#357: Yale Student Found Inside The Wall of Multi Million Dollar Research Lab on Campus
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It's almost like a game that the lab techs at animal research centers have to play. It's like a sad, sick game of death, that is. If there's a green tag, the animal must die. A lab tech at one of the research centers is walking down the row of shelves, scanning the lined up cages of mice that are used for research experiments. And if they see a neon green tag, they must pull the cage from the shelf, pull the cage out of the shelf,

place it on one of those sterile, cold steel carts, start rolling it down the silent hallway into a separate room, the death room. I mean, that's not what it's called, but sometimes it feels like the death room. The whole research lab has a certain smell to it the minute that you walk in. But this room specifically, it smells stronger.

And maybe the mice can sense it, they can smell it, because once that cage enters that room and you open the door to grab the little mouse, it starts trying to run. It starts trying to hide. You have to grab the long thin tail, place the mouse into a clear plastic tube, a chamber, and a few buttons. That's it. A few buttons is enough for the chamber to fill up with this anesthetic and you kill the mice.

Some lab techs say the first mouse is the hardest, then it slowly gets easier, but it's never easy. Like watching the little mouse, the chest go up and down slower and slower until it finally stops and it takes its last breath. Like that's never going to be easy. And then the smell, it smells like decomposition, even though the mouse just passed. It's mixed with something sickly musky. It smells like an anesthetic. It just sticks to you. It's a scent that you're never going to forget.

Some lab techs, they say, I absolutely hate it. The minute that I can get a job outside of this research lab, I'm getting a new job. They feel this strong emotional toll of having to say goodbye to so many mice and to see them pass away.

Others, they try to reason with themselves. Look, whether you and I agree, they try to reason. At least the mouse helped the research of something. I mean, I've seen some of the patients that have been cured by a lot of the medicine that comes out of these research studies. So the mouse was doing something good. Others, they just try to completely disassociate. They try to see it as just another experiment in a lab that just needs to get done. That's it. It's a research paper. No emotions.

At the Yale University Animal Research Center, a lab tech walks in excited for their new experiment. They even brought their own supplies from home. That's how excited they were. Fishing wire, a fishing hook, bubble gum. The lab tech walks past this row of just caged mice and goes straight for the steel door, unlatches it, opens it up, and the smell of decomposition just hits them.

The objective of the experiment is to fish out the green pen at the bottom of the cubby. Their favorite green pen had dropped to the bottom of this makeshift cage. I mean, there's no way that they're just going to stick their arm in there and grab it and feel around for it. So that's why they brought the fishing wire. That's why they brought the bubble gum. They have to get around everything inside of this makeshift cage to get the green pen.

They just had to get around the dead Yale student's body first. The brilliant student who had been essayed, murdered inside the research lab and stuffed into the wall.

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This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators. We would also like to thank our listeners for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com. Now, before we get into today's case, a few brief disclaimers.

There are brief mentions of SA as well as animal testing and euthanasia. In regards to animal testing, I am doing my best to educate myself on the topic when it relates specifically to the testing on animals for the development of medicine and treating diseases. I do think that it's a very complex discussion that requires a lot of time and nuance to be able to fully grasp. And I think that there's a lot of emotions and testimonies from both opposing sides that

make it very difficult to really have a strong stance as of right now. So I think that this is beyond my scope of expertise. I will try my best to remain neutral. I would also like to mention any and all theories in today's video are popular medicine theories. They are not my own. Some statements and quotes have been condensed for time and clarity. And the last disclaimer, perhaps the most important, is we have changed the names or omitted full names of some of the people involved as they've made it very clear that they do not want to be in the public eye.

So with that being said, let's get started. 4,000.

That's a lot of mice. If this were any other building, you would call it an infestation. On 10 Amistad Street in Connecticut, this is the norm. 4,000 mice is the norm. Like on a random street in Connecticut, there's this random red brick building. It looks beyond plain. It looks like the world's most boring building. It doesn't even look remotely special. But inside it houses 4,000 mice.

It's five stories tall above ground and 120,000 square feet. But you would never really know that just by looking at it, walking past it, that there are millions, if not potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of life-changing, world-altering research being funded and carried out inside those walls. Confidential research being done inside for different powerful organizations around the world. That's all done inside that building.

It houses three department programs, Yale Stem Cell Center, Interdepartmental Program in Vascular Biology and Therapeutics, Human and Translational Immunology Program, a cutting edge research facility. That's what they call it. And it's so cutting edge, in fact, that even the scent of the building is going to cut straight into your nostrils. It's going to go straight down into your throat like a burning sensation.

When the FBI agents and the lead detectives on this case walk into the Yale Research Center, they're almost taken aback by the smell. It's this overpowering, sterile smell, like a hospital where you know it's sterile, but you have no doubt that it has to be like it's clean. But that sterile scent is almost masking everything you know that's in there that's not sterile. Feces, vomit, fluids, blood, bodily things.

It's nauseating. Virus, disease. Yes. And if you get a whiff for a little bit longer, you get this musky, stinging scent. It's the unmistakable, sour, unpleasant scent of animal urine. That ammonia...

That's because the YARC building, Yale Animal Research Center, it houses over 4,000 mice, hamsters, gerbils, cats, dogs, fish, and pigs. In most of the research rooms, there are just rows and rows of steel shelves all filled with little cages filled with little mice that all have a number attached to them and something crazy going on in their bodies. And the FBI agents, they didn't know it until they walked in. But did you know mice smell like stale crackers?

They kind of have a cardboard scent because the nesting material that the mice use, they like to shred soft materials to make cozy little beds. And a lot of times it's made out of old cereal boxes or toilet paper roll tubes. They love it. They love these little cardboard homes. So it kind of smells like all of that decomposition, sterile ammonia, death, everything, but also old chips, right?

One of the lead detectives said, "When I tell you, I walked in there and I was taken aback because thousands, I mean, it seems like thousands, I could have told you, I didn't count them. The smell of thousands of mice in all these research rooms in the cages, they smell. So much so that when you leave that building, you smell like mice." But the FBI agents, they're not here for the mice. They're here for Annie Lay, second year grad student at Yale. She's missing. And the last place she was seen? Here.

in this lab. She came in September 8th at around 10 a.m. to check up on her mice, and now she's missing. She comes in at 10 a.m., makes her way to the basement, walks into G13, that's her lab room. She put on a yellow coat, took out her brown leather notebook that she never goes anywhere without, and allegedly she starts writing down her observations, taking meticulous notes on her research. Every little micro change about her mice, she's noting it down, almost like she does every single day,

Except then she just vanishes. She's gone. Literally just gone.

She's reported missing by a roommate who was worried that she didn't come home from the lab. You're like, okay, easy. I mean, the first step to finding her is get everyone out of the building, put this place on lockdown, turn the entire place upside down, search every hole, cavity, orifice, like search everything. Not allowed. There are extremely valuable and important experiments, years and years of work that would be destroyed if researchers aren't allowed in and out every single day, if not every single hour.

The experiments are worth hundreds of millions of dollars inside this facility. There's also scientific value that people with medical issues are depending on trials, research. Like there are strict guidelines on how they're handled. What do you mean not allowed? Not allowed to search the building? They can search the building, but it needs to remain open. People need to be shuffling in and out nonstop. They can't control this facility?

the access they can try they can stand guard but that's a lot of people that's a lot of square footage 120 000 square feet but even then i mean the whole thing just doesn't make any sense how do you walk into a building a building as important as a yale university's research center and never walk out

There's no apparent signs of struggle, no witnesses seeing anything alarming, no motive for anyone to want to harm Annie Lay, no reason for her to walk out on her own. But the authorities, they still have to go down every possible potential situation. Okay, animal research lab, maybe animal rights activists. There have been incidents of groups breaking into research labs and freeing animals as well as destroying property.

Previously, a group of activists broke into the University of Minnesota. They got into the research lab. They freed and took 27 pigeons, 48 mice, five salamanders. They also took with them computer files, hard drives, research notebooks. They destroyed a lot of the property.

Another lab, Spence Laboratories, masked men broke in, freed 400 mice, dumped chemicals on data, on hard drives, on research. They released addresses to all the researchers' homes, private residences. Maybe they would go as far to kidnap a researcher to prove a point? If all the theories have to be explored, then you can't rule anything out. But why would they want to take Annie Lay?

Annie Lay works in the Bennett Lab. It's an eight-person lab run by Professor Anton Bennett, Associate Professor of Pharmacology at Yale University. They're studying enzymes and how they play a role in cancer, diabetes, and muscular dystrophy. To put it simply, she's studying how medicine can help cure degenerative diseases.

I mean, it's a very simplified way of putting it, but clearly she's doing a lot of things. I mean, it's really challenging to get funding for research like that. She's funded by the National Science Foundation. And the National Science Foundation is not a random organization. It's an independent federal agency.

They were basically behind helping fund projects like the Internet, literally the Internet, Google, nanotechnology, MRI technology, weather radars, DNA analysis. They funded the first photo of a black hole. I mean, it's a pretty big deal. I think they get like 43,000 research proposals coming in from all over the country with the smartest scientists and researchers all wanting to change the world. And they chose Annie Lay as one of the people to give millions

millions of dollars to because they felt her research was that important. So clearly, this is not a regular Yale grad student that we're talking about. But it still doesn't seem to be a link for animal rights activists to target her. I mean, everything so far does not give any reason to why, why her? I mean, there's probably a ton of other researchers in this very building that are conducting research that could enrage animal rights activists so much more. In Annie's undergraduate years, she did research the genetics of speciation.

Do you know what that is? So she studied the evolutionary process in which populations evolve to distinct species. Think of it like species one lives on an island. For whatever reason, the island snaps in half and they drift apart. And now there's two islands. There's species one living on the left side and species one living on the right side. They're the same species. Nothing in their genetic makeup changed from the splitting of the island.

But now the two populations, they start slowly changing, adapting, and the micro changes from their food, rainfall selection. Eventually, after hundreds of years, if not more, maybe millions, the two sides of the island are merged again. But the two species are no longer able to breed with one another because they are no longer the same species because they've evolved so differently. They've diverged and become completely different species.

Annie's research before Yale revolved around the study of that. She used a parasitic wasp as the model.

But would she really be taken from a secure lab building because she worked on a study using parasitic wasps? Besides, animal rights activists, they usually leave behind a message. In this case, there is no evidence of foul play. There are no suspects, no message. I mean, nothing. And the theory really doesn't make any sense. Once you realize that this building is armed with 74 CCTV cameras that monitor every single doorway, every single exit and entry is captured on camera.

