New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Yale senior’s 1998 slaying haunts loved ones, investigators
25 years later, Suzanne Jovin’s death still a mystery
Suzanne Jovin got up extraordinarily early for a college student. It was Friday, and she had a lot to do.
Intent on finishing her crucial senior essay, the 21-year-old used her student ID card at 4:24 a.m. to pass through the gate at her residential college at Yale University. Working in a nearby computer room for much of the morning, Jovin told a fellow student she was in a rush because she was also facing a deadline to apply to graduate schools. She was planning to apply to Columbia, George Washington, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Yale.
Just before noon, Jovin picked up the keys for a Yale station wagon she would use later that day to transport people to a pizza party she was organizing for the Best Buddies program at Trinity Lutheran
Church, four blocks from campus. As her mother had done at Yale, Jovin as a freshman began volunteering with the Yale chapter of Best Buddies, an international organization that
pairs students with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. By her senior year, she was running the program.
By 1:30 p.m., she was back in her apartment near the residential college, spending a few hours working on more revisions to her essay and perhaps her grad school applications. Later that afternoon, she dropped off the revised draft of her essay at the office of her adviser, political science instructor James Van de Velde.
Jovin began picking up other Best Buddies participants around 4:30 p.m., and soon arrived at the party. After helping with the pizza baking, joining in the singing — “In the Good Old Summertime,” the title song from the 1949 musical starring Judy Garland, was a selection — assisting with the cleanup and driving people home, Jovin returned the vehicle around 8:45 p.m.
She went back to her apartment for a few minutes; when a friend invited her to a movie, she said she was too busy. Around 9 p.m., she emailed a female friend that she was
planning to retrieve some GRE materials from an unnamed person who had borrowed them from her. Jovin told her friend she would leave the materials in the lobby of Jovin’s apartment building for her friend to use.
At about 9:20 p.m., she was walking in the center of campus when she encountered friend and fellow student Peter Stein. She told him she was returning the car keys, was very tired and looking forward to getting some sleep.
He would be one of the last people on campus to see Jovin alive.
A murder case unfolds
It was unseasonably warm that night — Dec. 4, 1998. Two residents of New Haven’s affluent East Rock neighborhood — about two miles from the Yale campus — heard a man and a woman arguing, and a passing motorist heard a woman crying out, “I can’t believe you are doing this!”
Shortly afterward, a couple was out on a stroll to enjoy the Christmas decorations on the homes of New Haven’s affluent East Rock neighborhood. Just before 10 p.m., they came across a young woman bleeding on the ground. She was lying face down across the sidewalk beneath a tall oak tree at the corner of Edgehill and East Rock roads. She had been stabbed 17 times in the back of the head and neck, and her throat had been slit. She was fully clothed, and was wearing her rings, watch and earrings.
New Haven police, citing the number of wounds, would later call it a crime of rage and passion. The tip of the knife used in the attack was found in her skull during a later examination. A Fresca soda was found in a nearby bush.
The ambulance arrived quickly, responding to a 911 call from the couple. But it was too late. Jovin was pronounced dead a halfhour later at Yale New Haven Hospital.
It’s been 25 years since Jovin was killed. No one has ever been charged. All these years later, residents of East Rock and countless people beyond it are baffled over how someone could get away with murder in such a densely populated, safe setting. Above all, they are frustrated. That is the word used over and over when anyone discusses Jovin’s killing.
Her slaying remains one of the most notorious unsolved murder cases in Connecticut history — because of the personalities involved, the theories of what may have transpired that night and because the victim was a charismatic rising star at a world-famous university.
‘Boundless curiosity and energy’
Suzanne Jovin seemed destined for greatness. She was the daughter of Thomas and Donna Jovin, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. It was in this academically storied town in Lower Saxony — where Robert Oppenheimer received his Ph.D. in 1927 — that the couple raised their daughters.
