was broken up, with a break halfway in for her to show up and take over. But I don't recall in my time at school that a 1 1/2 hr class had a break. Usually if it was 3 hours there was a break. 1 to 1 1/2 hrs seems like something that would run straight through, so Annie would most likely have aimed to show up for 10:30am to be there at the beginning?

It's not clear which class was cancelled by the professor. Did she have an afternoon class she was supposed to teach? When did the class get cancelled? 10 to 20 minutes after the start of it when she didn't show up? Or was it cancelled beforehand, which would be odd since Annie could have turned up.

[As noted above, it has not been confirmed that any class related to Annie was canceled, and she was a teaching assistant, not a teacher. In most recent newspaper descriptions, the class she was assisting was described as taking place in the afternoon, but perhaps that story was generated by the "around noon" reference. It’s certainly possible that as a teaching assistant, she was designated to be present before the class; to set up slides, run off photocopies, and suchlike. It's equally possible that Bennett could not send the email until his class, which wasn't canceled, ended at noon. At this point, we simply don’t know.]

I still can't explain Ray being quoted as saying he saw her leaving the lab at 12:30pm. That would mean she was still alive. And that she had intentionally missed the 10:30am class. He was quoted as saying he saw her when he returned from lunch. But, again, if she was dead earlier, why not just say he never saw her? Unless he was protecting someone. It's difficult to comment on his behavior or what he said without us seeing it or having been there. I wonder if there were any people who didn't show up that first day the police came? Whether they be co-workers of Clark or the PhD people? Professional jealousy could be a valid motive for murder. Apparently Annie's research will continue without her, so someone is going to gain something from that.

[So now “innocent” Raymond is lying to protect a person or people unknown! He was protecting someone: Himself. He had to lead police away from the room where she was murdered.

The investigation was thorough. Police seem satisfied that they interviewed all the research and staff possibly involved.

Being part of the research project would have been a feather in Annie’s cap, but in such collaborative research, no single co-worker in her team will gain instant fame or fortune.]

I'd still like to know the times when those other three students scanned into G13. I think that information would be significant. Did they scan in before Ray? The affidavit never says that Ray was the only person to scan into G13 after Annie did.

[Actually, the affidavit states that those three Ph.D. researchers accessed room G13 after 10:11, that is, after Annie arrived. And as stated above, an arrest affidavit has a circumscribed purpose and that purpose is certainly not to inform the defense of all the good evidence they have in hand. I would wager that Annie’s colleagues will be testifying at the trial.]

I agree that if Ray innocently tracked the blood from room to room on his shoe, then it should also be on the floor. By the same token, if he was carrying a body dripping blood, that left blood evidence on the floor in two rooms other than G13, then drippings should have been found on the hallway floor. But nothing has been mentioned of such drippings. Would a janitor be washing those hallway floors on a daily basis? Somehow the body was transported from room to room without leaving drippings along the way. And it seems odd that one of the rooms he possibly transported the body into, G33, was not one that required scanning, yet he signed in?!! If he's carrying a corpse, is he going to bother signing in? Also, if he was signing into so many rooms and scanning into so many rooms before the fire alarm, when did he have time to conceal the body and clean up not only the room, but also his blood covered clothing? Mind you, he also took a break during that time.

[Read the affidavit: He scanned into G13 and G22, not into G33; the locker-room/toilet where Annie’s body was finally dumped has no scan.

As for the blood on the hallway floor: Clark assumed janitorial duties elsewhere in the building. I imagine that he felt similarly compelled in the hallway or wherever else he thought there might be gore.

I can’t vouch for Clark making optimal use of his time (he was caught after all), but I can imagine that a “nervous wreck” murderer would indeed move rapidly to transport, clean, and conceal the body and other bloody evidence which, by its very nature, leaves its trace wherever it is moved. And do any of us really believe that his “break” was not part of his clean-up and/or his alibi?]

 

[Chanler]

A few thoughts:

I think the socks may belong to RC. The affidavit states that his DNA as well as Annie's was found on the one hidden above the ceiling tiles. My guess is RC may have removed his bloody boots and walked around the corridors in these socks (which had some blood stains on the cuff area of the one found above the ceiling tiles) to prevent making bloody tracks. If not, it's quite possible that routine janitorial mopping could've cleaned up any evidence that RC failed to clean himself in the corridors.

Not only did RC approach Yale LE to volunteer that he'd seen Annie leave the building, he also told the FBI when they interviewed him and said he saw her gather up her things and leave room G13. These are very telling and incriminating lies since he not only fabricated a time of her departure but also claimed to have seen her with "her things".

If Shlock is correct that the class Annie was to have taught was scheduled to begin at 10:30AM, and RC didn't enter G13 for the first time until 12:40AM (a half hour after Annie arrived), he may have stumbled upon what could be the precipitating factor for the violence: perhaps RC was late for their appointment and threw Annie off her schedule. She may have admonished him for this which triggered his violence.

Hi, PatientOne; a great post!!

