♪♪
Narrator: Up next, the big day for a Yale research scientist
is fast approaching.
She was due to be married in about five days.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: This image shows the last time she was seen
on surveillance video.
On that day, we saw Annie going in.
Narrator: But she's never seen coming out.
You don't get in or out without being captured on camera.
Narrator: 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
10 Amistad is very nondescript 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.
Narrator: One of the Amistad researchers was Annie Le,
a 24-year-old doctoral student of great ambition
and brain power.
Strollo: She didn't go out much.
She had a very strict routine of going to work at the lab,
her studies, and back home.
[ Beeps ]
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: With her wedding just five days away,
police thought Annie might be a runaway bride,
but this theory was quickly discarded.
Strollo: 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.
Narrator: In fact, her purse and her cell phone
were still in her office.
Insalaco: She didn't take anything with her.
That was a big issue.
People just don't leave that type of stuff behind.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: Investigators now went frame by frame
through the hundreds of hours of security video
from in and around the Amistad building.
Chayes: 10 Amistad has 70 or so 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.
Narrator: 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 kill her
and out of the building
by using one of the large garbage receptacles
in 10 Amistad.
Strollo: 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.
Narrator: 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.
♪♪
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: With no logical explanation for where Annie had gone,
investigators turn to a darker theory
about what might have happened to her.
Insalaco: 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.
Narrator: 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.
Dadio: There was no reason to believe
that Jonathan was at all involved in this.
Narrator: 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?"
Narrator: 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 violence.
Annie was still wearing surgical gloves,
indicating she had been working when attacked
and was likely caught unaware.
No murder weapon was recovered.
It appeared her killer had used his bare hands,
a possible indication of a spontaneous attack.
The coroner said the cause of death was strangulation.
Narrator: The Yale community and the country at large
were shocked by the uncommon violence of this murder,
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?
Narrator: 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.
Insalaco: There's a meeting probably with 40, 50 detectives.
Everybody's in that one room
just trying to figure out what we have.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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 killer 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.
Narrator: 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 killed, shot in a bar
sometime before Annie Le had gone missing.
Narrator: 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 killer --
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.
Narrator: 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.
Altimari: He was the last person that swiped into the lab
that Annie had been seen in.
[ Fire alarm sounding ]
Narrator: 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.
Strollo: 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.
Narrator: So, if Annie didn't evacuate 10 Amistad,
she was probably dead before the fire alarm went off.
But who had killed her and why?
Investigators used employee key cards
to retrace Annie's final steps.
Chayes: You needed a keycard to get into certain rooms,
including the one where Annie would do her experiments.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: Raymond Clark was a 24-year-old lab technician.
Like Annie, he was engaged to be married.
Altimari: 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.
Narrator: But Clark's past was not without some red flags
for investigators.
One of Ray's former girlfriends
had actually reported domestic violence.
So, there was a side of Raymond Clark
that was not told to us up until we started digging.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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.
[ Fire alarm sounding ] Narrator: 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 killed.
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.
Narrator: 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 murdered?
Narrator: 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 killed,
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."
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: 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."
Narrator: 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.
Dadio: All of us that worked on the case were 100% confident
that Raymond Clark was the person that murdered Annie Le.
Narrator: 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.
Dadio: You want to know what compels somebody
to violently attack a coworker
with no provocation.
Narrator: 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 attack
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 murder.
Altimari: 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 murder.
Narrator: In March of 2011, Raymond Clark pled guilty
to first-degree murder and sexual assault.
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?"
Stollo: The state's case
was that he sexually assaulted her
and then killed her to cover up that crime.
Narrator: Investigators describe Annie's murder
as one of the most bizarre they've ever encountered,
and they're grateful for the science
that finally revealed what happened to her.
Stollo: 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.
Dadio: Annie would've changed the world with her research
and for what she wanted to do
to make the world a better place.