Annie Le's Mom Speaks Out

Annie Le’s mother spoke out publicly for the first time on Friday about the brutal slaying of her daughter on the Yale University campus in 2009.

Vivian Le, appeared on “The Today Show” on Friday and said her daughter died in vain, Yale is responsible for the death and she wants the school to improve the security system to better protect the students.

Annie, a 24-year-old Placerville, California native, was strangled and stuffed, upside-down, into a wall of a Yale lab building. He body was found on Sept. 13, 2009. That was the same day she was supposed to be married and five days after she disappeared. Prosecutors also said there was evidence of a sexual assault.

Her family filed a wrongful death suit against Yale University earlier this week and her mom, Raymond Clark III, an animal research technician who worked in the same building as Annie, was sentenced to 44 years in prison in June for murdering Le. He apologized for the crime at the sentencing hearing, but offered no explanation.

Vivian Le said she still does not know why he killed her daughter.

The suit she and her family filed alleges that the university fostered an atmosphere of tolerance of sexual harassment and sexual assaults that emboldened Clark.

Yale told NBC that there is no basis for the civil suit.

“Yale had no information indicating that Raymond Clark was capable of committing this horrible crime, and no reasonable security measures could have prevented his unforeseeable act,” Yale said in a statement. “This lawsuit serves neither justice nor Annie’s memory.”

The Le family’s attorney responded by telling the Today Show that “the culture of tolerance was alive and well in regards to Ray Clark, as well, because they had other students and other lab employees who had made complaints about Ray Clark.”

The suit comes two years after Le was killed and Vivian Le told the Today Show that when people ask her how many children she has, she says two, even though Annie is gone.
She misses her daughter and said Annie would have become a good scientist and do good things for the country to help people.
 “I want Yale to have to change their lack of security and be better for the students in the future,” she said.  

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