We won't know for certain whose socks they were, but you have given a plausible explanation why they might be Clark's. My sense that they might be Annie's is based on two things: First, they were identified as such by the Yale paper, which not only had access to less derivative copies of the video of Annie entering the building, but also drew on Yale police interviews before the clamp of secrecy came down. Second, they are low socks, more often worn in my experience at least by woman. In any case, with their DNA from both Annie and Raymond and their blood-stains, they present a major obstacle to his defense.


Annie arrived at 10:11; Raymond at 10:40. If she was already running late for the 10:30 class, she might not have been eager to hear his lecture, late or otherwise, about her deficient rodent practices. One can easily imagine an escalating incident between a feisty 90-pound, 4 foot 11 woman already late and a much larger authoritarian male who was insisting on having his grievances heard and respected. If she tried to leave, would he block her? If he blocked her, would she push? If she pushed, would he push back, perhaps knocking her down? Would she then threaten him with the police? We don't know; perhaps we'll never know exactly; but at this pre-trial moment, it does seem possible.

With this scenario, Clark's approaching the officer to alibi Annie out of the room becomes even more suspicious.

 

[Shlock Homes]

Thanks Chanler and Patient One for your responses

Patient One - that indeed could be a motive. However, seeing that Annie was an adult, and they easily could have crossed paths later, I don't feel Annie would have even bothered sticking around. She could have contact Ray later to find out if they could reschedule their meeting when he failed to show up. Assuming that they were supposed to be discussing it that morning. What is also not clear if it was just him and her, or if other students were asked to drop in so he could give them the low down on the procedure, all together.

Chanler Posted:

[I’d like to see all those articles that say that the socks didn’t belong to Annie. I’ve been reading the press since early in the case and I’ve never seen such statements. There is a difference between not specifying ownership or possible ownership and stating specifically that they did not belong to A or B or C.
By their very nature, arrest affidavits disclose only information required to establish probable cause; for well established strategic reasons, they do not disclose anything more than necessary. The affidavit successfully secured Clark’s arrest.]

Here's at least one place. There are many others. I just searched google using words like 'annie le' 'ceiling' 'clothing' 'belong'

-------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/53563...ailed-polygraph-test-raymond-clark-iii?lost=1

Bloody items of clothing discovered behind a ceiling tile in the same building did not belong to Annie Le.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I remember that it was the case pretty early on that it wasn't her clothing.

The affidavit might not have had to disclose much, but it did occasionally try to point out certain articles of clothing with blood that had been found were similar to ones the alleged killer had worn. So why not attribute the socks to the victim or the killer? Or at least rule out that they were not Annie's. They could have said the victim was found with both socks on or without socks. Then again, that could have been in the redacted part.

[Rodents do not take vacations. They continue to eat and void even on national holidays. Similarly, the scans indicate that Raymond Clark performed his animal technician feeding and clean-up tasks whether students were in class or not. Ivy League labs conducting important research on diabetes also continue their operations whether or not classes are in session. In fact, the labs might be slightly busier before classes begin because the Ph.D. researchers have not yet begun their teacher assistant jobs.

Rumors that Annie’s class had been cancelled seem to have been based on the mistaken notion, sometimes repeated here early on, that Annie was a teacher, not a teacher’s assistant.]

True, rodents would still be required to be taken care of whether the school year had begun or not. I read in one comment in the Yale News that Annie also carried mice from her office, which was also located at a lab but in another building, to the Amistad lab. I don't know how true that would be or if that was even considered appropriate.

I think as a TA, she still would have had a 'class'. When I took University, the lectures were taught by Professors, but the labs and other in-class lessons (I can't remember what they were called - tutorials?) were held by the TAs. Perhaps Bennett taught the lecture portion, and Annie was supposed to be in attendance, and then Annie held the tutorial or lab component later in the day?

[Your contention seems to be that if Raymond Clark is the killer, he would be nervous, but not too nervous to do anything that didn’t make sense. Actually, avoiding contact with the police was only one of his worries. And obviously he was acting impulsively: For example, he aroused suspicion by approaching an officer to offer a self-serving description of Annie Le. By September 10th, he knew that law enforcement, including the F.B.I., were busy gathering evidence and statements. Better than anyone else, he knew that discovery of blood evidence in G13 would extinguish any hope that the search would move beyond his killing field. It was shortly after the discovery of the blood-marked hand-wipes that he went in and out of the room repeatedly and, according to an law enforcement officer on the scene, on one of those visits, he moved the hand-wipes so that the blood splatter would not be in plain sight. He returned to the room to perform his baffling janitorial drain and floor clean-up even after he was told to leave the room by an F.B.I. Special Agent.]

But again, I think I stated it before, if he had carried out the murder, and knew where the body had been stored, he would have gone over those rooms cleaning them and looking for blood evidence many times over well before the police showed up. He had almost 2 days, so there would be no need to make a spectacle of himself by carrying out incriminating duties of cleaning up a crime scene. If the agents didn't tell the staff NOT to do anything like clean up, then why would Ray be expected to behave any differently? If he had been told NOT to go into G13 because it was a crime scene, and he still did, then that would be suspicious.

[Given the age, relatively small size of the Amistad building and the limited key swipe access to the basement, it’s quite possible that the basement didn’t have separate male and female bathrooms. In any case, you’re hypothesizing a male who strangles a small woman, but is too squeamish to search for hiding places while others are gone.]

