Going West: True Crime - Annie Le // 119

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

In September 2009, a Yale graduate student working towards her doctorate was just days away from her wedding when she disappeared without a trace. But as investigators began looking into her disappearance, they discovered that she was never seen on surveillance footage leaving the building that day, and that her keycard wasn’t used after entering a basement lab the morning she was last seen. As they began questioning other students and searching the building top-to-bottom, they found some incredibly disturbing evidence. This is the story of Annie Le. *BONUS EPISODES* patreon.com/goingwestpodcast *CASE SOURCES* https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Raymond-Clark-III-on-killing-Yale-grad-student-11586057.php https://www.oxygen.com/a-wedding-and-a-murder/why-yale-student-annie-le-murdered-before-wedding https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2009/09/13/female-body-found-at-10-amistad-st-police-assume-it-is-annie-le-grd-13/ https://www.hulu.com/watch/0d4af74a-57b7-434b-b9c7-e2802136514d https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/accused-annie-le-killer-raymond-clark-history-anger/story?id=8648090 https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/clark-raymond.htm https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Raymond-Clark-III-on-killing-Yale-grad-student-11586057.php Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. Howdy folks, thanks for tuning in today, happy May! Yes, happy spring everyone, and by the way, if you guys are interested, we have a new spring collection in our merch line. So head over to goingwestpod.com and click the shop tab. We got a bunch of really great stuff that Daphne designed that I think you guys are really going to love.

Yeah, and I also just wanted to say really quickly, thank you so much for getting a lot of really nice reviews. I know I kind of say this a lot, but every time I read them, I just want to give personal thanks to everybody for being so nice. But we don't do that anymore, so I'm so sorry, but thank you so much to everybody who leaves those nice reviews. It really helps get the show more noticed, and it means a lot to heathen I. So thank you. Yeah, and also thank you to everybody who has shared this show. It's really amazing that you guys do that. We've built such a great community, surrounded around this podcast, so please continue to share this show with your friends and your family, or whoever. All right, guys, this is episode 119 of Going West, so let's get into it. In September of 2009, a Yale graduate student working towards her doctorate was just days

away from her wedding when she disappeared without a trace. But as investigators began looking into her disappearance, they discovered that she was never seen on surveillance footage, leaving the building that day, and that her key card wasn't used after entering a basement lab the morning she was last seen. As they began questioning other students and searching the building top to bottom, they found some incredibly disturbing evidence.

This is the story of Annie Lay. Ani Marie-Lay was born on July 3, 1985 to parents Vivian and Huang Lei in Placerville, California, which is a small, super-charming charming Western style town, known to be a very historic gold rush town outside the city of Sacramento. Annie and her brother Chris were raised by their guardian parents, aka their aunt and uncle, so their mom Vivian's brother and sister-in-law, along with their three cousins, and since they grew up so close to their cousins, Annie and her brother actually considered them siblings. Annie had a very close-knit Vietnamese-American family in Northern California, so she was constantly surrounded by love and support, and this made her into an extremely loving and

kind young woman. Annie was described as a rare person, a person who is naturally good, and on top of that, she was incredibly smart. In 2003, Annie graduated from Union Mine High School as valedictorian, and she was so impressively intelligent that her peers voted her most likely to be the next Einstein. Since she had such a keen interest in science and medicine, she applied for a scholarship to attend the University of Rochester in New York to study bio-science and, more specifically, cell developmental biology, and she received a $160,000 scholarship. And while attending the University of Rochester, she met a very sweet, kind of shy young man

named Jonathan Wydowski, who was a New York native majoring in mathematics. After receiving her bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester, Annie headed off to Columbia University for graduate school to study physics, and her boyfriend Jonathan also went to Columbia at the same time to study physics as well, so they were both incredibly smart. And after that, Annie went to Yale. She began attending Yale University in Connecticut in 2007, where she was on track to earn her doctorate in pharmacology by 2013. It was at Yale where she worked hard researching enzymes that could treat muscular dystrophy,