So, I mean, there is nobody entering this building that is unauthorized. There's even footage of Annie from September 8th walking in through the doors at 10 a.m. And there is no footage of her ever walking out. One investigator said, you do not get in or out without being captured on camera. And people do not simply vanish.

So if she's caught on camera walking in in the morning, there's no signs of her. They look that building up and down every hallway, every bathroom, every corner. She's not in the building and there's no footage of her walking out. Then where is she? Jennifer is a lab tech at Yale's Animal Research Center. And I would like to say that she does bring a little bit of drama to work.

There's a lot in her job description that does not include workplace drama, but overall, you could argue that a lab tech is kind of like a mouse whisperer. I mean, aside from the almost custodial aspects of the job, cleaning, sanitizing, decontaminating animal rooms and cages, which is honestly quite a tedious process because you're talking about a research lab where cross-contamination, unstale environments can destroy millions of dollars of research money.

She has to carry 40 pounds of mouse food to feed hundreds and thousands of mice. I mean, aside from that, as a lab tech, you are in charge of performing and or assisting with euthanasia.

People say you're almost kind of like the mouse therapist. As a lab tech, you were the one in charge of monitoring the mice for illnesses and stress levels. And then you have to report that to the researcher. And then, God forbid, any sort of breakout happens in the lab between the mice. It's basically a catastrophic disaster waiting to happen. It is a job that takes a huge physical, mental, emotional toll. But Jennifer's holding up pretty well.

On the weekends when she gets off work, she goes to see her fiance, Raymond, a fellow lab tech at Yale, and she watches him play softball with his little team called the Wild Hogs. She's in the bleacher, screaming, cheering him on, cursing out the ref, and then turning, throwing up her left hand and showing off her engagement ring. If you saw her at one of these games, you would never think that this is the same Jennifer that's out here posting rants about work on social media. Is

Is she also part of like Yale lab? She works at the Yale Animal Research Center. Oh, they work at the same exact lab. Same exact lab. Now, there is a key difference between the researchers and the lab techs. I think both are incredibly crucial members of the building. The researchers are typically graduate students, whereas the lab techs are, I don't even think that there is an undergrad degree. I don't think you need a bachelor's degree or anything.

Right, right, right. That's their job, yeah. One is you study for Yale. The other is you work for Yale.

Right. Now, she would rant about Yale all the time. Spring is in the air, and this time of year, it seems that the rumors are popping up more than the flowers. Or at least that's how it feels at Yale. I've noticed recently that my relationship seems to be the focus of a lot of these rumors. And you know what? I could be a bitch and give it right back, because Lord knows people deserve it. But I choose to ignore the rumors, and I try to keep in mind that the people that are the source of these are a bit jealous. I mean, really. Life is too short. Right.

My fiance has no interest in any of the other girls. We are not broken up, nor were we. My boyfriend, Raymond, if you don't know him, he has no interest in any girls at the Yale Animal Research Center as anything more than friends. He's a bit naive. He doesn't always use the best judgment. Definitely, he's not the best judge of character, but he's a good guy. He has a big heart and he tries to see the best in people all the time, even when that person is psycho or that person cannot be trusted.

Who is she talking to? She's talking on social media and nobody knows who she's talking about. Nobody knows who she's talking to. I don't even think that there's a reason for her to be talking like this. But she is under the firm belief that there are rumors at the Yale Animal Research Center that her fiance, also a fellow lab tech, either is trying to break up with her like somebody else, is interested in other girls there. Hmm.

While engaged. While engaged. I mean, honestly, it just seems like a very tumultuous relationship, especially considering the fact that they work together. But that day in September at the Wild Hogs game, Jennifer does not look stressed about any of that. She looks so happy just cheering on her fiance. She's so busy watching him play that she doesn't even realize that they're also being watched by six undercover FBI agents in the bleachers.

Now, why would FBI agents be surveilling lab techs? Do they really care about workplace drama like that?

750 hours of footage CCTV footage That's how many hours that they had to go through the authorities because there was of course the possibility because Annie is super petite She's about 4 11 90 pounds. Maybe she walked out the building behind somebody and the cameras didn't catch it clearly She was hidden amongst the shadows. You just had to look a little bit closer and then you would see it Oh, there she is in her green shirt brown skirt and she's walking out the building. Oh

But that's not a possibility. Not anymore. Not after they combed through 750 hours of footage. I mean, this was basically a sealed box that you cannot get out of without someone seeing you. And they were now a thousand percent certain that she did not leave the building. Unless... Have you heard of the story of Petra Pizitska?

No.

Petra is found 33 years later, very much alive. She never spoke about why she chose to walk out one day of her life and leave forever. She left with no identity. She was only working cash paying jobs that paid under the table for 33 years and she did not get caught. Like Gone Girl type of? Gone Girl. Wow. I mean, she didn't stage blood and try to set someone up for it, but she just walked out of her life and never came back. Hmm.

And I'm sure, I'm sure the thought did cross the investigators' minds. If anybody is going to fake their disappearance and get away with it, it's going to be a genius Yale graduate student. They find Annie's phone.

So to give you a rundown of her day, Annie leaves her apartment in the morning, goes to her office, which is across the street from the research lab. She finishes up some work, does some emails, leaves her phone, wallet, shoes. So she has like lab shoes that she changes into. And her planner, all in her office, leaves that building, walks to the animal research center lab and starts going to work and then vanishes.

Wait, so she went to work without her phone? Yes. Is that normal for her? Some people argue it is because once you enter the basement where her lab is located in the research center, there is no cell service. They almost say it's moot point bringing in your phone. Okay. It almost seems so obvious that she had every intention of coming back. There's no forced entry in her office. Nothing points to a struggle. She left her phone and wallet. Some people wonder, are you sure she left her phone because there's no service?

You wouldn't want to use it on your two-minute walk to the lab. If you really look deep into it, you could argue that it was so set up it seemed planted.

I mean, if one were to hypothetically run away and fake your own disappearance or really just vanish without a trace because you don't want anyone to know where you are, leaving your phone and leaving your wallet, that's a smart choice. They're basically GPS trackers. Your phone is pinging from every single cell tower that it passes. Your wallet is basically filled with these plastic cards that trace your movements through purchases. There would be no point in bringing them on the run. Since the morning that Annie vanished, there was no usage on her phones or her bank accounts.

The original police working theory was that she did walk away. Now, whether they tried to paint it as running away, faking her disappearance, we don't know. It just seemed like they thought she was a runaway bride. Okay, let me explain. Her life is crazy. Annie was under immense amount of stress from being a graduate student and having to balance research that was incredibly overwhelming. And the police speculated maybe she dreamed of having a normal life.

Which, sure, I mean, I guess in theory it makes sense, but she doesn't appear to be the type in any other way. First of all, it seems incredibly out of character for Annie to let people worry about her. Her friend said, Annie actually had this thing about women and ensuring women's safety across the campus. Yeah, I mean, she even wrote an article for the Yale Medical School's Bee magazine, which is like a student publication. She wrote about crime and safety in New Haven, Connecticut.

She always recommended everybody walk back to their dorms at night with a buddy and it just, I don't know, it wouldn't make sense. Additionally, she doesn't seem like the type to let the stress of work impact her life. I mean, to the point of running away and doing something that drastic, faking your own disappearance, that's a lot. Now, a slightly more obnoxious element to this theory is that Annie disappeared on Tuesday. Her wedding, she was set to get married to her fiancé, was on Sunday.

Oh, so this is the week of her wedding? Like five days before her wedding. She disappeared. Yes. And now the police are like, okay, she's a runaway bride.

That is actually a very strong theory that the police had initially. And the press just ran with it, went on a full marathon with this theory, which I personally find to be a little bit offensive and ridiculous. I mean, some of Annie's friends were getting people showing up at their doors, reporters. And right when they would open their front door, reporters would be bombarding them. Did she run away? Was there trouble in paradise between the two? She didn't want to marry him, did she? Was she getting cold feet? She must have. It's a runaway bride.

I wonder like how many people actually disappear before their wedding. Like is it one of those like one in a million and people just keep reporting on it versus, oh, there's actually a big percentage people will run away right before their wedding. There have been some pretty high profile cases. One of them taking place in Georgia. She vanished like five days before her wedding. There was a whole nationwide search. She was set to get married, ends up in New Mexico, I believe, right?

Yes. And it was a runaway bride. Yeah, Jennifer Wilbanks. The case of Jennifer Wilbanks, it was really messy. I mean, everyone went crazy. People were suspecting her fiance. Like people were pointing their fingers at everyone and anyone. Turns out she said that she was just overwhelmed with the wedding. Did we talk about this in the case? Okay, okay, right, okay. So in terms of Annie's case though, the only thing that they had was Jennifer Wilbanks does seem to have a history of, I don't want to say...

mental health conditions but perhaps she struggled with her mental health in terms of annie lay there was nothing nothing to even point in that direction the only thing that they could maybe say is the night before her disappearance september 7th annie called her best friend jennifer and asked her do you think i'm too young to get married

Annie said that, I don't know, I'm just overwhelmed with balancing schoolwork, research, labs, and then the wedding planning. I mean, it's just a lot. Annie said that she was concerned that they were rushing into it and maybe because they're 24, they're too young, which sounds alarming. But Jennifer said, oh no, it's so clear that Annie was just stressed with everything going on in her life. She's not actually rethinking her marriage to Jonathan, her fiance. Jennifer was reassuring her, no, you're making the right choice. And deep down, I know you know it.

It was a moment of stress. It wasn't cold feet. Annie had already started signing her future married name to things. She liked the way it looked. She was really excited. But nobody, nobody that knew Annie could get behind this theory that she was a runaway bride or that she even faked her disappearance. Honestly, Professor Anton Bennett, her research advisor, said that Annie was happy with her life. She was happy with herself, happy with her dreams. I mean, that's why she was always smiling.

So if the animal rights activist theory is dead, if this whole genius Yale student fakes her disappearance is moot point, I mean, it doesn't make sense. There are students, media, press, netizens, all trying to solve this big mystery of an Ivy League student gone missing in the lab.

And so day one, all the theories, they start flying around. It's always the fiance. I mean, just statistically speaking, that is, if we look at the data, it's got to be her fiance, Jonathan, right? No, apparently he has an airtight alibi past a polygraph. It's not him. Then comes the more salacious theories and a fair. I mean,

I mean, that makes the most sense. Why else would she disappear five days before the wedding? She decides she wants to run off with another man, but is too embarrassed, is in too deep into the wedding and her reputation as a Yale grad student. She ran away. No, I mean, she's not. Everyone that knows her would disagree. It's a dumb, honestly disrespectful theory with no evidence. Then there was the theory with the Yale professor.