It was a new building, so I imagine it would have been designed to have both men and women toilets. If you look at the diagram that was linked earlier in the thread, you will see the position of the body was inside of a toilet stall in a wall behind the toilet. Across the hall from that room is a room in the exact mirror image, also with what looks like a stall. The only think I cannot discern from the diagram is if one room has a urinal and the other doesn't. I guess the chase was for the sewage pipes that would run up and down the building.

[If the small 90-pound body was temporarily concealed in G22, as some have surmised and blood evidence seems to suggest, moving it to its next, even closer resting place would be possible for a healthy, athletic male such as Clark. Certainly, he would have more of an opportunity to wait for the proper moment than would conspirators moving it from a more public locked area further away. Hiding bodies is inherently risky, but this restricted basement area was not bristling with activity.]

I don't think the basement would have needed to be bristling with activity for there to be a chance of at least one person seeing him. Looking at the diagram, room G13 is on the other side of a long hallway, with G22 down at the end of a short corridor across the way.

The affidavit states that he signed task sheets for 7 rooms, two of which were G13 and G33. Plus he was scanning into G22 and G13. He was assigned to look after the animals in G13, G24, and G33. They don't mention how many times he scanned into G24, which I assume would be near G22. Or if he was scanning back and forth between those rooms, or scanning back and forth between G13 and G22. The diagram doesn't point out the location of G33, but the affidavit did indicate it was a room for animals. The corridor between G13 and the washroom is somewhat long, and has a lot of doors leading to it. Lots of places for people to pop out from, as well as people coming around the corner. Unless Ray had access to cameras looking down all corridors and all rooms, he would not know who was coming or who wasn't. Moving her body during the daytime would have required a lookout. Moving her body late at night would have been easier to do alone, but still risky.

[Annie was already carrying a large armload to the lab; leaving a cell-phone and a purse behind on a busy day when the office is just a few blocks away might have been an impulsive decision, an oversight, or no decision at all. She was a very task-oriented young woman: Perhaps she just didn’t want to distracted by personal calls while she was in the lab or the classroom.]

Agreed, but at the same time, it could have been a sign that she was only planning on being pre-occupied for a short time. She probably wouldn't have needed to carry those items if she was planning on heading to Bennett's class right after, either.

[As noted above, it has not been confirmed that any class related to Annie was canceled, and she was a teaching assistant, not a teacher. In most recent newspaper descriptions, the class she was assisting was described as taking place in the afternoon, but perhaps that story was generated by the "around noon" reference. It’s certainly possible that as a teaching assistant, she was designated to be present before the class; to set up slides, run off photocopies, and suchlike. It's equally possible that Bennett could not send the email until his class, which wasn't canceled, ended at noon. At this point, we simply don’t know.]

It's definitely a little confusing as to whether a tutorial or lab session was cancelled, or if Bennett cancelled the remainder of his class, or didn't bother holding it at all?

[So now “innocent” Raymond is lying to protect a person or people unknown! He was protecting someone: Himself. He had to lead police away from the room where she was murdered.

The investigation was thorough. Police seem satisfied that they interviewed all the research and staff possibly involved.

Being part of the research project would have been a feather in Annie’s cap, but in such collaborative research, no single co-worker in her team will gain instant fame or fortune.]

At the time they may have felt they interviewed and ruled out the people as needed. I think Ray's biggest problem is that he HAD to be there. It was his job, so you can't really say he was or wasn't doing things he shouldn't have been doing. I'm also not clear about the earlier reports in the news about part of Ray's guilt was that he was going into areas where he had no business being. The affidavit doesn't point anything like that out. G22, from what I can tell, must have been a staff-only room. But the affidavit towards the end does specify that Ray Clark was the only person to scan in "during the time of the suspected crime" (pg 12). Does that mean other people scanned in after 12pm if that is the cut-off time for the time?

[Actually, the affidavit states that those three Ph.D. researchers accessed room G13 after 10:11, that is, after Annie arrived. And as stated above, an arrest affidavit has a circumscribed purpose and that purpose is certainly not to inform the defense of all the good evidence they have in hand. I would wager that Annie’s colleagues will be testifying at the trial.]

When they say after 10:11, I think that is significant in that it might be a time close to when she disappeared. If they had scanned in at 3pm, for instance, I doubt it would have been mentioned. Or they would have just indicated that three other people also scanned in that day. I think the mentioning of the time was important. That's why I also wonder if Ray Clark had perhaps texted or contacted everyone who was using that room to give them the details of what he expected or what was required to keep the room clean and running smoothly.

[Read the affidavit: He scanned into G13 and G22, not into G33; the locker-room/toilet where Annie’s body was finally dumped has no scan.

As for the blood on the hallway floor: Clark assumed janitorial duties elsewhere in the building. I imagine that he felt similarly compelled in the hallway or wherever else he thought there might be gore.

I can’t vouch for Clark making optimal use of his time (he was caught after all), but I can imagine that a “nervous wreck” murderer would indeed move rapidly to transport, clean, and conceal the body and other bloody evidence which, by its very nature, leaves its trace wherever it is moved. And do any of us really believe that his “break” was not part of his clean-up and/or his alibi?]

