Original subtitles

[l

[lig

[light

[light g

[light gen

[light gentl

[light gentle

[light gentle mu

[light gentle musi

[light gentle music]

[dramatic music]

academic landscape of Yale University

lies a fortress of scientific advancement

known as the Amistad lab,

where the greatest scientific minds

are dedicated to problem solving.

[suspenseful music]

- It was a very well-funded laboratory.

It had the best of everything.

- Everybody who's there,

they want to change the world.

[ominous music]

- But when a scholarly bride-to-be disappears

from the lab with no evidence of her leaving,

investigators face the ultimate closed-door mystery.

[suspenseful music]

- We see Annie Le enter the building,

and we don't see her again.

Where did she go?

- Someway, somehow she was still in this building.

- Someone called me and said they found Annie.

- I passed out from shock.

[intense suspenseful music]

- The reality set in that she had been brutally murdered.

- [Alan] Suddenly a missing person's case

becomes a desperate search for a killer.

- But just about everything from

that space requires keycard access.

[keypad beeping]

- You're a close-knit group in a small lab.

You are together day in and day out.

- Nobody trusted anybody.

- A mystery so vexing

can only lead to one solution.

Somewhere inside these walls

[intense dramatic music]

a murderer is hiding in plain sight.

[dramatic theme music]

[intense foreboding music]

[siren wailing in distance]

- Late on the night of Tuesday, September 8th,

a student at Yale University

calls the Yale Police Department

to report her roommate missing.

[dramatic music]

Her roommate is Annie Le.

She's a 24-year-old PhD student in pharmacology.

[quiet dramatic music]

- The roommate hadn't heard from her all day.

They texted normally multiple times a day,

and so she was concerned that something had happened.

[dramatic music continues]

- [Det. Valentin] What adds an extra layer of mystery

to all of this is that she's supposed to

be married that very weekend.

The fact that this is out of character for her

and this would not be how she would conduct herself

in the days leading up to her wedding,

this gave it some more urgency

than it otherwise would've had.

who is 80 miles away.

- [Det. Valentin] Jonathan is at Columbia University

in New York City.

They ask him whether or not he's heard from her,

and Jonathan tells the police that he's been

at Columbia University all day

and that he had a class that day.

He says that because he and Annie

both have very busy schedules,

it wasn't unusual for them not to talk much,

if at all, during the day.

- [Alan] However, Jonathan says that Annie was supposed

to call him at 7:00 p.m. that day but never did.

And when her roommate reached out

with the news she never came home,

he encouraged her to call campus police.

[intense dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] He says he's very worried,

and that he's going to travel up to New Haven the next day.

The initial impression of Jonathan

is that he is a worried fiancé,

and that it's not throwing up red flags,

but we can't rule him out as a suspect just yet.

[suspenseful music]

- [Alan] Investigators plan to question Jonathan further

when he arrives.

In the meantime, campus police open

a missing person's investigation

and get a detailed description of Annie from her roommate.

- [Det. Valentin] When campus police talk to the roommate,

she tells them that Annie left that morning

wearing a bright green top and a brown skirt,

and then the police were told that Annie

had a very predictable routine.

She would go to her office,

which was part of the campus.

She would go to her laboratory,

which is about a half mile away

on the outskirts of New Haven,

and then she would return home.

[suspenseful music]

So the first place to go is her office.

[dramatic music]

So as officers look around,

they don't see any signs of some sort of struggle.

There's no drawers open.

There's no chairs that are overturned.

You know, there's nothing to suggest

that something happened inside the room.

[dramatic music continues]

- [Alan] But what campus police do find

in Annie's office raises further questions.

- [Det. Valentin] They find her wallet, credit cards,

and her cellphone.

So where could she have gone

where none of those things are needed?

[suspenseful music]

- [David] Obviously it shows she wasn't

planning to go anywhere long term.

So one of the things that the police do in these

kinds of cases is immediately call the person's parents.

Annie's parents live in California.

Annie's parents say that

she was excited to get married.

That's all she was talking about.

Nothing that had indicated that she was going to takeoff.

A daug

is a parent's worst nightmare.

[intense dramatic music]

- [Alan] With urgency mounting,

Yale Police call in the New Haven Police Department

and the FBI for reinforcement.

[dramatic music continues]

- Yale PD enlisted the help of the FBI.