diabetes, and even cancer, so she was working on some really big stuff and she was really excited about her future and helping make advancements in the world of medicine. During this time, Jonathan was working towards his own doctorate, but at Columbia University back in New York. But they were only an hour and a half drive from each other so they continued to date and see each other every weekend, and in fact, they took their relationship to the next level in 2008 when they got engaged. Annie Lay's big loves in life, besides medicine, were shoe shopping, her fiance, and helping

people and animals. On one occasion, she was in New York and ended up rescuing a group of abandoned kittens, and she actually brought them back to her home in New Haven Connecticut by train. She was just an extremely passionate and kindhearted young woman who wanted to save the world. In 2009, she was two years into her doctorate studies at Yale and was planning she and Jonathan's wedding, which was to take place in the Harbor Town on Long Island where Jonathan grew up on Sunday September 13. They were both so incredibly excited about the wedding and Annie even made her own veil. The wedding was going to be almost like a much needed break for Annie and something she

really looked forward to because she spent her days working long hours in the lab as well as doing her schoolwork so she was working non-stop and was just happy to have a wonderful event on the horizon. And I know the wedding was also kind of another source of stress in a way since she had so much planning and organizing to do for it, but her friend stated that she was so excited for it to just happen and wanted to make it the perfect day for her and Jonathan. Yeah, and she really seems like the type of person that, I mean, she's, she's just so straight up. I mean, she, she works a lot. She's always studying, you know, she's not out there doing anything bad. Like, she's just an overall just an amazing person, like,

just the best person you could possibly think of. Yeah, she was just good. Earlier that year, in February of 2009, Annie had written an article titled, Crime in Safety in New Haven, and it was published in B Magazine, which is a publication by Yale's Medical School. And in the article, Annie touches on how there are more robberies in New Haven versus other towns that host Ivy League colleges. Alongside medicine, she had a great passion for helping women feel safe, so she discussed the importance of always walking with a friend at night

and always paying attention to your surroundings. In the instance that someone is robbed, Annie stated how important it is to get a description of the person's physical features, as well as their shoes. Because attackers can easily get rid of their clothes, but they often will keep the same shoes on, making it easier to identify them later if you make a note of what they look like. And the end of the article, Annie wrote, in short, New Haven is a city, and all cities

have their perils. But with a little street smarts, one can avoid becoming yet another statistic. So as if Annie didn't already have enough on her plate, she wanted to help other women in the area feel less vulnerable in their surroundings. And this really helps you get a better idea of how caring and hardworking Annie really was. On the morning of Tuesday, September 8th, 2009, just five days before the wedding, Annie lay, left her apartment, took Yale Transit, which is the university's shuttle, and

went to work in the lab as usual. But when the evening arrived, her roommate was surprised that she didn't come home. As the night progressed, the roommate tried to get in contact with Annie, but to no avail. And this was very uncharacteristic of Annie, because typically, she would work in the lab during the day and was always home to do schoolwork after. Yeah, she wasn't really the type of person to like go blow off steam at a bar or something. She would like go to the lab and then come home and do more studying. Yeah, so when she wasn't home by 9 p.m. her roommate was super concerned and she actually reported her missing to police at about 10-40pm that night, like that's how weird it was that she wasn't home. Of course, since Annie was

24 years old and she was studying for her doctorate, police figured that Annie was likely just somewhere studying where she wasn't answering her phone or maybe she had left town for the night, which she was fully allowed to do as an adult woman. Her roommate was adamant though that something must be wrong, but with campus security being so tight and there being a lot of police officers around campus at all times, it really didn't seem likely that anything happened to Annie. Yeah, and on top of that, the timing was just a bit too perfect.

With Annie having much on her plate and her noptials being that very weekend, it appeared that this was some sort of runaway bride situation and that Annie was just getting cold feet about the wedding. But none of her family and friends felt this way at all, because they knew Annie wouldn't do something like that. And when the next day came and Annie still was nowhere to be found, they all became extremely worried. Jonathan hadn't heard back from Annie since that Tuesday morning, and they were always in constant contact. At this point, investigators began looking into Annie's last steps, and they had found

a lab technician who had seen her that Tuesday at around 12.45 that afternoon, and everything with her seemed normal. On the campus surveillance footage, they saw that at 108 AM, Annie walked up to the research laboratory at 10 Amstead Street, which is a campus building, and she was wearing a green top and knee length brown skirt while holding a bunch of books and working her arms. As she approached the door, another student walked out, held the door open for Annie and she walked inside.

