♪♪
Up next, the big day for
a Yale research scientist
is fast approaching.
She was due to be married
in about five days.
And then, she disappears.
Is this a case
of a runaway bride?
A Yale University
graduate student
who is supposed to
get married this weekend
has suddenly vanished.
This image shows
the last time she was seen
on surveillance video.
On that day,
we saw Annie going in.
But she's never seen coming out.
You don't get in or out without
being captured on camera.
People don't simply vanish.
Or do they?
♪♪
♪♪
Yale is one of the oldest
and most-respected universities
in America.
Founded in 1701, the campus is
dotted with beautiful buildings
designed by generations
of noted architects.
But few people would call
the building known
as 10 Amistad distinctive.
In fact, it's designed not
for reasons.
It's a research facility.
So, there are all types
of highly confidential
multi-million dollar research
that is done from foundations
and organizations
from throughout the world.
One of the Amistad researchers
was Annie Le,
a 24-year-old doctoral student
of great ambition
and brain power.
She didn't go out much.
She had a very strict routine
of going to work at the lab,
her studies, and back home.
On the morning of Tuesday,
September 8, 2009,
Annie followed
her usual routine.
The building where she worked
required people to log in
using electronic keycard.
Her movement,
after going into the building,
she went into her lab,
which was G13,
and she logged in there a little
after 10:00 in the morning.
At 11 o'clock that night,
Annie's roommate called police.
Annie hadn't come home.
Even more concerning
to this roommate
was that Annie never called.
She would always hear from Annie
a couple of times
throughout the day,
and she never did.
Normally, police are slow to
move on missing persons cases.
Most people turn up
within a day or two.
But Annie was known for being
so reliable that in her case,
police started right away.
The nervousness about
the community was very real,
from the president
of Yale University
all the way down
to the students.
With her wedding
just five days away,
police thought Annie
might be a runaway bride,
but this theory
was quickly discarded.
They actually started to look
to see what Annie Le's
credit card activity was
and try to see
if she just took off.
And that was not the case.
There was no credit card
activity,
phone activity,
or anything from Annie Le.
In fact, her purse
and her cell phone
were still in her office.
She didn't take anything
with her.
That was a big issue.
People just don't leave
that type of stuff behind.
And everyone who knew Annie said
she was excited
about her upcoming wedding.
She actually already started
to sign her future
married name to certain things.
Investigators now went
frame by frame
through the hundreds of hours
of security video
from in and around
the Amistad building.
surveillance cameras
covering every entrance
and exit to the building.
So you don't get in or out
without being captured
on camera.
We could see Annie Le coming
into the building
and she was wearing
a brown necklace,
she had a brown skirt,
she had a blouse on.
Far as we know,
she never left the building
after going into it
on September 8th.
Days passed
and there was still no sign.
Investigators had to consider
the possibility
that someone had
harmed Annie Le.
She was so small...
less than five feet
and under 100 pounds...
that police believed an attacker
might have been able to k*ll her
and out of the building
by using one of the large
garbage receptacles
in 10 Amistad.
Dumpsters were checked.
Investigators went to the dump
and went through all the trash
to see if there was
any evidence of Annie Le,
and none was found.
All investigators
had was this image,
and in it,
Annie looked perfectly happy,
perfectly healthy,
just like it was any other day,
except, of course,
that no one could find her.
♪♪
Yale University
and the city of New Haven
were desperate for answers
after graduate student Annie Le
seemingly vanished from
campus in September of 2009.
I've been in conversations
with Annie Le's family.
All of us who are parents
can only imagine
what they are going through.
With no logical explanation
for where Annie had gone,
investigators turn
to a darker theory
about what might
have happened to her.
Everybody's a suspect.
In all the cases,
everybody's a suspect...
loved ones, friends,
last person with them.
You know, you've got
to keep an open mind.
Detectives questioned her
husband-to-be Jonathan Widawsky,
a student in New York City,
about 90 minutes from Yale.
But he had a solid alibi.
There was no reason to believe
that Jonathan was
at all involved in this.
Then on Sunday, five days
after Annie Le disappeared,
detectives were alerted
to a basement bathroom
in the 10 Amistad building.
All of a sudden,
I smelt a weird smell,
and I sat there and I looked
and I went, "That's decomp."
And I'm like,
"What's going on here?"
Behind a metal wall panel
about 13 inches across,
investigators found
Annie Le's body.
She'd been sexually assaulted
and stuffed behind the wall.
A broken jaw and collarbone
indicated a crime
of extraordinary v*olence.
Annie was still wearing
surgical gloves,
indicating she had been
working when att*cked
and was likely caught unaware.
No m*rder w*apon was recovered.
It appeared her k*ller
had used his bare hands,
a possible indication
of a spontaneous att*ck.
The coroner said the cause
of death was strangulation.