That's when my team was asked to assist.

Just from all the initial interviews,

it raised to the level of, like,

"Let's call in New Haven Police,

A, so that we have more personnel to work,

but B, so that in case it is a homicide,

they're here from ground level."

[suspenseful music]

- [Alan] Meanwhile, they work through the night

to learn everything they can about a woman,

who, they increasingly suspect,

is in serious danger.

[dramatic bass music]

[gentle music]

and she was a fireball.

She was naturally curious.

She graduated valedictorian from high school

and was determined to really pursue her interest in STEM.

Annie and I met at the undergraduate

scholorshop program at the National Institutes of Health,

and we became fast friends.

She's 12 years my junior,

and she looked up to me as her big sister,

so I had some important shoes to fill.

- [Alan] In 2007, Annie was accepted into Yale's

competitive pharmacology graduate program.

By her second year,

Annie had secured a position on a multimillion-dollar

groundbreaking experiment at Yale's prestigious Amistad lab.

[dramatic instrumental music]

but it was a laboratory at Yale University,

so it had the best of everything.

- [Jennifer] Annie was testing lifesaving medicines

utilizing mice.

It's a tight-knit community.

Everybody who's there,

they want to change the world.

You're a close-knit group.

People look after one another.

[light dramatic music]

- [Alan] And now,

one member of this tight-knit group is missing,

and campus police working through the night

pour over Annie's cell phone and email records

for a clue to where she might have gone.

- [Det. Valentin] Police go through all of Annie's

text messages, look at all of Annie's emails,

to see is there an unknown relationship

that she's engaged in.

[eerie dramatic music]

And they don't find anything.

And, in fact, the only message of any consequence

is the last message that she sends.

[dramatic music]

She tells all of her coworkers at the lab

because she's leaving for two weeks to get married.

- [Alan] But something else about

that email catches their attention.

The IP information indicates

that it was sent from a computer at the lab.

- [Det. Valentin] Annie sends her last email

from her lab computer

a little after 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning.

[light dramatic music]

So that in and of itself says that

she was at the lab Tuesday morning.

[keypad beeping]

So police need to go to the lab.

- [Alan] Investigators beeline to her lab

at the Amistad building half a mile away

and descend to the floor where

animal experiments are conducted.

- [Det. Valentin] We go to her lab and do a quick search.

[light dramatic music]

Check her workstation.

There's no note.

There's really nothing of any evidentiary value.

- [Alan] However, the sheer magnitude

of the lab security doesn't go unnoticed.

- Just about everything from that space

requires keycard access.

Where all the animals were kept required keycard access.

Even the janitor's closet required keycard access.

[keypad beeping]

[light dramatic music]

investigators work with building security

to get a log of the last time

that Annie swiped into her lab room,

and the timing provides a critical clue.

- [Det. Valentin] We find out that Annie

swipes into her lab at 10:11 that morning.

[suspenseful music]

So police quickly began

looking at the surveillance footage,

and sure enough, we see Annie Le

enter the building shortly after 10:00 a.m.

Once she's in the lab,

you can't really see where she's going,

but we know what Annie was wearing when she walked in.

It's thankfully distinctive.

It's a very bright green top.

So can we see her leaving?

- [Alan] Investigators hold their breath

as they watch through the security footage,

and at around the 1:00 p.m. timestamp,

they notice something unusual.

[intense suspenseful music]

- [Det. Valentin] All of a sudden everybody leaves.

[fire alarm beeping]

A alarm goes off

and forces everybody to leave the building.

- [Agent Jacobson] Being officers

and thinking in an investigative mind,

this is some kind of diversion

where somebody's doing something,

had to pull the fire alarm

to get people out of the building.

- [Det. Valentin] As we sit there and we watch

everybody leave,

we know what Annie was wearing when she walked in,

but we don't see her.

[striking dramatic music]

And it's really confusing,

because where did she go?

[alarm continues beeping]

She's still in the building.

[suspenseful music]

- [Alan] Coming up.

- [Agent Jacobson] What's going on during that fire alarm

that we're not seeing.

- [Det. Valentin] It becomes obvious

that the laboratory is a crime scene.

- [Agent Jacobson] This is the first sign of a violent attack.

