The Genius, The Control Freak and The Tragic Wedding Day

true crime podcast producer and host Lauren Bright Pacheco. Lauren co hosted, narrated, and produced the critically acclaimed first season of Happy Face, Murder in Oregon, and The Murders at White House Farm Podcasts. She is currently working on a new podcast, Murder in Miami, episode The Case of the Genius, the Control Freak, and the Tragic Wedding Day. Annie Lee was born in San Jose, California. Her parents immigrated from Vietnam and always had dreams their daughter would become successful.

From a young age, Annie seemed like she would live up to her parents aspirations. Described by friends as sweet, spunky, and smart. Annie had a four point to eight g p A and was her high school's valedictorian and voted to be quote the next Einstein by her classmates. With her pick of colleges, Annie accepted a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in scholarship money to attend University of Rochester, where she majored in cell development biology and minored medical anthropology.

While in college, Annie found a good balance between her studies and making friends. She was known as upbeat, friendly, and always smiling. Both their teachers and friends said what made Annie unique was her personality. While she worked hard and cared immensely about school, she was also energetic and boisterous. One friend remembered Annie as quote a mouse that roared in Rochester. During her freshman year, a friend introduced Annie to Jonathan Waldwaski. She immediately felt drawn to the Long

Island native, but at first they were strictly friends. As time evolved, it became romantic. As the pair got serious, they both decided to go to different graduate schools, which for Annie was a difficult decision as she didn't want to leave Jonathan, but Jonathan supported her career wholeheartedly. He would never want her to pick between him and her job. Following their college graduation in May two thousand seven, Annie

had it to Yale University for her graduate program. Jonathan headed to Columbia to get his doctorate in physics, Almost two hours away from each other. The distance would be hard, but with buses and trains, the couple was committed to making at work pet Yale. Annie's plan was to earn a doctorate in pharmacology. She dreamt of one day helping cure diabetes and cancer. In July two nine, after dating for more than six years, Jonathan took Annie out for

a day of their favorite activities. They took a walk in the park, had an all chocolate party, followed by gathering with friends. Then Jonathan got on one knee and proposed, Here's Jeff. So the wedding was on for the fall of two thousand and nine at the north Woods Club in say Asta, New York, and Annie and Jonathan planned to exchange their vows in a beautiful outdoor garden setting that included a coy, ponds and a waterfall. Sounds just lovely.

While the wedding sounded great, Annie did joke to her friends that Jonathan was upset he would have to miss a New York Giants game to get married, But I think was just a joke. And they were both very excited about the upcoming actuals. Annie specifically, she was described as a girlie girl. She loved to go shopping and especially shoes, so she was very excited to get her wedding dress and to get to be the beautiful, blushing bride. Lauren, do you know anything else about the couple and their

upcoming wedding, Well, they seemed very romantic and adorable. Their special song was Jason Mraz's Lucky, and one lyric in particular stuck out to the couple, and that was lucky, I'm in love with my best friend, which I think speaks volumes. You know. Jonathan's sister said that she knew that they would be together forever when Jonathan actually let Annie cut his hair. And you know, between school and

her fiance and friends, Annie was really really busy. But that said, you know, her friends described her as a world wind of energy. But no matter how busy she got, apparently she was the kind of person who always had time to prioritize her friends. She was a great friend and the kind of person who offered to help her friends with their resumes, personal state mints, and cover letters as they applied for internships and jobs. So as busy as she was, she was also very motivated to show

up for other people in a really meaningful way. And I think, you know that's reflected in the kind of relationship she had with Jonathan. They were best friends on top of being soulmates. That's great. I'm always an off people who can kind of be very successful in their professional life their personal life and still managed to help other people. I mean, it's amazing that it sounds like she kind of did it all, and you know, with