One of the professors at Yale randomly canceled his Tuesday class out of nowhere. It was very out of character for this professor who is very stickler about being on time and having his lectures at the same time. He just sent out a mass email. No more class. It was weird. Same time that she went missing. So maybe...

The university president had to shut down the rumors. There is no reason to believe any professor is a suspect in Annie's disappearance. That was an email sent out by the president of Yale University. So, I mean, the whole thing is mind-boggling for everyone, but especially for these Ivy League students because Annie's disappearance defies logic. Even the vice president of Yale stated that Annie's vanishing is the most perplexing mystery. None of it makes sense. Not a single theory works until one night.

FBI Special Agent James Lawton, who was assigned to this case, he went home to wash up, get a fresh change of clothes. He's finished eating dinner and he's sitting there just taking a breath for a second, just resting before he has to get back up and back out to the lab. He's sitting there and he's watching his little daughter doing these handsprings in the kitchen floor. And she keeps asking him like, Daddy, can you watch me? And she's jumping around, basically parkour running.

At first, Special Agent Lawton is smiling. You know, he's enjoying his time with his family. Wait, can you lay down for a second? He instructs his daughter to lay on the floor. He doesn't tell her why. He doesn't tell the rest of the family why either. He just silently walks over, picks up his daughter, throws her over his shoulder and walks out the kitchen. Oh my God. He knows where Annie Lay is.

It was a smell that the investigators knew all too well. Or at least some of them knew it. It's the type of smell that really sticks to your skin. You get home, you take five showers. It smells like the scent is embedded into your pores. Like you grabbed a perfume bottle of this horrid scent and you sprayed it up your nostril. Anything you try to smell smells like that. A hint of that. It is the smell of 3,000 tons of trash on fire burning at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Okay, wow. It's a dump site. It's a trash incinerator site. To give you an idea, the temperature of a cremation ranges from 1400 to 1800 degrees. So if you accidentally get thrown into a trash incinerator, it's a giant oven that sets all the trash on fire.

These giant cranes come in and they go to the landfills. They get the trash bags, dump it into this oven, and then they light it up on fire. The steams turn into electricity. It's a whole thing. The steam turns into electricity? Yeah, like the steam that's caused by the ashes burning can be converted into electricity to run the town. It's a lot. Yeah.

The ashes are then, I believe, recycled in some way, shape, or form. It's a trash incinerator site. And if you were to accidentally get pulled up by one of these giant cranes and thrown into this giant oven, you would, to put it simply, be cremated alive. You would be turned to ash. Like, that's how hot it is. And the scent is unforgettable. The police are searching through 3,000 tons of trash looking for Annie Lay. The FBI agent realized that night after dinner his daughter is the same height and size as Annie.

4'11", 90 pounds. Someone could have dragged her out. She's that petite. But yes, they checked the footage. Nobody was forcibly dragging anybody out of the building. It would have been caught on camera. Then they thought someone could have carried her out. But there was nobody leaving the lab with any suspicious looking suitcase or box that was enough to fit someone of that size. So maybe, just maybe, the only thing that had been going out of this building at this time... Trash chute? The trash!

The trash! 90-pound trash bags from a research lab? That is not the most alarming thing. And if that's the case, her body was going to get incinerated, so they need to keep searching. There are five different streams of trash that come out of the Yale Animal Research Lab. Regular waste, animal waste, animal carcasses, bodies, recyclables, and biohazardous material.

All of them would have to be searched through by agents in big yellow hazmat suits. The theory being, if they can't follow the person, the detective said, we follow the trash.

Some of the agents stayed up overnight searching through the trash incinerator piles using the giant tractors, cranes. They got canine dogs. They're pulling out everything they have to try and find Annie. But while they're searching, they keep popping their heads up and they're like, it still doesn't make sense because this is the animal research center. This isn't some random small research lab run by a single passionate researcher. This is a Yale building. Even if she was thrown out by the trash, you still need ID and clearance to access this building.

It's not a random building. So this isn't productive. If we think that someone harmed Annie, we got to look in the building. So the killer got into the building. Yes. Like there's no way the killer did not have access to this building.

They finish searching through the trash and they find nothing. So they end up right back at the building, right back at the footage, right back over analyzing the day that Annie disappeared. That day, something strange did happen. At 1240 p.m., about two hours after Annie walked into the building, every single person in that building walked out at the same time.

The security cameras caught a mass exodus of people filing out of the building. Some of them are in lab coats. Some of them are in scrubs. Some of them are rushing out using multiple different doors. Everybody's running out of that building. And then they just stand in front of the building, staring at the building. Some of them have their fingers shoved into their ears because it's a fire. It's a fire alarm.

There was a fire breaking out? There was a fire alarm set off, but it doesn't seem like anyone was genuinely concerned. This seems to be a thing that happens at the research lab because there's a lot of steam produced by these research cleaning equipments. There's a lot of big machines in there that produce a lot of different types of steams and it happens. It trips the alarms.

But they should have been concerned. Every single person outside that building waiting to get back in, they should have been alarmed because standing amongst them in a pair of scrubs was a killer and they had just killed. And their victim was hidden inside the massive 120,000 square foot building that they're all about to walk back into.

There are three groups of beings inside the research center. One, you have the researchers. Two, the lab techs. And three, you have the subjects. You have the mice.

And there's a pretty clear, distinct hierarchy between the three. Now, some people say that you can look at the relationship between the researcher and the lab techs as that of a doctor and a nurse, the researcher being the doctor, the more prestigious, more respected position, typically higher paying, and the lab tech as nurses. Now, most researchers, like most doctors, they should know that their jobs would be impossible without the nurses, impossible without the lab techs.

But sometimes there's this tension amongst the two groups. And it's just...

Yeah, there was a strange hierarchy inside the building. Some researchers feel like they're better than the lab techs, that the lab techs are basically their personal assistants, janitors, and feces cleaners. On the other hand, some lab techs feel like they're doing all the work for the researchers, and the researchers basically just jot down stuff on paper. That's it. And they're just going to win a Nobel Prize one day, and they don't even know how to properly feed a mouse.

One lab tech said, a lot of them tend to view us as janitors, but we're a lot more than that. We are the policemen for the animals. We are there to make sure that everything is done humanely and ethically.

An interesting element to add is a researcher at the Animal Research Center at Yale said that a lot of the researchers are not the best socializers, which adds to a lot of the tension in the building. They said, you're talking about highly educated, but incredibly awkward people working with a bunch of less educated people with a shitty job who have to serve the needs of the first group. And it's all about a fight of who's in charge.

Wow. They stated, it's an interesting mix. There's definitely an undertone of dissatisfaction. Low level, low skilled and low paid workers attending their jobs alongside high level, highly skilled, sky's the limit potential folks.

Wow. To give you an idea, at the time, an animal lab tech at Yale made anywhere between $25,000 to $52,000 a year. The researchers, on the other hand, they receive on average more than half a million dollars in tuition fellowships, healthcare benefits. I mean, their whole studies are fully funded as grad students. I don't want to say they're paid to be there because it's not necessarily a job, but they're paid to study and get this prestigious degree from Yale.

That's just while they're studying. So you can imagine their earning potential the minute that they graduate. One researcher straight up said, they're in our world and we're in our world.

And so with that kind of tension, it was inevitable that there would be some rumors or some whispers amongst the two groups. There was whispers of a very crazy lab tech known as a control freak. I mean, I feel like you could argue that maybe they just cared about their jobs, but we don't know. So if a researcher is not keeping the standard of keeping the mouse cages very clean, the lab techs are allowed to let them know.

It's up to the researcher to maintain a level of cleanliness. And it's not just the lab tech's job.

Some people said that this one lab tech would get into this very annoying, condescending, self-important, authoritative way of yelling at researchers to keep their mice clean. They would straight up berate people. I mean, the best words that they could describe this person as was control freak. Some said it felt like this lab tech just wanted to be the leader of the rats, like wanted to create a rat kingdom inside the building and be the royal highness. Yes.

There was another rumor. This is incredibly unhinged and incredibly unfounded, meaning there is no facts to this, but it's wild. There was a rumor that a lab tech was having way too much fun with the mice. The weird conversation started because of a previous Yale alumni, Dr. Susan Block. She has got a education radio show where a caller confessed that they were a lab tech at an animal research center, not the Yale one. And they said that they self-pleasured with mice.

What? Long story short, the lab tech said that he liked to stick a cardboard tube up his back door and let the rats run up and down out of the tube, out of his body. He stated it felt incredible. What?

Yeah. What is going on? This is... So because she is, I guess, a Yale alumni, a lot of Yale students had been listening to her show and they're like, well, maybe one of the lab techs at the Yale Research Center is also doing that because, I don't know, it sounds crazy. It's just one of those things going around. It's just a baseless rumor. But the weirdest thing that was going around recently after Annie disappeared was that one of the lab techs at Yale...

was acting very strange. One graduate student, a colleague of Annie's, met up with the investigators and she seemed really nervous. I mean, everyone on campus was on edge at this point and worried because, I mean, it could be something, it could be nothing, it could be that she's overreacting to all of this and then it's nothing and then she's wasting the investigators' time and it's pointless and the investigators are like, slow down, just tell us what it is. I think I found blood.

The investigators follow her into room G13, the room that Annie was last seen in the lab, and she points to one of those steel carts. And on top, there's a cardboard box of paper towels. It's called white balls. They examine the box, and on the side, there's tiny little specks of blood. And it looks like blood splatter. There was no reason for blood to be found in Annie's lab. I mean, perhaps in other rooms of the facility, but not G13.

And the cop didn't find that? No. That's crazy. That's crazy. So they test the blood. Well, they have to send it off to be tested. And nobody's freaking out at this point. At least none of the authorities are because it could be a researcher who hurt themselves by accident during an experiment. I mean, it could be a number of things. There's no way to say for certain that this is Annie's blood. But it's not looking good.

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Now, while the blood is being tested, a police officer is posted guard in room G13 because like I said, they can't shut down the lab. They can't because there's millions of dollars worth of research that's being done. And the minute that a mouse is not tended to, research gone. Millions of dollars wasted. So a police guard is posted guard in the room. And I mean, it's technically not a crime scene yet. They just want to keep it secure.

