(Updated 01/17/08. Case reopened.)
If you are suspicious about 9/11, then you should know about this suspicious murder of a college student back in 1998.
Suzanne Jovin, 21, was a senior at
Yale University, the elitist Ivy League school home to the infamous
Skull & Bones. She was born and raised in
Germany by her American parents who are top scientists who work at
Germany’s esteemed Max Planck Institute. Her father,
Thomas Jovin, is chairman of department of Molecular Biology there and her mother,
Donna, works in her husband’s department as a cell biologist. She had two older half-sisters, Ellen and Diana Jovin, from her father's first marriage.
Suzanne had been busy trying to finish up her senior thesis when on the night of
Friday Dec. 4, 1998, four days before her senior thesis was due,
someone had stabbed Suzanne 17 times in the neck, back, and head near a street corner in an affluent neighborhood in
New Haven, CT. Her murder is still unsolved to this day with no arrests and few suspects. The case has just been
turned over to the state’s cold case unit.
The
only person ever publicly named as a suspect was
her senior thesis advisor,
Professor James van de Velde, 39. It first seemed like some kind of student/teacher love affair gone bad cliché because of their close association, the viciousness of the stabbing and with
none of her belongings taken (including money still in her pocket), the murder spoke of a crime of passion, not a motive for robbery. Police also said that
Suzanne most likely knew her killer.
However, any motive about a sexual/romance connection seems to have been ruled out. Suzanne had a boyfriend, Roman Caudillo (who’s been cleared of the crime), since her freshman year that her friends and family said she was happy with and seems to be no evidence she was having an affair with Van de Velde, along with
no mention of an affair with him in Suzanne’s diary. Police also said there was no evidence of a sexual assault during her murder.
The Real Motive?
So with no student/teacher love affair gone array, no real evidence this was some kind of senseless random act of violence, and no other real motives raised by police or the press, there seems to be only one motive left that has been greatly overlooked, the subject of Suzanne's senior thesis and one of Van de Velde's area of expertise:
Osama Bin Laden
“Meanwhile, Jovin's thesis was on international terrorism, with a specific focus on a Saudi citizen by the name of Osama bin Laden. Even then, some thought that the subject matter might have gotten her killed by sparking the interest of those who sought to protect the terrorist and his work.” – Yale Hearld (12/06/02)
“She chose a subject in Van de Velde's area of expertise: the international terrorist Osama bin Laden… – Vanity Fair (01/16/06)
Now here is where it really gets interesting. Van de Velde was no ordinary college lecturer. Get a load of his background:
- He has a Ph.D. in international-security studies.
- In 1988 he was selected for a prestigious Presidential Management Internship for those interested in and committed to a career in federal government.
- He was appointed to work at the Pentagon and State Department by the first Bush administration for nuclear weapons arms control.
- He’s lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Intelligence Reserves.
- He worked on the Dayton Peace Accords in 1997 as a mobilized reservist performing a voluntary active duty assignment for the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command.
- He’s analyzed the drug trade out of Latin America.
- Students heard rumors that he worked for the C.I.A.
- Was the executive director at Stanford's Asia-Pacific Research Center.
- And perhaps the most eye-opening, he had a security clearance five levels above top secret!
After Suzanne’s murder,
Van de Velde went back to work for the Pentagon before 9/11 where
his “extremely high” security clearance was renewed. He works in the office of the assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence.
Then Van de Velde, the al Qaeda expert, went to
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where
he interrogated al Qaeda suspects because he was able to do what the military could not do well: break down suspects until they reveal their closely guarded secrets.
Van de Velde does not have a confirmed alibi for Suzanne’s murder. He said he back at his apartment around
9 pm watching TV and his apartment is only
three blocks south of the crime scene.
(Green balloon is Van de Velde's apt: 305 St Ronan St. Red balloon is where Jovin's body was found at E Rock Rd & Edgehill Rd.)
