March 17th 2011: Raymond Clark pleads guilty to the murder of Annie Le.

Annie Le was born in 1985 in San Jose, California. She spent her childhood living mainly with her aunt and uncle and their tight knit Vietnamese-American family. She was named as one of the smartest in her graduating high school year and was described as being an exceptional person. Having earned a scholarship to attend The University of Rochester, she majored in cell developmental biology. Annie was then accepted to a post grad programme at Yale University in Connecticut where she started studying for her doctorate. 

She was due to marry her college sweetheart, Jonathan Widawsky, on September 13th 2009. So when one of Annie's roommates reported she had not come home 5 days before the wedding, many believed she had become a runaway bride. Police checked on Annie's office and found that personal items such as her cellphone and purse were left neatly on her desk while CCTV footage showed Annie entering the laboratory building at 10 am on September 8th but she was never seen exiting the building. 

By September 12th, the day before Annie Le was supposed to be saying "I do", police had decided to do a more thorough search of the laboratory building. They discovered bloody clothing in the ceiling and declared the area a crime scene and closed off the area. They searched the garbage area for more clues yet there was still no sign on Annie Le. By the next day police could smell something in the building that they said reminded them of a decomposing body and they decided to bring in cadaver dogs to do a sweep of the building. 

At 5 pm of September 13th when Annie Le should have been celebrating one of the happiest days of her life, police discovered her body stuffed upside down into a cable chase inside a wall in the basement of the laboratory building. Police said she had been crushed into the wall and was barely even recognisable. After an autopsy on the body the state medical examiner determined that Annie Le had died of traumatic neck asphyxiation with other injuries including a broken jaw and collar bone which happened while she was still alive. Her bra had been pushed up to reveal her breasts and her underwear had been pulled down and left around her ankles, there was semen found on various parts of her body and her underwear.

At this time, police had a suspect in mind, Raymond Clark III who was a young laboratory technician. He had previously emailed Annie complaining about the condition she had left the lab in. The DNA match from the semen on Annie Le was really all the evidence police required to bring charges against against Clark but his key card had also been used to access the lab at the same time as Annie. Due to the high security levels within the lab, police established that it would have been difficult for anybody without a key card to gain access to the lab, this left Clark being the only other person in that lab area at the same area when the murder happened. Clark had inserted himself into the investigation and approached police to volunteer information. He told them that he had been working in the building at around 10.30 am on the morning of the disappearance and had actually seen Annie leave the lab, police knew this to be untrue from the CCTV. While doing a routine interview with Clark police had noticed scratches on his face and arm but he told police that they had been caused by a cat. In all, police collected a massive 250 pieces of DNA evidence which contained blood, hair and semen from around the building. The clean up had created a trail that was impossible to hide from police. 

On September 17th 2009 police made an arrest and Raymond Clark and Clark maintained his innocence. He had the support of his fiancée and his family in court. Including on the day of March 17th 2011 when he decided to change his plea to guilty.

It is believed that Clark pleaded guilty and took the 44 year sentence to avoid having to go to trial. He had been charged with both felony murder and murder which he could have possibly gotten a 66 year sentence for each. The 44 year sentence means that Clark will probably be released before his 70th birthday. 

Clark's father extended his sympathies to the Le family from in front of the court that day. 

Many people question the reason that the murder of Annie Le gained so much attention in the media and the press and while it is unfair to make any assumptions on the matter I can express my own reasons for being interested in the case. 

Annie Le was a young, 24 year old, beautiful and intelligent woman set to marry her soul mate. She had already achieved so many great accomplishments and no doubt had a solid foundation to go and build further on that. 

Meanwhile, Clark was also engaged to be married, was in a good steady paying job and while he had been described as a "control freak" in terms of cleanliness where the laboratories were concerned, the brutal attack and murder of Annie Le was still completely out of the blue in a sense.  

The unexplained and seemingly quite unprovoked attack was only made more tragic by the life or lives that could have been but as a result, never will. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

April 13th 1973: David McGreavy, The Real Friday 13th Killer.

Image
On Friday 13th of April 1973 Clive Ralph left his home in Gillam Street in Worcester to collect his wife Elsie from work at a bar. Elsie worked the closing shift that night and Clive would often go and collect her and even lend a hand in the closing duties, in exchange for a late night pint before the pair would head home together. They had three small children, Paul (4), Dawn (2) and Samantha (9 months). Clive worked as a truck driver and would often have to spend long periods of time away from home on long distance trips for work. A friend of Clive's David McGreavy moved in with the couple as a lodger in 1972.  David McGreavy was a down on his luck 20 year old. He was the second of 6 children and who had wanted to follow in his father's footsteps in serving his country. As a child he would move around with his family frequently to where his father was posted in The British Army. They were thought to be a tight knit family and always done everything together, go biking, walkin...
Read more

March 31st 1978: The Disappearance of Paul Rudolph Alwardt

Image
Paul Alwardt was a 17 year old boy originally from Martha's Vineyard but living in Falmouth where he worked for Melvin Reine at his waste haulage company. His mother had gone missing when Paul was a baby. With a believed drug problem, she was not able to cope with being a mother to Paul. His father, also named Paul, settled with his son in Martha's Vineyard where he grew up. Paul Senior was not without his problems either, these problems seemed to centre around alcohol and Paul Junior was left to fend for himself a lot. Paul was bullied as a child due to a deformity which caused him to have an extra row of top teeth. The constant bulling and harassment Paul received in his early years caused him to become rebellious and act out as he developed into his teens. As Paul Senior was often busy with his own life and problems, Paul spent a lot of his time hanging out on the streets and this is how he began working for Melvin Reine at his business, Five Star Enterprises. Reine had a re...
Read more

May 10th 1994: The Execution of John Wayne Gacy

Image
Born in Chicago on March 17th 1942 John Wayne Gacy was the middle child to John Stanley Gacy and Marion Elaine Robinson. His father was a mechanic, while his mother looked after the children and kept the family home. John was close to his mother and two sisters but had a difficult relationship with his father. His father had served in The First World War and was prone to drinking a lot. He was physically abusive towards his wife and children but John got a much harder time than the others. As a child he would be called dumb and stupid by his father and be called a sissy when his mother would try to shield him from the harsh beatings. From a young age, his father instilled the beatings with the fact that John was a Mamma's boy and probably grow up to be a queer. The negative connotation to the idea of being gay is something that is believed to have shaped the life that John Wayne Gacy would go on to lead.  In 1949 John and another boy were caught fondling a young girl and when John ...
Read more