the intention of wanting to cure cancer one day. She was really driven and just seemed by all accounts to be a really principled good person, right, Like she had so much drive, but that that didn't stop her from also being an empathic, functioning member of society. Like she wasn't a one track mind. She could kind of balance both sides of her life absolutely. With a hundred sixty wedding invitations sent out, the wedding was starting to feel more real. Things seem to be going well. But could

hyper organized and thoughtful Annie be getting cold feet? Pre wedding jitters are completely normal. I mean I had them myself. I remember losing a ton of weight before the wedding, and not necessarily even in a good way. And you know, I wasn't alone that I think it's of women report having some kind of apprehension or cold feet before their wedding, And Lauren, it's interesting you point that out, because despite them being common, those signs should not necessarily be ignored.

We did a little digging and found that newly wed wives who were plagued by doubt before the wedding were two and a half times more likely to get divorced four years later than wives who were certain they were making the right choice. So basically, that says that if you're not sure before the wedding, it doesn't bode well for the longevity of the marriage. True, but I mean I think that everybody has insecurities or tiny little bit of nagging doubts. But whether or not this couple had them,

who knows. By all accounts, it seemed that they were the perfect couple. Yeah. I think people surmised later that maybe Annie had some cold feet, but again, that's normal, and she has so much on her plate, and she's been you know, long distance from Jonathan for so long, so maybe it was you know, we haven't been together in the same room as a couple in you know, for a long time. Maybe that was causing some pause in her mind. And keep in mind she had huge ambitions.

I mean, during cancer isn't a small ambition. So she was obviously of a career track mind as well, and maybe when push came to shove, she was afraid that the relationship could derail her ambitions in terms of succeeding. On September eight, two nine, just five days before the wedding, Annie left her apartment and wrote a shuttle bus that took her the two miles to Yelle Sterling Hall of Medicine. She was wearing a green top, brown skirt and brown

penny loafers. And when she got there and he swiped her key card at ten or nine am, then she went down to her lab for what she thought would be a normal day at work. At p m, a fire alarm went off, causing the entire building to evacuate. According to witness Raymond Clark, who worked as a lab technician, Annie left the building between twelve thirty and twelve forty five during the evacuation in her lab coat. After that,

Annie seemed to vanish into thin air. By eight pm, Annie still hadn't come home, and her roommate Natalie started to get concerned. Natalie tried to get ahold of the young woman, to no avail. An hour later, Natalie called Jonathan to ask if he'd heard from Annie. Jonathan told Natalie hadn't spoken to Annie since a m that morning, when she was on her way to work. Jonathan and Natalie took turns calling friends and family, but no one

had heard from Annie. At midnight, Now officially scared, Natalie called campus police to report Annie missing. Take a listen to the police's initial reaction to her disappearance. We have many physical security items in place to help us with this investigation, to include over seventy cameras. So the next morning, after Annie goes missing, the police go to her office in the lab and find to see what's going on,

and they find no signs of a struggle. What they do find, though, is her keys, her purse, and her cell phone. Her wallets, stelled cash, and her credit cards were still inside. Having covered a fair amount of these cases, that's the first thing kind of cops look at, is this a robbery? And if all of her valuables are still including cash. It seems like it probably wasn't the only think missing. What from her stuff though, was her

yale I D and key lab card. Police also started to looking at herself one records and she hadn't made any calls after ten am, and remember she's last seen around twelve thirty according to that witness Raymond. But without her idea or phone, it seemed unlikely that she would have gone off on her own, and it seemed more likely that something nefarious had happened to Annie. I would think that campus would have strict security in these labs, Lauren,