Before her murder, Suzanne had been complaining about Van de Velde as stated in this
Vanity Fair article:
“If the police found no evidence of a romance, they did, however, learn something else. By November, it appears, the professional relationship between Van de Velde and Jovin had broken down almost completely. Although Van de Velde had written her a glowing recommendation for graduate school in late October, Jovin began to feel that he had no time for her. According to a friend of Jovin's, she had tried repeatedly to meet with Van de Velde about her senior essay and had felt that she was rebuffed. In the weeks before she died, says this friend, "she complained bitterly about a bunch of things in that class, and especially his lack of support for her project. He had shown no interest in her work." For a college-thesis adviser basically to check out on a student trying to get feedback on her senior essay would be unusual in any case. But for Van de Velde—a devoted teacher noted for his availability, who would take his students to lunch to help them with their work, and who answered their E-mails within minutes—it would have been downright bizarre. During November, it appears that Jovin was trying to pin down a time to meet with Van de Velde. "They never did get together [then]," says Ira Grudberg. "They couldn't get the dates right and so forth."
By Thanksgiving, Jovin had become upset; her essay was due on December 8. "Suzanne indicated to us during the Thanksgiving break—we were together in California—how deeply she resented the lack of mentoring by this senior thesis advisor," her parents recall. Although Van de Velde denies having received it, Jovin's parents say she had handed in a draft on November 17. She left a second draft with Van de Velde right before the Thanksgiving holiday. Jovin told friends that Van de Velde canceled a meeting on Monday, November 30, because he hadn't read the paper yet, although he says no meeting was scheduled. At a meeting the next day, December 1, he still hadn't read it. "He'd gotten tied up over Thanksgiving and hadn't done it," says Ira Grudberg. "He was very apologetic, and he could see she was upset. That very day and night he made a lengthy review of it and met again with her on December 2, at which time he discussed it with her. She was much, much happier."
According to her parents and a close friend, however, Jovin was far from happy after that meeting. "The last time I talked to Suzanne was … on that evening, very late in the evening," the friend says. "She was still furious … and she was very insecure about what would happen." – Vanity Fair (01/16/06)
Timeline of Her Killing
Between
4:00 and
4:30 pm, Suzanne stopped by Van de Velde's office on
Prospect Street to drop off a new draft that was complete except for the conclusion. She attached a cordial, handwritten note outlining her changes and thanking him. She had written neatly on the margins of page 20 of her 21-page thesis:
“I’m saving the conclusion for last.” Van de Velde reportedly spent most of the evening reviewing her draft.
Van de Velde reportedly takes a break and walks up the street to watch the Yale hockey game at
Ingalls Rink. He then reportedly returns to his office.
Suzanne spent the early part of the evening at Trinity Lutheran Church near campus at a pizza-making party she had organized for an organization the pairs students with mentally disabled adults. She left the church sometime
before 8:30 pm and then used a borrowed university car to drive other volunteers home.
Sometime between 8:30 and 8:50 pm, a group of friends passed by and saw Suzanne in her window. They asked her if she wanted to go to the movies with them, but said she was planning to work on her senior essay.
At 9:02, she emailed a friend, telling her she was leaving some books for her in her apartment lobby. She then logged off at 9:10 pm.
By 9:15, Suzanne walked to Old Campus and ran into a classmate, Peter Stein, who was out for a walk. She told him she was going to the Yale police communications center at Phelps Gate to turn in the keys to the university car. "She did not mention plans to go anywhere or do anything else afterward," Stein later said. "She just said that she was very, very tired and that she was looking forward to getting a lot of sleep."
At
about 9:20, she was seen walking toward the Yale Police office at
Phelps Gate (
which is right around the block from the Skull & Bones building on High St.) where she turned in the keys for the borrowed Yale vehicle.
Suzanne was last seen between 9:25 and 9:30, walking north on
College St. towards Elm St. The witness who says she saw her last was a student who had left the Yale-Princeton hockey game early and was walking alone to an off-campus party when she passed Suzanne.
Witness reported
a brown or tan van seen parked facing east on
E. Rock Rd adjacent to where Suzanne’s body was found.
Police say she was driven there and appeared to have had gotten out of a vehicle, before or after having had an argument with a man.
