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Yale murder suspect to plead guilty, attorney says

By Jesse Solomon, CNN
Raymond Clark III appears in court in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2009.
Raymond Clark III appears in court in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2009.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Raymond Clark III will enter a guilty plea Thursday, the public defender says
  • There is a plea agreement, the attorney says, but he does not divulge details
  • Yale graduate student Annie Le's body was found inside a wall at a Yale lab building
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(CNN) -- A Yale lab technician charged in the strangling murder of a Yale graduate student less than a week before she was to be married plans to plead guilty, his attorney said Wednesday.

Public defender Joseph Lopez said his client, Raymond Clark III, will plead guilty in New Haven, Connecticut, Superior Court on Thursday as part of a plea bargain, though he would not divulge the details of the agreement. Clark had originally pleaded not guilty in January 2010.

Clark, 26, of Branford, Connecticut, is accused in the slaying of Annie Le, 24, who was pursuing a doctorate in pharmacology at Yale when she went missing September 8, 2009. Le's body was discovered inside a wall of a Yale lab building four days later after an extensive search by the FBI and police.

She had planned to marry Columbia graduate student Jonathan Widawsky on the day her body was found.

Clark was not a Yale student but had worked as a lab technician at the university since 2004, after graduating from high school. He lived with his girlfriend, who also is a Yale lab technician, according to police.

A Yale faculty member described Clark's job as maintaining colonies for animals used in research.

A motive in Le's killing was unclear, but police said they were treating the case as workplace violence.

Calls to the New Haven district attorney's office and Yale University seeking comment were not immediately returned Wednesday.