[MUSIC]
Let's move a little closer to the present
day,
and let's talk about the case of Annie
Le, who was murdered at Yale University in
2009.
She was very promising PhD student in the
pharmacology area
and she was last seen on September 8th,
2009, about 10 a.m.,
when she went to a Yale University
Building at 10 Amistad Street.
And this is the building where her
department had their animals for doing
animal experiments.
She was finally reported missing at 10:40
p.m.
that night, September the 8th.
A few days later on September the 13th, her
body was found inside a wall space in that
building,
and part of the tragedy is that September
the 13th
was the day when she was supposed to be
getting married.
Four days later one of the animal lab
technicians,
a man called Raymond Clark, was arrested
for her murder.
And on March the 17th, 2011, Raymond Clark
entered into a plea
bargain, and was found guilty of murder
and sexual assault.
Interestingly, the first public news of
the sexual
assault was when the plea bargain was
announced.
No details of it had been released by the
police previously.
On June the 3rd, Raymond Clark was
sentenced to 44 years in prison.
At the time, the state of Connecticut,
where Yale is, still had the death
penalty.
So presumably, Raymond Clark entered into
the plea
bargain in order to avoid the death
penalty.
So what happened in the case?
How, for instance, did they find Annie Le?
The police quickly realized that she was
somewhere inside 10 Amistad Street.
This is an animal experimentation
laboratory, so it has quite high security,
and nobody can get into the building
without being filmed by CCTV,
and nobody can get out of the building
without being picked up on CCTV either.
The CCTV showed her entering but never
showed
her leaving, therefore she had to be still
inside.
In addition, the building had electronic
locks.
The locks are activated by an ID card, and
whenever you use your ID card on a lock of
this kind, the computer records whose ID
card has opened the door and at what time.
Now these locks are not only on the
external door of
the building, they're also on the internal
doors of the individual rooms.
So the police were able to use the
electronic
lock records to track her movement through
the building.
The last room she entered was a room
numbered G13.
When room G13 was carefully searched, they
found medium velocity blood spatter.
Remember from our lecture on blood that
even if blood stains are cleaned and
scrubbed, techniques are available to make
them visible again.
The building was extensively searched, and
so on September
the 13th, her body was found in a wall
space.
She had been strangled, her jaw bone and
collar bone had
been broken, there was bruising, and also
signs of sexual assault.
So this was a very violent crime.
What made Raymond Clark the suspect?
The same evidence that allowed the police
to find Annie Le also made him a suspect.
The CCTV showed him enter the building,
and
the electronic locks recorded his movement
through the building,
and the police were able to show that on
that day he had been rushing from room to
room.
By looking at the records from previous
days, they
could see this was very strange and
uncharacteristic behaviour.
Perhaps he was rushing from room to room
looking for somewhere to hide the body.
The CCTV also showed that he changed
his clothes, probably trying to hide
something.
When the building was being searched, he
was behaving suspiciously,
even trying to hide objects while the
police were searching.
And all of these evidence led up to his
arrest on September the 17th.
Now, arrest is one thing.
Arrest is based on suspicion.
Conviction must be based on proof.
How was Raymond Clark convicted?
The police found a lot of evidence in 10
Amistad Street.
A sock, a glove, and other clothes were
found hidden above a ceiling tile,
and the sock had blood on it from both
Clark and from his victim, Annie Le.
In the wall space where the body was
found,
they found a second sock and a green pen.
Now one of Raymond Clark's habits, when he
signed books
or documents, he had this habit of using a
green pen.
That's not enough to prove that this pen
was Raymond
Clark's, but they were able to also get
his DNA
off the pen, and presumably, he'd dropped
it in the
wall space when he was putting the body in
there.
And finally, the DNA evidence from the
sexual assault was also his.
So, the result -
in March of 2011, guilty of murder and
sexual assault,
44 years in prison.
The conviction was possible because of
this mass of forensic evidence.
[BLANK_AUDIO]