One of those sisters, Ellen Jovin, in a letter written to the New Haven Register one year after Suzanne’s death, described her as “almost always in motion. At 2, she had dancing pigtails, deep dimples and bright blue eyes, and explored her world with boundless curiosity and energy.”
Anne Felsch, Jovin’s lifelong friend and now an architect living in London, thinks they met in kindergarten in Germany. In an email interview, she offered her first impressions: “Kind, empathetic, creative, funny, intelligent! We quickly formed a strong bond.”
Jovin double-majored in biology and chemistry at her German high school. Her talents extended beyond academics, as she played piano and cello, and sang with several rock bands as a teenager. She was also a world traveler and fluent in four languages — English, German, French and Spanish. Before she left Germany to study in the U.S., Jovin had already traveled extensively through Europe and Mexico, where her grandparents lived.
Responding to a question about what made her special, Felsch wrote: “Suzanne was an incredibly devoted friend, with a fantastic sense of humor and a
brilliant mind. In addition to our typical teenage silliness, our conversations were often very profound, and she appeared exceptionally wise beyond her years.” According to Felsch, Jovin was also the first in their group to drive a car. “Our favorite thing was rolling down the windows and cranking up the volume to Snap!’s album ‘World Power.’”
Jovin’s mother had gotten her Ph.D. from Yale, and her parents encouraged her to study there, too. She flourished at Yale from the start, academically, socially and in the New Haven community. In addition to her involvement with the Best Buddies program, she also volunteered her time tutoring local underprivileged children, continued her musical pursuits by singing in the Bach Society Orchestra, co-founded Yale’s German club, and worked in a Yale dining hall.
“While others talked of making a difference, Suzanne rolled up her sleeves, whether as a Best Buddies mentor or through other volunteering,” David Bach, one of Jovin’s best friends at Yale, and now a professor at the International Institute for Management in Switzerland, wrote to me in an email. “And while many of her Yale peers remained in their comfort zones, she pushed herself inside and outside the classroom, tackling hard questions, determined to make a difference.”
While Jovin’s family and friends always note how sweet and caring she was — “At Yale, it was Suzanne’s ‘activist’ empathy for people in need that stood out and filled us with great respect and admiration,” her father wrote in an email — she was also known for being strong-willed and never backing down from anybody with whom she disagreed.
In a Yale Daily News tribute page created after the murder, classmate Sathya Oum wrote: ”She had such a zest for life and always seemed so invincible. It seemed impossible that anything could have stopped her.”
Jovin was also popular and well-liked, and she had a longterm relationship with a fellow Yale student from her freshman year until her death. He was cleared by police early in the investigation.
As she did in high school, Jovin was a double-major at Yale, but rather than continue on her parents’ science track, she devoted herself to international studies and political science. Her goal was to make a difference in the fight against global terrorism. Three years before the 9/11 terror attacks, that focus was reflected in the title of her senior essay — “Osama bin Laden and the Terrorist Threat to U.S. Security.”
“Over the past 25 years, there hasn’t been a single global challenge or major political crisis that didn’t lead me to ponder ‘What would Suzanne think? And what would she do?’” Bach wrote by email. “Think/do was central to this remarkable young woman. She was a deep thinker and an enthusiastic doer, a pragmatic idealist — more idealistic than most, convinced that people of all backgrounds and beliefs could come together to find a common purpose, but also more pragmatic, with an infectious enthusiasm for getting things done.”
In 1999, Yale posthumously awarded Suzanne a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude with distinction in both her majors.
At Jovin’s core was care and compassion for others. During her memorial service at Yale’s Battell Chapel six days after her death, attended by nearly 1,000 mourners, Jovin’s “buddy,” Brown, had a letter read in which he wrote, “Suzanne was a sweet person and a good friend who did a lot for me. She always helped me feel better when I was stressed.” Of her death, “I don’t know how someone could do something like that. This is going to hurt me for the rest of my life.”
During that service, Thomas Jovin, choking back tears, said his daughter loved life, adding, “Suzanne was a more perfect person than either of her parents.”