But Annie was never seen on footage walking out of that building. When investigators searched Annie's office, which was located in the sterling Hall of Medicine on Yale's campus, the same building she was seen walking into on surveillance footage, they found her purse, cell phone, and wallet all on her desk. So at this point, any thought of Annie just being a runaway bride was completely out the window. But it just didn't make any sense that Annie wasn't seen coming out of the building, and she was reportedly seen at 12.45pm that Tuesday. Other Yale grad students as well as Annie's friends and loved ones got together and made posters and missing persons flyers and put them up all around

campus and in their small city of New Haven. Although Jonathan wasn't living in the area, investigators wanted to make sure he wasn't involved in this, so they asked him to come up to Connecticut from New York for questioning, which he very willingly complied with. Of course, he was incredibly distraught and worried about where his fiance was, so he gave police the information of his whereabouts for that week, which did not include any trips to Connecticut, and even submitted to a polygraph test, which he passed.

So Jonathan was quickly ruled out. And imagine this, I mean, your fiance is missing and your wedding is, what, like a week? Days away. Yeah, like a days away. So you must be kind of freaking out in your mind. Well, yeah, especially because there's no evidence of her being anywhere.

It's not like, oh, her body turned up on Tuesday. They're like, where is she? Did she run away? Because it doesn't seem like it, but then where did she go and what happened? Right, and the weirdest thing in this case is that every, all of her belongings were left behind. Her purse, her wallet, all that stuff was left behind. Which doesn't look good.

Yeah, right, and there's, but there's also no security footage of her leaving that building, so you're like, okay, and so what the hell happened? Which is, so, which is honestly what made this case stick out to me when I read that that she was not seeing leaving the building because that reminds me of the Brian Sheifer case that we covered Oh, yeah, last year I think oh, yeah, yeah, that's definitely a weird one And it's like what do you mean she didn't leave the building there's so many questions So let's talk a little bit more about the security footage There were cameras all around campus both inside and outside of the buildings. However, at 10 am, the building that Annie was last seen entering,

there was only two cameras at the entrance and exit, and no others around the building or inside. Well, at least from what we could tell, I heard that there was maybe one inside, it might have been in like a hallway or something, but we're not sure. I did see footage, and I don't wanna give any spoilers, but I will say it did see footage of something not Annie in an interior camera,

but I could not figure out where that camera was. I just know that Annie didn't come up on it. So wherever that camera was, it's not really relevant to this story in case anyone's like, I go there and there is one. But there was a camera outside of one entrance and exit and a camera outside of the other and that's essentially it for this case. Right, right, right. So, but the interesting thing here is that all the Yale employees

and students of this research lab had a key card and you needed the card to enter or exit any room as a security measure. So although police couldn't see Annie's steps, they could track them through these scans of her key card. But at 10.11 am, so within under 3 minutes of entering the building, Annie bagged into the basement lab of the building, and that was the last time her card was scanned, meaning her card, and presumably her, never left that room. Knowing that Annie never baged out of the building, nor was seen on any security footage leaving the building, and remember she was fairly easy to spot in her bright green top. Police really believed that something had happened to her. They also felt confident that her disappearance had something to do with her wedding because the timing was just too bizarre. So they started thinking that maybe Annie was having an affair, and this

potential other man had done something to Annie because of her upcoming nuptials. But there weren't any emails or text message records that could really back this up in any way. So they were just left stumped. By that Friday, now two days before her wedding, police noticed something on the security footage that seemed odd. At around noon, two hours after Annie bagged into the basement storage lab, people began exiting the building in large groups, plugging their ears, and it was because the fire alarm had gone off. So they were closely watching to see if anyone who looked like Annie left the building, and they didn't see her at all.

