Thoughts and Prayers for Annie Le and Her Family

ABC’s Nightline did an overview on Annie Le’s homicide case earlier this week.

When I first heard of the Yale graduate student Annie Le disappearing a few days before her wedding, I assumed she just got cold feet and was most likely a “runaway bride.” But as the fears of her disappearance grew, investigators tragically discovery her body between the walls in the basement at the Yale lab where she was a graduate student – on the day that Annie was supposed to get married.

This fast moving case has also lead to a possible suspect (“person of interest”), Raymond Clark, a lab technician who had worked at the same lab, failed a polygraph test as well as was found to have had wounds on his chest, arms and back. The medical examiner released Annie’s cause of death to be strangulation; I wouldn’t be surprised if Clark is indeed found guilty.

There are a lot of murders in the United States that happen every day, so why has this garnered so much attention? There is the fact this murder was that of an Ivy League student. Annie was attractive, and was also about to get married. Add to this the grim findings that she was murdered in the place where she studied and worked.

I cannot even imagine what Annie’s fiance and parents and family must be feeling. At age 24, to be murdered just days before getting married just makes you wonder about why such horrible things happen in this world and how anybody could do such an act.

What really concerns me is that Annie could have been someone you or I would know – a friend, a friend’s sister, colleague’s wife. Annie grew up outside of Sacramento, California – not too far from the Bay Area. We all know an Annie. As an attractive and diminutive Asian American woman, Annie might be seen as an easy target. But apparently, based on Clark’s wounds, she fought back her attacker fiercely. My thoughts and prayers are with Annie, her fiance and her family; I don’t know how anybody gets over a tragedy like this.