That's what I said about Room G33. No scanning was apparently required, yet during that period before the fire alarm, when Annie was supposedly already killed, he signed into G33 as having checked it. Why do that if he was concealing a dead body in there? Unfortunately, the presence of blood in a room doesn't tell us exactly when it was tracked in there or left there. We have to also take into account that blood starts to dry or congeal once it's exposed to air, so I guess that would rule out him stepping in it by accident in G13, then tracking it into G22 and G33.

Since the police stated in the affidavit that Ray was the only person scanning in around the time they believe the crime was committed, that shouldn't be read as meaning he was the only one accessing that room on that day. In fact, if their cut-off time is Noon, then maybe the murder did occur after she left around 12:30pm? Then the fire alarm was used to cover the crime and concealment of the body?

 

[Shlock Homes]

Hi, PatientOne; a great post!!

We won't know for certain whose socks they were, but you have given a plausible explanation why they might be Clark's. My sense that they might be Annie's is based on two things: First, they were identified as such by the Yale paper, which not only had access to less derivative copies of the video of Annie entering the building, but also drew on Yale police interviews before the clamp of secrecy came down. Second, they are low socks, more often worn in my experience at least by woman. In any case, with their DNA from both Annie and Raymond and their blood-stains, they present a major obstacle to his defense.


Annie arrived at 10:11; Raymond at 10:40. If she was already running late for the 10:30 class, she might not have been eager to hear his lecture, late or otherwise, about her deficient rodent practices. One can easily imagine an escalating incident between a feisty 90-pound, 4 foot 11 woman already late and a much larger authoritarian male who was insisting on having his grievances heard and respected. If she tried to leave, would he block her? If he blocked her, would she push? If she pushed, would he push back, perhaps knocking her down? Would she then threaten him with the police? We don't know; perhaps we'll never know exactly; but at this pre-trial moment, it does seem possible.

With this scenario, Clark's approaching the officer to alibi Annie out of the room becomes even more suspicious.

I don't think he approached the officer. They interviewed him, and he gave them details from what time he arrived at work (7am), to when he first saw Annie and when he last saw her. It was probably a routine interrogation that all of the people at the lab that day went through. I still think if he did kill her, but didn't want to be connected to her, he would have said he didn't see her at all or the time he would have given for her leaving the room would have been around the time she died. In other words, if he killed her at 10:45am, then he would have either never said he saw her (provided they were alone in the room from the time he showed up) or he would have said she left around that time (if others were there, but left soon after he arrived).

So it still begs the question: Was Annie still alive at 12:30pm when Ray said she left the room? Did she or didn't she show up for Bennett's class when she was supposed to. If she had gone to class, and it ended at 12pm, for instance, that would have been ample time for her to return to the lab, do more stuff, and then leave at 12:30 to 12:45pm. The affidavit doesn't state if Ray saw her in the room during that time he said he was in there and then left for lunch. It just states that he saw her when he first arrived and when he came back from lunch.

What's important to note is that the green pen was last used by Ray C around 1:30pm. The pen would have been put or fallen into the chase around the time the body was put in there, so it stands to reason that moving of the body occurred around the time of the fire alarm. We must also consider that after a few hours, rigor mortis would have started to set in. If she was killed some time after 12:45pm, it wouldn't be the case, but if she was killed around 10:40am, then it would have started to happen. Her body would not have easily fit into that space if her body was frozen in rigor. But that doesn't change the fact that if Ray killed her near the time he entered the room, and he allegedly was moving room to room in an out-of-character, frenzied manner, then the body would have been hidden before noon. When the fire alarm went off, Ray was seen leaving the building, so how could he have hidden the body and lost his pen at that time?

I just thought of something disturbing. Let's say the killer was obsessed with Annie. The placing of her body in the chase could have been done purposely, not necessarily to hide her, but to keep her somewhere they could see her whenever they wanted. Think about it, it's behind a toilet in a stall with a closed door. This sicko could have spent time with her without anyone knowing because the stall door would be closed.

That's just a hypothesis. I think it is odd that the FBI didn't check the bathrooms and the chase in the bathroom before Sunday. It would seem like an obvious place to hide a body. Unless they thought it looked too small, and didn't bother? I sure hope they dusted the toilet stall for fingerprints, especially the wall surrounding the chase. Plus the location of the body was a locker room, not a place where animals were kept, so wouldn't the dogs have sniffed out the corpse earlier? Also, if Rachel Roth pointed out some wipes with suspected blood on it, why wasn't that bagged immediately for lab analysis? The investigators should not have left that lying around to be contaminated. Maybe they hoped the killer would be caught trying to move it or steal it? Or could that also be perceived as entrapment if employees or researchers entering the room were not told to not touch anything, and they touch the box of wipes, thus making them suspects?

 

[Chanler]

Thanks Chanler and Patient One for your responses

Patient One - that indeed could be a motive. However, seeing that Annie was an adult, and they easily could have crossed paths later, I don't feel Annie would have even bothered sticking around. She could have contact Ray later to find out if they could reschedule their meeting when he failed to show up. Assuming that they were supposed to be discussing it that morning. What is also not clear if it was just him and her, or if other students were asked to drop in so he could give them the low down on the procedure, all together.



