In brief: Former lab tech admits murder

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – A former animal research technician pleaded guilty Thursday to killing a Yale University graduate student days before her wedding, and prosecutors revealed that he left behind evidence of a sexual assault and tried to cover his tracks.

Raymond Clark III pleaded guilty to murder and entered an Alford plea to attempted sexual assault of 24-year-old Annie Le under an agreement with prosecutors that calls for a 44-year sentence. Under Connecticut’s Alford doctrine, the defendant agrees that the state has enough evidence to likely get a conviction and a guilty finding is entered.

The sex charge and related DNA evidence offered the first official revelation of a potential motive in the case.

Clark, 26, was accused of strangling Le, of Placerville, Calif. Her body was found upside down stuffed behind a research lab wall on Sept. 13, 2009, five days after she was last seen inside the Yale medical building.

Prosecutor David Strollo said there was evidence that Clark tried after the killing to generate an alibi, scrub the crime scene and even fish evidence out from behind the wall.

Live kidney donor transmitted HIV

ATLANTA – A transplant patient contracted AIDS from the kidney of a living donor, in the first documented case of its kind in the U.S. since screening for HIV began in the mid-1980s.

It turns out the donor had unprotected gay sex in the 11 weeks between the time he tested negative and the time the surgery took place in 2009.

In a report Thursday on the New York City case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that organ donors have repeat HIV tests a week before surgery.

“The most sensitive test needs to be done as close as possible to the time of transplant,” said Dr. Colin Shepard, who oversees tracking of HIV cases for the New York City Health Department.

Because of patient confidentiality, health officials released few details about the donor, recipient, their relationship or the hospital where the transplant took place.

Neither the donor nor the recipient knew he or she had HIV until about a year after the transplant, according to the report.