Murder of Annie Le

On September 8, 2009, 24-year-old Annie Marie Thu Le, a doctoral student in the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology, was murdered on Yale University's New Haven, Connecticut campus. Le left her apartment that morning, took Yale Transit to the Sterling Hall of Medicine, and then walked to a research building at 10 Amistad Street where her laboratory was located, entering just after 10 a.m. as recorded on security cameras. She left behind her purse, cell phone, credit cards, and cash in her office. She was never seen leaving the Amistad Street building. When she had not returned home by around 9 p.m., one of her housemates reported her missing to police.

Because security footage did not show Le exiting the building, investigators closed it for examination and also searched refuse at a Hartford dump where Yale's garbage is incinerated. The FBI, New Haven Police Department, and Connecticut State Police participated in the search. On September 13, 2009 — the day Le had been scheduled to marry Jonathan Widawsky, a Columbia University graduate student — her body was discovered inside a cable chase within the wall of a basement laboratory in the Amistad Street building. Bloody clothing had previously been found above a ceiling tile in the same building, which was monitored by about 75 security cameras and required Yale identification cards for entry. Because of these security measures, investigators focused on Yale employees and students. A Connecticut medical examiner's autopsy determined the cause of death to be traumatic asphyxia due to neck compression.

On September 17, 2009, police arrested Raymond J. Clark III, a 24-year-old laboratory technician who worked in the same building, after he had been taken into custody the previous day to provide a DNA sample under a court warrant. Clark was held on $3 million bail at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution. He appeared in Connecticut Superior Court on October 6, 2009, without entering a plea, and later pleaded not guilty on January 26, 2010, following a delayed hearing. His case proceeded through pretrial stages into 2011.

In March 2011, Clark entered a guilty plea to Le's murder in exchange for a 44-year prison sentence, and entered an Alford plea — a guilty plea that concedes sufficiency of evidence without admitting the underlying facts — to an additional charge of attempted sexual assault of Le. He formally entered these pleas on March 17, 2011, and was sentenced to 44 years' imprisonment on June 3, 2011. At sentencing, Clark took responsibility for his actions and expressed remorse. He is serving his sentence at Cheshire Correctional Institution, with an original scheduled release date of September 16, 2053; under a 2023 law expanding parole eligibility for youthful offenders, he became eligible for parole after serving 60% of his sentence, or 26.4 years.

Le's case drew extensive national media coverage, which some commentators, including a Slate contributor and a Connecticut Post columnist, characterized as disproportionate compared to coverage of other murder victims.