Here's at least one place. There are many others. I just searched google using words like 'annie le' 'ceiling' 'clothing' 'belong'

-------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/53563...ailed-polygraph-test-raymond-clark-iii?lost=1

Bloody items of clothing discovered behind a ceiling tile in the same building did not belong to Annie Le.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I remember that it was the case pretty early on that it wasn't her clothing.

The affidavit might not have had to disclose much, but it did occasionally try to point out certain articles of clothing with blood that had been found were similar to ones the alleged killer had worn. So why not attribute the socks to the victim or the killer? Or at least rule out that they were not Annie's. They could have said the victim was found with both socks on or without socks. Then again, that could have been in the redacted part.



True, rodents would still be required to be taken care of whether the school year had begun or not. I read in one comment in the Yale News that Annie also carried mice from her office, which was also located at a lab but in another building, to the Amistad lab. I don't know how true that would be or if that was even considered appropriate.

I think as a TA, she still would have had a 'class'. When I took University, the lectures were taught by Professors, but the labs and other in-class lessons (I can't remember what they were called - tutorials?) were held by the TAs. Perhaps Bennett taught the lecture portion, and Annie was supposed to be in attendance, and then Annie held the tutorial or lab component later in the day?



But again, I think I stated it before, if he had carried out the murder, and knew where the body had been stored, he would have gone over those rooms cleaning them and looking for blood evidence many times over well before the police showed up. He had almost 2 days, so there would be no need to make a spectacle of himself by carrying out incriminating duties of cleaning up a crime scene. If the agents didn't tell the staff NOT to do anything like clean up, then why would Ray be expected to behave any differently? If he had been told NOT to go into G13 because it was a crime scene, and he still did, then that would be suspicious.



It was a new building, so I imagine it would have been designed to have both men and women toilets. If you look at the diagram that was linked earlier in the thread, you will see the position of the body was inside of a toilet stall in a wall behind the toilet. Across the hall from that room is a room in the exact mirror image, also with what looks like a stall. The only think I cannot discern from the diagram is if one room has a urinal and the other doesn't. I guess the chase was for the sewage pipes that would run up and down the building.




I don't think the basement would have needed to be bristling with activity for there to be a chance of at least one person seeing him. Looking at the diagram, room G13 is on the other side of a long hallway, with G22 down at the end of a short corridor across the way.

The affidavit states that he signed task sheets for 7 rooms, two of which were G13 and G33. Plus he was scanning into G22 and G13. He was assigned to look after the animals in G13, G24, and G33. They don't mention how many times he scanned into G24, which I assume would be near G22. Or if he was scanning back and forth between those rooms, or scanning back and forth between G13 and G22. The diagram doesn't point out the location of G33, but the affidavit did indicate it was a room for animals. The corridor between G13 and the washroom is somewhat long, and has a lot of doors leading to it. Lots of places for people to pop out from, as well as people coming around the corner. Unless Ray had access to cameras looking down all corridors and all rooms, he would not know who was coming or who wasn't. Moving her body during the daytime would have required a lookout. Moving her body late at night would have been easier to do alone, but still risky.



Agreed, but at the same time, it could have been a sign that she was only planning on being pre-occupied for a short time. She probably wouldn't have needed to carry those items if she was planning on heading to Bennett's class right after, either.



It's definitely a little confusing as to whether a tutorial or lab session was cancelled, or if Bennett cancelled the remainder of his class, or didn't bother holding it at all?



At the time they may have felt they interviewed and ruled out the people as needed. I think Ray's biggest problem is that he HAD to be there. It was his job, so you can't really say he was or wasn't doing things he shouldn't have been doing. I'm also not clear about the earlier reports in the news about part of Ray's guilt was that he was going into areas where he had no business being. The affidavit doesn't point anything like that out. G22, from what I can tell, must have been a staff-only room. But the affidavit towards the end does specify that Ray Clark was the only person to scan in "during the time of the suspected crime" (pg 12). Does that mean other people scanned in after 12pm if that is the cut-off time for the time?



When they say after 10:11, I think that is significant in that it might be a time close to when she disappeared. If they had scanned in at 3pm, for instance, I doubt it would have been mentioned. Or they would have just indicated that three other people also scanned in that day. I think the mentioning of the time was important. That's why I also wonder if Ray Clark had perhaps texted or contacted everyone who was using that room to give them the details of what he expected or what was required to keep the room clean and running smoothly.



That's what I said about Room G33. No scanning was apparently required, yet during that period before the fire alarm, when Annie was supposedly already killed, he signed into G33 as having checked it. Why do that if he was concealing a dead body in there? Unfortunately, the presence of blood in a room doesn't tell us exactly when it was tracked in there or left there. We have to also take into account that blood starts to dry or congeal once it's exposed to air, so I guess that would rule out him stepping in it by accident in G13, then tracking it into G22 and G33.

Since the police stated in the affidavit that Ray was the only person scanning in around the time they believe the crime was committed, that shouldn't be read as meaning he was the only one accessing that room on that day. In fact, if their cut-off time is Noon, then maybe the murder did occur after she left around 12:30pm? Then the fire alarm was used to cover the crime and concealment of the body?

