CONSERVATIVE PROFESSOR'S CAREER RUINED DESPITE TOTAL LACK OF EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING



The slaying of Suzanne Jovin was bound to attract exceptional press and public interest. She was a dazzling undergraduate at one of the world's leading universities. Born in Gottingen, Germany, to U.S. scientists Thomas and Donna Jovin, raised there in a 14th-century castle, she was vastly talented. She spoke four languages. Even as a teenager she had greater experience in other countries and cultures than the man being groomed to become our 43rd president.

Energetically pursuing a double major in political science and international studies, Jovin seemed destined for a life of public service. She would be at the center of the nation's greatest modern challenge to its security. Nearly three years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she produced a formidable senior thesis on international terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Just as impressive was her commitment to the social good. A friend has told of her "very, very strong sense of justice and righteousness." She tutored urban children. From the start of her freshman year to her last hours, she devoted herself to the Yale chapter of Best Buddies, joining other students in bringing friendship and joy to the lives of adults with mental disabilities.

Picture her final hours in this labor of love: directing a Best Buddies pizza-making party at Trinity Lutheran Church, driving home the volunteers, returning the borrowed car to the university, turning in the keys to the campus police, then, at about 9:30, walking into the night and an encounter with a madman.

Even so, it was not the heartbreaking death of an outstanding young woman that made the Jovin case a national story through the first year of her death. For the Connecticut press as well as the New York Times, Time, Vanity Fair, 20/20, Court TV, CNN and the other big media, the compelling force was the flood of speculation, with undertones of romance, obsession and anger, about a student-professor relationship gone wrong.

The permanent coupling of the homicide with a case of false accusation began within a week of the crime with the local headline "Educator Grilled in Jovin Matter." Thereafter, the victim's name was linked to that of her thesis adviser, James Van de Velde, one of the university's most popular lecturers.

A 38-year-old Yale graduate and former dean of Saybrook, one of Yale's residential colleges, his class on the national security dimensions of international drug trafficking had been cited by Spin magazine as among the most interesting college courses in the country.

As an officer in the U.S. Naval Intelligence Reserve, he had worked at the Pentagon and the State Department. He had carried out assignments everywhere from Bosnia to Singapore. Born and raised in Orange, still a bachelor, he was a handsome, politically conservative "straight arrow" with a sterling reputation.

With the avalanche of publicity about his possible guilt, based mostly on police leaks, rumor and conjecture, Van de Velde's good name was destroyed. In the words of a Courant headline, he went "From Pillar to Pariah." Never mind that no hint of any relationship with the victim outside the classroom ever surfaced. Never mind the absence of any history of violence. His academic career came down in flames.

In a grave lapse of conscience, Yale itself, putting out his name as one in a supposed "pool of suspects" even before the official police statement, subsequently canceled his political science classes just hours before the start of the next semester on the excuse that his students should be spared distractions.

When I read this, I thought about Peter Reilly. He was the central figure of Connecticut's nationally famous "wrong man" case of the mid-1970s. Although his mother's death was the most savage homicide in Litchfield County history, the teenager was released from prison during the appeal of his conviction. The "confessed killer," eventually exonerated, returned to our regional high school for his senior-year classes. No distractions were expected or reported.

With his lectures abruptly ended, his teaching contract unlikely to be renewed, Van de Velde's days at Yale were numbered. The university said it was willing to recommend him to other institutions but would have to note that he was under suspicion for murder. His academic opportunities vanished. Quinnipiac College had already added to his woes by expelling him from its master's program in broadcast journalism.

An independent investigator, Patrick Harnett, now Hartford's police chief, has described Van de Velde as "Richard Jewell with a Ph.D.," referring to the security guard mistakenly targeted by the FBI and defamed in the press for the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996. The great oddity about Van de Velde's situation now, as it has been for seven years, is that he is both "the only named suspect" in the Jovin murder and the citizen who has been more active than anyone else in trying to keep the case alive and demanding a solution to the crime.

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