[suspenseful music intensifies]

[t

[ten

[tense

[tense d

[tense dra

[tense drama

[tense dramati

[tense dramatic

[tense dramatic mu

[tense dramatic musi

[tense dramatic music]

- [Alan] Yale University grad student Annie Le has disappeared

after entering a highly secured lab building on campus

just days before her wedding.

Nearly 24 hours after she was last seen

on video surveillance entering her lab

and never seen exiting,

it's a mystery that has investigators

from three different agencies confounded.

[striking dramatic music]

[siren wailing in distance]

- [Agent Jacobson] Annie sent an email around 10 o'clock,

and then the fire alarm went off around 1:00,

and there was no sign of her at the fire alarm.

So it was clear that something had happened

between that 10 o'clock and the 1:00 o'clock time.

- [Alan] Is there a connection between the alarm

and Annie's disappearance?

Investigators find the answer for what set it off.

[dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] Somebody in the laboratory accidentally

opened up a large steam container

used to sterilize equipment

[fire alarm beeping]

and sets off the alarm,

and as a result everybody has to evacuate.

[alarm continues beeping]

- [Agent Jacobson] Those two researchers stood by the machine

and didn't exit the building,

also bringing attention to them.

Were they involved?

Were they not involved?

[intense mysterious music]

- [Alan] After thoroughly interrogating the researchers

and examining the equipment,

investigators are able to verify the accident.

But after clearing Annie's colleagues,

they're left back at square one.

- [Det. Valentin] What had us all stumped

is we have this young woman, Annie Le,

who goes into this secure building and she disappears.

and we really started to believe the worst.

[dramatic instrumental music]

- [Alan] Hoping for answers,

investigators turn to Annie's distraught fiancé Jonathan,

who has just made the trip to New Haven from New York.

It's unlikely Jonathan could have

entered the lab yesterday unnoticed,

but to leave no stone unturned,

the FBI asks him to take a polygraph,

which he passes.

- [Agent Jacobson] There was no video of him

entering or exiting the lab.

Also, we were able to confirm

that he was out of town at that time,

and he was cleared from the investigation.

[dramatic bass music]

[light gentle music]

- [Jennifer] I know Annie, and she was dedicated to John.

She loved him so much,

and they had such a great relationship.

They were the sweetest couple,

sweetest couple I had seen.

So to me the

[suspenseful music]

- [Det. Valentin] So at this point we still don't know

whether something's happened to her

or whether she's simply missing.

- [Alan] Now they face the exhaustive process

of speaking with well over 100 employees and students

who entered the lab that day.

Without any evidence that Annie left the building,

they're confident that someone

in the lab has vital information.

- [Agent Jacobson] There was a

"When's the last time you saw Annie?"

"What was your relationship with her?"

[intense dramatic music]

- It was a Wednesday.

As I enter the lab,

I was greeted in my storage area

by an officer and a detective.

They showed me her picture,

and right then and there the hair stood up.

And I'm like, "Oh my, god, I know her.

Oh, my god, I remember her."

[light dramatic music]

She would blow by and, "Hey, hello."

She made me feel warm and welcome.

That's when I was like what could have happened?

Her wedding is coming up.

We got to find her. We got to find her.

[intense suspenseful music]

- [Det. Valentin] While conducting interviews,

we speak to another PhD researcher named Rachel.

[ominous dramatic music]

on a hygienic wipe container

that's on a lab cart in Annie Le's lab.

[ominous music continues]

- [Alan] Detectives are finally finding

a clue to suggest a crime has taken place

and quickly use an alternate light source

to look for more trace evidence.

[ominous music continues]

- [Det. Valentin] I found something that was

fluorescent on the wall,

and it tested positive with acid phosphatase.

So it was potentially seminal fluid.

She's still missing,

but the picture of what happened

is starting to become a little bit clearer.

- [Alan] Despite an emerging theory,

investigators can't make any assumptions yet.

So agents test the blood-spattered box

against items found in Annie's home.

- [Det. Valentin] Because of the access that we had to the lab

and the fact that we didn't have to wait

for any testing to be performed,

blood samples that were found

in the lab were tested immediately,

[suspenseful music]

and they turned out to be Annie's blood.

[intense dramatic music]

- [Agent Jacobson] This is the first sign of a violent attack,

we're starting to realize that

there's more to be told from inside the lab.

