A bumbling revenge plot turns sour 1
Man blames girlfriend's threesome for murder 2
Grandpa randomly punches kids at Walmart 3
Wednesday, Sep. 23 2009 @ 12:45PM
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Raymond Clark appears to have a history of abusing women
​UPDATE: Former girlfriend Jessica Del Rocco says Raymond Clark had a dark side going back to high school. See update after the jump...

Raymond Clark III was arrested this morning for the murder of Yale doctoral student Annie Le. He's charged with strangling her inside the Yale laboratory building where they worked. He body was found stuff in a utility canal that houses wiring between floors.

It seems New Haven police found a DNA match in Clark after getting samples of his hair, blood and skin. He was arrested at a Super 8 Motel about 25 miles from Yale. Though it's believed he was at the motel to avoid the heavy media scrutiny at his apartment, police still treated him as a serious threat. He'd been under constant surveillance since providing the samples, and police even shut down a highway outside the motel before making the arrest.

But the details about why Annie was murdered remain a mystery. Friends and coworkers describe her bubbly, kind and effusive, an impressive young intellect and rising scholar. In the days after her disappearance, they simply gushed with praise. Given their words, it's hard to see her having a beef with anyone...
 
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Annie Le was set to be married the day her body was found
​But apparently she did -- at least in Clark's mind. The coroner's office has ruled she was asphyxiated, perhaps by choke hold or the use of an instrument. New Haven Police Chief James Lewis has described the crime as a workplace issue, though he didn't elaborate. "It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country," he said.

Some have speculated Clark, a laboratory technician, was simply a dick on the job. His duties included janitorial work, cleaning animal cages, and tending to the rodents used for experiments. But is there was a physical altercation between he and Annie, it would have been no contest. She was 4-foot-11, while Clark is described as muscular.

The Hartford Courant has reported that Yale computers placed him at the scene of the crime, and that he was the last one to see Annie alive. Her electronic key card showed her entering a basement room the day of her disappearance. Clark followed her into the room. Annie was recorded as never leaving.

And he appears to have had problems with women in the past. The New Haven Independent, which has put in a dogged performance on the case, reports that Clark was accused of harassing a girlfriend in high school.

During Clark's senior year at Branford High in 2003, the girl claimed he once forced her to have sex. And when she tried to break up, Clark confronted her at the school. She talked to police, but refused to press charges. She was worried enough, however, that police had to warn him to stay away from the 16-year-old. Since the case was never prosecuted, Branford police are refusing to release their paperwork on the case.

UPDATE I: Coworkers thought Raymond Clark was something of a prick. Friends say he was a jokester and a giving man.

In previous reports, coworkers have described Clark as officious and a stickler for rules, which never makes for a pleasant colleague. He's also been described as controlling of his fiance, Jennifer Hromadka, whom he planned to marry in 2011. (See excerpts from her MySpace page here.)

But friends saw him in a different light. He was an honor student and respectable baseball player at Branford High in suburban New Haven. One high school friend described him as a class clown. "Everybody knew him. Everybody liked him," Lisa Heselin told CNN. He also volunteered and raised money for homeless causes.

But perhaps the most interesting thing is that he was a member of the Asian Awareness Club in high school. Though it's hard to tell with the melding of families these days, neither his looks nor his name seem to speak to Asian ancestry. Maybe he was just supporting friends.

But some True Crime readers suspect he has an Asian fetish. There's no real evidence to back that up, and maybe's it's just a coincidence. Still, since Annie Le was a beautiful young Asian woman, possessed with a magnetic personality, it can't totally be ruled out.

If New Haven police know anything about their relationship, they're not talking. "They work in the same building, passed in the hallways," Chief James Lewis said. "Anything beyond that, I won't talk about."

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Annie Le, dead at 24
​UPDATE II: While DNA seems to be the key to Raymond Clark's arrest, the circumstantial evidence is also very strong.

Clark is said to have used a green pen for everything he signed. And this being a university, there was more stuff to sign than at the White House, which made his habit conspicuous. But it seems he dropped a green pen when he was disposing the body and then was unable to retrieve it. This would have been a damning piece of evidence alone.