Suzanne’s parents still live in Göttingen and are both still active in scientific research at what is now called the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. When reached by email, Thomas wrote: “Donna and I certainly do not object to your recapitulating what has happened over the last 25 years. Perhaps it will lead to substantive new information and results. Time will tell.”
Thomas Jovin acknowledges that the wound will never truly heal, even if her killer is finally brought to justice. “Our feeling of loss is of course unabated, yet secondary to the guilt and anguish we feel every time we contemplate the horror Suzanne experienced in her last moments and the lost promise of a long and rewarding (for her and others) life. Achieving ‘justice’ will/ would/can not change that.”
The only named suspect
Who killed Suzanne Jovin? It’s been a quarter-century and the complex investigation has not led to any arrests. The only name that has surfaced over the years was that of one-time suspect James Van de Velde, the Yale professor and Jovin’s senior essay adviser.
Van de Velde adamantly told reporters at the time he was innocent, saying, “I look forward to the real killer being found.”
By 2013, when Van de Velde settled a civil lawsuit he filed against the City of New Haven and Yale, the state’s attorney said he was no longer considered a suspect.
Van de Velde did not respond to recent emails for comment about the case and how it has affected his life.
One area of focus for investigators was Jovin’s senior essay. In the days leading up to her killing, the essay became a source of tension between Jovin and Van de Velde; she complained to her family and friends that he was not providing her with the expected feedback as she raced to meet her Dec. 8 deadline. Van de Velde, however, has denied there was any such disagreement.
But to this day, police have not come up with any forensic evidence linking Van de Velde to the crime.
Still, amid rampant speculation that one of their lecturers might have killed one of his students, Yale did not rally to his defense. On Jan. 11, 1999, the university issued a statement announcing that Van de Velde was among a “pool of suspects,” while also saying they presumed him to be innocent.
The day before the statement was released, Van de Velde was placed on paid leave. A Yale spokesperson said his presence
on campus would be “a major distraction.”
During the four-hour interview in New Haven, Van de Velde dismissed the police investigation as a “joke” and “pure bunk.” He said they should take him out of the infamous “pool of suspects.” And he vowed: “There will never be any evidence linking me to the crime.”
Van de Velde chose not to take Yale up on its offer to remain in New Haven to do scholarly research. In early May of that year, Yale announced he would not be invited back to teach in the fall semester. Yale officials claimed it had nothing to do with him being investigated for Jovin’s murder. His attorney called this “total nonsense.”
Van de Velde moved to the Washington, D.C., area and, after at least a year of job rejections he blamed on his public branding by Yale, he resumed his career with the U.S. government, including the U.S. Naval Intelligence Reserves. (He had previously done defense and diplomacy work with the George H. W. Bush administration). The Navy gave him a series of assignments, including at the Pentagon. He also taught national and international security at Johns Hopkins University.
And yet still there was a cloud of suspicion hanging over him. In April 2001, he decided to sit down for an interview with the New Haven Register because he said he was “weary of watching the criminal justice system fail.”
During the four-hour interview in New Haven, Van de Velde dismissed the police investigation as “a joke” and called it “pure bunk.” He said they should take him out of the infamous “pool of suspects.” And he vowed: “There will never be any evidence linking me to the crime.”
In October 2001, New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington announced that DNA from skin cells found under Jovin’s fingernails did not match that of Van de Velde. But still authorities did not take him out of that “pool of suspects.” No one else in this “pool” has ever been named.
In December 2001, Van de Velde filed a federal lawsuit against the New Haven police. The following April he added prominent Yale officials to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claimed that, as a result of being named a suspect, his constitutional rights were violated and his reputation and career were damaged.
Several years passed, and in an effort to revitalize their seemingly stalled investigation, authorities in November 2007 announced they had brought in a four-person team of retired police investigators to put fresh eyes on the case. Initially, they were to be paid as volunteers, for $1 per year, but their pay was eventually increased to the minimum hourly wage for an inspector.