- [Det. Valentin] The more time that passes

and nobody hears from Annie,

and there is no activity on any credit cards or on a phone

the more obvious it becomes

[intense suspenseful music]

that the laboratory is a crime scene.

[striking dramatic music]

- [Alan] Despite finding the blood,

police are unable to shut down the lab

and declare it a crime scene

due to the ongoing experiments.

- [Det. Valentin] There's a very delicate balance

that we are trying to strike between

conducting an unfettered investigation

and being mindful of the research projects.

[dramatic music]

[birds squawking]

- [Melissa] Whenever I entered 10 Amistad,

the feeling was uneasy.

[uneasy dramatic music]

The building is very busy.

Laboratory people, scientists,

students that work in the lab,

and then us custodians,

[cart squeaking]

they looked at us as suspects,

and we looked at them as suspects.

[intense dramatic music]

It was nerve-racking.

Nobody trusted anybody.

[striking dramatic music]

- [Alan] Following the lead where the blood was found,

detectives narrowed their focus to determine

who else had access to Annie's lab room

on the day of her disappearance.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] Annie swipes into her lab

at 10:11 that morning.

We find out that after Annie swipes in,

there are four more people who swipe their cards

and gain access to that same laboratory.

[ominous music]

[keypad beeping]

So one of the people who swipes into Annie's lab was Rachel,

the same person who actually noticed

the bloodstains on the box.

Another person that goes into Annie's lab

after she does is Tim.

[keypad beeping]

He's a Yale postdoc.

Then one of the animal care technicians named Ray Clark.

[keypad beeping]

- [Agnet Jacobson] So there were four people that went

in the same area that Annie had gone,

three that were regular lab fellow employees.

- [Alan] The fourth person who swipes

is revealed to be an HVAC contractor named Larry Godfrey.

[intense foreboding music]

- [Det. Valentin] Larry Godfrey has access to the entire floor,

every lab, every passageway, every duct.

That raises a red flag.

[suspenseful music]

- [Alan] As investigators set out to bring Larry Godfrey

in for an interview,

they encounter a problem.

[intense dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] But when they call Larry,

they can't get him on the phone,

and when they try to find out where he lives,

they don't have a good address for him.

- [Alan] Subsequent interviews with other

workers at the lab raise further concerns.

[suspenseful orchestral music]

- [Det. Valentin] Several of the female researchers

in the laboratory had reported that

he had generally made them feel uncomfortable.

- [Dave] Larry had been working there for several months

and had access to all the labs and all the rooms.

[suspenseful music continues]

[keypad beeping]

- [Det. Valentin] He swiped into the lab after Annie did.

And this is the person that several people

in the labs said made them feel uncomfortable.

- [Agent Jacobson] He is at the top of the suspect list,

and now everything becomes about

tracking down Larry Godfrey.

[suspenseful music crescendos]

[i

[int

[inten

[intense

[intense d

[intense dra

[intense drama

[intense dramati

[intense dramatic

[intense dramatic mu

[intense dramatic musi

[intense dramatic music]

- [Alan] Day two of the search for Yale grad student

Annie Le yields nefarious clues inside her lab.

As they pore over the IDs of four people

who swiped into the room Annie last entered,

investigators find one name pops.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] We're searching for

the HVAC technician and contractor working on the floor,

Larry Godfrey,

but we can't get him on the phone.

He doesn't have a stable address.

He swiped into the lab after Annie did.

[keypad beeping]

- [Alan] While investigators worked

to track down the transient contractor,

they turn back to the other people

who swiped into Annie's room that day.

[striking dramatic music]

- [David] There's only four other people

that swiped into the lab that day.

Two of them were researchers

who you would've anticipated

would have been in the lab doing their work.

- [Det. Valentin] We spoke to Rachel.

We spoke to Tim.

Neither of them had seen Annie

when they went into that room that afternoon.

- [Alan] Neith

arrived at the lab that day until after 1:30,

well after the building evacuation.

- If they're telling us the truth,

the fact that they didn't see her

when they went into that room is very useful,

because it begins to give us a window of time

for what might have happened.

[eerie dramatic music]

is one of the animal care technicians named Ray Clark.

[keypad beeping]

- [Agent Jacobson] Ray worked at the lab.

He was an animal tech,

and he would do things like keep the animals alive,

feed them, clean the cages, remove any dead animals.