The affidavit might not have had to disclose much, but it did occasionally try to point out certain articles of clothing with blood that had been found were similar to ones the alleged killer had worn. So why not attribute the socks to the victim or the killer? Or at least rule out that they were not Annie's. They could have said the victim was found with both socks on or without socks. Then again, that could have been in the redacted part [/quote]

• The link that you provided to justify your claim is nothing more than a British online news gathering service, which cites no sources. It contains incorrect information: Annie was not last seen alive walking into the building. Her body was not found behind the wall of a basement laboratory strictly access controlled.
• There was no need, legal or otherwise, to identify or attempt to identify the owner of the socks in the affidavit. The document offers descriptions of items without pinpointing ownership. Not even the beads are identified specifically as her’s.
• I think that you’re right: Whatever Annie’s role in a specific class, she would have been missed. And her absence was, in fact, noticed.
• As for Clark cleaning, the officers on the scene found it suspicious; he was asked to leave and returned more than once to perform janitorial duties on areas that appeared clean. Obviously, whoever killed Annie had, by your standard, ample time to clean up the scene and did not achieve that purpose. Messy homicides are difficult to conceal. (Clark’s renewed work on September 10th might have been sparked by the police activity after the discovery of the blood-marked Hand Wipes. And at least some of his puzzling floor clean-up might have staged to eavesdrop as best he could on police conversations and interviews.)
• You are correct about the age of the building. However, one doesn’t need to be an architect or a genius to know that toilets, regardless of gender, require space for venting and piping. The difference between a potentially movable partition and an immovable wall are obvious to the naked eye.
• The hallways of high-pressure graduate school labs are not generally bristling with activity; researchers are too busy working behind closed doors. I can testify to that: My girlfriend did her graduate work at M.I.T. Like anyone else, Raymond Clark could wait for the optimal moment to move Annie’s body. In fact, if he moved the body temporarily to G22, as perhaps indicated by physical evidence, he faced less urgency than person or persons unknown moving it directly from the murder site.
• As for Annie’s armload: We simply don’t know at this point of what it consists.
• I haven’t read any reliable account that any class or lab was canceled. Certainly, it seems that the Bennett call about her absence was made around noon, when his class would have over or drawing to a close.
• If Clark “HAD to be there,” he was not unique and he certainly wasn’t fired because of his much, much less active movements in the previous weeks. And the police certainly interviewed the staff about what his specific responsibilities were and discrepancies seem to have been found. What those were, we will find at his trial.
• At this point, we don’t know what exactly “during the time of the suspected crime” specifies. (Noon is an arbitrary time not stated in their paperwork.) It was perhaps determined at least in part by the arrival of researchers and/or staff in G13 after Annie’s body was removed. However, another statement is explicit and much more inclusive: “Furthermore, Clark’s key-card is the only card used to access G22 after the victim swiped into the Amistad building on September 8th.”
• By stating only that the three researchers arrived in G13 after 10:11, the arrest warrant application is utilizing minimal disclosure. It might indicate to the officer of the court only that they interviewed other relevant visitors to the room.

 

[Chanler]

I don't think he approached the officer. They interviewed him, and he gave them details from what time he arrived at work (7am), to when he first saw Annie and when he last saw her. It was probably a routine interrogation that all of the people at the lab that day went through. I still think if he did kill her, but didn't want to be connected to her, he would have said he didn't see her at all or the time he would have given for her leaving the room would have been around the time she died. In other words, if he killed her at 10:45am, then he would have either never said he saw her (provided they were alone in the room from the time he showed up) or he would have said she left around that time (if others were there, but left soon after he arrived).

So it still begs the question: Was Annie still alive at 12:30pm when Ray said she left the room? Did she or didn't she show up for Bennett's class when she was supposed to. If she had gone to class, and it ended at 12pm, for instance, that would have been ample time for her to return to the lab, do more stuff, and then leave at 12:30 to 12:45pm. The affidavit doesn't state if Ray saw her in the room during that time he said he was in there and then left for lunch. It just states that he saw her when he first arrived and when he came back from lunch.

What's important to note is that the green pen was last used by Ray C around 1:30pm. The pen would have been put or fallen into the chase around the time the body was put in there, so it stands to reason that moving of the body occurred around the time of the fire alarm. We must also consider that after a few hours, rigor mortis would have started to set in. If she was killed some time after 12:45pm, it wouldn't be the case, but if she was killed around 10:40am, then it would have started to happen. Her body would not have easily fit into that space if her body was frozen in rigor. But that doesn't change the fact that if Ray killed her near the time he entered the room, and he allegedly was moving room to room in an out-of-character, frenzied manner, then the body would have been hidden before noon. When the fire alarm went off, Ray was seen leaving the building, so how could he have hidden the body and lost his pen at that time?

I just thought of something disturbing. Let's say the killer was obsessed with Annie. The placing of her body in the chase could have been done purposely, not necessarily to hide her, but to keep her somewhere they could see her whenever they wanted. Think about it, it's behind a toilet in a stall with a closed door. This sicko could have spent time with her without anyone knowing because the stall door would be closed.