I mean, what do you think about that? Yeah, you know, particularly because this was a research lab that relied heavily on the use of animals for testing, and you know, so the lab had to have tight security because the concern was that, you know, angry animal right protesters could break in. So because of that, there were a decent amount of security cameras on the outside of the building. So campus police had footage of Annie walking into the building,

but unfortunately that's kind of where it ends. They didn't have the same kind of security camera presence inside the building. So you know, once she was in the building, there were limited cameras, and they basically lost track of her. But you know, the interesting thing is, remember the fire alarm, It is conceivable that Annie could have been you know, taken out of a side door during the confusion, and so that was initially a thought that she had been

removed from the building. But also keep in mind, staying safe was really really important to Annie, and not by

any small you know, relation to her physicality. She was only four foot eleven inches and only nine pounds, so you know, look, she knew that she was not exactly a formidable threat to anybody who would do her harm, and that was something that had concerned her because earlier that very year she had even written an article for the Yale Medical School magazine and it was titled Crime and Safety in new Haven, and in that article she actually wrote and offered tips about how to avoid being

quote another statistic which is just a heartbreaking footnote to this whole thing. And you know, despite being a prestigious school, Yale is in new Haven, and new Haven is not exactly a safetown. It has a violent history, particularly with you know, street gang violence. And that's one of the things that I would have thought that even more than gangs. The obvious suspect in this would have to have been

her fiance. It's always the romantic partner that police look at first, and so I would have thought that they would have examined Jonathan almost from the beginning. We're going to take a break, we'll be back in just a moment. Two days after going missing, Annie's fiance, Jonathan was brought in for questioning and he was very emotional when he talked to the police. He started crying and he told them he had no idea where she could have gone.

And while police thought maybe she was getting cold feet and then she ran off and a runaway bride type situation, Jonathan said the opposite. He said she had no idea, that she was having reservations about the wedding, and things were all great and on track. He also said that the last time he spoke was at eight am, and police obviously asked him where he was the day she went missing, and he told them he had been in

Manhattan at his apartment with his roommate. He then went to campus at Columbia in the afternoon, and New Haven and New York City are hours apart, so if he was really there, and it seems like he was it would be impossible for him to then get over to New Haven and do something to Annie. He even took a polygraph and passed. Police were even saying publicly that he was cooperating with the investigation. So with him kind of crossed off the list as a suspect, no one

really knew who harmed Annie or where she was. Yeah, and I mean, you're right, just in terms of the logistics, there's no way he could conceivably have transported himself from New York City to New Haven, Connecticut. I mean, the traffic alone would have added hours, So there's absolutely no way.

I find it interesting about the article she wrote. I wonder could it be just a very tragic coincidence, or was she feeling like she was somehow in danger or she was personally feeling threatened and that's what inspired her to write that, because what happened to her, and then having written that article seems like a very weird, odd coincidence. No, and necessarily having you know, also being inside the lab, you would not have necessarily thought she would be in

danger within the buildings of the institution. But I should think that that's a major concern with young women walking through campus late at night. You're always aware that you could become a victim at any point. Particularly again back to her physicality. She was ninety pounds, so she was probably even more conscious of how easily she could become a victim. True, And she's also not quote unquote a

normal student. She's doing something that for some people was kind of ruffling some feathers, and so perhaps she was targeted because of that, And she was so vulnerable because of her small size, like it was easy to pick her as the target of you know, our anger about this lab work. The FBI, Connecticut State Police, and New Haven Police were all working tirelessly to look at Annie.

The first sign of a crime came on September twelve, two and nine, when luminal was sprayed throughout the research area. Detectives found what's called ghost rings on the wall. Ghost Rings appear when someone has attempted to clean up blood splatter. Detectives now knew that Annie was most likely harmed somewhere in the building. The next day, on September two thousand and nine, what would have been Annie's wedding day, officials combed through the building inch by inch inside the men's

locker room, an odd smell emanated from the wall. At five pm, a cadaver dog led investigators to a metal plumbing access panel that appeared to have a screw missing from it. They immediately removed the loose panel and found a disturbing site, Annie's lifeless body upside down and decomposing inside the wall. It's just such a heartbreaking coincidence that they find her body on her wedding day, and making

