Murder of Suzanne Jovin

Suzanne Jovin, from Göttingen, Germany, was an undergraduate at Yale University, majoring in political science and international relations. She was murdered on December 4, 1998 in New Haven, Connecticut by an unknown assailant.

The murder

Suzanne Jovin, was found stabbed to death at 9:55 p.m. in New Haven's East Rock neighborhood. The time of the attack was estimated as sometime between 9:30 and 9:50 p.m..

Jovin had last been seen at 9:15 p.m. on the Old Campus at Yale, returning keys to a Yale Police substation, about 1.9 miles away from where she was later found. No motive was evident; police claimed that there were no signs of sexual attack.

The investigation

The ensuing investigation did not result in official findings; however leaks to the local newspaper, the New Haven Register, just days after the crime, claimed that Jovin's killer was likely someone she knew. Subsequent leaks by City and Yale University sources claimed that the prime suspect in the case was one of her instructors. Finally the name of Jovin's thesis adviser, James Van de Velde, was leaked to the local media as a suspect and he was officially described as a suspect five days after the crime; however he was never formally charged. Many who have studied the case have suggested an attempt by Yale and the city administration to whitewash the city's reputation for random violence, in order to prevent a repetition of the Christian Prince public relations problem. [1]

James Van de Velde

Van de Velde was not a regular, tenure-track faculty member, but was instead a former professional in the field; a lieutenant commander in the United States Naval Reserve, he had worked in the United States Department of State as a White House appointment for nuclear weapons arms control under President George Herbert Walker Bush, served as Executive Director of the Asia Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, and worked on the Dayton Peace Accords in 1997 as a mobilized reservist performing a voluntary active duty assignment to Naval Forces Southern Command, Naples.

Van de Velde's background and general manner and style, very distinct from the classic caricature of the formal and reserved Ivy League academic, made him popular with students, but may have fueled salacious and irresponsible media reporting in the early days of the investigation. Rumors of improper behavior, special weapons training and links to the CIA, all heavily investigated by the local and national media as well as the NHPD, all proved false, yet the damage to his reputation was not and could not be subsequently repaired.

Though a relationship between the popular lecturer and Jovin was the foundation of the NHPD's suspicion, no suggestion of any impropriety in the relationship between Van de Velde and Jovin was ever found despite extensive investigations by the New Haven Police as well as the Yale Daily News. Many media reports had nevertheless insinuated that Van de Velde and Jovin may have had an affair, reporting the NHPD speculation. Respected national outlets such as the New York Times and even British newspapers such as The Times covered the case extensively, also publishing rumor and innuendo. However, no Jovin friend, colleague, student or individual ever corroborated the NHPD's speculation that they had a relationship or Van de Velde wanted one. In fact, Jovin's friends claimed such an idea was unlikely in the extreme, given her close relationship with a student colleague.

No individual ever claimed Jovin and Van de Velde were ever seen together outside of class. Although Van de Velde lived 0.6 miles from the crime scene, the district in which she was found is home to the great majority of Yale graduate students, postdocs, and young faculty members; Van de Velde claimed publicly that he had never seen the student outside of class or office hours and did not even know where she lived. He further claimed that he had never had a relationship with a Yale undergraduate and had never wanted one or attempted one. No one ever came forward to dispute such claims.

The only other potential motive cited by those suspicious of Van de Velde was Jovin's alleged upset that Van de Velde was two days late in returning a courtesy review of a draft of her senior essay, and that that might have in some way led to a conflict which turned violent. However, the written cover sheet accompanying Jovin's penultimate draft thanked Van de Velde for his comments and displayed no animus. The 180 degree change in speculative motive from 'relationship' to 'maybe she hated him' suggested to many that naming Van de Velde a suspect was premature at best, suspicious in the least, and perhaps worked to derail the investigation by misleading the New Haven and Yale communities.

In 2001, the Hartford Courant published an 8000 word Sunday magazine story on the case, written by the then Courant Metro Section editor, Les Gura, which won the Neiman Prize at Harvard University for fairness in journalism. It argued that the case was badly handled by the police, Yale and the media, and raised serious doubts about the logic of suspecting Van de Velde of any involvement in the crime.