So they're standing there. When the door opens, a lab tech walks in, sees the police guard standing near the box of paper towels, walks out. What? Then walks back in and then walks over to the steel cart and starts making some small talk with the police officer. And this is so bizarre. But they start while they're talking, nudging the box of paper towels to the side.

Talking about nothing in particular with the officer, just nudging the box. The weather, yeah, the weather's been nice. Nudging the box a little more. Did you try that new spot across the street? The taco shop? Nudging the box. What does that mean? Like pushing it away? Yes. Like behind their back. To the other side of the cart where the blood is positioned away from the officer.

But the officer knows there's blood. Yes. Officer is here to monitor this blood. Yes. So he's watching... This lab tech do this. This is crazy. This is insane. In front of my eyes. But they're not going to stop them. So they're all there like...

Okay. Yes. It was absolutely bizarre. By the time that the lab tech walks away from the box, the officer noted the box had been nudged all the way from the left corner of the steel cart to the right corner. And it was now turned at an angle where the blood was no longer facing the officer. They said, I mean, it was weird. That person was ghost white. Their answers weren't making any sense. They were stuttering, trying to stand in front of the chemistry tray with their arms crossed, trying to hide something clearly. Okay.

The officer tells the lab tech to leave the room because what are you doing, right? But the lab tech is like, yeah, I'll be back. Comes back with a bottle of cleaning solution and cleaning pads and starts cleaning the floor drain because all the lab rooms have like floor grates and drains. Cleaning the floor drain in room G13 in front of the police officer. And he's letting them do this? Because it's part of their job description. Technically, they have to clean all the floor drains, right?

This is crazy. But the strangest part is the officer was like, that drain did not look like it needed any cleaning. In fact, it looked recently cleaned. Oh my God. Do you think the police was making the connection at that point yet? Like this could be the one? Not that strongly. So this is all afterthought? Yes. I think there was a little bit, but I don't think that they were assuming.

Yeah, because otherwise he will basically be cleaning what, like bloodstains? Yes. Or whatever leftover DNAs. Yeah. There's something called an Annie-ism, which is what a lot of people who knew Annie called it. It's just things that Annie would do, little quirks. There was an Annie-ism scheduled for September 13th.

Pigs in a blanket. That's what Annie was most excited for in terms of food. She wrote in her blog about her wedding. In terms of consumables, I'm most excited about pigs in a blanket. I love those yummy mini hot dog confections.

Annie spent a lot of time on this wedding that was happening on Sunday, but it's not really in the way that you would imagine. Like you would imagine typically people spend their time making sure that their dress is going to be absolutely perfect, their makeup, hair, nails, everything is going to be perfect, perfect for their wedding day. But Annie was actually spending a lot of time for months before this wedding to study Hebrew and

Part of the service was going to be in Hebrew and Annie is Vietnamese American and her fiance is Jewish. So she wants to learn Hebrew and she just wanted to do something special. So she started embroidering and hand beading her own veil. She spent a lot of energy crafting the perfect wedding registry. One of the options being instead of buying us gifts, you could opt to donate to the I Have a Dream charity, a charity that supports low income students pursuing higher education.

She spent a lot of time thinking about her wedding on Sunday because it was going to be a moment that she would share with Jonathan forever. Annie told her friends during a rehearsal a few months back, I've never felt this depth of love for anything or anyone before. But now it's September 12th, the day before the wedding, and Annie is still missing.

Her fiance, Jonathan, rushes in from New York because that's where he lives. And yeah, he was suspicious initially for the sole reason that he's her fiance. The Connecticut State Police officer said, everyone's a suspect. Loved ones, friends, the last person with them. You know, you got to keep an open mind. The detectives questioned Jonathan. They checked his alibi, his location, administered a polygraph test, and they concluded, quote, there was no reason to believe Jonathan was involved in any way. Even just by looking at Jonathan, it's

they could tell like this is a man who looked like he was on the verge of losing one of the only things in his life that mattered to him. many investigators describe when loved ones go missing there's almost a hollow look in people's eyes like they're not really looking at the investigators they're kind of looking past them or they're lost in their thoughts maybe they're running through all the scenarios or where they could be or probably running through how they'll never recover if their loved one is not found

their lips usually have this strange tightness to them. Like if you accidentally bump into them, it feels like they're going to lose it. A sob is just going to come out. It seems like they're holding so much pressure in their mouth to stop from screaming or crying. And you can almost see in their eyes, in the span of even just a few seconds, they're flashing between anxiety, utter life-altering fear, shock,

sheer panic to disassociating and being in a state of emotionless shock. And it's just nonstop back and forth between these five different crazy strong emotions.

The alibi and the polygraph, obviously, are what the authorities went off of, but I'm sure that they could look at Jonathan and know that he wasn't involved. Or they could have just asked any one of their friends about it. I mean, if you asked anyone about their relationship, that would be all it took. The odds of Annie and Jonathan even finding each other, it was kind of wild. Annie was supposed to be 340 miles away from Jonathan for college. She applied for Princeton.

After high school, she applies to Princeton, which is one of the best schools for undergraduate research programs. They spend nearly $400 million every year in funding research, which is exactly what Annie wanted to do. But they rejected her. She was devastated.

So devastated, in fact, that she sent a fully clothed picture of her butt to the dean of admissions. Like, you know what? I feel like I could appreciate that to just like loosen up from such a serious job. I feel like the dean could appreciate that. And then she applied to one hundred and two scholarships because her parents are Vietnamese immigrants.

And her mom owned a nail salon. They didn't do that well. She didn't want to burden them with paying for her college tuition. So she hand filled out a hundred and two different scholarship forms so that her parents would not have to worry about her. She said, my tongue is sore from licking envelopes. My wrist hurts from typing and stapling. And the post office clerk knows me on a first name basis. But other than that, there's nothing I can complain about.

She received $160,000 in scholarships. She basically got a full ride to the University of Rochester in New York, which is where she meets Jonathan. And they were introduced by a mutual friend, and it was pretty clear from day one that

Annie is a one in a century type of person. And it's not because she's smart. I mean, everybody at the University of Rochester, everybody at Yale, all these places, they're smart. John and his friend would walk into Annie's dorm and she would be studying English.

shopping for five inch heels, stilettos, talking to her friends all simultaneously. And then at the end of the night, because she's 4'11", she would get on her tippy tippy toes and kiss everybody on the foreheads goodnight. I mean, she was just so fascinating to be around. She had these things, like I said, called Annie-isms. Okay, so let me give you an example.

She would have a lab schedule that everyone knows is going to be very messy. Maybe they're dissecting an animal. So most people, they show up jeans or sweats. She would show up in flowy skirts and her professor would even joke with her like, you're crazy for that. And she would just shrug, today is skirt Friday. I always wear skirts on Friday.

She knows how to make a quick witty joke. And her favorite food is Popeye's fried chicken. She is the type to take a bite of fried chicken, joke about her love life, and then immediately open up this brown leather notebook that she never went anywhere without. And then make a breakthrough in her research in a study of molecular basis of osteoarthritis and bone tissue engineering at a Popeye's. Wow.

Annie's friend said about her, I don't know anyone else who could wear five inch heels while doing laborious mouth surgery, eat fried chicken, not gain an ounce, use smiley faces in her PowerPoint presentations and not lose the respect of her audience.

So yeah, it seemed kind of inevitable that Jonathan would fall in love with her. He would wait outside for all of her classes at the University of Rochester. He would carry her books around campus. And then after undergrad, Annie gets accepted into Yale for a doctorate in pharmacology. Jonathan gets accepted into Columbia for a doctorate in applied physics and mathematics. And after the excitement of both of them getting accepted into their dream schools, it's like, okay,

what are we supposed to do now because that's it's almost a two-hour drive away from each other and they're gonna be busy with it's not even two hours and they have all this free time they would have almost no time jonathan encouraged her he's like i never want to feel like your career comes second we're gonna make it work

So they both sat there and they promised each other that they were going to talk as often as they can. They're going to see each other as often as possible. They even agreed. And this is just now. Soon they're going to be together forever. That's the plan. That was the plan when Jonathan got down on his one knee and proposed in the park. It was like the perfect day. It was such a low key proposal, but it was perfect. They had eaten chocolate for dinner.

And they actually spoke on the phone every single night. Even if it was just to like put each other on the background while they're studying, they'd be on the phone. And their favorite though was to hop on Skype and watch baseball games together. And the friends would tell the authorities the day before the wedding, I just remember telling Annie, you really did good, you know? You did great, girl. You found someone. You found someone who really appreciates you.

They're long distance, but they weren't really long distance. They were in constant communication until Tuesday, September 8th. Jonathan never got a call back from Annie. They had this whole date scheduled for 7 p.m., a Skype date where they would just video call each other. And she missed it. And now it's the day before the wedding. There's all these registry presence arriving at their house and they don't know what to do.

The day before Annie's wedding, the 12th, the detectives find something that would shift the entire focus of the case.

they walked into G22. So this is a storage room just a few steps away from G13. So G13, G22. And the plan was just to conduct another sweep of the entire floor for anything that seems out of place because the whole blood on the cardboard box and the detective said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to turn off all the lights in every single room. We're all going to get down real low on the ground and we're going to use our flashlights on the floor. We're

The officers all drop on the floor. They start looking under because every single room in this building does have all those steel shelving units. It's not even just up against the walls. They're like, it's like aisles of shelves. There's a ton of dust, random trash that's falling on the ground and like lazily got kicked under out of sight, out of mind. Wait, hold on. They find something. They find a small red bead.

A bead. Like the ones that you would find on a beaded necklace. And this was huge because this is Annie's necklace. She was seen wearing it that day when she walked into the lab, but she had never been in room G22 that day. So why would her necklace, first of all, be broken? And second of all, why would it be found under a shelf in G22? What's in there, G22? It's just a storage unit, so storage supplies.

There's no, I don't think that there's any mice. There's no reason for her to be in there. I guess if you need extra printer paper, extra scissors, extra tools. But she already had everything she needed in G13. Now the officers, they hear more commotion outside. Another detective came across even more incriminating evidence in the hallways. There was a laundry bag found outside with a blue pair of sweatpants with dark red stains on them. Dried blood. So they just finding this. Yeah.

So they gotta keep looking, okay? When the officers walk back into storage room G22, there's a lot of things catching their eyes. You know, there's rows of those steel shelves stocked with lab equipment. They probably have to open each of the boxes to sort through, make sure nothing was hidden or thrown into one of these storage boxes. And one of the investigators is scanning through every part of that room, under the shelves, behind the table, on the walls, under the chairs. Is there anything that they missed?