The Yale community
and the country at large
were shocked by the uncommon
v*olence of this m*rder,
and even more tragic,
Annie's body was found
on what would have been
her wedding day.
What could possibly be worse
than having her body
found on the day
she was to be married?
The pressure
to find who did this
and how it could have happened
on a campus
with such a large
security presence was immense.
The FBI was involved, the
New Haven Police was involved,
the State Police was involved,
and the Yale Police Force
were all involved.
There's a meeting
probably with 40, 50 detectives.
Everybody's in that one room
just trying to figure out
what we have.
Dozens of items
found with the body
were sent to forensic analysts.
One of those items didn't seem
to fit with the other evidence.
Found underneath Annie Le
in that wall was a green pen.
And that was very important
to this investigation.
DNA tests were done on Annie's
clothing and the green pen,
as well as in the area
where Annie's body was located.
In a startling development,
DNA from two different men
was recovered from the area
behind the wall.
Both DNA samples were entered
into CODIS,
the national DNA database.
In a crime this brutal,
it was likely Annie's k*ller
had been violent before
and that his DNA
would be in the system.
Sure enough, analysts got a hit.
A DNA profile came back,
and it came back
to a convicted felon.
His name was Kieran Robinson,
and he was convicted in 2001
on drug charges.
Now, investigators were sure
they had a positive lead
on a suspect,
until the background check
on Robinson came in.
It turned out that the person
who was the convicted felon
had worked building
the building,
and then he was k*lled,
sh*t in a bar
sometime before
Annie Le had gone missing.
A dead end.
And even worse,
the other DNA profile
turned up no matches
in the CODIS database.
As the investigators used
video surveillance to check
every person who went in
and out of the Amistad building,
they turned to yet
another aspect of Yale security
that might reveal
Annie's k*ller...
employee key cards.
Those cards kept track
of everyone's movements
in the building at all times.
The keycard system is something
that is done
to secure the research
that's being done in rooms,
who has access to it,
and who goes in.
That information can
be used to track people's
activity over weeks,
even months,
and the investigation showed
that one person's
activity underwent a big change
right about the time
Annie Le went missing.
When we were looking at who may
have gained access,
we saw one person kept going
into Annie's research room,
utilizing his keycard.
He was the last person
that swiped into the lab
that Annie had been seen in.
On the day
Annie Le went missing,
shortly after she was
last seen alive,
a fire alarm went off
in 10 Amistad.
It turned out to be
a false alarm,
but everyone was forced
to leave the building.
And all that video
surveillance was viewed
by the police time
and time again,
and Annie Le never left
the building
during the fire alarm at 12:55.
So, if Annie didn't
evacuate 10 Amistad,
she was probably dead
before the fire alarm went off.
But who had k*lled her and why?
Investigators used
employee key cards
to retrace Annie's final steps.
You needed a keycard
to get into certain rooms,
including the one where
Annie would do her experiments.
Keycard
records showed that room,
a lab known as G13,
was Annie's last-known location,
and some potentially interesting
things were turning up there.
Another student tipped off
a Yale police officer
that she had seen
what she thought was blood
on a box of wipes on a cart,
and it turned out that
that was indeed blood.
There would be no reason
for blood
to be in the research room.
While this blood
was being tested,
a police officer was posted
to guard the room,
which technically
was not yet a crime scene.
The lab was not closed down
when Annie went missing.
Multi-million dollar research
is being conducted
in that facility,
and there was no reason
to close it down.
But the police presence
didn't stop a lab worker
named Raymond Clark
from attempting to handle
the bloodstained box of wipes,
a potential piece of evidence.
Raymond Clark entered the room,
and he walked over
near the cart,
made some small talk
with the officer,
and then moved
this bloody towel dispenser
to a different part of the cart
where the blood
wouldn't be as obvious.
Raymond Clark was
a 24-year-old lab technician.
Like Annie, he was engaged
to be married.
He was not a graduate student.
He was a Yale employee.
He basically took care
of the animals,
cleaned up after them,
took care of them, in fact.
So, he would've had access
to every lab.
But Clark's past
was not without some red flags
for investigators.
One of Ray's former girlfriends
had actually reported
domestic v*olence.
So, there was a side
of Raymond Clark
that was not told to us
up until we started digging.
Keycard activity
showed Clark was in the G13 lab
the same time as Annie,
and they were alone.
Raymond Clark entered that room
and stayed in that room
for approximately 46 minutes.
There was nothing
particularly unusual about this,
but since it appeared Clark
might have been the last person
to see Annie alive,
he was brought in
for questioning.
Raymond Clark was very
cooperative in the process.
But now investigators
were taking a closer look
at Raymond Clark.
And in the security footage,
they found something haunting
on the day Annie was k*lled.
After the fire alarm,
when every employee of the
Amistad building was evacuated,
Clark's behavior
seemed highly suspicious.
We actually saw Ray Clark
exit the building,
go across the street,
and sit on a wall,
and he looked distraught.
