Police are focusing on a lab technician in the murder of graduate student Annie Le at the Yale School of Medicine, two local news outlets report.
“A source familiar with the investigation said the probe has zeroed in on a single ’serious’ suspect,” according to the New Haven Independent. “Another law enforcement source familiar with the probe identified the suspect as a lab technician who works with animal testing.”
Monday afternoon, the Connecticut medical examiner’s office confirmed that a body found hidden inside a wall in the basement of a Yale laboratory building the previous day was that of Le. The 24-year-old doctoral student, who was supposed to have gotten married on Sunday, had been missing for five days.
The basement of the research building, at 10 Amistad Street on the medical campus, houses lab animals and has restricted access, suggesting that the murderer worked in the area. (Although the Yale Daily News reports that last Friday, as the search for Le intensified, the basement “remained open to Yale faculty, staff and students” — including two student reporters who wandered around the basement, unchallenged by law enforcement.)
The lab technician on whom police are focusing has been under scrutiny since before Le’s body was found and the case declared a homicide, according to the New Haven Register. The paper says he had “had scratches on his chest, as if he were in some type of a struggle,” and that he flunked an FBI polygraph test.