He's about to turn around and walk out when for some reason he feels something weird above him. And you know, when you catch something in your peripheral vision as you're walking, it's such a passing little like, oh, what was that? I feel like I saw something or that was kind of unsettling. Your brain catches. It's not consistent, but you almost keep walking because it's in your peripheral. And he stops and he walks back two steps and he looks up.

It's an interesting human quirk, actually, that when we walk into a room, typically we never look up. We're so focused on everything eye level. But when he looks up, one of the ceiling tiles is slightly crooked.

Wow. He calls for his colleagues and he points to it. They grab a ladder and one of the detectives pushes up the tile with his gloved hands. They poke their heads up into the little space and tucked away in the ceiling is a single white sock and a single blue rubber glove with bloodstains on them.

The two investigators said they were momentarily speechless in that moment. I mean, they had been searching this building for the past four or five days, the same 120,000 square feet over and over and over again. They had been retracing, retracking, researching the same 120,000 square feet. And in this tiny little storage room in the basement, G-22 was a full-blown crime scene right in plain sight.

Sunday morning, September 13th, the day of Annie's wedding, there was something going on inside the building at 10 Amistad, the Yale Animal Research Center. I mean, for the past five days, there had been a lot of activity there. And this whole case of the Yale grad student being missing was all over the news. But this morning, Sunday, there was something going on inside the building.

It was weird. It was almost like something secretive was underway. Squad vans belonging to the New Haven Police Department, Connecticut State Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigations. They were driving down the ramp into the basement. They did not have their sirens on. But one after the other, it was just cop car, FBI car, cop car driving into the building.

Around the other side of the building, a group of canine dogs were being led in through the loading dock. Their tails are straight out. They're not wagging. They're not tucked. That means they're laser focused. They're working. On every corner of that building, there was a trooper car parked with an officer in the driver's seat scanning the street. Alert. Watching for any sort of activity. Every door and entrance to that building had an officer standing guard. Back straight, unapproachable.

something is going on inside of Tan Amistad. There were a hundred or so investigators inside the building. I mean, every single one of them knew what day it was. It's Sunday. It's Annie's wedding day. And they are still looking for her. And after spending five days looking for Annie, after learning about everything that Annie was doing at work, but also about her personal life, talking to her fiance, family, friends, all of her family flew in from California. The investigators felt like they almost had this duty to bring her home. And today was supposed to be her day.

One of the officers said, I was knocking on the walls at one point. I was knocking on the walls, hoping that I would get a knock back, some kind of noise. I was hoping that we would find her. I was hoping that she would be somewhere tied up or she was incapacitated and we could have this happy ending.

Sunday, it was eerily quiet in that building. Officers were focused on what they were doing. Most of them had this big piece of paper in their hands, blueprints to the entire building. They were searching, or honestly, it looked like they were hunting. When one of them stops, just like stops halfway in the middle of a step, he looks up at his colleagues. It's gone. It was like a whiff he got for two seconds. And then it's gone now. Decomp. I smelled decomp.

All the officers, they start poking their heads up, trying to crinkle their nose and smell as deeply as they can. And they're turning down their radios as if silence is going to help them smell better. A lead detective said, since the day we first stepped into that building, it smelled like animal decomposition. It was not pleasant. But this wasn't that. This was human decomposition, which is very different. And anybody who's done this type of work can tell you as soon as they smell it, they know there's a dead body somewhere.

Really? It's that distinct? Distinct. Very distinct. I tried to look into it and a lot of people say that humans smell definitely sweeter than animals. Animals have more of what you would consider that rotten scent.

Like I guess if meat goes bad in the fridge, that was a thing. A lot of people said that animals kind of smell like a raw piece of beef gone bad in the fridge or left out in the sun. But humans smell like if that raw piece of meat was soaked in expired honey and then left to sit out.

It's kind of a sickly sweet undertone. But as quickly as the smell comes, it would just like disappear. It's not like the smell was lingering. And if they walk a little left, it gets a little weaker. If they walk a little right, it gets a little bit stronger. Ooh, let's pinpoint the smell. No, they would walk into a room, smell it, and then it would disappear. Like someone sprayed perfume, then quickly purified the air, and then left.

The research lab throughout the entire building had a state-of-the-art ventilation system that cost millions of dollars to keep the air as sterile as possible.

Oh, and they can't even shut it off. No. So the air is ventilating. So it's like chasing a disappearing scent that keeps floating around the building, but you have no idea where the source is coming from. It's almost like if there is a place, a ventilation that you spray perfume in and you don't know where it is, but it's now coming into all the rooms.

It felt like it was taunting the investigators. One of the lead detectives said the million dollar question since the day she went missing is where is she? She disappeared in a multi-million dollar lab building with the multi-million dollar ventilation system, several floors, several rooms, several locations. Where is she?

In this one building on 10 Amistad, you have some of the world's leading scientists. I mean, the ones that are likely going to change the trajectory of modern medicine and how humans perceive and feel diseases. You have some of the world's brightest minds on campus where students at Yale have an average IQ of around 125.

In that specific building right now, well, not right now, but then you had the leads, the head investigators from New Haven Police Department, Connecticut State Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigations. And all of this would come down to Max. Max is going to be the one to find Annie Lay. Max is a 90 pound German shepherd. And Max is only trained to react to one thing, human remains.

But maybe he's having an off day because he's dragging the officers straight into one of the bathrooms on the basement floor, right across from G-22, the storage room, past this bright blue door and into one of the metal door stalls. Max is like dragging them. They're following him. And then he just stops. He sits inside the middle of a bathroom stall.

the investigators are looking at max i mean his bottom is touching the ground he's sitting that's his signal he's sitting and he's staring but it doesn't make any sense they look at max and they look at what he's signaling at he's staring directly at the wall the wall the lead investigator on this case said everyone expects police to be like robots but every single person on that case looking for annie lay was completely shaken when we had to tell the family

that we found her body. When we told her fiance that there wasn't going to be a wedding and that she was dead and that she had been killed, we were shaken. One of the investigators, I mean, of course they would never actually do this, but they had a brief fleeting thought of what if we just wait a day? Because today was supposed to be their wedding day.

There were so many loved ones. I mean, so many of them had flown in for the wedding and they were waiting for any and all word from the police. On Wednesday, September 9th, the day after Annie vanished, Annie's uncle got a call from the family that Annie was missing. He was alone at the time. He's in California. He's frantically calling Annie, emailing her. He's going into full panic mode. He's completely distraught. I mean, there is no way to calm him down. He's getting anxious. This is his beloved niece and his wife comes home and she's comforting him and she's not emotional at all.

Because she is a thousand percent confident nothing happened to Annie. What do you mean? She was so committed that she packed their bags for them with their wedding outfits. And they flew to New York and she was like, we're gonna have a good time at the wedding. Don't stress, honey. They fly into Connecticut and two days later on the day of the wedding with their wedding outfits still packed in their suitcase, they were all told of the news.

Annie Lee's family and her fiancé Jonathan were alerted that her body was found in the basement wall of the research lab. Instead of walking down the aisle to his new wife, Jonathan would be walking down the aisle to her casket. I will say that Jonathan is very quiet in this entire case. And even afterwards, I know that in maybe other cases, people would have been like, oh my gosh, why is he so quiet? But it...

It's so clear he's so devastated. I mean, we don't know his exact reaction the exact time that he was told Annie's body was found. But every time that he is seen out at the funerals, mainly, he's basically the embodiment of grief. He looks like a ghost. I mean, just completely pale, like he's going to disintegrate into thin air, like he's going to evaporate. He can barely talk. He just alternates between crying and then staring at the ground, zoning out, maybe trying to disassociate.

He honestly looks like a completely broken man. His little sister Lauren cried, "This isn't easy for us because it wasn't the plan." She said that she was so happy for Annie to be her sister and they were already doing sister things. They were already going shopping and gossiping and doing these things together and now she's just gone and Lauren is saying that yeah, I mean there is so much grief for her

But also, we have so many long days ahead and I pray that my brother can recover from Annie's loss. Annie didn't deserve this. Again, we don't know exactly how Annie's family reacted to the news of her body being found either, but one of her little brothers has described the whole family as going into shock.

Annie had a lot of younger cousins who were all there for the wedding and a lot of them were at a very unfortunate age. So they were old enough where they could fully comprehend that she was dead and killed, but they were not old enough to know how to cope with such a high level of intense grief and shock. I mean, not that I think anyone ever learns how to be even as an adult, but it was such a tricky age. Like most of them are like 13, 16. It's...

So they all had flown in for Annie's wedding and now they're all sitting there quiet and confused. And sometimes they would just look over at one of the youngest cousins and he would just be sitting there quietly playing with the stuffed teddy bear. And he's too old to play with stuffed teddy bears. But this one was really special because Annie had given it to him for being her ring bear. He was supposed to bring the rings up that day for the wedding.

But there was gonna be no wedding and all he had left of Annie was this teddy bear. Jonathan would be seen wearing a wedding band on his left finger that it seemed he did not want to take off.

In one of the stalls of the basement bathrooms, there is this white square on the white wall. It's like kind of blends into the wall. It's almost the size of a computer screen. Like your laptop screen may be 8 to 10 inches wide at most. And there's a tiny little knob on the right side. It looks like one of those utility panels where you have shut off valves for water and gas. There's some insulation on the inside, but you're basically looking at the inside of a wall. Like it's not finished. There's no drywall inside, right?

There's foam, there's insulation, there's dust, there's debris, and then there's like piping that you can see everywhere and shut off valves. Right? It's basically a hole into the wall. The space inside is not that big. Imagine a few shoeboxes stacked on top of each other, maybe three shoeboxes stacked on top. It's tiny. The officers carefully unlatch and open the door. And in between the water pipes, the yellow insulation foam is

was the body of a brilliant Yale graduate student. I tried to find a better word to describe what the officers found, but most of the investigators used this word because I don't think that there's really a better way to describe it. Annie Lay had been shoved, like stuffed into the tiny little space inside the wall. Her body was upside down,

It appeared as if someone was maybe even trying to kick her body in, like using all brute force to force her body into this small space. There were pipes and cables inside the wall that her body was contorted around. I mean, it was very clear whoever did this obviously had no regard for her dignity and her body. They pushed her body into this small tiny space with only one thing in mind: hiding her body.

At 5 p.m. the day of Annie's wedding, the search was called to an end. This would have been around the time of her very first dance with her husband. But instead, Annie Lay was found in the wall.