So then they wondered, why wouldn't she leave during a fire alarm? Where was she? And for anyone wondering if Annie's article about crime in New Haven had anything to do with how she felt about her own safety, it's unclear because Annie never told anyone, not even Jonathan who she was in constant contact with, about feeling unsafe at Yale or in New Haven. The only thought that seemed to make sense was that Annie had been murdered in that building, because she wasn't inside the building and was never seen exiting. But still, she would have had to have been taken out of the building in some way.

Annie was a very petite young woman. She was only about 4 feet 11 inches tall and 90 pounds. So one of the investigators wondered if she had been met with foul play and then whoever the perpetrator was, had discarded her body in the trash. Although it was a few days after she was last seen, they checked various dumpsters in the area and even searched the local area where all of Yale's garbage was dumped. But ultimately, they didn't find any evidence leading to Annie's whereabouts.

The only thing police had to go off of was the room that Annie was last seen in. As we mentioned before, at 10.11am, so within 3 minutes of entering the hall from the main entrance of the building into the basement, for whatever reason, she bagged in and out of that particular room 11 times within a few minutes. So police felt like there had to be some answers in that room. Because after 11 entries and exits, she bagged into that room and never bagged out. But when police searched that room, they were confused. It was essentially just a storage room, so they understood maybe why she'd need to go in

there, you know, possibly to grab supplies, but it was a fairly small room, so there was nowhere to go once you were in there, and no real reason to stay for a long period of time. This room held a lot of rat cages, since there was testing on mice done for the students' research, so probably not a room you wanted to hang out in for a while anyway. Although investigators didn't immediately see anything upon entering the room, they decided to turn off the lights and use flashlights to see if anything stood out to them. And when they did this, they found a dark brown bead on the floor. This was incredibly

significant because investigators were aware that on the day Annie went missing, she was wearing a beaded necklace, and this necklace could be seen on the surveillance footage. So it seems that this bead they found matched the beads that were on her necklace. And this obviously tells us a lot of different things. So now there's just this single bead on the floor that happens to be in the last room Annie Lay was known to be in. And this was huge, but it only brought more questions. The presence of a bead indicated that her necklace had broke, which led investigators to believe

that there had been some sort of struggle or act of violence. But then, where was she? And what happened? At this point, it really wasn't looking good that Annie was out there somewhere alive and well. And by the way, if you want to see photos of the storage room and the bead and more, check out our social media accounts you can head over to our Instagram, at Going West Podcast, and our Twitter at Going West Pod. We also have a discussion group called Going West Discussion Group. And that's on Facebook. Please really felt that there had to be more

answers in that room, so they continue to search every inch of it in hopes of finding other small details that could put the pieces together of this puzzle. And that's when they noticed very small spatters of blood on the wall behind a metal cart. Please now know for sure that something very bad had happened in that room. As Heath just said, the spatters of blood were very small, and the way the investigator described them were as if maybe it had come from Annie's mouth. It almost looked like blood had been lightly misted at the wall.

Yeah, it's very, very menace-cool. I mean, it would be very hard for you to see unless you were right up against that wall, really. Yeah, we did post a photo. It honestly just kind of looks like maybe some, the wall got a little dirty. It doesn't look like blood unless you really looked at it, which luckily they did. And it was just on the lower portion of this one wall. After this discovery, things became much more intense in the investigation, because now

they knew that someone else had been in that room with her, and had done something awful to her. And luckily, this is where the security badges helped once again. When Annie walked into the building, someone had held the door open for her as they were walking out. But it was incredibly difficult to get into any of the other rooms in the building if you didn't have a badge. Especially the basement.

