Still We Wonder -- Who Killed Suzanne Jovin?

How is it possible for somebody to stab to death a young woman in the evening hours on a residential street and get away with murder?

How can this be “the perfect crime”?

These questions have haunted the family of Suzanne Jovin, the residents of the East Rock neighborhood of New Haven — I am one of them — and certainly the New Haven police and other investigators who spent years working to bring the killer to justice.

This case is personal for me. On Dec. 4, 1998, the night Suzanne was murdered, I was in my home three blocks away, reading a bedtime story to my two young daughters. We heard the sirens.

The next day I saw the police cars and the yellow crime scene tape on that corner. I was a reporter for the New Haven Register but not working that weekend. Over the following hours and days I would start to hear bits and pieces of what had happened. But I didn’t know this would become a story that would consume me, that the fateful corner would be a jarring recurring signpost on my daily runs, that I would be writing about this for 25 years.

To cover this story is to go down a rabbit hole, with new turns and tips and rumors and theories that never cease to sprout anew. Everybody seems to have a theory and will recite it in detail in a strong, emotional tone. What could arouse more emotions than the sudden violent slaying of a popular young woman? Suzanne was just 21, in her senior year at Yale. She was a rising star, with plans to make her mark on the world, perhaps in international relations.

Because of my keen interest in this crime and my intense frustration that the murder has never been solved, I knew last year that the 25th anniversary was looming. Although I no longer work for the New Haven Register, I continue to write for Connecticut magazine. Hearst Media owns the magazine and the Register, so I knew if I could get my story into the magazine, it would be picked up by the Register. I knew it was important to write this overview. You never know who might be reminded about the case, might come forward after all these years with a memory, a piece of evidence that could lead to the killer.

Through the years, even after I left the Register, I have maintained contact with some of the investigators on this case. Even though they are no longer assigned to work on it, they can’t let it go. I can’t either. We have spent years communicating with Suzanne’s parents, Thomas and Donna Jovin, who live in Germany. We can only imagine their anguish and suffering.

After I got the green light from my editor at the magazine to write about this, I reached out to Thomas Jovin and told him what I was doing. He quickly responded to my email, saying he would help in any way he could. “Perhaps it will lead to substantive new information and results,” he said. “Time will tell.”

“Suzanne had a truly exceptional mix of temperament, character and ‘the smarts’ and would have undoubtedly contributed materially to the human condition,” he added. “In short, ‘our’ loss is everyone’s loss.”

During my months of working on this story (which you can find at ctinsider.com and connecticutmag.com), I re-interviewed many, many people who have been involved with this case, some of them for decades. Police and state officials tried to assure me the murder is still the subject of an “active” investigation but I could find little evidence that anybody is still spending much time working on it. However, if officials claim it’s “ongoing” or “open” or “active,” that gives them the legal ability to keep the files sealed from the public, including from curious reporters.

What would I look for if the files were to be opened? First I would seek out the transcript of an interview a New Haven cab driver gave to the police about what he said he saw on the night of the murder.

I learned about this cabbie during my interviews with two state investigators who spent approximately seven years looking into Suzanne’s murder. They found this man and they talked with him. They believe his story. However, his account was not allowed to be part of my magazine article. Perhaps there were fears of a lawsuit. The public has never heard about this witness. But I feel I can no longer keep this under wraps.

The cabbie said he drove past the corner of Whitney Avenue and East Rock Road — one block from where Suzanne’s body would soon afterward be discovered — and saw and heard a man and woman arguing in front of an apartment building. (Other witnesses recalled hearing this argument). After dropping off his fare nearby, the cabbie was so concerned that he returned and saw the same couple, then near the corner of East Rock Road and Edgehill Road.

“He described that the man appeared to be holding up the woman, with his arms under her arms,” one of the investigators told me. The cabbie said the man then climbed into a car and followed him for several blocks.

Five days later the cabbie was watching a local TV news report about the murder that showed a photo of a man police had been questioning. He was convinced that this was the man he had seen holding up the woman on that street corner.

The cabbie eventually went to the police to tell them his story. They interviewed him as he gave a detailed videotaped statement. But he had a heroin habit, which obviously didn’t help his credibility as a witness. And last year he died. This means his account can never be used in a courtroom; defense attorneys would not be able to cross-examine him.

This is just one example of how frustrating this case has been. I also have to make clear that there is very little forensic evidence, despite the fact that Suzanne was stabbed 17 times. The evidence is only circumstantial.

Some of those investigators are still kept up at night thinking about this unsolved mystery. One of them, a father who identifies with the Jovins’ agony over losing a child, told me: “We tried really, really hard. Sometimes it was emotionally really hard. Everybody wanted to solve this thing. It turns a young man’s hair white.”

He added, “I hope to God there’s an answer somewhere. There’s something about these unsolved cases. You feel an obligation to the family. If some day somebody could say to the Jovins: ‘Mom and Dad — we know what happened.’”

Another investigator, who is even more emotionally involved with this case, told me: “I fall in love with victims and their families.” Every year, on the night of Dec. 4, he returns to that street corner and places a rose at the base of the tree where Suzanne was found.

This past year, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary, I asked the investigator if I could go with him. He agreed. He also brought me a rose that I could place alongside his.

The Jovins were touched to hear that we had done this for their daughter, that we remember and haven’t given up.