A day after the the body of who police believe was missing bride to be Annie Le was found stuffed into a basement wall of the Yale University laboratory where she had last been seen, police may have a powerful piece of evidence.
Bloody clothes found in the lab belonged not to Le but to the likely killer, according to sources. Some law enforcement officials have speculated that police are already narrowing in on a suspect, as there is no obvious manhunt for her killer, no warnings to area residents to be on the lookout.
But for friends and family who had insisted for days that Le was not the kind of person to run out on her fiance, the news that police had found a body was devastating. Le was to be married Sunday.
Vanessa Flores, Le’s former roommate, said she heard the news on the Internet about her friend’s body likely being found.
“I had a very tough time just reading the headline,” she told “Good Morning America” today. “It was very difficult.”
Le, 24, disappeared Tuesday. She had been seen entering the Amistad Street lab around 10 a.m., but none of the cameras caught her leaving. The body was found shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday, shoved into a space in the wall meant to conceal pipes and wiring.
“We did locate the remains of a human. … We are assuming that it is her at this time,” New Haven Assistant Police Chief Peter Reichard told reporters in a brief news conference Sunday.
Flores said she doesn’t know why anyone would want to kill her friend, who earlier this year had written a piece for the University Magazine questioning the safety of the New Haven campus.
“The only thing I can possibly think of right now is maybe a psychopath, an anti-social person who, I don’t know, maybe got upset about what she wrote back in February about not being safe,” she said.
Wedding gifts had been left outside the family home of Le’s fiance, Jonathan Widawsky. Their impending nuptials had led some to believe that Le had gotten cold feet and fled.
But Flores said Widawsky was “perfect” for Le.
He’s just so wonderful to her. John was so supportive of her, of her dreams,” Flores said. “They would talk on the cell phone for hours, and they would just be so connected.”
The discovery of the body ends a massive search by state and federal authorities that had expanded to a Connecticut waste-processing facility in Hartford, in addition to the Yale lab, in the hopes of finding clues to her mysterious disappearance.
Using cadaver-sniffing dogs in round-the-clock shifts, FBI agents and state troopers dressed in hazardous-material suits began searching the facility in Hartford Saturday night.
Police scanned blueprints of the lab and brought in blood-sniffing dogs, paying particular attention to the building’s basement.
Yale had also offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Le’s whereabouts. After the body was found, Yale president Richard Levin wrote in a letter to the university’s staff and students:
“It is my tragic duty to report that the body of a female was found in the basement of the Amistad Building late this afternoon. The identity of the woman has not yet been established,” Levin’s letter said. “Law enforcement officials remain on the scene; this is an active investigation, and we hope it is resolved quickly.”
Adding to the intrigue surrounding the case was an article Le wrote for a campus magazine earlier this year about how to stay safe on the Ivy League campus.
The article, titled “Crime and Safety in New Haven,” was published in February in the magazine produced by Yale’s medical school and compares higher instances of robbery in New Haven to other cities with Ivy League universities.
“In short, New Haven is a city and all cities have their perils,” Le wrote. “But with a little street smarts, one can avoid becoming yet another statistic.”
Le, who is 4 feet 11 and weighs 90 pounds, had left many of her belongings in the lab when she disappeared.
“She left her pocketbook, her cell phone, everything in the lab,” Le’s co-worker Debbie Apuzzo said.
Le’s Facebook page showed her posing in wedding dresses and smiling with fiance Widawsky, a Columbia University graduate student in physics, whom she described as her best friend.
“He’s an amazing kid, just a wonderful, wonderful boy, and he must be heartbroken,” Widawsky’s friend Linda Matychack said. “I just can’t imagine.”