So police felt pretty confident that whoever had been in that room with Annie was a student or an employee. And since they had the badge swipes, they would tell exactly who had been in that room and around the area the morning Annie lay was last seen. And three people stood out among the rest. Of course at this point they didn't have a body or anything, so they couldn't even conclusively say that Annie was deceased. But they knew that at the very least she had likely been incapacitated and was either being held somewhere, or that she had been murdered. Two of the potential suspects who had been in the building that morning were independent

contractors who both often worked on the Yellow's campus, and the other was a lab technician who worked in that very building. So investigators brought all three of the men down for questioning individually, that day to see if they were behind whatever happened to Annie. Well, the two contractors were questioned, and their alibis actually lined up with other witness stories from that morning. So it was pretty clear that they weren't involved. Out of the three potential suspects, this just left the lab technician, and in fact, the lab technician in question was the same man who had told investigators days earlier that

he had seen Annie Lay at 12.45 pm on Tuesday, which would have meant that she was alive in the building 45 minutes after the alarm had gone off. But remember, she wasn't seen leaving that building for the fire alarm, so this lab technician was looking very suspicious at this point. The man was 24-year-old Raymond Clark. From the outside, Ray appeared to be a very friendly and helpful guy, and he was happily answering questions that the police had for him. But in Ray's interview, he explained again that he saw Annie at about 12.45pm that Tuesday as he was returning from lunch, and she was heading out of the building for the day. But this struck police as a

major red flag, because they had watched the surveillance footage countless times and they knew she didn't exit the building that day or any other day at all. So they knew right off the bat that he was lying. Yeah, it was like what do you mean she wasn't leaving the building, she didn't leave the building so automatically you look weird. Regarding the security badges, as we've stated a couple times now, Annie had gone into the storage room, the one where the bead in the blood had been found, at 10.11am, and she had been in and out of that room, or at least her card was, for the minutes to come. The next person to enter that room after her was Raymond Clark, and he went in there at 10.40 am,

so less than 30 minutes after her. And as we know, Annie didn't badge out of that room after that, nor did she badge into any other room after that. Meanwhile, Raymond did. And on top of that, about an hour and a half later when the fire alarm went off, Raymond was seen

leaving the building, and he didn't wait outside like everyone else. He walked up the street about one block, sat on a short staircase outside a different building, and put his head in his hands. Talk about suspect. Yeah, that's incredibly suspicious. Yeah, I saw this video and it's just, he just looked like he was kind of like shit. And it is a little grainy, but you do see the head go into the hand.

And it's not a good sign to put the head in the hand. That speaks volumes, yeah. Speaks volumes. So police felt very confident that Raymond Clark had done something to Annie Leigh, but they still didn't have her body. So while keeping close tabs on him, and what he was doing, they continued to question other people and looked tirelessly for Annie

Le. Again, they really weren't thinking she ever left that building, because the only way she could have gotten out unnoticed was in the trash, which they searched to no avail. The thought that she could be in that building seemed impossible, but they knew that they needed to search at top to bottom, and they needed to get a bit creative here. So they began pushing up those fiber ceiling tiles that most schools have, you guys know the ones, and they looked to see if anything was hidden up there. And that's when they found their first clue. After pushing up one of the ceiling tiles, an investigator came across

a blood-speckled blue rubber glove. And about a foot away from that was a bloody white sock. And although this still wasn't Annie's body being found, this made police know even more that something bad had happened in that building. And they knew it with the blood on the wall in the storage room and with the bead, but now there's more blood and it's very clearly being hidden. So it's almost like someone is concealing evidence in various places, and it's just a matter of time before they find her. And this was all coming to light on the morning of Annie's wedding, like hours before it was supposed to start. So it made for an extra devastating discovery. But they had a feeling it was only going to get worse.

As they continued to search the basement, one of the investigators went into the men's bathroom with a flashlight, the men's bathroom in the basement, by the way, and he noticed a familiar smell. Obviously, it being the bathroom, maybe you'd say that wasn't too bizarre. But the smell he kept catching in his nose was decomposition, and he knew being a seasoned detective that that's what he was smelling. But he couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from, because it kept coming and going like one moment he can smell it the next it's gone. Right, it gets like little waves of this whiff.