The state of her body is pretty grim. She was wearing one surgical glove, a match to the single glove found in the ceiling of storage room G22. She had only one white sock on, a match to the single white bloody sock found in the ceiling of storage room G22. Her beaded necklace was broken around her neck. Little beads were found inside of her clothing, which was a match to the tiny red bead found in G22. Her bra was pushed up above her chest.

Her underwear was pulled down to her ankles and male reproductive fluids were found in her panty liner. She had been assayed before her murder. Underneath Annie's body, something of interest was found. Inside the wall, under Annie, was a green pen.

A friend of Annie said, whoever did this took away a precious life, a life of an individual who had so much potential, who could have changed the course of history, who could have contributed to developing a drug that would have saved millions of lives. And they took away a treasure. They took away someone who could have really made a difference in so many people's lives. So now it is up to the investigators to find out who did it. And there was no way to even get Annie Lay out.

The opening of the door was so small, there was no way to get her out without further causing more damage to her body. So they had to go to the other side of the wall and break down the whole wall.

They wanted to be as careful as possible with Annie Lay's body to not only preserve the integrity of the evidence, but also to preserve the dignity of Annie Lay. When the autopsy was performed, it was concluded that Annie was killed by traumatic asphyxia via neck compression, aka suffocation. She had a broken jaw and collarbone, which was sustained prior to her passing. There was bruising inflicted on the back of her head.

The autopsy was quite difficult to perform as Annie's body had been decomposing for five days now and additionally, she was placed inside the wall upside down. So a lot of the fluids and natural gases that are formed and released during decomp, they had all rushed down towards her head and upper torso. They were able, however, to pull three DNA profiles. One that belonged to Annie and two male DNA profiles.

The first step was to run both profiles through the CODIS database, and only one of them was a hit. I mean, it had to be someone that she knew, right? One student speculated, a professor, I mean, another student, someone who knew her schedule and knew where she was, someone that she wouldn't have been afraid of when she was in the lab. That's who did this.

One of the two male DNA profiles come back as a match to a man named Chris Robinson. He was in the CODIS database for a drug felony charge eight years ago. And on the database, his address is listed and it's near the research lab. But the problem is, can dead men kill? What? Chris Robinson was shot and murdered two years before Annie was found in the basement wall. What? This is a dead man.

That means he's not dead. He was never a student at Yale. He never worked as a lab tech. He had no relations to Annie prior to his death. And he's dead. So how did his DNA get on Annie? They had to verify. The police went through a lot. They had to verify that he's actually dead. He's actually dead.

Okay, a twin? Twins have identical DNA sequences, so it could be a twin. No, Chris Robinson is confirmed to have no twin. Other relatives? Ruled out. Lab contamination errors? Ruled out. Everything was ruled out to the point that this DNA almost felt planted. How does a dead man's DNA get into the walls of a secured Yale research lab on a deceased body?

A case of secret history by Donna Tartt? I don't know. Ivy League students harming one of their own? Maybe this is pure Ivy League jealousy. Maybe she discovered something that she wasn't supposed to in research because even in the world of Yale, Annie Lay was a force to be reckoned with. Because this feels like a setup. I mean, how does a dead man's DNA end up on her body? Do you know how to spell the word genius?

G-E-N-I-U-S. Okay, if you spelled it correctly, you can probably beat a 10-year-old at a casual spelling bee in America. That is on the list of challenging spelling words for 9- to 10-year-olds. Annie's uncle is...

He was anticipating winning the round of Scrabble because he's playing against 10-year-old Annie. She probably doesn't even know how to spell giraffe correctly. But halfway into the game, Annie's letter rack is empty. She used up all her tiles, which means she won. And the last word she put down is czar. C-Z-A-R. Definition, a person appointed by the government to advise on and coordinate policy in a particular area.

No, Tsar is spelled with a T, not a C. T-S-A-R, not C-Z-A-R. No, T-S-A-R is an emperor of Russia before 1917. And just like that, a full adult uncle was beat by the great Annie Leigh. And ever since high school, Annie stated that she loved cell biology, which is...

It's so fascinating because I don't think I even knew what those words meant in high school. She was just fascinated on getting to know how things worked on a microscopic level. She graduated high school with a 4.28 GPA. She was valedictorian of her class, which somehow she still managed to have free time. She spent that volunteering at Marshall Medical Center. She was named Volunteer of the Year Award. And one fellow volunteer said,

I mean, you can't help but love her, right? At her young age, how confident she is. Not all kids at that age are smart and driven and have friends. I mean, she has it all. We had this joke when she was volunteering that she could do a calculus problem quicker than she can wash a bottle, but she would happily wash all the bottles. In high school, Annie was voted most likely to be the next Einstein and the best of the best. So clearly, there is a lot to be jealous about when it comes to Annie Leigh.

But as incredible and as intelligent as she is, Annie was truly so likable. I mean, truly none of her peers and colleagues would even think about harming her. It just didn't make any sense. So that was thrown out. The only other solution to that DNA being on her was 2007 and the summer months.

2007, a massive project gets started in New Haven, Connecticut. I mean, nobody really knows exactly what's being built. I mean, it's not a big secret. You could probably look it up, but nobody wanted to do that. It's a research facility for Yale University. And the whole construction process was a huge ordeal. The building, it's going to have a rainwater collection system on the roof. The water is going to be treated, used to flush toilets, provide irrigation for the building. They had hundreds of people working on the building, skilled tradesmen, electricians, plumbers, general laborers.

And on that long list of people, Chris Robinson. The odds of this happening are insane. But years ago, Chris Robinson worked on the construction of the lab, the research lab, building it. He's building the lab.

He's sweating through the 2007 Connecticut summer heat. His sweat beads drip down into the area where the electrical panel was. They seal up the drywall. Climate control kicks in the lab because this is a state of the art facility where the temperature has to be maintained at a very cold level at all times.

And all of that manages to preserve Chris's DNA, keeps it absolutely sweat bead. Wow. So that's how. But when was this? When was this case? Like three. He was building it like three years before Annie passed. And then he was killed a year after the construction happened.

Oh so he built it, left DNA, and he was killed how? He was shot and murdered at a bar, unrelated. Yeah, it was a, I believe a gang violence situation. His DNA was pristine, and once Annie's body was placed into the wall, years later his DNA was transferred to her skin and underwear.

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Two days after Annie went missing, a lab tech actually walked up to an investigator and started making small talk with them. Are you guys looking for Annie? Oh, yeah, I knew Annie. I actually saw her yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She left the building during the fire drill. I, well, I don't know if she left, but I saw her grab her things, her notebook, a big bag of mouse food, and walked out with everyone. I mean, I don't know where she was going with that mouse food, though.

The lab tech that told the police that? His name is Raymond Clark, the fiance of Jennifer, fellow Yale lab tech. Raymond has been working at Yale for the past five years. I mean, he's basically grandfathered in, if you will. Okay, that's a bit dramatic. But his sister is a Yale lab tech. His brother-in-law is a Yale lab tech. His fiance is a Yale lab tech. It does appear that Raymond got the position due in part to the fact that so much of his family works there.

Looks wise, everyone said Raymond looked so meek that he looked like he couldn't even hurt a mouse. Some said if you passed him in the hallways, he would prefer to look at the floor rather than look at you. He just seemed very passive, almost. So why would this passive guy lie about seeing Annie leaving during the fire alarm when it was absolutely certain that she was dead before the fire alarm even went off?

Investigators also noticed scratches on Raymond's face, left bicep. He had fresh bruises under his eyes, on his chest, arm, ear. There was this huge red mark on his shoulder that looked like a burn rash. There was a bruise the size of an oyster shell on his upper left arm. And he said, it was from my cat. So why did he go to the police so many times? It seems like he was panicking, yeah.

He was also the one that awkwardly nudged the box of bloody paper towels away from the officer's line of sight. So the lead detective was suspicious about all of this, but mainly she said, Annie never left for the fire alarm. So by his own statements, we knew he was lying. It was now time to take a closer look at Raymond Clark.

The investigators, they start combing through the basement hallway CCTV, elevator CCTV, any and all surveillance cameras to try and track his whereabouts in the building a little bit better. I got him right here in the morning. He's seen on the camera walking in wearing blue scrubs. Well, I have him here and he's not wearing blue scrubs. He's wearing blue pants and a white long sleeve scrub top.

No? Well, I see him here on the CCTV footage and he's wearing jeans and a dark colored shirt. What is going on here? Why would a lab tech need to change so many times throughout the day?

There was also footage of Raymond Clark leaving the building twice that day, once during the fire drill with everybody else. And the second time he walks to a nearby park and the officers are actually able to trace him from the building to the park through all of the exterior CCTV cameras from like nearby buildings, nearby street cameras, everything. And he sits down at the small park entrance steps. He pulls his knees up to his chest. He puts his hands up to his face and it looks like he's about to have a panic attack.

The detectives looked at the footage and they looked at each other and they looked at the footage and a detective said, you know what that looks like? That looks like someone who's thinking, what did I just do?

It was clear that Raymond Clark had something to hide. The key card system at YARC runs kind of like a hospital. So in order to get into most of the rooms inside the building, you have to swipe your key card to gain access. It helps secure the building, the research, the experiments being carried out in the labs. And to get into room G13, you need three ID swipes. One time to get into the building.

One time to get into the basement and then a third time directly into G13. The IDs don't need to be swiped to exit, but still it's pretty trackable considering most rooms need it. So if you're in room J13 and for example, you get carded into that room at 315, you leave at 330, there's no digital log. So either you're going to the restroom or you're key carding back in. Does that make sense?

Right, right, right. Like you're either going to the restroom or you're leaving the building. If you're leaving the building, it's going to be caught on camera or you're going to enter another room, which would need another key card swipe. You don't need a key card to exit any of the rooms, but it's still pretty trackable because once you exit the room, you have maybe three options. A, leave the building entirely. You'd be caught on CCTV cameras. B...

walk to the restroom. Yeah. Okay, fine. And then C, enter another room, but then that would be tracked again because you have to swipe your card. Correct. So it's like, yeah, I mean, it doesn't tell you what time you leave a room, but it's pretty trackable other than that. So the police, they start pouring through this data and there was only a total of three people who swiped into G13 the day Annie disappeared. Annie, a man named Lucas Frey and Raymond Clark.

