Sep 26, 2009 11:57 pm US/Eastern
Family, Friends Remember Slain Yale Grad Student
Calif. Mourners Remember Annie Le's Fun-Loving Spirit
EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. (CBS) ―
Family members of the Yale University doctoral student found murdered on what was to be her wedding day said they'll always remember the beaming smile and fun-loving spirit of the brilliant woman who hoped to change the world through her medical research.
"She always brought a smile to our faces," said Annie Le's cousin, Dan Nguyen, one of several speakers who eulogized Le at her funeral Saturday in California's Sierra Nevada foothills, near where Le grew up.
Le's mother, Vivian Van Le, read a poem she had written in Vietnamese that was translated by another brother, Chris Le.
"Farewell my child ... the most wonderful gift that God had sent to me," Le's mother said, going on to describe her daughter's death as being "like a knife searing through my soul."
The service at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in El Dorado Hills, about 30 miles east of Sacramento, follows a memorial service earlier in the week at the Long Island synagogue of Le's fiance, Jonathan Widawsky.
As about 600 mourners filed in Saturday, the church's pastor, Monsignor James Kidder, called the service conducted in English and Vietnamese "a chance for the family itself to come to reconciliation with what humanly is irreconcilable -- not only the fact that Annie died but the way she died."
Kidder called Le "a rare person ... a person who is naturally good."
Le was busy but always had time for others, he said. "She was lots of fun and she had a wicked sense of humor."
Kidder had been Le's pastor until she graduated from Union Mine High School near Placerville and left for college. He said her family was seeking healing from Saturday's funeral and burial.
Lab technician Raymond Clark III has been charged with killing Le, 24, five days before her body was found on Sept. 13, the Sunday she was to marry Widawsky. She had been stuffed inside a wall in the basement of a research building in Yale's medical school complex.
"Jon, even now Annie's gone, but I still have you and love you very much. You are my son," Vivian Van Le told her daughter's fiance during a eulogy.
Widawsky and members of his family attended Saturday's service but did not speak.
Le (pronounced "lay") was born to Vietnamese parents Hoang and Vivian Van Le in San Jose, according to a statement issued Friday by the university. He remarried after a divorce, but the university did not say where he or Le's mother live.
Le and her brother, Chris Le, a student at the University of California, Davis, were raised by an aunt and uncle near Placerville, in a home deep in the woods and miles from the nearest town.
They are described by the family as her "guardian parents." The guardians, Robert Linh Nguyen and Ngoc-Tuyet Bui, had three children of their own, including Dan Nguyen, whom Annie considered to be her brother.
Family spokesmen could not say when Le's parents came to the U.S. from Vietnam or why she was raised by her aunt and uncle.
Annie Le excelled in high school and took a special interest in science and medicine. She graduated as valedictorian in 2003, and classmates voted her "most likely to be the next Einstein."
Her drive led her to spend hours applying for college scholarships, eventually being awarded nearly $160,000 worth. She attended the University of Rochester in New York, majoring in bioscience, and met Widawsky, now a graduate student in physics at Columbia University.
Le began attending Yale as a graduate pharmacology student in 2007 and was on track to earn her doctorate in 2013. She was working on research with enzymes that Yale said could help with treating cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy.
"Hers were great achievements and there were more to come," Kidder said during the service. "She wanted to do the best and be the best to keep people from having their lives cut short. Ironic, isn't it, that her life was so sadly cut short."
Colleagues and family members said Le had an outsized personality and a determined will that belied her 4-foot-11, 90-pound frame.
"Although Annie was small in size, she had a large heart and a personality that filled the room," her laboratory colleagues wrote in the university statement. "No challenge ever seemed too large for her to overcome."
Yale officials are planning an Oct. 12 memorial service on campus and said they are establishing a scholarship in her memory.
A former high school girlfriend of Clark said that he was extremely controlling, telling her what clothes she could wear, where she could go and what friends she could have.
Jessica Delrocco said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Raymond Clark III would also get very angry and "physical" with her, to the point where she was frightened. She declined to elaborate on any physical confrontations.
Police said they don't know a motive for the Sept. 8 slaying. Some of Clark's co-workers have described him as a "control freak" who rigidly enforced the rules in the lab where research mice were caged.
An animal lab technician at Yale since 2004, Clark cleaned floors and mouse cages. Le, a doctoral pharmacology student, was on a team that experimented on mice as part of research into enzymes that could have implications for treatment of cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy.
Clark's fiancee, sister Denise Kent and brother-in-law Shawn Kent are also animal lab technicians. Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said they remain employed by the university, but he would not say whether they've returned to work. Clark was suspended after his arrest last week.
Clark attended high school in Branford, a small middle-class suburb of New Haven.
In 2003, when he was a senior at Branford High, police reportedly warned him to stay away from a girlfriend because he upset her so much when she tried to break up with him.
The warning was reported by the New Haven Independent, which obtained a copy of the police report. It isn't known whether Delrocco is the girlfriend described in the report, and police refused to give a copy of it to The Associated Press, citing the investigation into Le's death.
According to the police report, the girlfriend and her mother told a detective that Clark once forced her to have sex, but no charges were filed.
Le's memorial service was held at her fiance's synagogue, Temple Beth El in Huntington. Leaders of the temple were set to officiate at Le's wedding to Jonathan Widawsky on Sept. 13.
New Haven pastor Dennis Smith said the family of Le, originally of Placerville, Calif., is very private and is "a little uncomfortable" with the extensive media coverage of her death. Smith says the family appreciates the expressions of sympathy and a candlelight vigil held on Yale's campus.
Smith says Le's family is grateful there was an arrest, but wonders why Le was killed.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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