Exactly. The only place in the room where it looked like something could be hidden technically was the mechanical panel about the size of a computer screen behind the toilet. And you know those little metal access panel doors that you see in buildings was one of those. Yeah, they're usually in like commercial buildings, like schools or businesses and things like that. Right. So the investigator kind of crouched down and opened it up and immediately saw some blood smeared on the back of the door as well as on the yellow insulation that was inside the panel. There was a pipe off to the side

and some awkwardly placed yellow insulation and the panel kind of opened up to the left a little bit. So there was a little bit of room in there. And as the investigator lifted up the yellow insulation, he saw feet. Police immediately knew that it was the body of 24 year old Annie Le. And when they pulled her out, she had multiple bones broken due to the fact that she had been stuffed inside this very small space. She was wearing the same clothes she was on the day that she disappeared, sans a sock, and her beaded necklace. When a Connecticut medical examiner conducted her autopsy, it was determined that she had

died from traumatic atsphyxia due to neck compression, and her jaw and collarbone had been broken. She had also been sexually assaulted, and when detectives found her, her bra was pushed up, and her underwear had been pulled down. On top of that, her pantyliner had traces of semen and so did other parts of her body. In sadly, investigators had to inform Annie's family and her fiance Jonathan of all of this on the morning of her wedding. Yeah, God, that's so sad because for days, you know, they're like, where did she go and

what could have happened to her? And she was so brutally murdered and the fact that like where she was found is so horrific and to have those details when she's supposed to be walking down the aisle is so so sad. I can't even imagine. So the main person of course on investigators' minds was Raymond Clark, the lab technician. So that day they brought him in for questioning once again. And this is why we always say that we don't care if a potential suspect is forthcoming and friendly, because Ray was described as those things, and he was also described as someone who seemed like he just wanted to help.

This just reminds me of a quote from a movie where I can't remember what movie it was, but somebody was saying like, I mean, I wish all bad people had like some big scar on their face so we could like identify them because people are deceiving. Yeah because this guy Ray Clark, he does not look like a killer. I mean he looks like a nerdy straight up just good. He looks like a goody goody kid. I mean he does not look like a killer. So it's really interesting when there are cases like this.

I'm just glad that despite that, investigators still thought of him to be suspicious and they were kind of still looking past the friendliness because... I mean, you have to. I mean, think about Ted Bundy. I mean, he looked like a nice guy, but he's a fuckface. Yeah, yeah, he is.

And, or he was. But, you know, with Ray Clark, he was still also being suspicious. He wasn't just being this nice friendly guy who wanted to help. He was also being very nervous. He seemed like he was hiding something, so there was also that side of it. But still, overall, they were like, nice guy. But again, means jack shit.

So basically, Ray agreed to take a polygraph test that day and he failed it. It was like a two hour long polygraph and he failed. So with that, Ray, who again at this point had been speaking freely with police, got himself a lawyer. However, as he was loyering up, forensic professionals were hard at work trying to take all the DNA evidence that they could find from Annie's body and her clothes, and see if it matched Ray Clarks, and they quickly determined that it did. The seaman, along with some other DNA traces on her body, belonged to 24-year-old Raymond

Clark. Between the DNA evidence, the key card movements, his failed polygraph test, and the fact that Ray had stated he saw Annie leaving the building that Tuesday, when she in fact did not leave the building, police had built a strong enough case against Ray to arrest him for Annie's murder. Four days later, on Thursday, September 17th, 2009, just nine days after Annie was murdered,

police arrested Ray Clark for the murder of Annie Leigh, as well as for her sexual assault. Ray Clark's ex-girlfriend actually spoke about him and described their past relationship as incredibly emotionally abusive. So here's where all this comes into play. Although she didn't dive too deep into the details, she did mention that while at school with him years prior, she had to be escorted to her car by school security after their break-up because she was afraid of Rey. But eventually he stopped coming after her and began dating someone else. So here's a little bit more on Rey. He was known as a popular competitive basketball player in high school, and was known to volunteer

to help Rey's money for cancer patients as well as those without shelter, and he even was a member of the Asian Awareness Club. Although many people were shocked to hear that Rey had done something this horrific since many people dubbed him as the nicest kid. It's clear there was a side to him that only those really close to him knew, a very controlling and evil side. In 2003, so just six years before Annie's murder, his girlfriend at the time who was 17 years old just like him, reported that Ray had forced her to have sex with him and that