Lucas is a third-party contractor who did not see Annie that day and has no relation to Annie, and he was quickly ruled out. So that just leaves Annie and Raymond. Now, the unsettling part is Annie's keycard activity stops out of nowhere, completely, at 10.09 a.m. She never swipes anywhere after G13 again. That's it. Now, Raymond, he swipes into G13 at 11.04 and stays there for approximately 46 minutes.

And then between 1040 and 345 on September 8th, the day Annie disappeared, Raymond goes in and out of room G13 and G22 a total of 55 times. What? G22 is the storage room where the bead, the sock and all of that was found. Yeah. And it's close by, you said? Very close. Like an eight second walk.

At least 10 times an hour for five hours. He's going in and out of these two rooms. To give you an idea, that is not normally how he works. From August 27th to September 8th, in the span of almost two weeks, 12 days to be exact, Raymond had used his car to enter G13 11 times.

total in the span of two weeks but the day of annie's death he's in and out of those two rooms 55 times he's in and out of g13 more in one hour in one day the day she disappears than he was during the entire previous two weeks and remember g22 where the necklace and all these things were found annie never swiped into that room and additionally nobody else but raymond did that entire day

Which, fine, maybe you can try and come up with some weird, bizarre story about how his key card was stolen. But how do you explain away DNA? Raymond Clark's DNA and his bodily fluids were found on Annie's panty liner. But additionally, a stain matching his DNA was also found on the lab wall. A semen stain.

It was also found on a blue pair of scrub pants found in the laundry bag that was a match to him, a yellow lab coat that he was seen wearing that was later discovered to have blood on it, which was Annie's blood. And Raymond's DNA was found on the green pen inside the basement wall underneath Annie's body. And the DNA evidence is super solid in this case, but sometimes forensic evidence does not translate well in a trial. Maybe more impactful to a jury would be this. Raymond had a thing for green pens.

He wrote everything in green ink. That was like his trademark at work. And when you walk into the building, when you walk into the lab, you have to sign in. Even if the camera see you, even if you swipe your ID card, you got to sign in with your initials and the time. That day he checked into work. He wrote his initials RC in green ink. But when he signs out for the day, it's written in black ink. But how did the pen even end in there just by accident? I think so. It might've been in like maybe the pocket of his scrub. Oh.

Thursday, September 17th, FBI agents surround a motel building. They storm up to room 214 and arrest Raymond Clark. There were, I guess, people who had seen the commotion and they were waiting to see what was going on and they knew what Raymond was being arrested for. This was news everywhere nationwide. People burst into applause. At one point, someone recorded him being pushed into a cop car and said, hey, big man, enjoy jail.

Natalie was Annie's roommate that initially reported her missing. And she said, Raymond Clark is a monster. He killed my roommate. He left her in a wall. How am I supposed to feel? I feel sick. I don't care what happens to him at this point, as long as he can no longer hurt anyone else. And at first, people thought that's what was going to happen. At first, Raymond Clark was facing 120 years in prison. But he later entered into a plea deal for just 44 years. That's it.

How old is he? He will get out when he's 70. Jonathan remained pretty private throughout the entire case, which I think, again, everyone totally gets. But his family did put out a statement during the trial. They stated,

Now, it is pretty evident that the murder was not premeditated. And I don't want to make it seem like a lesser crime because murder is murder. And I'm sure we can all agree. I don't think it matters if someone thought about doing it an hour in advance or five minutes in advance or two months in advance. There was no way clearly that Raymond Clark thought that he was going to get away with Annie's murder. So there is a theory for what happened the day of Annie's murder. And this is the crazy thing is Raymond refuses to tell anyone the reason he killed Annie.

Still to this day? To this day. Refuses. I think it's sadistic. Yeah, he probably can't come up with anything. Yeah.

And so I say theory because again, I mean, it's not a theory whether or not he killed her, but a theory in the sense of we don't know if these are the exact steps and the motives of why the events took place. But they did take place and he did commit them. So the theory goes, after Annie entered the lab, G13, Raymond followed her in. That morning, Annie had sent out a mass email to all the researchers and staff at the building, letting them know that if anyone was going to look for her, she was gone this weekend for her wedding and she was going to be out of office for a few days afterwards.

He is currently engaged. Yes.

And Annie is engaged. Yes. It doesn't seem like, I don't know if he loves his fiance, considering he and his fiance seem to have a very bizarre relationship. Her Facebook rants of like, no, we're still together. He doesn't like anybody else.

That's weird. Yeah. Sounds like there's way more going on. Yes. There were some people who were theorizing that Annie and Raymond were having an affair. Absolutely not true. Yeah. Not true at all. They knew of each other professionally and that's it. The only electronic evidence that they could find of interactions between the two were an email of Raymond telling Annie, clean the mouse cages better. That's it. Raymond telling Annie? Yeah.

Oh, so he's the one that was telling researchers to clean stuff. He's the control freak. Now, there was a, not a rumor, but there were a lot of sources going around saying that Raymond had texted Annie that morning to come in and have a meeting about the mouse cages. But the lead detective on the case said that they could not find evidence of that text message anywhere. So really, it seemed like they really only had one email, not even from that day, except this email that she sent out to everybody. Yeah.

Now, it's stated that Raymond, the theory is Raymond realizes that she's getting married that weekend, confronts her in the lab, and she nicely but firmly rejects him. And with that rejection, he beats her, causing blood splatter that was found to have been cleaned up at the scene, essays her, attempts to murder her. He then likely takes a steel cart, transports her body to storage room G22 because it's a lesser trafficked room, right?

So G-13, she's got eight other researchers that are working on the same project as her, as well as her research advisor that are in and out at all days of the hour. Now he moves her to G-22 where he likely discovers that she's not dead and beats her a little more and asphyxiates her because there was blood spatter found in that room as well later.

Now, it's likely he potentially tried to hide her body in the ceiling, but that did not work. Now, this is where the theory kind of splits off. Some netizens believe that Raymond had pulled the fire alarm for a number of reasons. He's the one that caused the fire alarm. Some believe that he was hiding the body right after the fire alarm, so...

nobody could see him in the chaos of things. Some believe he did it to give Annie an out of the building. Maybe he thought the fire alarm would be an easy way to overwhelm the CCTV footage and people would just assume she left with the fire alarm. Yeah. Or some believe that he just needed to buy time to think about what to do with her body without the risk of someone walking into the room in on him.

investigators on the case stated that they initially thought all of these things as well. But after investigating, they believe that the fire alarm has nothing to do with Raymond. They stated it's crazy because there's no such thing as coincidences in an investigation in a murder investigation. But this does seem to be a coincidence is what the lead detective stated.

They stated it was a lab's autoclave, which is essentially a large dishwasher to sterilize lab equipment. The steam had gotten weird. Someone let out the steam too quickly and it set off the fire alarm. But it also, in a way, very quickly identified that the time of her murder because she didn't walk out, right? So this happened right after the murder? Like 30 minutes after. Wow. So, okay.

So regardless of the fire alarm, the two differing sides of the theory come back together. And it's believed that after the fire alarm, Raymond transports her body to the restroom and hides her in the basement wall. Now, that's kind of what investigators believe happened, but it still doesn't really answer why, I guess. The confusing part is, like you said, Raymond has a fiance and there was no indication that he was stalking Annie, or at least not that we know of. They had no communication, really, except for that one email. That's it. Like, it's just kind of odd.

of odd. So can it really be true that Raymond was obsessed with Annie? Some criminologists point to something called inner obsession, which is when someone is obsessed with another person and has a whole idea of their relationship in their heads, but they do not show any outward signs of obsession. No endless text messages, no calls. They say that this is actually a little bit more terrifying. Some netizens believe that Raymond had a controlling and overpowering inferiority complex. So

In high school, a police report was filed by an ex-girlfriend of Raymond's that he allegedly R-worded her after she broke up with him. And I say allegedly because she dropped the charges. So in the eyes of the law, you get it. I'm not saying that we don't know if it happened, but she stated she was incredibly terrified of him after their breakup.

Incredibly. She said that he was so controlling. He would physically get abusive. He was violent. He would tell her what she could and could not wear, who she could talk to. This is in high school. He would get angry with her. He would yell at her for breathing too loud, like straight up try to hit her for breathing too loud, basically was the vibe.

That leads a lot of netizens to believe that he was also abusive and controlling with his fiance, Jennifer. Neighbors reported Jennifer always acting very timid around Raymond. It seemed that she was never allowed to interact with any of the neighbors and he always walked in front of her, never opened the doors for her. And one neighbor said, I don't know, she just had a blank eye stare. That's it.

So combined with his overwhelming yearning to be controlling and powerful and mixed with his lower authority position, people speculate a rejection from Annie would have been too much for someone like Raymond. Yeah, Raymond does have a bit of a raging inferiority complex. Okay, so to put it nicely, or to put it bluntly, I guess, Raymond Clark peaked in high school. So in high school, he was this outstanding athlete, star athlete. His classmates said that this guy was competitive.

I mean, he was quietly competitive. You would never know how much he liked to win until you got to know him. And then at that point, it was like he's got this obsession with winning that is almost terrifying. It was weird.

And in high school, because he was the star athlete, he got a lot of respect. But later in life as a lab tech working at a research facility with some of the most prestigious students in the world, there does seem to be signs of an inferiority complex seeping out. Raymond does take his job at Yale very seriously. Honestly, maybe too seriously in terms of he would try to power trip for no reason at work. But you know when someone says something doesn't bother them?

And you know it bothers them? Like they're like, I don't care if someone says my nose is flat. I mean, it is flat, but ha ha, it's so funny. I talk about how it's flat all the time. But like you just kind of know it bothers them.

It seems like that's how Raymond was with work. He would joke about how he doesn't care that all of his old high school friends call him a shit cleaner-upper or some mouse-keeper because he makes good money. Good enough money to afford a red Mustang that those haters can't afford. So yeah, whatever.

But again, it's the kind of reaction that makes you think he's bothered. Yeah, you're bothered by people calling you a cage cleaner, which I agree is mean, but it's interesting. So netizens believe with his inferiority complex, with his controlling behavior, perhaps he felt very angry with Annie's rejection.

There is a little bit more like, okay, we could keep going into the layers of this. There's a very complicated layer to this theory, which is that all of this combined made Raymond feel begrudgingly inferior to all the researchers in a way that invoked violent hatred. Probably that's why he's so rude to them.

But because Annie is an Asian woman, perhaps he felt like, well, at least she's still beneath me because her status as a researcher is high, but her status as a submissive Asian woman is at least lower than me. So this evens out. Now, the speculation here being that he believes Asian women to be submissive and inferior. So when she allegedly rejects his advances, he personally feels it as an even stronger attack on his identity. It's a speculation.