- [Det. Valentin] So we interviewed him,

and he says he leaves for lunch at about 12:45,

and he says that he saw Annie leave

about 15 minutes before that.

- [Alan] If Ray's statement is accurate,

Annie left the building well before

the fire alarm was tripped at 1:00 p.m.

[alarm beeping]

- [Det. Valentin] If she left,

- [Alan] When they revisit the footage,

they don't see Ray leave for lunch at 12:45 as he claimed.

However, they do find him evacuating

at 1:00 p.m. with the others.

- [Det. Valentin] So in this situation,

if what we are being told is not true,

we have to wonder why.

Is it an innocent mistake,

or is there something

more sinister at play here?

[intense sinister music]

So what becomes really interesting is

what Ray Clark is doing

at the time everybody leaves the building.

[eerie dramatic music]

Just about everybody who leaves the Amistad building

because of the alarm is sitting outside

enjoying the few minutes of rest, I suppose.

Ray Clark can be seen

sitting with his head in his hands,

on his shoulders.

[suspenseful music]

- [Alan] Now detectives are left wondering:

Is Ray merely having a bad day,

or could he have something to do with Annie's disappearance?

They take note of his demeanor as well as the discrepancy

in his statements, then rush to pinpoint the movements

of their other person of interest, Larry Godfrey.

- [Agent Jacobson] Larry Godfrey and Ray

were kind of sticking out,

but more Larry.

There was some talk about Larry being a little creepy.

Larry stuck out as a suspect.

[light dramatic music]

that maybe Annie was snuck out of the lab at some point,

and we just missed it on the footage.

- [Alan] At 11:33 a.m.

they spot Larry entering the building,

and at 2:36 p.m. he exits.

- [Det. Valentin] Is Larry carrying a suitcase?

Is he pushing a cart?

What is he doing?

- [Det. Valentin] And specifically

when we saw Larry leave,

[eerie suspenseful music]

we realized he couldn't have snuck her out.

- [Alan] It appears that neither Larry nor Ray

could have removed Annie from the building,

but that does not clear them of any wrongdoing inside.

And of their top two persons of interest,

only one of them seems to be evading police.

- [Det. Valentin] Larry is somewhat transient.

And based on the contracting work that he does,

he moves around quite a bit.

So him having this less-than-stable home address

does raise a red flag.

[intense dramatic music]

- [Alan] Finally,

on Wednesday evening, they track him down.

- [Det. Valentin

and he's interviewed.

He provides consent for his room to be searched,

for his van to be searched.

[suspenseful music]

We looked through his cleaning equipment and supplies.

[suspenseful music intensifies]

Nothing suspicious.

At the conclusion of all of that,

the police just asked Larry to stay around

just in case we'd like to talk to him again,

and he also voluntarily supplies a DNA sample.

[light dramatic music]

- [Alan] Detectives can't write Larry off completely,

but they have to move on to other leads.

[gentle dramatic music]

By the next morning,

Annie has been missing for 48 hours,

and her disappearance is getting a lot of attention

throughout the Yale community and beyond.

- [Jennifer] We just wanted to find her.

We wanted to get to the bottom of what was happening,

but we knew this is something probably more sinister.

- [Alan] Investigators take advantage of the media attention

by making a direct appeal to the public.

- [David] They released the photo of her

walking into the building,

and then they also put that on billboards on

the major highways coming in and out of New Haven.

[somber dramatic music]

- [Melissa] Everybody was holding vigils.

Everybody felt it.

Even if you didn't know her,

it was a sad situation.

[dramatic instrumental music]

- [David] Well, now we're three full days

since she's been missing.

Annie's blood was found in the lab.

[striking dramatic music]

They're now focused on the fact that

whatever happened to her happened to her in the lab.

[dramatic instrumental music]

- [Det. Valentin] We're looking through

all the other floors of the building

again and again for any signs of Annie,

and there isn't anything.

- [Alan] That's when Yale custodian

Mellisa Dunkley notices

some things are amiss inside a basement storage closet.

- [Melissa] So G22, our storage unit,

is only used by us custodians.

HVAC sometimes stored machines in it.

[tense dramatic music]

When I went to go get my supplies,

I just noticed the drain was open.

So I goes down to close it,

and I could smell the bleach coming up from the drain.

[dramatic music continues]

We're not allowed to use bleach.

