Suzanne Jovin Case - The Evidence

The Evidence

Many items and observations have been reported by the police and media as possible evidence over the thirteen plus years of the investigation, much of which has either been discredited, deemed hearsay or unreliable, or been explained. The most notable physical evidence appears to be: 1) DNA found in scrapings taken from under the fingernails of Jovin’s left hand 2) Jovin’s fingerprints and an unknown person’s partial palmprint found on a Fresca bottle in the bushes in front of where her body was found and 3) the tip of the knife used in the attack that was lodged in her skull.

The most notable observations appear to be 1) "a tan or brown van stopped in the roadway facing east, immediately adjacent to where Suzanne was found.”, 2) "a man in his 20s or 30s with an athletic build, well-groomed hair, dark pants, a loose-fitting greenish jacket, running like his life depended on it in the opposite direction from where Suzanne Jovin was killed" and 3) "A mysterious, nondescript 'someone,' whom Jovin mentioned in an e-mail she sent less than an hour before she was found stabbed" to whom she had lent a friend's GRE test study materials.

The only speculation about the murder weapon came on the March 1, 2000 broadcast of ABC's 20/20 television program. According to host John Miller's voiceover: "The medical examiner would later identify only one of the 17 stab wounds as fatal. He would also determine that the murder weapon was a four to five inch nonserrated, carbon steel knife, when he discovered the tip of the blade lodged in the left side of her skull." The New Haven police have never revealed whether any tests have ever been done to determine a precise make and model of the knife.

Though there have been no reports of anyone witnessing Jovin enter or exit any vehicle, it is generally assumed that Jovin had either forcibly or voluntarily entered one, as it was virtually impossible for her to have reached the intersection of Edgehill and East Rock Roads by foot in the short span of time that elapsed between when she was last seen alive and when she was found bleeding by witnesses nearly two miles away. The existence of the tan/brown van was not made public by the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) until March 27, 2001. Although members of the Yale faculty had reported the police were asking privately about the van at the inception of the investigation, no explanation has ever been given why it took more than two years to release the information to the public. And although the New Haven Register reported on November 8, 2001, that the NHPD had impounded a brown van as part of the Jovin investigation, no link has ever been confirmed.

The existence of the Fresca bottle came to light on April 1, 2001, by Hartford Courant reporter Les Gura The only store in the vicinity of campus that sold Fresca that was still open at the hour Jovin was last seen alive was Krauszer's market on York St. near Elm St. – precisely one block south of Jovin’s apartment. Although Krauszer's maintained a video recording of its customers for security purposes, the police never asked to view their tape and have never reported seeking assistance from store employees or customers about whether they had seen anything unusual that night. The foreign palmprint has yet to be identified and public calls for DNA evidence to be extracted from it and other potential sources have gone unheeded.

The first mention of the existence of the fingernail DNA was on October 26, 2001, following a solicitation by the New Haven police for colleagues, friends and acquaintances of Jovin to come forward and give DNA samples voluntarily No explanation has ever been given as to why it took nearly three years for the fingernail scrapings to be tested for DNA. On September 14, 2009, Jovin's parents wrote to Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell that "potential forensic investigations, made possible by significant advances in technology in the intervening decade, are not being carried out due to shortcomings in the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory." Rell's office admitted that the lab also had a backlog of 12,000 DNA samples that needed to be tested. The DNA results from material collected under a fingernail of Jovin's left hand remained unmatched until November 2009. It was determined at that time that the DNA matched that of a trace evidence technician in the Connecticut State Police Forensics Laboratory, and was the result of accidental evidence contamination at the lab.

At the end of June, 2008, the Jovin Task Force revealed that only days after the crime: "A female motorist told police at the time that she was driving in the area of Whitney Avenue and Huntington Street at about 10 p.m. when she saw a white male sprint past her and disappear into the church property." As for why this testimony was withheld from the public for nearly a decade: "Sources said the police at the time showed her a photo of Yale Professor James Van de Velde — Jovin's thesis adviser, whom police had publicly identified as a suspect — to determine if he was the man she saw. They also took her in an unmarked van to Van de Velde's office so she could look at him in person. She told them Van de Velde was not the man she saw running, and investigators didn't contact her again, sources said." Subsequently, the Jovin Task Force began hanging a sketch of this person around the neighborhood in which he was spotted.

On July 16, 2008, the Jovin Task Force provided further details of Jovin's final email, written in German to a female friend, about GRE test study materials Jovin would leave for her to pick up. "Jovin wrote that she would retrieve the books and leave them in the foyer of her apartment for the classmate to pick up, giving her classmate the code to her apartment in case Jovin was not in the building.". The materials were never returned, nor has anyone ever come forward as the borrower, leading many to speculate the borrower may have possibly been involved in her killing. Furthermore, Jovin's specific use of the word "someone" when referring to the borrower implies to many she did not know this borrower too well.