she feared for her life just thinking about breaking up with him. After high school the following year, which was 2004, Ray moved from his hometown of Branford, Connecticut to Yale where he began working in the lab, and there he was known to be more of a quiet guy who was often alone, and his day-to-day consisted of cleaning the labs and doing various custodial type work. And at the time of Annie's murder, he was also engaged to a young woman named Jennifer. Ray Clark was held on a $3 million bail at the McDougal Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut until March 2011, so a year and a half later, when he pleaded guilty to murder and first degree attempted sexual assault during a pretrial hearing. And up until that point, he had been pleading not guilty at the other hearings, so now he

took an Alfred plea and pleaded guilty, but either way, he never described what exactly happened that day and what he did to Annie-Lay nor why he did it. His statement to the court included, I take full responsibility for my actions. I alone am responsible for the death of Annie-Lay and causing tremendous pain to all who loved and cared about Annie. I am truly sorry I took Annie away from her friends, her family, and most of all her

fiance. I really never 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 fiance, but again I failed. I blame only myself and there are no excuses for what I have done. Annie was and always will be a wonderful person, by far a better person than I will ever be in my life. I'm sorry I lied, I'm sorry I ruined lives, and I'm sorry for taking Annie Lay's life. And Ray's father also read a statement saying that he offered his family's deepest sympathies to the Lay family.

The grief and tears we shed are equal for your family, as well as ours. 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. Ray was raised in a loving and supportive household. I say this to underscore how shocked we were to hear that Ray committed this horrible and senseless offense. This is not the Ray that we know and raised, and we can't explain or make sense of this. And Annie's mother stood in Redanode as well, and described her daughter as a beautiful,

brilliant young woman, quote, the world will never know what she had to offer. Annie's father commented that he hoped his daughter's death would at least result in higher security in the school for the other students on campus to have a safe learning and working environment. And Annie's uncle, who raised Annie alongside his wife, spoke as well as Annie's cousin. It was a very emotional day in court, and although Rey did make that statement, the police didn't feel it had any ounce of remorse. And they've also stated that he didn't show guilt or repentance at all during the

process. In the end, Ray Clark was sentenced to 44 years in prison for his crime. And regarding the fire alarm that went off, it was determined that while Ray was trying to dispose of Annie's body, he accidentally tripped the alarm. See, and I was going to ask you about that because I wasn't sure whether or not he had purposefully Triggered that alarm so maybe he could get everyone out of the building so it was easier easier for him to like cover up Evidence and hide the body because there was no one around like that's kind of where my mind was going with that That's a really good theory as far as the investigator said they just stated that he did it by accident So I'm assuming that they had asked him about it, but all I read was

that they said he had accidentally tripped it off while he was disposing of her body. But again, I know that we don't know exactly what he did because he hasn't said it, so I don't know if he did confess that or again if it is just them saying, oh he accidentally tripped it off and maybe he did do it on purpose. Yeah, that makes sense. That's just what the investigator said. And regarding Ray's motive, we also don't know for sure. But according to sources, Ray Clark was a control freak and he was obsessed with lab cleanliness. He reportedly had issues with the way that

and he kept her lab because it wasn't as clean as he preferred. And as we know, he was in charge of cleaning the lab. So maybe it angered him that she wasn't as clean or as tidy as he wanted her to be. But something I also need to mention is that I don't know when investigators discovered this but they did find that on the day that Annie was murdered, Ray actually sent her a text message that morning saying that he wanted to talk to her about her lab cleanliness for the mice cages.

