Annie Le: The Yale Lab Murder

Ray Clark grew up in Branford, Conn., in a working-class neighborhood near the Eclin/Dana auto parts factory. His father is retired; his mother works at a Walmart.

Clark didn't shine as brightly as a student as did Annie Le, but he was in the honors program at Branford High School, where he spent his freshman and senior years. As a sophomore and junior, he attended Lyman Hall High School in nearby Wallingford. He joined Branford High's Interact Club (a high school version of the Rotary Club, focused on helping the community) and the Asian Awareness Club. He was a pitcher on the baseball team, and a football quarterback.

His high school girlfriend, Jessica Del Rocco, reporte that Clark was controlling and even violent. She says he tried to dictate who she could hang out with, what she could wear, and how she should act. She accused him of raping her, but never pressed charges. When she dumped him, the police had to get involved. She was escorted to her car after school each day until he started seeing someone else.

Six months after he graduated from high school, Clark's sister helped him get a job where she and her husband worked: Yale's Amistad Street Lab. He was lucky to have that personal connection. In the economically depressed area that surrounds the university, such Yale jobs are coveted. It was a tempting enough opportunity that Clark lied on the application, falsely claiming that he had held a job on a farm that gave him the required prior experience with working with animals.

He took his job as a washer seriously, and was promoted to lab technician. It was a good job, but a high-stress one. Lab techs are responsible for the animals (mice, in his case) and for enforcing the rules surrounding researchers' treatment of the animals. If anything goes wrong with the animals in Yale's labs, the lab techs get blamed and they can face disciplinary action.

Clark would get blamed for a murder.