Ellen Jovin appeared at the news conference announcing the formation of this team. “Not knowing what happened that night is devastating, and compounds the loss,” she said. “We grieve for her every day.”
Also at that news conference, Assistant New Haven State’s Attorney James Clark said, “The idea is to approach the case as if it were brand new. Therefore, no person is a suspect in the crime, and everyone is a suspect in the crime.”
The four-person team never turned up enough evidence to charge anyone. But Van de Velde received some good news in June 2013: His attorneys had reached a settlement with New Haven and Yale officials on his lawsuit. The city agreed to pay him $200,000; Yale would not disclose how much it had agreed to pay.
At the time, Dearington said it was “fair to say” Van de Velde, after 14 years, was no longer in that “pool of suspects.”
Jeff Mitchell, a longtime friend who grew up in Connecticut with Van de Velde in the town of Orange, pointed to a series of opeds the former Yale professor submitted to the media. In the submissions, Van de Velde provided specific suggestions for police. For example: “Test the knife tip left in Jovin’s body to determine who made the knife, when it was sold and who bought knives in 1997–98.” And: “Test the hormones left within the fingerprints found on the Fresca soda bottle found at the crime scene.”
Investigators had found Jovin’s fingerprints and the partial palmprint of an unknown person on the soda container. The palmprint has never been identified, nor has it been examined for DNA evidence. The New Haven police have never said whether tests have been done on the knife to determine its exact type.
Another lingering question involves Jovin’s final email before she left her apartment, in which she wrote that she needed to retrieve study materials from “someone” that night. It’s unclear whether Jovin met that unnamed person, that person has never come forward, and the materials were never returned.
Mitchell, who still lives in Connecticut and has spent decades intensively researching the Jovin homicide, has even offered to pay to have the evidence re-tested, using updated DNA techniques. He says investigators turned him down. Nor has he been able to obtain the voluminous police files on the case because, authorities say, it’s still an “open” investigation. “In their mind, I’m just someone who doesn’t know and has no right to know.”
Van de Velde still lives in the Washington area where he has married and raised two children, who are now teenagers. According to his LinkedIn profile, Van de Velde has been a college professor in the Washington area for most of the past decade.
The investigation
The lead investigator now for the Jovin case is New Haven State’s Attorney John P. Doyle Jr.
In a recent interview with Doyle at his office, he also described it as an “open investigation.” He acknowledged that any unsolved murder is considered “open.”
“It’s a pending investigation, it’s a murder. So it’ll never be closed until we get some answers,” he said. “We’ll continue to follow leads. We ask people who have information to contact us.”
As Mitchell notes, Doyle says he won’t open the files on this case to the public or news media while it’s still “open” and “ongoing,” as has been the situation for 25 years.
Regarding recent advances in DNA techniques and whether they’ve been used on the evidence, Doyle said, “As new tech
niques develop, we’ll go back to look at a case to see if there’s new evidence. That has been done in the Jovin case in the past three years.” He wouldn’t be more specific.
Doyle says his predecessor, Patrick Griffin, now Connecticut’s chief state’s attorney, met with the Jovin family “over a year ago” and updated them on the case. But, Doyle said, “There wasn’t any new information to act upon.”
In a recent email, Thomas Jovin said he was contacted three years ago by Herbert Johnson, an inspector of the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice.
[New Haven State’s Attorney John P.] Doyle says his predecessor, Patrick Griffin, now Connecticut’s chief state’s attorney, met with the Jovin family “over a year ago” and updated them on the case. But, Doyle adds, “There wasn’t any new information to act upon.”
“He was assigned by (New Haven) State’s Attorney Pat Griffin the job of completing a comprehensive review of Suzanne’s case, collating and ordering all the investigative and forensic materials into a coherent picture,” Jovin wrote in the email. “This he did. Unfortunately, we are not aware that the effort has led to important new insights about Suzanne’s case.”
