Local and state police in Connecticut as well as the FBI continue their search for missing 24-year-old Yale University graduate student Annie Marie Le. On Tuesday morning the missing woman worked in her office at Yale's Sterling Hall of Medicine, but later that morning left to walk the three blocks across campus to a facility where she could work on an experiment. Although she left her purse, cash, credit cards and cell phone in her office, she took her college ID card with her and used it at 10 a.m. to gain entrance to the Amistad Street facility. It was from this 120,000 square foot building that she disappeared in the late morning or early afternoon. Le, who is engaged to be married this coming Sunday in New York, has not been seen or made any known attempt at contact with her family, friends or fiancée since her mysterious disappearance. Police sources indicated on 9/12/09 that bloody clothing has been found hidden above a false ceiling in the lab building, however this "evidence" has yet to be directly linked to the the missing graduate student.

Annie Le, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, is 4’11” and weighs 90 pounds. She was reported missing by her roommate when she failed to return to their apartment Tuesday night. She is an academic success story, a dual medical and doctoral student in her third year in pharmacology. The topic for her dissertation is "understanding how certain proteins are involved with metabolic diseases such as diabetes."

While her purse and other personal possessions were all found in her campus office, a search of her apartment by the FBI and the use of tracker dogs has been unsuccessful in locating her to date. A review of campus surveillance camera footage showed her entering the research lab where she spent 10+ hour days, but she was not seen to leave and she is not known to have a car on campus. One challenge is that a fire alarm was activated in the Lab at 12:40 p.m., causing everyone inside to evacuate the building via numerous doors at the same time. Many who simultaneously left the building were wearing white lab coats similar to that Le may have been worn over her clothes. This would frustrate investigators as they look for Le on the tapes of over 75 surveillance cameras located in the vicinity of the laboratory. But did she actually leave the lab at that time, perhaps assuming it was a false alarm and that she would quickly return, only to be taken by an assailant somewhere out of the camera’s eye? And did the false alarm have anything to do with Le’s disappearance and if so, could she have simply been a victim of opportunity, perhaps confronted by an unknown assailant or burglar while still inside the lab building, or did some unknown person specifically target the bride-to-be in this manner?

Le’s fiancée, Jonathan Widawsky, attended undergraduate school with Le at the University of Rochester and is currently a graduate student at Columbia University. As usual he has been questioned by authorities, but so far he has not been implicated in any way in Le’s disappearance. Referring to Widawsky on her Facebook account, Le said “Lucky I’m in love with my best friend.” Meanwhile Yale University has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to her return, this while over 100 university, local, state and federal investigators continue the hunt for Annie Le.

Why some Students Disappear

Now authorities must consider the various possibilities that could explain her disappearance. She may have slipped out of the lab undetected and thereafter had an accident and simply not been found to date, or she may have been assaulted and/or kidnapped, perhaps concealed within the massive campus lab or somehow surreptitiously removed from the building, again without being seen. Finally, could she have simply been overwhelmed by the stress and pressure of graduate school and her impending marriage and simply left of her own volition to get time to herself to allow her to get her thoughts and life together? The pressures of a relationship has been the catalyst that allowed others to run away from scholastic, social, and emotional commitments in the past. For example:

In March 2004, 20-year-old University of Wisconsin student Audrey Seiler disappeared from her apartment without taking her purse or coat. She was found four days later lying in a nearby marsh, curled up in a fetal position and alleging she had been kidnapped. Police quickly obtained a store videotape that showed her buying a knife, duct tape, and the rope she claimed her kidnapper had used to restrain her. Investigators concluded she had faked her own abduction in a frantic attempt to get the attention of her boyfriend. “I set up everything,” she would say. “I’m just so messed up. I’m sorry.”

And most will remember the 1999 movie “The Runaway Bride” that starred Julia Roberts as a woman who couldn’t bring herself to fulfilling her commitment to walk down the isle of marriage. Six years later 32-year-old Jennifer Carol Wilbanks disappeared in rural Georgia, this just four days before her wedding day. Due to the circumstances she was presumed kidnapped and her fiancée became one of “the usual suspects.” One day before her planned wedding she called from New Mexico, claiming she had been kidnapped, sexually assaulted and transported to that distant state. Her story quickly came unglued and she soon admitted she had lied about the whole thing. “I was running away from myself” she said, and all the media hoopla that was created by her disappearance quickly disappeared with her promise to pay for the law enforcement investigation. Shortly thereafter her fiancée saw the light and moved on from his histrionic former bride-to-be.

