Saturday, September 12, 2009

Missing Yale Student's Body Reportedly Found

Fox News- New reports about missing Yale University graduate student Annie Le, are painting a grim picture to what could end the search for her.

Police sources told FOX 61 in Connecticut that the 24-year-old's body was found inside the building she was last seen.

Bloody clothes and other evidence was also found reported found in the ceiling of the same building, the New Haven Register reported.

More information is expected to be released at a news conference Saturday evening.

Detectives questioned a Yale professor Friday who suddenly canceled class about the same time graduate student Annie Le vanished, a police source told the New York Daily News.

Le, 24, a doctoral student in pharmacology at the Ivy League university, was supposed to attend the class Tuesday afternoon. But the course was canceled shortly before Le was reported missing, according to the News.

A New Haven police source told the paper that investigators grew suspicious about the timing and questioned the professor. It wasn't known what came out of the interview.

University Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer told the Yale Daily News that there is no reason to believe a professor is a suspect in the Le case, and authorities are "interviewing tons of people." Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said police haven't named any suspects in the student's disappearance.

Meanwhile, the missing woman's family canceled her Sunday wedding on Long Island, N.Y., according to a supervisor at the hall where the ceremony and reception were to have taken place.

"The wedding is off," Nadeen Fotopoulos, a manager at the North Ritz Club in Syosset, told the News. She said 160 guests were supposed to attend.

"It's very sad," she told the paper. "The hall will be dark Sunday morning."

Detectives were spotted Saturday questioning a man outside the lab where Le worked. When they finished talking, the man got in the front seat of an unmarked car and one of the FBI agents got in the back seat. The car then drove away.

Authorities previously said they had no evidence to indicate foul play in Le's disappearance. More than 100 investigators are working on the case.

On Friday, Yale offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the missing student. Investigators searched her office, the lab facilities where she did research and her apartment.

Agent Bill Reiner said the FBI wouldn't answer any questions about the investigation while it's ongoing.

Le was last seen about 10 a.m. Tuesday morning on surveillance camera outside a lab in the Yale School of Medicine complex, less than a mile from the main campus in New Haven, Conn.

About the same time, she swiped her Yale ID at the facility's entrance. There was no footage of her leaving the building, in spite of a fire alarm that went off about 12:40 p.m. The alarm isn't thought to be connected to her disappearance.

Her purse, cell phone, credit cards and money were found in her office, a few blocks from the lab. She has not contacted her fiance, family or friends since Tuesday.

Investigators were examining security camera footage from some 75 cameras near the building where Le was last spotted.

"They are going frame by frame, looking at every image," Conroy said Friday.

Le, a California native, was to be married to Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student in physics at Columbia University. The two met as undergraduates at the University of Rochester. Widawsky has been cooperating with the investigation and is not considered a suspect, authorities say.

Le is 4-foot-11, 90 pounds and of Asian descent with brown hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information on Le’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Yale Police Department at (203) 432-4400.

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