No Body Found in Missing Yale Bride Annie Le's Disappearance
FBI gathers more clues, holds conference about Annie Le's disappearance.
Sept. 12, 2009— -- Law enforcement agents said they scoured a Yale University building, interviewed dozens of witnesses and removed items for analysis, but had not found the body of missing graduate student Annie Le. Investigators have not identified any suspect or determined whether any foul play was involved.
The mystery of Le's dissapearance intesified as FBI agents said again that videotape evidence showed Le entering the Amistad Building on Yale's campus, but never leaving. Her body had not been found inside, investigators said.
Despite some media reports today that Le's body was found in the building, FBI Special Agent Kim Mertz said, "I will categorically say a body has not been found. Items that could potentially be evidence have been seized. Nothing that can associated with Annie Le at this time."
Mertz said, "Our goal is to find Annie Le and determine what happened to her. ... We are not in a position today to conclude whether this is a missing person case or whether criminality is involved.
"The last video clip we have is her entering the building," said Mertz, who added that analysts were again going through video taken by 70 cameras in the area to determine if Le was ever seen leaving.
"We are still undergoing a review and have not yet confirmed an exit. I don't know whether it's definitive if she has left the building," said Mertz.
She said the building had been thouroughly searched by law enoforcement officials and blood-sniffing dogs.
Mertz said investigators would look into determining if perhaps the videotape had been tampered with, to explain why she could not be found in the building or seen on tape exiting.
Le was due to marry Jonathan Widawsky Sunday, leading to questions about whether the 24-year-old pharmacology student had gotten cold feet and ran away, or whether she was the victim of foul play.
Merts said a number of items had been removed from the building for analysis, but would not confirm what they were, where they were found or how they might pertain to Le.
"We don't where she is, we don't know what happened," Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said plainly told reporters. "We don't know if a crime was committed or not."
In an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America," a friend of Le's who came to New York to attend the wedding said the bride-to-be was excited about getting married and would not have run off to avoid the wedding.
"Everything was good. There was nothing that would make us believe that she was having second thoughts or anything like that," said Vanessa Flores, a close friend and former roommate of Le.
"She's a very conscientious person. This thing has been planned for more than a year, and she was just very excited about it," Flores said.
The Long Island wedding was canceled just as more than 100 local, state and federal law enforcement officials descended on the university, pouring over video footage from some 75 cameras near where Le was last seen.
"They are going frame by frame, looking at every image," Yale spokesman Conroy told The Associated Press.
Police scanned blue prints of the lab and brought in blood sniffing dogs, paying particular attention to the building's basement.
Yale has also offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Le's whereabouts.
Adding to the intrigue surrounding the case is a magazine article Le wrote for a campus magazine earlier this year about how to stay safe on the Ivy League campus.
The article, titled "Crime and Safety in New Haven," was published in February in a magazine produced by Yale's medical school and compares higher instances of robbery in New Haven to other cities with Ivy League universities.