[tense suspenseful music]

At the time, we had just went green,

so if somebody was to use bleach,

like, you can be fired.

- [Alan] The taboo of using bleach

is widely known among employees

and contractors alike.

Mellisa immediately alerts detectives.

[tense dramatic music]

I use this reagent,

and when I use it around the drain,

I get the characteristic color change,

which lets me know that there's blood in this area.

[striking dramatic music]

Something bad happened here.

Because we had bloodstains found earlier in her lab,

and now we're in a different room entirely,

and we're finding more bloodstains.

- [Alan] And two people who entered Annie's lab

also have access to the storage closet:

animal tech Ray Clark

and HVAC contractor Larry Godfrey.

- [Det. Valentin] Sure does look like

the attempt to cover something up.

- [Agent Jacobson] To have been able to cover it up,

the perpetrator had to be from within the lab.

[striking suspenseful music]

[d

[dra

[drama

[dramati

[dramatic

[dramatic mu

[dramatic musi

[dramatic music]

- [Alan] It's been three days since anyone has seen

24-year-old Yale grad student Annie Le,

but detectives have just made a chilling discovery,

another room with more blood.

[ominous music]

- [Det. Valentin] It sure does look like

the attempt to cover something up, but what?

[suspenseful music]

- [Melissa] It was weird because evidence is showing up,

but she's not.

How can somebody disappear without leaving

[striking suspenseful music]

and maybe the killer is still here.

[suspenseful music intensifying]

- [Alan] Detectives continue following

the breadcrumbs of the keycard swipes.

- [Det. Valentin] One person who accessed that storage closet

was Ray Clark, one of the animal care technicians.

- [Agent Jacobson] The day of her disappearance,

he's in that storage room 11 times.

- [Det. Valentin] Now, is that unusual?

Well, we don't know yet.

Now his responsibility is the care

and maintenance of the animals.

So what's his normal usage

of his keycard to get into this room.

In the 10 days prior to Annie going missing,

he'd only used his keycard three times to enter that room,

so that really makes him significant to us.

[suspenseful instrumental music]

- [Alan] At the lab, Ray is known for being

almost obsessive about cleanliness,

but for the last five years that has made him

a dependable employee.

- Clark certainly did not have a criminal record,

had a job at Yale for five years.

- [Agent Jacobson] So along with Ray being the animal tech,

his fiancée also worked there.

If Annie was snatched due to some

kind of misconstrued love interest,

it didn't seem like Ray fit that profile.

[intense dramatic music]

- [Melissa] He stayed to his self a lot.

He was a lab tech,

so he didn't have a office.

So he was basically like a custodian like me.

- [Alan] Agents decide to sit down with Ray's fiancée,

a fellow staff member.

She says Ray has never been violent,

and that there must be an explanation

for his unusual activity.

[dramatic instrumental music]

On Friday evening, they sit down with Ray

to ask more questions.

- [Agent Jacobson] Ray states

that he didn't have a relationship

with Annie outside of the lab.

He didn't find any reason

why anybody would want to hurt Annie.

- [Alan] As for his multiple visits to the supply closet

the day of Annie's disappearance,

Ray shrugs it off.

- [David] He basically says,

"I went in there a lot that day

because I was getting supplies,

and I'm just one of many technicians

that has to go in that room."

Ray Clark legitimately

did have access to the storage room,

but 11 times seemed a little bit of a stretch.

- [Alan] Ray's movements may be unusual,

but investigators need more physical evidence

before they can implicate him

for Annie's disappearance.

[dramatic instrumental music]

- [Agent Jacobson] We began to follow him around.

He comes off as pretty normal,

going home, going to the park to play baseball.

He did go out with his fiancée at one point,

but it definitely makes you think like,

"Ah, are we on the right person?"

[dramatic music]

investigators work round the clock.

With each hour that passes,

the chance that Annie is found alive is dwindling.

- [Det. Valentin] We believe something happens to her

in the lab, but where is she now?

We still don't have any answers to those questions,

and we don't know where her body is.

We don't even know if she's dead.

[suspenseful music]

- [Alan] Then at around midnight

on Sunday, September the 13th,

an officer alerts detectives to a foul smell.

- [Det. Valentin] The Yale police officer noticed that

there's an odor coming from the men's room.

[dramatic music]

There was no doubt in my mind what it was.