Van de Velde later sued Quinnipiac University for claiming in the press that he had been removed from his graduate program in broadcast journalism following the crime for 'academic reasons.' Quinnipiac paid Van de Velde $80,000 in damages for the false statement. (Van de Velde was always in good academic standing with Quinnipiac.) He has loudly and publicly maintained his total innocence and complete lack of any knowledge regarding Jovin's murder at all times.

Nevertheless, Yale first cancelled Van de Velde's classes for the following 1999 spring term, citing the disruptive effect of the case, then did not renew his contract for the following year; the stated reason was not suspicion of Van de Velde's guilt, but rather that he would not have been invited back as a matter of course. Many were skeptical, however; the dismissal of such a popular and successful instructor without some sort of cause would have been unusual, and it seemed to many like an undeserved sudden end to what had been a promising career. Alan Dershowitz, for instance, noted that it seemed to suggest that the police could influence hiring and firing of university faculty at will, by merely advancing rumors.

Van de Velde left Yale and was reported in the Yale Daily News as having successfully undergone an investigation to renew his security clearance and gone to work for the Pentagon. Van de Velde never lost his Top Secret Department of Defense security clearance, despite an extensive review of the case by both the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Defense Security Service of the Department of Defense. Further still, Van de Velde took and passed the State Department Foreign Service exam in 2001, prompting another investigation of the case which resulted in another Top Secret clearance afforded him by the US Department of State.

Van de Velde sued the City of New Haven and the senior officers of Yale University in Federal court for violations of his civil rights and is waiting the results of his motion to reconsider the initial court decision to dismiss the case. If the motion fails, Van de Velde has promised to appeal the case.

Yale moves on

In March 2000, ABC television network's newsmagazine show 20/20 examined the case, and quoted "a University spokesman" as saying that Yale wanted to move on and that attention to the murder "can only hurt Yale". ABC later named Thomas Conroy, now Yale's deputy director of public affairs, as the spokesman in question, but Conroy denied making the statements and a press release by Vice President and University Secretary Linda Lorimer said 20/20 was mistaken. In the March 30, 2000 edition of the Yale Daily News, Jovin's parents published a letter responding to the show and Yale's reaction. "The statements by the Yale College administration in reaction to the outcry on and off campus to the callous position of the University reported in the 20/20 program are disingenuous, hypocritical [and] self-serving," they wrote; "It was a tragic mistake to send our daughter to Yale College for an education." Van de Velde also expressed his skepticism, saying "I have no doubt, therefore, that [Yale President Richard] Levin and Lorimer specifically wrote or approved the Yale statement."

Forensic evidence

According to a New Haven police press statement in March 2001, "several" witnesses saw a "tan or brown" van stopped facing "east" on East Rock Road around the time of the crime at the location Jovin was found - precisely the direction in which a vehicle would be if it were ejecting a body, or if Jovin were escaping a vehicle that had stopped. This was the first time the NHPD revealed that they were looking for a suspicious vehicle. Van de Velde drove a Jeep Wrangler at the time and had offered to have it checked by the police days after the crime. It was checked, revealing no trace links or prints.

The April 2001 Hartford Courant investigation revealed that a Fresca soda bottle was found at the crime scene with Jovin's and someone else's fingerprints on it, though the unknown set was a partial print. The second print has yet to be identified and has not matched any known acquaintance (again, it did not match Van de Velde's). The only establishment in central campus that sold Fresca is the former Krauszer's, located at York and Elm streets - precisely on the way home from Old Campus to Jovin's apartment.

Krauszer's was open at the time and had a surveillance camera that recorded all customers' activity. New Haven and Yale police never checked it, even though it might have taped the individual(s) who murdered Jovin and even though it should have been intuitive to ask immediately where might Jovin have purchased this unusual brand of soda on the Yale campus.