it even worse. When her body was found, her clothing was in disarray, her bra had been pushed up, her underwear had been pulled down, and she was missing a sock that police later found in the hallway ceiling. Everything about the crime scene suggested that Annie had been sexually assaulted and beaten before she was shoved into a wall. And you know of note, police found Annie's missing I D and a green pin next to her body. Yeah, Lauren,

like you kind of just touched on. Annie was savagely murdered and during the optopsy the medical examiner found multiple bruises and contusions on her body. She also had a broken jaw and collar bone, and a bruise on the back of her head. The Emmy concluded that the injuries happened while she was alive, which makes this somehow even worse. They also confirmed that Annie died of manual strangulation after

she was brutally sexually assaulted again. Back to her size, how difficult it would have been for her to fight back, but all of her defensive wounds were in keeping with somebody who really fought as hard as she could before her life was taken away. And after Annie was found, her friends were understandably inconsolable. They held a nighttime vigil on the Yale campus and six hundred some odd people attended her funeral, so there was a tremendous outpouring of

grief and mourning. And while Jonathan didn't speak at the funeral, he did serve as the head rusher and he wore what would have been his wedding ring to the funeral. You know, having covered this story specifically during your time in daytime television, do you remember the reaction or the feeling when you heard about it, or what people were saying when this was happening. None of it made sense.

It have had to have been an inside job, somebody who was willing to commit that kind of violence inside a medical building would have been pretty clear as to where they could get away with things and where the struggle, you know, the sound of the struggle would not raise immediate suspicion. So they were obviously aware of the security in the building. But also think of the clean up.

It took the police a long time to find those bloodstains, and so the person obviously again had access to all the things that you would need to clean up a crime of that magnitude. So I did think that from the beginning it did not make sense that a stranger

had committed the crime. And it also didn't really make sense that the fiance had committed the crime, because he wouldn't have had add the access in terms of the security card to get into the places where you would have had to have gotten into to commit the crime or to hide the body. That's a really good point. I also wanted to ask you too. I mean, you've covered in your work as a true crime producer very grewesome crimes and murders and things like that, and so strangulation,

what does that say to you as a method of murder? Like, what does it say about the killer or the victim? Or their relationship. I think that strangulation in particular is one of the most intimate ways to kill a person because it is always about power, and there is a cruelty because you are more often than not killing the other person with your bare hands, but you could stop yourself at any point, and so you're literally taking away the person's breath and watching them die in a slow

and painful way in front of your very eyes. So sexual abuse, you know, and of this sort is about control and power, and the strangulation is another layer on a very evil onion of power and inflicting pain and control over one's victims. Let's stop here for another break. Going back to strangulation. The first podcast that I did, Happy Face, covered Keith Hunter, Jesperson and Jus Person was

infamous for strangling and sexually assaulting his victims. And it inevitably comes out of the need to control, but also a deep seated insecurity. And that's something that immediately resonated with me about the way in which Annie was murdered. Somebody felt the need to control her. Somebody felt the need to put her in a position where they felt

more powerful and superior. Do you think that the police would take that information and they use all that in their investigation when they're looking at potential suspects who would have a vendetta against Annie or a desire to harm her in such a brutal way. I think so because it becomes a crime of passion, you know, it becomes a very personal crime. And that's why I thought that the likelihood was she knew the person who took her life.

Strangling also takes longer I think than people. I think it does, and which to me that speaks to and cart me that's wrong. But I think that speaks to someone who knows the schedule of other lab workers, other people in the building, like they knew they would have the time to to execute this murder and then cleaned up like you mentioned, which would not be an easy task now, and so you would have to be pretty confident that you weren't going to be discovered in the process.

Investigators began to look at the entire staff and students of the five story, twelve thousand square foot building. There were approximately one hundred and fifty people who had daily access to the lab, and each one was being treated as a suspect. Most of Annie's co workers were cleared after eyewitnesses and their access cards determined their whereabouts during the time period in question. Police heeroed in on around twenty people who were in the building at the same time.

