Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

I have been hoping & praying she just had a case of wedding jitters, although in my heart, I knew it was worse





Investigators have found a body hidden in a wall in the Yale University laboratory where a missing graduate student had last been seen, officials said Sunday.


Police believe the remains to be those of Annie Le, 24, reported missing Tuesday night, assistant police chief Peter Reichard said at a hastily called news conference Sunday evening.

Reichard said the body was found at about 5 p.m. in a chase — a vertical space used for ducts, pipes or wires — in the basement of the lab at 10 Amistad St. in New Haven. It was discovered on the same day she was to be wed in Syosset.


“We are assuming that it is her,” said Reichard, who said the investigation into Le’s disappearance has been classified a homicide. “We have been in contact with family members of Annie Le and our sympathy goes out to the family.”

Yale President Richard C. Levin said afterward, “Our hearts go out to the family of Annie Le, to her fiance, to her friends.” They “now must suffer the additional ordeal of waiting for the body to be positively identified,” he said.


Le, a doctoral student in pharmacology from Placerville, Calif., who had been missing since Tuesday, was to marry Jonathan Widawsky, a Columbia University graduate student from Huntington, at Syosset’s North Ritz Club on Saturday. The nuptials were canceled on Friday.

The FBI and Connecticut State Police Sunday had been searching trash at a Hartford incinerator for remains of the graduate student.

FBI agent Bill Reiner said investigators were “following the trash” that left the university laboratory. Reiner declined to comment further on the search at the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority’s trash-to-energy plant in Hartford.


Paul Nonnemacher, spokesman for the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, said agents wearing hazmat suits had been searching by hand and using Bobcat tractors late Saturday night and continued through the day Sunday.

The garbage being searched at the Hartford facility, Nonnemacher said, was not medical or specialized waste, but rather typical residential trash. Nonnemacher said authorities had not asked the facility to halt its incineration, which typically stops on the weekend but would resume today.

No one was home Sunday at the Widawsky family’s home in Huntington. Police have been saying Widawsky, a Columbia University graduate student, is not a suspect in the case and is cooperating.

Outside the North Ritz Club yesterday, security guards in suits and sunglasses said they had been hired for the day by the club, and added that no one related to the wedding had shown up Saturday.

The New Haven Register reported yesterday that bloody clothes found in a ceiling of the lab where Le was last Tuesday are not the clothes she was wearing the morning she disappeared.

Le used her student ID to enter a lab where she worked Tuesday morning but 70 surveillance cameras did not record her leaving. Le’s ID, credit cards and purse were found in her office.

With Jennifer Barrios, Jennifer Maloney and AP

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

My brain cannot wrap around how this could happen in daylight ina busy building and then not have her found for so many days???

I feel so bad for the family and her fiance- this shouldve been a happy weekend I hope they find the ******* who did this soon!

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

This is so sad and upsetting. I was afraid this was going to happen. I was definitely praying for wedding jitters.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

I was hoping not to hear this type of ending. I feel so bad for her family especially her fiancée on what was supposed to be a joyous day for them.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

just awful

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

just horrible. i hope they find the person that did this quickly.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

poor girl her family must be so heartbroken, I hope they find whoever did this to her soon

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

Just terrible.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

I don;t get it either-broad daylight---school is currently going on...and they ahve like 75 cameras....

I am so heartbroken

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

What a tragedy...

Prayers to her family and fiance...

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

OMG I just got the chills reading this

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

So sad it ended like this

I hope they catch the ******* who did this!!

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

It's so sad - she was supposed to marry my friend's cousin

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

there is no words
for family and friends.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

I was hoping and hoping it was just wedding jitters or even something more scandalous (like she left to be with someone else).

I just don't understand people. It's so sad. Her poor family and FH.

Because it happened the week b4 her wedding, i have a feeling that it's related to that...like a jealous ex or unrequited love.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

Awful just awful :( Body found on her wedding day too.
My heart goes out to her family :(


The day after she disappeared, i have family that work at Yale, there was an ex-employee of yale found in the parking lots across the street from my their building with a gun..he was arrested by yale police.

I'm not sure how many of you know or are familiar with where Yale is, but it's not a great area at all. Yale is surrounded by poverty & crime ridden area.

Message edited 9/14/2009 10:49:11 AM.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

This is so so sad:(

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

I, too, thought this was another case of "runaway bride". I'm saddened that I was wrong but now at least her fiance, family, and friends can begin the grieving process. I feel so bad for her fiance especially, they should be married by now and leaving for Greece on their HM; instead he'll be planning her funeral.

May she RIP.

I hope they find the SOB who did this and get some answers.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

Posted by Holly

I don;t get it either-broad daylight---school is currently going on...and they ahve like 75 cameras....

I am so heartbroken

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

This is so sad, my heart breaks for her family and her FH's family.
What a living nightmare.


something similar happened in a building in nyc a couple months ago, a worker was seen entering the building, but was never seen leaving by any of the security tapes.
Turns out she was in the ducts of the building, someone had killed her.

Re: Cops: Body found, believed to be Annie Le

They identified a suspect

Annie Le