That's just a hypothesis. I think it is odd that the FBI didn't check the bathrooms and the chase in the bathroom before Sunday. It would seem like an obvious place to hide a body. Unless they thought it looked too small, and didn't bother? I sure hope they dusted the toilet stall for fingerprints, especially the wall surrounding the chase. Plus the location of the body was a locker room, not a place where animals were kept, so wouldn't the dogs have sniffed out the corpse earlier? Also, if Rachel Roth pointed out some wipes with suspected blood on it, why wasn't that bagged immediately for lab analysis? The investigators should not have left that lying around to be contaminated. Maybe they hoped the killer would be caught trying to move it or steal it? Or could that also be perceived as entrapment if employees or researchers entering the room were not told to not touch anything, and they touch the box of wipes, thus making them suspects?

Hi, Schlock Homes. The arrest warrant specifies that Officer Jennifer Garcia of the Yale University Police Department stated that Raymond Clark approached her and offered his 12:30-12:45 version of Annie's departure. This approach seems to have preceded Clark's interviews with the New Haven Police and the F.B.I.

I think that we can both agree that Raymond Clark did not arrive at work thinking that he was going to kill little Annie Le that day. Such spontaneous violence as seems to have occurred is a crazy-making experience. In the calm of this moment, we can imagine what we would or would not say, but Clark had no such sanctuary. He approached Garcia, probably spontaneously, and told her what he thought would extract him from closer scrutiny.

Beyond that, I will not speculate tonight.

 

[PatientOne]

Page 6 of the affidavit states that RC told LE that key cards are required to enter rooms that house animals, including the ones to which he was assigned on the day of Annie's disappearance -- G13, G24 and G33. If work sheets for these rooms require signatures, it may be to confirm that certain duties were performed like feeding, etc.



It's already been established if not absolutely confirmed that RC texted Annie to schedule a meeting between the two to occur at Amistad on the day she disappeared. To elaborate a little more on a theory I posted earlier, although it's quite possible the meeting was scheduled to begin a few minutes after 10:00AM, I suspect it may have been scheduled for 10:00AM. But Annie didn't swipe into G13 until 10:11AM. This is a scenario I can envision: RC could've been irritated that she was a few minutes late for their meeting. So HE kept HER waiting until 10:40AM, causing her to be late for the class she was to have assisted teaching.

If LE is looking for a motive, I hope a record of the text and the scheduled time of the appointment exists. I can imagine that if Annie was a bit late, someone like RC, who's been characterized as "officious", could've interpreted her tardiness as an attitude that she considered her time more valuable than his. He may have been spoiling for a fight and Annie, who reportedly responded to his officiousness in the past in a concilatory manner, may have been less indulgent, less conciliatory this last time, with tragic consequences.

 

[Chanler]

Page 6 of the affidavit states that RC told LE that key cards are required to enter rooms that house animals, including the ones to which he was assigned on the day of Annie's disappearance -- G13, G24 and G33. If work sheets for these rooms require signatures, it may be to confirm that certain duties were performed like feeding, etc.

It's already been established if not absolutely confirmed that RC texted Annie to schedule a meeting between the two to occur at Amistad on the day she disappeared. To elaborate a little more on a theory I posted earlier, although it's quite possible the meeting was scheduled to begin a few minutes after 10:00AM, I suspect it may have been scheduled for 10:00AM. But Annie didn't swipe into G13 until 10:11AM. This is a scenario I can envision: RC could've been irritated that she was a few minutes late for their meeting. So HE kept HER waiting until 10:40AM, causing her to be late for the class she was to have assisted teaching.

If LE is looking for a motive, I hope a record of the text and the scheduled time of the appointment exists. I can imagine that if Annie was a bit late, someone like RC, who's been characterized as "officious", could've interpreted her tardiness as an attitude that she considered her time more valuable than his. He may have been spoiling for a fight and Annie, who reportedly responded to his officiousness in the past in a concilatory manner, may have been less indulgent, less conciliatory this last time, with tragic consequences.

Hi, PatientOne, thanks for your fine post. The information about G33 settles the confusion.

Your detailed suggestions about a motive and a scenario seem reasonable, at least to me, a person who lives in a city where arguments over parking spaces have escalated into murder. In addition to her urgency about wanting to get to her advisor's class, she was understandably preoccupied with tying up things at Yale before her fast-approaching wedding; that Tuesday, a lecture by an overbearing animal tech about rodent hygiene would not be high on her dream agenda.

 

[Shlock Homes]

Thanks Patient One for clearing up the issue with the rooms. From the affidavit, G13 belonged to the Bennett lab, while G33 belonged to another professor's lab. What's odd, is that they don't mention anything about him swiping into G33, even though he did sign the sheets for both G13 and G33 with his green pen. If they found evidence of the crime in G33, I thought that would be an important part of the affidavit. Did he scan more than usual when going into that room?