It's the odor of human decomposition,

[intense dramatic music]

but we can't really figure out where it was coming from.

[police dog barking]

We have one of our cadaver dogs

come to the scene and search the room.

[suspenseful music]

[police dog barking]

- [Agent Jacobson] A dog does go over and sit next to a toilet,

and the dog won't move.

[intense ominous music]

And there's a small metal door

in the wall covering up a hole.

- [Det. Valentin] An access panel behind the toilet.

The door was about one foot square.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Alan] Investigators carefully unscrew

and open the wall panel.

[intense suspenseful music]

- [Det. Valentin] Once we open the door, the odor was there,

[suspenseful music continues]

and I look inside the hole,

[striking dramatic music]

and I see a foot.

[striking music continues]

We found her.

[l

[lig

[light

[light d

[light dra

[light drama

[light dramati

[light dramatic

[light dramatic mu

[light dramatic musi

[light dramatic music]

- [Alan] The week-long search for Annie Le

in Yale's Amistad lab is now over

with a shocking discovery.

Now investigators shift their focus

on carefully removing her body from the wall.

[light dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] This is the first time any of us

have ever seen a body hidden in the wall,

and there's no protocol for this.

In fact, our medical examiner

was present on scene with us,

which is extraordinarily rare.

He was watching us.

As I am certain it was unprecedented for him

and his office as well to do this kind of recovery.

We complete this arduous process

of carefully disassembling the wall,

because we want to be careful not to create too much dust,

because that'll obviously contaminate our scene.

We document her body position.

We took swabs of DNA from the bathroom,

and we carefully remove her.

And the medical examiner takes her back to his office

so that they can perform the typical autopsy the next day.

[striking dramatic music]

- [Alan] Investigators send off the swabs

from inside the mechanical chase for processing.

Meanwhile, Annie's loved ones

must accept the horrifying reality.

[somber dramatic music]

- [David] As the news trickled out,

any hope that she was gonna turn up was obviously now gone,

and the reality set in that she had been brutally murdered.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Melissa] Someone called me and said, "They found Annie,"

and I said, "Where?"

They said, "In the wall."

[rain splashes softly] [somber dramatic music]

I just started crying.

She was there the whole time.

- [Jennifer] My phone rings.

It's Annie's younger brother on the other line,

and he asks me if I am in a place

where he can give me some news,

and he shares the news with me that Annie had been found,

the manner of which her body was found

and where it was found.

It was quite disturbing and painful.

[somber dramatic music]

She's supposed to be getting married on this day,

and yet it turns out to be the day that they find her.

- [Meliisa] You find a very smart, prestigious

young lady in a wall on her wedding day,

that touched home.

- [David] Everybody realizes it's someone that

has some affiliation with the school.

This is not some random crime.

[dramatic instrumental music]

- [Alan] The entire Yale lab community is reeling

as the Connecticut State Medical Examiner's office

performs Annie's autopsy.

- [David] The medical examiner ruled it a homicide,

and said that she had, in effect,

been badly beaten and asphyxiated.

It was clearly a brutal murder.

It took some effort to move her body.

[dramatic music]

- [Alan] Most importantly, they now have

a DNA sample they can connect to Annie's murderer.

They have already swabbed contractor Larry Godfrey,

but they still need DNA from the man rising to the top

of their short suspect list,

Ray Clark.

[intense dramatic music]

- [Agent Jacobson] We are still watching him.

So the next step was a search warrant

was applied for his residence and for his DNA.

As we're watching him, the detectives roll up.

[suspenseful music]

- [David] The police get a warrant and search his apartment

and also get a DNA sample.

[suspenseful music continues]

- [Alan] A DNA match is the one piece of evidence

that could prove Ray's guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

On September the 17th they get an answer.

- [Agent Jacobson] The DNA found on her body

[striking suspenseful music]

was Ray Clark's DNA.

- [Alan] The DNA match is enough to obtain an arrest warrant.

[dramatic music]

Investigative teams coordinate their efforts

with the surveillance team

that's already been following Ray Clark.

Within a matter of hours of the DNA results,

he's on the move.

- [Agent Jacobson] I recall following him,

and he gets in the car pretty hastily

with his fiancée and leaves the area.

We're thinking maybe he's gonna take off.