He actually was sitting there
and put his head
down on his hands,
and it's all captured on video.
His face is actually in his
hands and he's kneeling forward,
and he actually looks like
he almost passes out
and falls into the street.
So, he's definitely under
a lot of stress in that video.
But what was Raymond Clark
stressed out about?
And was it a coincidence
or something worse
that he was acting this way
just after Annie Le
was m*rder*d?
When Raymond Clark was first
questioned about Annie Le,
he said he had no idea
what happened to her
and that he and Annie
were coworkers, nothing more.
But on the day Annie was k*lled,
his keycard showed him
moving a lot
between Annie's last known
location, a lab called G13,
and a seldom-used storage area
called G22 just down the hall.
Detective Insalaco
had become convinced
that the G22 storage room
would connect Raymond Clark
to what happened to Annie Le.
I said, "Alright, here's
what we're gonna do.
We're gonna turn off the lights,
we're all gonna get down
real low to the ground, and
we're gonna use our flashlight.
I'm gonna side-light the floor."
On the floor of the storage room
was the usual dust and debris,
but there was also
something else.
I immediately saw a brown
bead with a hole in it.
Why was this important?
Because Annie was wearing
a beaded necklace
the last time
she was seen alive,
and the bead was found
in a room Raymond Clark
had gone in and out of 11 times,
and Annie's keycard showed
she had never swiped
into this room herself.
So finding a bead
on the floor was huge.
Then, above the ceiling tiles
near the storage room,
investigators made more
ominous findings.
They found a sock
with blood on it
and a glove in a ceiling panel
that they also sent
to get tested for DNA.
This was later found
to have Annie's blood
and DNA from Raymond Clark.
More incriminating evidence was
found in a nearby laundry bag
that had never been searched.
When I dumped it out,
I automatically saw
blue pair of sweatpants.
I saw dark dried blood
on those pants,
and I just looked at it
and I went,
"There's his pants."
And those pants contained
a mixture of Annie's blood
and semen later
matched by DNA to Raymond Clark.
Even the pen, which had
intrigued investigators
ever since Annie's body
was found, implicated Clark.
That pen really started to
connect things together for us.
Raymond Clark habitually signed
in and out of laboratory
logbooks with a green pen.
But in the middle of the day,
just about the time
Annie disappeared,
he switched to a black pen.
Detectives believe Raymond Clark
dropped the pen by mistake
as he stuffed Annie Le's body
behind the bathroom wall.
All of us that worked
on the case were 100% confident
that Raymond Clark was the
person that m*rder*d Annie Le.
Further proof came from
a physical check of Clark.
It showed he had recently been
in a violent altercation.
He had minor cuts
on his head and face.
You want to know
what compels somebody
to violently att*ck a coworker
with no provocation.
To this day, no one knows,
and Raymond Clark isn't talking.
He was a foot taller than Annie
and more than twice her weight.
Prosecutors believe this was
an unplanned att*ck
and that she didn't
stand a chance.
However it started,
the evidence is clear.
Raymond Clark strangled
and sexually assaulted Annie
in the G13 lab.
During this altercation, blood,
later matched to her,
landed on objects in the lab,
including the box of wipes
that Raymond Clark later
tried to hide.
In an attempt to cover up
the crime,
investigators theorized
he may have used
the large rolling tables
in the building
to move Annie's body
to a more isolated area...
the storage lab known as G22.
His keycard showed a flurry
of activity
between Annie's lab
and that storage area
just after Annie's
keycard activity stopped.
His clothes with his DNA
were covered with her blood
and were later found
in a laundry bag.
He was able to get Annie
to a nearby bathroom
and stuffed her body
behind the wall,
where he dropped his green pen
covered with his DNA.
Raymond Clark was able
to hide Annie's body,
at least for a while,
but he couldn't hide
the evidence
that tied him to her m*rder.
It was a woman that had
a lot to live for, you know?
She was about to get married,
she was clearly
a brilliant graduate student.
Who knows what she would've
gone on to study or become,
and her life was cut short.
It was a senseless m*rder.
In March of 2011,
Raymond Clark pled guilty
to first-degree m*rder
and sexual as*ault.
He was sentenced to a minimum
of 44 years in prison.
But one question,
perhaps the biggest of all,
remains unanswered to this day.
The "why?"
His side of what had happened,
and the "why?"
The state's case
was that
he sexually assaulted her
and then k*lled her
to cover up that crime.
Investigators describe
Annie's m*rder
as one of the most bizarre
they've ever encountered,
and they're grateful
for the science
that finally revealed
what happened to her.
Forensic evidence
was very important.
It was what made the case.
It allowed a quick suspect
to be developed,
it allowed a quick arrest
to be made,
and it made an incredibly
strong case for the state.
Annie would've changed
the world with her research
and for what she wanted to do
to make the world
a better place.