In an October 2001 press conference (almost three years after the crime), State's Attorney Michael Dearington revealed that DNA found under the fingernails of Jovin did not match Van de Velde's DNA. Nor did it match Jovin's former boyfriend's or any of the emergency personnel who worked on her. The state's attorney announced that investigators planned to ask for samples from acquaintances and friends of Jovin. Dozens of samples were subsequently taken. Dearington stated that should no innocent match be established, then it would be more likely to match the assailant. Since no word has emerged since 2001, presumably no match has been made to date.

In November, 2001, the New Haven Register reported that the New Haven Police Department had had a 1982 Dodge van--formerly tan but now painted white--in their custody for six months, and that this van was believed to be connected to the Jovin case. The van was owned by an unidentified Guilford resident at the time of the crime, who had been questioned by the police several times as of November 2001. The resident claimed no involvement whatsoever in the case, claimed he knew where his van was at the time of the crime, and agreed to provide a DNA sample. His brother, a Yale graduate student, was also questioned by the police. He refused to provide a DNA sample but also claimed no involvement whatsoever in the crime. There is no known evidence that either knew or had ever met Jovin.

Timeline

Adding time to the confirmed sighting at 9:15 p.m., Jovin is likely now in or near Krauszer's at around 9:35 p.m.; a passerby called 911 at 9:55 p.m. after finding Jovin lying unconscious at Edgehill and East Rock roads, 1.9 miles away. A vehicle was therefore likely used in the crime.

The timeline suggests that Jovin was not on her way to any appointment. The meeting with her murderer(s) was probably random, or at least spontaneous. A serendipitous meeting with someone she knew most likely would not allow for an acquaintance to come prepared for murder (i.e., with a knife), nor have his car parked conveniently nearby - precisely in between Krauszer's and her apartment on Park Street, in the middle of the Yale campus, on a one-way street, in a direction facing opposite to her likely destination - home, just a couple short blocks away.

For a killer known to Jovin to have waited for her to arrive home from wherever she was would mean the killer knew or assumed she would leave her apartment in the evening, be returning and returning alone that evening, would have somehow been able to convince her to get into his car, though she would have just returned home, and would have staked her out immediately in front of the Yale police substation. (Her apartment was above the 24/7 Yale Police substation.)

It takes eight minutes to drive from the corner of York and Elm to the corner of East Rock and Edgehill. This leaves little time for an amicable meeting to turn sour and then hostile.

Cold case

Despite the lack of any explanation for why Van de Velde became such a high profile suspect and the lack of anything implicating him, no other suspects were ever named in the case, either officially or unofficially. Posters were distributed in the neighborhood of the crime offering rewards for any leads on the case; noted Connecticut forensics expert and Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Safety, Dr. Henry Lee, was among those reviewing the case and gave voice to the growing body of opinion that the New Haven Police Department had just botched it from the start, to the point where it was unlikely to ever be solved.

Although the police knew about the soda bottle and the van since the outset of the investigation, reward posters were never posted on central campus where Jovin probably bought her soda until April 2001, 29 months after the crime. The van seen at the crime scene was never positively found or identified. Little to no publicity about the $150,000 reward was circulated outside of the Yale campus and none likely ever reached the associates of Jovin's killers, since reward posters were only hung around Yale and only briefly. Despite repeated calls by Van de Velde and others for the State's Cold Case unit to become involved, the NHPD refused to allow any other investigators to assist in the investigation, until August 24, 2006, when the New Haven State's Attorney's office finally gave up and officially referred the case to Connecticut's Cold Case Unit. The case remains unsolved.

Bin Laden connection

The perpetrator of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Osama bin Laden, had been the subject of Jovin's senior thesis at the time of her murder. [2]

External links

• Cold Case Unit Should be on Yale Murder Hartford Courant December 30, 2005
• Pride & Prejudice in New Haven Hartford Courant December 4, 2005
• $150,000 Reward Hartford Courant December 4, 2005
• New Haven Police Department summary of the case and offer of reward for any information relevant to the crime
• Yale Herald article on the fourth anniversary of the murder
• Yale Daily News Article on DNA tests
• WTNH article from December 2003
• http://www.siliconinvestor.com/subject.aspx?subjectid=32074
• Yale Daily News article on discovery of van