[intense dramatic music]

[s

[sus

[suspe

[suspens

[suspensef

[suspenseful

[suspenseful o

[suspenseful orc

[suspenseful orche

[suspenseful orchest

[suspenseful orchestra

[suspenseful orchestral

[suspenseful orchestral mu

[suspenseful orchestral musi

[suspenseful orchestral music]

- [Alan] Just over a week after the murder

of Yale researcher Annie Le,

investigators are ready to make an arrest.

Twenty-four-year-old animal tech Ray Clark,

who's on the run with his fiancée.

[suspenseful music]

- [Agent Jacobson] He actually goes to a hotel,

and he stays there.

Ray anticipated we were coming, how could he not.

So there's a lot of things going through your head.

As you're watching someone like this

who's potentially a murderer,

that's a suicidal situation, or suicide by cop,

or, "Hey, I'm gonna take out my fiancée first

before the police come to get me."

- [Alan] Luckily for police,

after much anticipation,

they arrest him without incident.

- It was a lot of media attention.

They walked in, handcuffed him,

brought him out,

[intense dramatic music]

put him in the car.

[gentle dramatic music]

- [Jennifer] It was really quite hard to fathom

that somebody in the lab, a close-knit group,

would do something so horrific.

- I would never in a million years think it was Ray.

I still didn't think of him as a murderer.

- [Alan] Despite the damning evidence against him,

at his arraignment Ray firmly maintains his innocence.

Looking back on the forensic evidence,

prosecutors piece together a theory

as to what took place that morning.

[tense sinister music]

- - [Det. Valentin] We have to wonder,

does the existence of that seminal fluid

have anything to do with what happened?

Is this attack part of a sexual assault?

Is it coincidental?

I mean, we just don't know at this point.

[dramatic instrumental music]

- [David] They were looking at Annie's emails,

texts, phone records,

trying to figure out if there were any connections to Clark,

and they found he had at some point

asked her to get a drink after work.

- Annie shared with me that there was a lab tech

who asked if she was dating anyone

and if she would ever be interested

in getting a drink with him.

And in true Annie fashion, she was like,

"You know, I'm happily engaged."

[gentle dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] I think her email announcing that

Friday was her last day before her wedding

might've been a precipitating factor here.

[intense sinister music]

Perhaps Ray went to talk to her in her lab,

and I think that either she went to leave

or she asked him to leave,

and I think a situation got out of hand.

[intense suspenseful music]

- [Alan] Whether or not it was sexual in nature,

the evidence shows Annie was badly beaten by Ray

and then moved into the storage room.

As a nearly five-year employee of the lab,

he would know exactly where to go.

Then before he can find a better place to hide her body,

the fire alarm goes off.

[dramatic music]

[alarm ringing]

[beeping continues]

and so that's what's captured

on the footage that afternoon.

- We thought he had set the alarm off to move the body,

but that wasn't the case.

He was obviously in the middle of something,

hands in his head, and was distraught.

- [Alan] After the fire alarm,

Ray returns to the storage room

and moves Annie once again.

[tense dramatic music]

- [Det. Valentin] What I didn't see much of

in the physical evidence was premeditation.

What we see is panic, confusion,

somebody frantic to cover up.

[striking dramatic music]

- [Alan] With evidence stacked against him,

18 months later Ray pleads guilty to murder.

As part of the plea negotiations,

prosecutors add the charge of attempted sexual assault

based on the seminal DNA evidence found on the walls

of Annie's lab.

Although he makes a statement at the plea arraignment,

nothing he can say will ever bring closure to Annie's

family, friends, or fellow lab workers.

- [Det. Valentin] He said he was sorry for his actions,

but what he never did was explain why.

- [David] To have her life cut short like that,

for really no reason,

I think is the real tragedy here.

It just was such a sad loss of a brilliant mind.

- [Melissa] I just feel for her family.

I feel for her fiancée.

It was sad.

It was wrong.

[light gentle music]

- [Jennifer] Her love for John

was so real.

She was really excited.

She was looking forward to the wedding.

It was gonna be a big, beautiful day,

and it was stolen from her.

It was stolen from them.

[light gentle music]

- [Alan] In the years since Annie's murder,

her fellow researchers at Yale's prestigious lab

have gone on to change the world

through scientific breakthroughs.

Yet they remain haunted by the chilling reminder

that sometimes among your most trusted colleagues,

there could bea killer in plain sight.

[ominous music]