Final thoughts, I promise.
Years ago, the National Review ran a piece about Dean Brodhead's role in the Jovin investigation. In the early nineties, a Yale undergrad had been shot and killed. The killing was at the hands of a townie. This looked terrible, of course: Affluent families all over the world were asking if their children were really safe at Yale, in New Haven. Admissions numbers dropped.
In this context, it must have been especially helpful to put the Jovin blame on a professor. Administrators can think: A professor-killer is something we can recover from. What really hurts is the perception that townies are wandering the streets with guns, waiting to murder our undergrads. If American families believe some unhinged professor randomly slaughtered Jovin, that is not going to contribute substantially to New Haven's image as an unsafe place. Better the professor than some nameless, drug-addled stranger on the street.
The problem is that Van de Velde seems not to be the killer. And, also, long stretches of intense focus on Van de Velde meant that the actual killer--possibly a Yale undergrad--went undetected.
It seems to me that the police have not ruled out the "Billy" theory. (It seems to me the police have not done much of anything at all.) But if Billy did it, then why is there nothing to indicate Jovin had any contact, ever, with Billy? Would she really have entered the vehicle of someone she didn't know? Possibly accepted a Fresca from this guy? And this Billy figure seemed all too eager to mention his Jovin obsession, after the murder occurred. Would someone so chatty, and disturbed, really conceal, from everyone, the fact that he committed the murder?
And if Billy did the killing, and the killing was not at all related to the borrowed GRE books (Billy was already in grad school and would not need to take the GRE), then why has the actual person who did the borrowing never, never come forward? (And why did Jovin loan out materials that were not hers to loan out? If you were in her shoes, wouldn't you first ask for permission from the actual owner to loan out the books to a third party? Maybe, maybe not.)
I hope that Jovin is all over the news on Dec. 4, which will be the twentieth anniversary of her death. And I hope that investigators are taken to task for having really, inexcusably botched this investigation. It's much harder to gather Yale grads now, with connections to Roman or to the German Club, than it would have been to do that gathering twenty years ago. Did Van de Velde get an apology? And Jovin's family?
Lastly, on a semi-related note, a friend yesterday alerted me to a juicy new piece on THE WATCHER. This is the guy, or lady, who terrorized a family, by poison pen letter, before that family had a chance to move into a fancy New Jersey home. Here's what stuck out in the piece. The victimized family seems mildly irritating. This dad took legal action against the people who sold the house, when those people seemed cooperative and well-intentioned. (Not very nice, Mr. Broaddus.) The Broaddus couple also whined about having "lost some Christmases, which you never get back"; a little self-awareness, and a recognition that many other families do not have multiple houses to choose from on any Christmas morning, would have been welcome. Lastly, the petulant Mr. Broaddus sent retaliatory anonymous packages to people who hadn't been kind enough to him in New Jersey. Come on, Mr. Broaddus: That's childish. It's Kindergarten behavior.
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I know. But that's my honest reaction to the new WATCHER piece. Look it up (NY Magazine) for some good reading!
Years ago, the National Review ran a piece about Dean Brodhead's role in the Jovin investigation. In the early nineties, a Yale undergrad had been shot and killed. The killing was at the hands of a townie. This looked terrible, of course: Affluent families all over the world were asking if their children were really safe at Yale, in New Haven. Admissions numbers dropped.
In this context, it must have been especially helpful to put the Jovin blame on a professor. Administrators can think: A professor-killer is something we can recover from. What really hurts is the perception that townies are wandering the streets with guns, waiting to murder our undergrads. If American families believe some unhinged professor randomly slaughtered Jovin, that is not going to contribute substantially to New Haven's image as an unsafe place. Better the professor than some nameless, drug-addled stranger on the street.
The problem is that Van de Velde seems not to be the killer. And, also, long stretches of intense focus on Van de Velde meant that the actual killer--possibly a Yale undergrad--went undetected.
It seems to me that the police have not ruled out the "Billy" theory. (It seems to me the police have not done much of anything at all.) But if Billy did it, then why is there nothing to indicate Jovin had any contact, ever, with Billy? Would she really have entered the vehicle of someone she didn't know? Possibly accepted a Fresca from this guy? And this Billy figure seemed all too eager to mention his Jovin obsession, after the murder occurred. Would someone so chatty, and disturbed, really conceal, from everyone, the fact that he committed the murder?
And if Billy did the killing, and the killing was not at all related to the borrowed GRE books (Billy was already in grad school and would not need to take the GRE), then why has the actual person who did the borrowing never, never come forward? (And why did Jovin loan out materials that were not hers to loan out? If you were in her shoes, wouldn't you first ask for permission from the actual owner to loan out the books to a third party? Maybe, maybe not.)
I hope that Jovin is all over the news on Dec. 4, which will be the twentieth anniversary of her death. And I hope that investigators are taken to task for having really, inexcusably botched this investigation. It's much harder to gather Yale grads now, with connections to Roman or to the German Club, than it would have been to do that gathering twenty years ago. Did Van de Velde get an apology? And Jovin's family?
Lastly, on a semi-related note, a friend yesterday alerted me to a juicy new piece on THE WATCHER. This is the guy, or lady, who terrorized a family, by poison pen letter, before that family had a chance to move into a fancy New Jersey home. Here's what stuck out in the piece. The victimized family seems mildly irritating. This dad took legal action against the people who sold the house, when those people seemed cooperative and well-intentioned. (Not very nice, Mr. Broaddus.) The Broaddus couple also whined about having "lost some Christmases, which you never get back"; a little self-awareness, and a recognition that many other families do not have multiple houses to choose from on any Christmas morning, would have been welcome. Lastly, the petulant Mr. Broaddus sent retaliatory anonymous packages to people who hadn't been kind enough to him in New Jersey. Come on, Mr. Broaddus: That's childish. It's Kindergarten behavior.
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I know. But that's my honest reaction to the new WATCHER piece. Look it up (NY Magazine) for some good reading!
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