Others, though, will also remember the December 4, 1998 murder of then 21-year-old Yale student Suzanne Jovin who was murdered just off campus and whose killer has never been identified. Jovin had been stabbed 17 times by an unidentified assailant and her murder is still considered a cold case awaiting resolution.

Crimes on College Campuses

Since 1991 all colleges and universities, public and private alike that have any type of federal student aid program, must report the past three years worth of campus crime statistics. While most schools comply, some have hidden crimes to save the reputation of their school. Date rape continues to be the most under reported crimes on such campuses, and all types of crimes are committed on our nation's college campuses by both students and non-students alike. Current statistics suggest that on the average 10 people are murdered each year on our college campuses. In 2007 Yale University reported 8 forcible sexual assaults and 103 burglaries on campus with no murders.

Missing Person Reports

876,213 men, women and children were reported missing last year in the United States, representing an average of 2,400 missing person reports that were filed every single day of the year. Most (upwards of 90%) of the missing are juveniles under the age of 18, with the vast majority of all reported missing persons eventually being accounted for by law enforcement. We also know that over 16,000 murders take place in America every year. It was Le who wrote an article on student safety in a Yale School of Medicine publication in February in which she stated, "Despite safety measures such as door-to-door escort and shuttle services, the Yale community is still plagued with thefts, some involving frightening confrontations." She concluded by stating "In short, New Haven is a city, and all cities have their perils, but with a little street smarts, one can avoid becoming yet another statistic." The challenge for investigators in their attempt to determine if Le has become one of the statistics about which she wrote begins with their ability to follow any trail that she may have left. While some follow footprints in the dirt, today’s modern footprints are usually electronic, to include the use of the Internet, telephone calls, bank transactions and credit card purchases.

The Investigation to locate Annie Le

Many have said that Le must have been kidnapped, but others recall the stories of Audrey Seiler and Jennifer Wilbanks and many other men and women before and after them who ultimately became victims of themselves and their own circumstances. In this case investigators will conduct a two- track investigation, much like a set of railroad tracks that run parallel to each other. Track one will consider the possibility that she was a victim of an unknown offender, either assaulted and hidden in or nearby the lab, perhaps during the fire alarm, or that she was somehow spirited out of the large building without anyone, to include the ever present surveillance cameras, seeing her being taken by her assailant. The presence of a 1,000 space parking garage connected to the lab building from which Le disappeared has also been of interest to investigators, noting, of course she could have left via such an exit or been taken from the building, placed in a vehicle, and transported off campus. Of course the presence of bloody clothing found hidden in the lab appears to suggest she may have become a victim of some terrible crime. Should the clothing, and the blood thereon, be that of the victim's, then investigators must determine in the blood was in a sufficient amount to suggest that the victim could not have survived the suspected assault. Meanwhile investigators are looking for a live missing person until they determine otherwise.

Track two of the investigation has considered the possibility that Le was a victim of herself, somehow caving in to the overwhelming pressures associates with her graduate studies, her doctoral work, and her rapidly approaching marriage, perhaps one she wasn’t quite ready for. In this case she would be hiding out, perhaps with a friend, trying to figure out how to gracefully return after all of the unanticipated media attention her disappearance has generated. Her high school class voted her the student most likely to be the next Einstein, an impression that she has carried throughout her college career and one that could suggest the continuing pressure she was functioning under. Her close friends, however, say she was looking forward to her wedding, but for now investigators just don’t appear to know her fate, and the clock seems to be ticking against them in their search for the missing bride-to-be.

IMPORTANT

Please see my new 9/14/09 article for an update on this case, one has evolved into a homicide investigation, at:

http://clintvanzandt.newsvine.com/_news/2009/09/13/3262824-wedding-bells-silent-on-day-missing-yale-grad-student-to-be-wed

To obtain a free copy of our DVD "Protecting Children from Predators" go to www.LiveSecure.org. We've given away thousands in our attempt to help to save lives.