In a follow-up email, Jovin said, “As to the issue of DNA forensics, I posed the same question at the beginning of the year to the investigators, and their lab came back with information along the lines: There are no new technologies that would aid in the case; the recovered DNA was very limited in quantity and of mixed composition; the new techniques require more and better-quality DNA; the collected evidence has been reviewed many times.
“I might have doubts about some of the above but cannot presume to question the expertise of a lab dedicated to forensic DNA analysis. It would get me nowhere anyway.”
Doyle said Johnson is now working as an inspector in the Judicial District of Ansonia-Milford. “He’s still following up, reviewing the case under my direction,” Doyle said.
Johnson declined to comment in response to a series of questions: How often does he or anyone in his office work on this case? What new evidence has come up in the past few years? What materials have been retested? What were the results?
“I spoke with State’s Attorney Jack Doyle, and I know you have as well,” Johnson wrote in his email response. “I do not have any further comment from what he told you.”
Other investigators
Through the years, a number of investigators have been called in as part of the ongoing effort to find the perpetrator. In 2000, under pressure from the Jovin family, Yale hired two seasoned crime solvers: Andrew Rosenzweig, a former chief investigator with the New York district attorney’s office, and Patrick Harnett, a former commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s major crime squad.
In a recent phone interview from his Rhode Island home, Rosenzweig says the evidence didn’t point to Van de Velde.
“It was all circumstantial,” Rosenzweig said. “It continues to be all circumstantial. After 25 years. there is not a shred of evidence (against Van de Velde), other than circumstantial.”
Rosenzweig and Harnett interviewed Van de Velde for four hours (the same number of hours New Haven police interviewed him in 1998). “He was aggrieved and assertive,’” Rosenzweig said. “He told us, ‘I hope you’re gonna stick with this.’ He was fully cooperative.”
Rosenzweig recalls authorities’ setbacks with the evidence, including the material found under Jovin’s fingernails. When he began working the case, two years after the murder, “I discovered no testing had been requested on the fingernail scrapings. When I pointed this out to (Assistant New Haven State’s Attorney) Jim Clark, he was clearly taken aback and said, ‘Isn’t that why we take scrapings?’
About six months later, he called me and said, ‘Are you sitting down? They discovered some male DNA in the scrapings.’ It was later discovered that
this was the result of contamination by the lab examiner.” It was the examiner’s own DNA.
Rosenzweig asks of the state’s lab workers: “Did they look at every inch of her jacket? These state labs are all overworked and under-staffed. That’s a nightmare that’s never written about.”
Rosenzweig said in 2018 that he and Harnett stopped working on the case after sticking with it for about two years. “I felt like I was spinning my wheels,” he said. “Pat and I encouraged the authorities to pursue different avenues, without much success.”
In a recent interview, Rosenzweig said he doesn’t believe the Jovin murder is still being actively investigated. “If it were ‘active,’ they’d call me back when I call them with tips,” he said. “I’m just some old crank at this point. … It’s exceedingly frustrating.”
A world-famous examiner was also involved in the case, but only briefly. In 1998, Dr. Henry C. Lee, the noted forensic scientist, was commissioner for the state Department of Public Safety and director of the state’s forensic laboratory. In his capacity as public safety commissioner, he was briefed on the Jovin murder the morning after it happened. “Right away, I called the New Haven police chief (Melvin Wearing),” Lee said in a recent interview. “I told him, ‘The state police can help, we can send in major crime forensic lab people.’ He said, ‘Thank you, Dr. Lee, we can handle it.’”
Lee, who today is professor emeritus at the University of New Haven’s Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, remembers that several weeks later, just before Christmas, a New Haven police detective asked him to look at some of the evidence.
“I examined the victim’s clothing and the soda bottle,” Lee said in a recent interview. “I could not examine the body (because it had been buried). If I’d been able to examine her body, we could’ve gotten a better idea of the wounds. But I didn’t see it. If I don’t see it, how can I make a statement?”