Annie was without alibies. By now, all students and staff had been cleared except for two outside contractors and one lab technician. The lab technician was twenty five year old Raymond Clark, the same technician who had told police he had seen Annie leaving during the fire drill. Raymond willingly gave his DNA to the police. Twelve hours later, the results came back a match Raymond Clark's DNA match the

DNA found at the scene of the crime. On September sewo thousand and nine, Raymond was arrested and charged with Innie's murder. Take a listen to the chief of police discussing the crime. You know, the only person that really truly knows the motive in this crime is the suspect what made him do what he did, and we may

not know to trial who we may never know. It's pretty incredible that Raymond not only was speaking to police this entire time and gave them a pretty important detail, which is that he saw her leaving the building that they used during their investigation, but that he willingly gave over d NA knowing that it would most likely come back a match. I don't know, I just find that

very interesting. And something else that's interesting is that remember that green pen, Lauren, that you mentioned at the scene of the crime. That also became a big part nailing Raymond to this murder. On the sign in sheet the morning of the murder, the same one Annie signed in when she got to the building, like she did every day. Raymond signed in with a green pet, but he signed out that day with a black pet. So it seems likely that he accidentally left the pen in the wall

with Annie's body. And it wasn't just the pen, which could be considered circumstantial evidence, even though it seems pretty damning to him. Police also found traces of Annie's blood on his boots. The big question was who was Raymond and why did he do this? And you know, in terms of Raymond, please forgive the pun. But the more the police dug, the more it became apparent that everybody

did not love Raymond. You know, multiple witnesses came forward and basically they painted Raymond as an absolute control freak. Who made a big deal about cleanliness and lab protocol in particular, And Raymond was repeatedly described as a man who seemed to have two starkly different personalities. One was this outgoing, uber competitive, all American guy, and the other was this abusive control freak who was allegedly violent with

his exes. And that kind of ties back to what I said about the control of strangulation and you know, sexual abuse, that this is somebody who's threatened in some way, shape or form by a female. And police found that Raymond had even once sent Annie an angry email scolding her basically for how she handled lab rats, and Annie apologized. Evidence also showed that the day Annie disappeared, Raymond had sent her a text asking her to meet him to

discuss the cleanliness of the mice cages. And that kind of goes back to how the killer knew where all the cleaning supplies were. You have somebody who is obsessed with cleanliness, they're going to know where the bleaches. Detectives also surmised after the fact that Annie was likely the

object of Raymond's infatuations. He had a crush on her, apparently, and basically it looks like Raymond forced himself on her and being the mouse that roared, Annie fought back and valiantly too, but her size was no match and there was a struggle, and Raymond killed Annie, And so it

seems like he had a fair amount planned out. What he didn't expect was that fire alarm going off, which is interesting because I think when I first heard the story, I would assume that the killer pulled the fire alarm and some sort of rules to get everyone out of

the building or caused a distraction. But it turns out police don't think those two things were connected because when they went back to look at the surveillance footage, Raymond could be seen exiting the building and his white lap Co sitting down on the steps with his head in his hands. He repeatedly was looking back at the door, looking very stressed and anxious, which, knowing what was going

on inside that lab, makes a lot of sense. Once everyone was able to go back in the building, Raymond went inside, and he proceeded to cover up the evidence of what he done by dragging her body to the locker room and shoving her inside the wall. Police looked at the key card records that showed him moving from room to room as if he were searching for a place to hide the body. On the way back to the lab, he found her sock in the hallway and

just shoved it in the ceiling panel. But here's the thing, So with a scientific background, he would have known it was a matter of time. It's not like he stored her body in an airtight container. He would have known her body would have been decomposing, and almost like you know the telltale heart and Edgar Allan Poe, that decomposition was the ticking time bomb that ultimately her body would

