Suzanne Jovin, a 21-year-old Yale senior, was found mortally wounded on a quiet New Haven street corner on a December evening in 1998 after being seen earlier near the New Haven Green. She suffered 17 stab wounds to the head and neck and a cut throat; she was pronounced dead shortly after at a nearby hospital. Police were called less than an hour after she was last seen leaving a campus event.

Early investigation focused on her thesis advisor, James Van de Velde, but DNA under Jovin’s fingernails did not match him; he was later publicly cleared and received a settlement from the city. Critical evidence at the scene included a partial palm print on a Fresca bottle and the tip of the murder weapon lodged in her skull, neither of which led to an identification. An eyewitness described a man running from the scene, prompting a police sketch of a white male; the sketch was compared by some to a Yale graduate student who later died by suicide, but no definitive link was established. The case was later given to the state’s cold case unit and remains unsolved.