Then there's the text message Clark supposedly sent Annie on the day she tied. He was known as that  guy every office has -- Captain Rule Boy who seemed obsessed with enforcing those little technicalities of the job. Coworkers say he considered the mice cages his personal domain, and tended to bitch when others didn't meet his standards concerning them. Annie could have run afoul of him over something to do with the cages.

But Clark's key card also tracked him through the building that day. It shows he spent an hour with Annie's body after the murder. Then it shows him quickly moving from room to room, as if look for a place to hide her. Medical evidence indicates Annie was first hit and then strangled.

New Haven Police Chief James Lewis has described the attack as a workplace murder. Detectives note emails from Clark complaining about Annie's handling of lab mice. Annie's response was conciliatory, and those who know her say she would have acted the same way when she saw Clark at the lab that day. Here's the New York Daily News' theory on how it went down:

"Investigators speculate that he criticized her for some additional lapse in protocol. His concern was likely less the animals' welfare than his need to be in charge, if only when it came to mice. Everything everybody knows about Le suggests she would not seek to put him in his place or somehow demean him.

"More likely, she was simply distracted. Her wedding was just five days away. Her mind was no doubt filled with thoughts about her hair, her dress, the guest list. And she was trying to get all her pressing lab work done.

"Investigators believe she may have responded to Clark with something like, "Yeah, I'll get to it, thanks. I'm busy now." A guy such as Clark could have mistaken distracted for dismissive. And what he took for dismissive may have been harder for him to take from a young, smart, diminutive woman."

Clark also screwed himself by claiming he hadn't seen Annie the day of the murder, when key card info distinctly said otherwise. And he blew up a polygraph when asked, "Do you know where she is now?" That's when he lawyered up.

New Haven police had him under the constant surveillance of the narcotics squad. Not because he was suspected of dope, but because they're the department's best tracking agents. No less than seven cops where following him at a time, first covertly, then openly parking outside his apartment with badges visible as he increasingly became the prime suspect.

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Clark was caught trying to clean the laboratory after Annie disappeared
​

UPDATE III: Did Clark have help in Annie's murder?

Fox News is reporting that police are questioning another Yale laboratory employee. The TV network offered no further details, nor has that employee been named. New Haven police say they're not "actively" looking at anyone else, but they've also said there may be others involved in the case.

Police have made clear that Clark was alone with Annie at the time of the killing. What they could be looking at is whether he had help covering up evidence. Clark's fiance, sister and brother-in-law also work at the lab. But right now, all of this seems more conjecture than solid fact. 

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Jessica Del Rocco became so afraid of Clark she was escorted to her car for two weeks
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UPDATE IV: Investigators saw Raymond Clark attempt to clean areas of the laboratory where Annie was last seen.

As detectives still searched Yale for the missing grad student, one saw Clark try to hide cleaning equipment that was spattered with blood. The also caught him cleaning rooms where Annie had been that day at the school. But he apparently couldn't wipe clean the walls and ceiling of the utility cavern where he hid the body. Both his and Annie's DNA were found there.

UPDATE V: Jessica Del Rocco, Clark's high school girlfriend, says he exhibited the classic behavior of an abusive boyfriend.

In an interview on Good Morning America today, she said that Clark was as obsessive and controlling of her as he was with the mice cages at Yale. They dated when she was 16, and she initially found him charming and attentive, the popular boy she was proud to be with.

But three months later, Jessica began to see his uglier side, which resembled the classic behavior of a controlling wife beater. He badgered her about what she wore and how she spoke. "It's, 'Don't go here and don't be friends with these boys, and these girls are OK. You're talking too much or you're not talking loud enough.'"

Though police have asked her not to talk about the matter, previous reports say that at one point Clark forced himself upon her sexually. When she finally found him too creepy, she went to both school officials and police, but never formally pressed charges. Still, there's little doubt she was scared at the time. "For about two weeks, I was escorted from the school to my car."

Also see "Comment of the Day: Was Yale Condescension Raymond Clark's Motive for Killing Annie Le?"