So this says a lot too that they were discussing this and maybe he just got so angry about it that one thing led to another any killder. Or maybe that meeting was a decoy and just a way to get her to meet him if this was premeditated. But it's also believed by investigators that he had an infatuation with Annie and possibly even an obsession and that maybe they were discussing her upcoming wedding and it angered him. And the murder was more of maybe like an, if I can't have you no one can angle. But police have expressed that they have both theories in their mind as to why they just don't know which, maybe it's both. But to this day, Ray has not

publicly explained why he did what he did. And he remains at the Cheshire Correctional Institution and is scheduled for release on September 16, 2053, when he's 68 years old. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and next week we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. I really think that this case is extremely interesting

and when we were talking about the motive for why Ray Clark murdered Annie Lay. I was thinking you know maybe this this Asian awareness club that he had in high school or that he was a part of in high school had something to do with the motive for this murder. Maybe he had an obsession with Asian women. We don't really know but it is very curious. I thought that was a kind of ironic thing as well. I mean, it's so frustrating to me because this is very rare in cases we cover, in cases we research, where the perpetrator will be like, yeah, I did this and I'm sorry.

Whether or not he actually meant he was sorry or not, I think it's really interesting that that statement was made and that he pled guilty, but then didn't explain what happened. Because if you're gonna go so far as to claim guilt and claim responsibility for your horrible act, why, why don't you at least tell us why the fuck you did it? Yeah, I mean, you're already there. You're caught, you're in prison now, you're not going anywhere, you might as well just fess up to the details. And you might as well do it anyway for people who are guilty

and they're in prison and they're gonna be in prison for life or what they did and they're just not taking responsibility, but he literally took responsibility. So just tell us why you did it. Like just to put her family at peace a little bit more, even though honestly, just because he admitted guilt doesn't mean that they're at peace because they don't have their daughter who would have gone on to do amazing things.

So that's the least you can do, is just say why you did it. Yeah, and clearly this guy's a dumbass because, I mean, thinking about this, you have to use a key card to go in and out of that room, you think that they weren't going to check that, and then you hid the body in a place, in a building, where obviously it's gonna be composed, it's gonna smell, people are gonna find it. You're not gonna get away with this. And that's why I wonder if he, like, woke up that day and was like, I'm gonna do this, or if it was a moment of anger, I just, I would really help to know what his thought process was on this. Or a moment of sexual frustration. Right.

Yeah, there could be a lot. And also regarding her coming in and out of that room with her key card, I also wondered wonder if he did that. If he used her card to get in now the room for whatever reason, or if that was her, you know, I don't know. There's just so many questions even though this case is resolved and he can answer all of them. So, fess up, dude.

Yeah, at the very least, we have justice in this case, which is amazing, and we're so grateful for that. But unfortunately, again, it doesn't bring Annie back, and she would have done amazing things in her life. Jonathan went on and got his doctorate

and has continued on with his successful career on his own without Annie, and that's devastating. So, thank you guys everybody for tuning in though for this week's episode, and can't wait to see you next week. Yeah, and we got to definitely give thanks to the people who have subscribed to our Patreon. If you guys don't know by now, I mean, come on, you guys gotta know by now, we have a Patreon account where you can get bonus episodes Going west bonus episodes. We have almost 40 bonus episodes full length ad free bonus episodes They come out every month, so when you subscribe not only do you get all 40 depending on what tier you get either you get

24 bonus episodes or you get 40 but you're gonna get more as the months go on. What's more to love? Yeah, it's honestly an amazing community and you guys want to check it out. Head over to patreon.com slash going west podcast. So thank you so much to everybody who has joined this past week. Thank you so much Stephanie. Thank you Karin. I love that name Karin. Thank you Julia. Another Stephanie. Lollie, I think it's Lollie or Lallie. I think it'll Lollie sounds well. I think it's Lollie. It could be Lallie. Lallie, I'm so sorry Lollie, I'm so sorry, thank you.

And a big thanks going out to Jarrah. Or as a Jarrah. It might be Jarrah, I don't know. But big thanks going out to you. Also, thank you to Becca, Dana, Ashley, Samantha, and last but not least, Angela. you guys are awesome. Thank you so much for subscribing. You really help keep this show going. Yes, we love you guys so much. It means the world that you subscribe and the rest of you who aren't subscribed means the world that you listen to our show every week.

So thank you so much, either way. Alright, guys, so for everybody out there in the world, cheerio and don't be a stranger. you