Ex-Girlfriend Describes Yale Lab Tech Murder Suspect as Controlling and Angry

Sept. 17: Raymond Clark III appears in court for arraignment in murder of 24-year-old Yale graduate student Annie Le. (FNC)

NEW YORK – A former high school girlfriend of a Yale lab technician charged with murder said Wednesday he was extremely controlling — that he told 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 the alleged physical confrontations.

Clark is charged with murder for the strangulation of 24-year-old graduate student Annie Le, whose body was found on what would have been her wedding day. Her body was found hidden in a wall recess in a university medical school research building where they both worked.

One of Clark's lawyers, public defender Beth Merkin, declined to comment Wednesday.

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 part of 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 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 incident was reported by the New Haven Independent, which obtained a copy of the police report. It is unknown if Delrocco is the girlfriend described in the report, and police refused to give a copy of the report to The Associated Press, citing the investigation into Le's murder.

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.

Delrocco didn't immediately return a message left Wednesday by The AP with a relative.

Le's funeral is set for Saturday in El Dorado Hills, California, near her hometown of Placerville. She was also to be remembered Wednesday at a memorial service at her fiance's synagogue in New York.

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