But these are all just speculations. He took a plea deal and it appears that he has no intention of ever telling the truth of why he did what he did. Now, I think the New Haven police chief put it best. The only person that truly, really knows the motive of this crime is the suspect. What made him do what he did, we may never know.

In court, one of Annie's brothers gave an impact statement and he said,

There's a tree and a plaque in remembrance of my sister at my school, and sometimes I find myself absentmindedly standing in front of it, wondering what life would be like for my sister if this horrifying tragedy hadn't occurred. She'd be married, doing what she loves most and living her dreams,

I miss my sister. I miss the phone calls I used to get from my sister on my birthday. I miss the frequent packages of goodies that my sister would send all of us with a simple note saying, Hi little buddies. I miss you guys. I miss my sister's loud booming voice when she gets excited. And I wish she were still here to share my new journey of high school. And most of all, I miss having my sister in my life.

I believe to fully reach acceptance and to find peace for myself again, I would have to forgive Raymond Clark for his sinister actions, even though I still cannot believe that someone could kill a person and not be fairly punished for the crime that he committed. I'm not very clear on how the proposed sentence is and...

I don't know much about the sentencing process, but I do believe that no matter how long Raymond Clark is to be in prison, the pain, the destruction, the turmoil that he has inflicted upon me and my entire family will never go away. There will never be closure for me because my sister is gone.

Annie's dad couldn't even read his own statement. He had spent so long preparing his own statement. He went over every single word trying to see if it made as much sense in English to see if it held the same amount of emotion and power as it did in Vietnamese as it did in English because that's his primary language. He spent so long. But when he got up on that stand, like nothing would come out.

Raymond also had a few words for the court, in which he stated, I take full responsibility for my actions. I alone am responsible for the death of Annie Leigh.

Which, like, who else would be? He continues, I'm truly sorry I took Annie away from her friends, her family, and most of all, her fiancé. I've always tried to do the right thing and stay out of trouble, but I failed. I took a life, and I continue to lie about it. Yeah. While Annie's friends, family, and fiancé sat and waited. I never really wanted to harm anyone or cause emotional pain to anyone. All I wanted was to be a good son, a good brother, and a good fiancé.

This is the most empty thing I've ever... What do you mean stay out of trouble? And I feel like, what are you talking about? This is not like you got in a fist fight. Yeah. What are you talking about staying out of trouble? Like the way he talks about it is like, I made a mistake. I tried. I tried really hard, but it didn't work. And I made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes. That's...

Raymond Clark II, Raymond's dad, went up to say a few words, which I will say ultimately I think it hurt his son because in it he states, first and foremost, I would like to extend my family's deepest sympathies to the Lay family. The grief and tears we shed are equal for your family as well as ours.

Wow. The events of September 2009 devastated two families and shocked a nation. No parent can imagine or prepare for losing their daughter to violence or to having their son commit such a horrible crime. He's here looking for sympathy right now? Yeah. This guy here is... He's like, I am a victim just like Annie Leigh's parents.

Wow, I am... I cannot protect my son and am powerless to undo this nightmare. But I stand here today with unconditional love for my son. It is with deep sorrow that I stand here today. But I do want to tell my son that his family, his fiance Jennifer, and his friends love him deeply and are proud that he is taking responsibility for his actions.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. The father is saying they love him and they're proud of him? For taking responsibility for murdering someone. What the fuck? And like netizens have stated this is why Raymond ended up the way that he is because he has parents like this. What do you mean you're proud of your son? I don't even... Wow.

There is a quote I think sums up this whole dumpster fire of a statement. It goes, a proud man is always looking down on things and people. And of course, as long as you're looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. And Annie Leigh will always, to the end of time, be above Raymond Clark III and Raymond Clark II, his dad.

The Sterling Memorial Library at Yale is right at the center of campus. It's one of the largest libraries in the world. It's beautiful. It's gothic revival style. It looks like a cathedral. There were hundreds of candles set up by students up and down the steps leading up to it, under the massive oak trees and the benches where Annie would spend a lot of her time. Thousands of students showed up for the vigil.

Annie's family had spent hours preparing speeches for Annie. They spent so much time thinking about all the right words and stories to share to show Annie how much she meant to them and they were practicing all the jokes that they knew that she would fall over in her chair laughing at. They were anticipating all the moments where they would look over at her in her beautiful wedding gown and they would all lift their champagne glasses and everyone would cheer and

And they had to scrap all of those speeches and prepare statements for her funeral instead. I think that I speak on behalf of all of us gathered here. When I say that, I will never fully understand why this has happened. Annie was always the same little girl that has and will always be in our hearts and in our prayers. Jitu, I miss you, and I will always love you.

Annie's family held two private memorial services, one in Huntington, New York, where she was supposed to get married. 300 people came. Then a second one in California, where over 600 people came. Annie had so many loved ones come to share incredible stories and memories. And one of them said, I hope Annie will find an afterlife in which designer bags are plentiful. There's a Popeye's on every corner and there are no diseases for you to spend your life trying to cure.

Annie's mom shared a poem in Vietnamese that she wrote for Annie. It was later translated to English, and it goes, Farewell, my child. You are here lying in the cold coffin. You were born in my loving embrace, the most wonderful gift that God has sent me. I sang lullabies by your side this week, like I did when you were a baby, wishing you a peaceful sleep. You left life at too young of an age. All your dreams and hopes of your future gone with you to your resting place. Now that you are gone, I will sing a different sort of lullaby.

At the funeral, the song Amazing Grace was sang in both English and Vietnamese. A fellowship was created in Annie's honor, the Annie Lay Memorial Fellowship Fund. It will be awarded each year by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University to provide assistance to doctoral candidates who have demonstrated a commitment to bettering the world around them and showing an outstanding record and research that represents the life and career of Annie Lay.

Annie's research advisor, Professor Bennett, said, the fellowship in her name now enables us to identify and celebrate other talented and selfless students, some of the hidden gems amongst the student body. Annie Lay's family filed a lawsuit against Yale University two years after her death. They claim the institution failed to protect Annie and was negligent in hiring Raymond. They believe Yale had not done nearly enough to ensure the safety of employees and students.

It was kind of this lingering question, even amongst Yale students, of how the hell did Yale hire a killer? Like, was he even properly hired? Did he qualify at all? Or was it because his family worked there? It's believed, sure, he might not have a real criminal record, but more likely than not, he was not hired through the standard hiring procedures. Because allegedly, Raymond told a colleague of his, ha ha, I lied on my resume that I worked on a farm with animals before, but I never actually did. Now...

I don't know if that's true because Yale states that they conduct criminal background checks as well as verifying all educational and employment credentials. So it was kind of up for debate. Later, the Yale president even responded. His supervisor reports that nothing in his history at work, at the employment, at the university gave an indication that his involvement in such a crime might be possible. The incident could have happened in any city, in any university, in any work

place. It says more about the dark side of the human soul than it does the extent of security measures. Yale had no information indicating that Raymond Clark was capable of committing this terrible crime.

But others argued, of course, his supervisors never said anything alarming because allegedly his supervisor was his sister and his brother-in-law. There were other things that were thrown into conversation. So a month before Annie was murdered, there was an email list going around by a fraternity where they ranked 53 incoming freshman girls and ranked them based off of sober, one beer, five beer, 10 beer, blackout drunk in terms of

how much alcohol it would take for them to want to sleep with women of that appearance. In Yale? At Yale. Yeah, so that was a whole thing. The lawsuit also brings in the attention of there was not a lot of safety for women at Yale. And there was another incident that Yale had where a fraternity was chanting on campus, no means yes, yes means anal. What?!

So, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a wild thing to state that most universities could be a lot safer for everybody, but also specifically for women. An anonymous Internet user posted on a forum and they wrote, I'm disturbed. The OP stated that they are a Yale graduate student that works at the research lab, the animal research lab. And they were shocked to see that after the trial, Raymond's extended family are still working as if nothing happened. Sister, brother in law, fiance, who's still his fiancee.

They stated one day they saw Jennifer, Raymond's fiancee, quote, walking through the workplace, laughing loudly without a care in the world. Around the similar time, I could see a person close to Annie sitting in a daze, looking like she might burst into tears. I mean, for the sake of Annie's friends and colleagues, I wish Yale would remove Ray's family members further away from the medical campus. And to add to the terrifying element of that, Raymond's fiancee, Jennifer, lab tech at Yale supports him.

Yeah. Wow, what do you mean? She still visits him in jail and she posted on social media, who are you to judge the life I live? I know I'm not perfect and I don't live to be, but before you start pointing fingers, make sure your hands are clear. I have no time for your drama or BS. Take it somewhere else. That's not my problem that you have no life. Once again, who is she talking to? Just medicine? Herself.

And Raymond's dad even said, Jennifer supports Raymond. I think it shows how strong their relationship is. She stands behind him and is willing to offer him her assistance. This whole family is out of this world. Yeah, I mean, what are you saying right now? I feel like you need a brain scan.

Now, some people did try to insinuate with this lawsuit that the Lay family was money hungry. But even earlier in this case, I mean, this case was everywhere on the news. It received a ton of coverage, but it was also a huge story for Asian American communities. Everyone was emotionally invested. They wanted to help in any way that they could. And a lot of that was through providing financial help. The family put out a statement that if you wish to donate to the family for things like funeral expenses, the cost of transporting Annie's body, please just donate the funds to I Have a Dream Foundation.

Annie's favorite foundation. I don't think that this... They're not money hungry. It's crazy to even assume that. In the end, Yale University did settle with the family for $3 million, which truly is nothing compared to a human life, but also the impact Annie would have made on medicine, the development of pharmaceuticals that would have helped millions, potentially, of people. And as for Raymond Clark, he will be 68 if released. That'll be in 2053. And an interesting comparison to note...

which people pointed out. Raymond is 5'9", 190 pounds. Annie was 4'11", and 90 pounds. But she was a thousand times the person he will ever be. And even that is an understatement. One netizen commented, he's a perfectionist about how a mouse is treated but has no problem murdering a human. Some netizens pointed out the parallels, the mice in cages that he tended to, and how he is now one of them.

I mean, maybe even worse because you could argue the mice in the research experiments were at least helpful in some capacity to medicine progress. Raymond, on the other hand, is not impacting society in a positive way. He's just a rat in a larger cage called prison and he will be forgotten. And that is the case of Annie Lay. What are your thoughts? Please leave it in the comments and stay safe. I will see you guys on the next one.