Chanler, I think we'll agree to disagree on the clothing and whether it belonged to Annie. It will probably be cleared up once the trial gets underway. I just cited one of many articles that came out around the time of the clothing's discovery. Here is one that is closer to Yale, if you prefer to read a source in the same vicinity

--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/09/13/news/doc4aad41ad5531c586462814.txt

The blood-stained clothes found in ceiling tiles at the Yale University laboratory where graduate student Annie Le disappeared are not the clothes Le was last seen wearing, law enforcement officials said.
--------------------------------------------------------

I think we're probably going in circles right now trying to dissect the affidavit and determine whether the points they made were significant to the investigation, or in my view, perhaps a little narrow minded or out of context in the sense that observations made by the investigators may not have been true indicators of someone behaving in a guilty manner.

So I'll go back to the main parts of the evidence that I think show it wouldn't be possible for Ray to do what he did when they say he did it.

• Annie Le shows up at the lab at 10am. She didn't bring her cellphone so one might assume she was only going to be there briefly. She carried items which police have yet to identify, and we don't know if those items, or the ones Ray claimed to have seen her leaving with, were found in G13 or elsewhere

• Annie Le might have been scheduled to be at Anton Bennett's class from the beginning, which started at 10:30am according to the schedule

• Ray Clark scanned in around 10:40am, but more importantly, the affidavit states that three other people scanned in after 10:11am, the time Annie last scanned. This could be significant if they were around when Ray entered, if they were also given a talk by Ray to as was alleged with Annie and the text sent to her, or if Annie might have exited and re-entered G13 with one of those three researchers scanning her in.

• It's alleged that the violence occurred some time after Ray entered the room. We don't know how long Annie and Ray were alone in the room together. I think the belief is that it occurred before Ray scanned back into G13 at 11:04am

• The affidavit states that blood evidence as well as parts of Annie's necklace were found in G22, which is at the end of a short hall on the other side of the main hall of those labs, and blood evidence and a bead were also found in G33, a room that Ray Clark also maintained, but which wasn't indicated on the diagram so it's not clear how far away it was.

• Blood evidence in G22 could be connected with the discovery of the bloodied sock and glove in the ceiling. Even though it was found in the ceiling along the main hallway that runs outside of the secured lab area, it's more likely that they were tossed up there from G22. It's not clear if a ladder would have been required, or if the perpetrator had a particular height requirement to reach the ceiling.

• It's not clear when the actual fire alarm occurred. The news indicated for a long time that it happened around 12:40pm. The affidavit even quotes Ray Clark as suggesting it was around that time, which was also the last time he saw Annie exiting G13. But then the affidavit goes on to state the alarm occurred at 1:55pm. The alarm time is significant because it coincides with not only the loss of Ray's pen (found with Annie's body), but it also was pointed out in the affidavit that Ray was seen LEAVING the building during that time.

• Annie's body was located in a chase behind a toilet that was located in a locker room. It's not clear from the affidavit or the diagram whether the toilet was a men's or women's washroom. Also, the affidavit indicates that in addition to the green pen, a bloodied sock was found in the chase with the body. Also important, the smeared blood found on the inside panel and piping in the chase.

The time of the crime is very crucial. Annie was a small framed person. From what I've read about rigor mortis, the body starts to go into it around 2 hours after death. There are various factors that will make it speed up or slow down, like environmental temps. Also, the first muscles to rigor are the smallest ones like the face. Anyway, if Annie was murdered before 11am, then her body would have started to go into rigor by 1pm. It would have been difficult for the body to have been placed in the chase once that started.

If the blood generated was not as a result of her body being mutilated after death, and was the result of a blow to the head, in order for all that blood to be transferred to three rooms and the chase, her body would have needed to be moved in less than an hour. I'm not sure what the exact speed that blood takes to dry, but once the heart stopped beating, any blood coming out of Annie's wounds, as well as the blood on her clothing or the killer's clothing, would have been dry within a half hour. For all that blood to have been transferred into the rooms and the chase, she would have needed to be in that chase by 11:15am at the latest.

We don't know how many people were down in the lab that day during the time of the crime. Nor do we know if it's possible for a person to have carried a body from room to room, down hallways, without being seen, or without having a fear of being seen. Hindsight is 20/20, we know no one saw anything. But the killer would not know that soon after committing the crime. They would also have had to know about the chase, and hide the body in there, while getting rid of the insulation in there. And they'd have to have time to hide bloodied clothing in the ceiling tiles, or wherever else they did.

I don't feel Ray Clark committed the crime because incriminating evidence was stored where it could be easily found, as opposed to taking it all out with him (Ray) in a bag and disposing of it elsewhere; he didn't avoid LE when they arrived on Sept 10, and in fact, didn't seem to exhibit any behavior that would suggest he committed some atrocious crime, from what I can tell (he didn't hide the box of wipes, he just moved it, perhaps to adjust it so the opening was facing outward?); and the killing and hiding of Annie's body would have required speed and the ability to see around corners and knowing that no-one was hanging around the lab ready to spring out of a room at a moment's notice; and lastly, the killer would have had to have disposed of Ray Clark's pen with the body after 1:30pm, even though many sources cited that the fire alarm went off at 12:40pm, and by then anyway, Annie's blood could not have smeared inside the chase as it would have dried. The only possible way there could have been blood in that chase, if she was murdered soon after 10:40am, and she wasn't moved until the afternoon, would be if her skin had been punctured through cutting or mutilation.