Right before she was killed, Suzanne was heard saying, "I can't believe you're doing this!" Obviously, she was saying this to someone she knew.
Minutes later, a neighbor said she heard a woman scream five times. Police say it appears Suzanne was stabbed from behind and didn’t put up a struggle.
At about 9:58, someone called 911 to report a woman lay bleeding near the corner.
“The precise location on East Rock in New Haven where Suzanne Jovin was found, mortally wounded, on December 4, 1998” - RumorMillNews
At about 10:26 pm, Suzanne was later pronounced dead at the Yale–New Haven Hospital by her apartment.
Witness believes she saw Van de Velde
The woman who had last seen Suzanne walking on
College Street at around
9:25 pm claims she saw a white man with blond hair and glasses who was “dressed nicely.” The woman later saw Van de Velde on TV and started shaking because
she believes it was Van de Velde that she had seen.
Van de Velde
denies killing Suzanne. He claims to have had no relationship with her, never argued, never saw her outside of class, and didn't even know where she lived.
He says he took a polygraph test and passed, but in actuality,
he had taken three polygraphs, but not with the police. He took them with private examiner who was a 30-year veteran of the FBI.
The first two tests he took were deemed “inconclusive” because Van de Velde was "too emotional." Van de Velde passed the third polygraph, but he was tested on whether a declaration he signed denying the murder was true. He was not directly asked whether he killed Suzanne. When he was asked if he would take another polygraph by a police examiner, Van de Velde responded: "Absolutely not.”
Professor James Adcock, a 20 year Army veteran and criminal justice, said Van de Velde is not being asked direct questions that the Professor, as an investigator, would want covered. He said Van de Velde’s polygraph tests are meaningless unless Adcock was able to validate them through another examiner. He says the reliability of the test results depends on how good the examiner is and says it’s hard to gauge the tests without seeing the list of questions.
What was on her thesis?
As far as I can tell,
Suzanne’s thesis was never released to the public. It seems like only Van de Velde and the police know what’s on it. The New Haven Police seem to have
fended off any attempt for her files to be released. The question is why? It’s been almost 10 years since her brutal murder. Don’t they want the killer(s) found?
What had Suzanne written on her thesis? She handed her new thesis draft about Osama bin Laden to her Navy Intelligence thesis advisor with very high top security Pentagon clearance and an expert on drug trafficking and Bin Laden and less than seven hours later, she winds up being stabbed 17 times by someone the police said she knew and drove her to the scene four days before her thesis was due and after she had been complaining about Van de Velde’s lack of support with her thesis, yet he had written her a glowing recommendation for graduate school in late October.
Van de Velde had given the police a copy of her thesis draft on
Dec. 7,
three days after her murder, when they first questioned him. Then, although unclear,
Van de Velde provided the News with Suzanne's "unfinished paragraphs" which apparently doesn't seem provide any smoking guns pointing to a 9/11 government conspiracy in what the News printed:
“To ultimately defeat bin Laden in his ‘holy war’ against the United States and the non-Muslims, we must be prepared to ‘stand some more heat.’ Certainly, there is nothing to suggest that this ‘holy war’ will turn cold anytime soon.”
What is unclear about this is what exactly are these "unfinished paragraphs" that Van de Velde provided to the News? Was it Suzanne's last draft that she dropped off at his office hours before her murder and he gave to the police on Dec. 7, or was it a draft of her final conclusion? If it was a draft of her final conclusion, how in the world did Van de Velde get it when Suzanne had mention in her last handed in draft that she is "saving the conclusion for last"?
For those who believe the official 9/11 story, the connection between Suzanne’s thesis subject and Van de Velde’s Military intelligence background might seem irrelevant, but for those who are suspicious about 9/11, the connection is just too hard to get past.
Suzanne’s friends say whoever killed her was "
someone who knew what they were doing."
I think I agree. Suzanne just may well have been the first victim of 9/11.
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People with any information about this case are asked to call the
New Haven Police Department at
1-866-888-TIPS. There is a
reward of $150,000.
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Those with information are encouraged to call the investigative team at this private number: (203) 676-1575, or at this email:
jovincase@gmail.com
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