be found. I think that there is something really chilling and little bit powerful about her body being found the day she was supposed to be married. I'd like to think that Annie had something to do with that, because her loved ones must have just been in so much grief not knowing what had happened to her. But you know, I wonder if Raymond ever had the thought of going

back and removing the body at some point. But as the investigation heated up and it became obvious that he was being scrutinized, he couldn't sneak back in and dispose of the body. But as long as that body was in the wall. He was going to get caught, I know, because on the one hand, it seems like he kind of tried to plan this out. He lured her into the lab under the guise of talking about cleaning the

mice cages, and he cleaned it up pretty well. I mean, it took days, like you said, to find any traces of blood. But then he doesn't put the body in a good place, and he's telling police the wrong story. So it just seems very sloppy in a lot of ways. I don't think he planned to kill her. I don't think he invited her they're planning to kill her. I think he invited her there to maybe put themselves in an intimate position where he could express his feelings or

make some kind of a move on her. And she rebuffed his advances, and that was the trigger, you know, That was his fragile insecurity. That was something that summoned this deep rage. She obviously did something that triggered his insecurities or fragile male ego. There was no reason to kill her. She wasn't a threat to him physically. In your work covering various murders, is snapping something that happens where people just kind of something switches and they can't

control themselves. Yeah, I mean, going back to Keith Hunter Jasperson, it was always when women either ridiculed him or played upon his insecurities about his intelligence. You know, in his mind, Jesperson fancied himself some kind of rock star casanova, and when women saw him differently, that was this trigger that set him off in a blind rage and he snapped. So I do think that you have Raymond having a

violent history with ex girlfriends. Obviously, he wanted Annie to be his girlfriend, and when she turned him down or called him out for making advances, that triggered something in him. Yeah, it seems like there's a lot of similarities between the two those two killers, like the same kind of anger towards women and the hostility and when they don't get their way. But the loss of control is one thing, but the actual remorse is another. Jesperson didn't have remor worse.

It looks like Raymond did. When he goes outside and he holds his head in his hands, he obviously realizes that he's done something horrible. Back inside the building, I kind of saw it as he's stressed because he was in the middle of cleaning up a murder, and now he might get caught. But that's an interesting way to look at it. Why would he have chosen to murder somebody inside a building where he did research that he obviously had to go back into day after day during

the investigation. It's a great point. I mean, yeah, and then he's lying to the police about seeing her leave, knowing that all these that the key cards are the dead giveaway that they will tell once they figure that out. I mean, there's no way they would his story doesn't check out once they figure that out, and probably realizing he lost his green pen at some point and running about looking for it, and then realizing that that could be the thing that that tied him to the crime.

It's just so sad, and my heart goes out to Jonathan. I mean, to have lost your soul mate is horrible enough, but to lose somebody in such a tragic, violent and senseless way, my heart goes out to both families. In March of two thousand eleven, instead of going to trial, Raymond Clark accepted a guilty plea that came with a forty four year sentence. He has scheduled for release on September. Those who knew Annie often said that the brilliant and

vivacious women would have changed the world. She did, after all, go into medicine to help others. Now with her gone, we can only wonder what Annie's impact might have been. Lauren, I mean, your work speaks for itself. It's prolific, with things like murder in Illinois, Happy Faith, and murders at White Horse Farm. Can you tell us what you're working

on next? Yeah, I'm actually working on a really intense story about a detective who goes to work for an agency in Miami in the eighties without realizing that it was a front for a CIA sanctioned drug and arms smuggling operation. And it of course involves a murder, and so it is called Murder in Miami And that will be out probably in September. Shameless plug. If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review. Season three of the Piked and Massacre Returned to Bike County is in

the works. We want to hear from you for the upcoming season. Do you have a story to tell a connection to Pike County or is there another case local to Pike County that you can't let go of. Please email info at Katie dash Studios dot com and don't forget to follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graves, and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Crazy in Love is a production of

I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,