“If on the first day they had said, ‘Dr. Lee,’ we could have set up an investigative team. We would have looked at it from different angles,” he added.
Looking back, Lee says, “Not for myself, I feel frustrated. For the family. Their daughter came to the U.S. to study, just like I did. I feel terrible about it. I wish I could do something.”
“If on the first day they had said, ‘Dr. Lee,’ we could have set up an investigative team. We would have looked at it from different angles,” he added.
More recently, two state investigators — Marcia Pillsbury, then a senior assistant state’s attorney for the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice, the other a veteran police investigator who asked not to be named in this story — examined the Jovin case for about seven years, studying her final hours and conducting numerous interviews.
When those two investigators met with those in charge of the case in 2020, they were told they didn’t have enough evidence to indict anyone and were ordered to stop working on the case.
The theories
Through the decades, several theories of who killed Jovin, and why, have circulated.
The theories include an implausible scenario involving the topic of Jovin’s senior essay: The threat posed by bin Laden and al-Qaeda. In her essay, which was later published, she concluded it seemed “bin Laden will be susceptible to the application of a judicious long-term counterterrorist strategy.”
Rosenzweig thinks it’s possible Jovin was learning too much sensitive information about bin Laden while doing her research and was killed by an al-Qaeda sympathizer. “I never said anything with great certitude about this,” Rosenzweig said. “Merely that it was one more possibility that was never explored. There are groups in Connecticut who are clearly sympathetic to alQaeda.”
The al-Qaeda theory doesn’t sound feasible to many people familiar with the Jovin case, including Van de Velde’s friend Mitchell. “She’s a college kid writing an essay. If it’s a professional hit, why would you stab her 17 times with a flimsy blade and leave her alive on the street? It’s absurd, a fantasy. It makes no sense.”
Another theory that has been advanced would be difficult to prove — the man has been dead for more than a decade. Three New Haven friends, including documentary filmmaker Gilles Carter, told me they had asked police to consider the possibility that a man they knew might have killed Jovin. Since this man was never charged in the slaying nor named as a suspect, he has never been publicly identified.
Carter, who first met the man in 2008, says the person was a Yale graduate student in 1998. In 2011, Carter vividly recalls his friend saying, “There’s something you should know — I’m obsessed with the murder of Suzanne Jovin.”
In 2012, the man was driving on I-95 in West Haven when he hit a jersey barrier, exited his car and walked onto the highway. He began running, grabbed onto the side of a pickup truck, hauled himself onto it, then jumped in front of an oncoming car. It was deemed an accident, but Carter believes it was suicide.
Carter says his group never learned whether their friend
knew Jovin. “I don’t say he’s the guy who did it,” he says. “But he certainly should be looked at carefully.”
Mitchell also considers Carter’s friend a suspect. He even made a video, “The Green Jacket Killer,” which he posted to YouTube. He bases his suspicion largely on a police-ordered sketch of a scowling young man who came to be known as “the running man” — yet another mysterious figure in the Jovin case. In releasing the sketch in 2008, police revealed that shortly after the murder “a female motorist told police she was driving in the area of Whitney Avenue and Huntington Street (near the crime scene) at about 10 p.m. when she saw a white male sprint past her vehicle and disappear” over some bushes.
Based on the driver’s account, the man was described on the poster of the sketch as “a physically fit athletic looking white male with defined features, 20s to 30s in age with well-groomed blond or dark blond hair. He was wearing dark pants and a loose fitted greenish jacket.”
Though the driver has never been identified, I found her at the time and asked her about what she saw. Asking not to be named, she said she saw the side of the running man’s “square jaw” for only a second or two and thus cannot say who he was.
The “greenish jacket” attracted Mitchell’s attention. He notes there are photos of Carter’s friend wearing a loose-fitting green jacket. Mitchell also notes the man was an avid runner. Carter too thinks “the running man” looks like his friend.
However, then-Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane at the time said: “We have not made any connection (to the Jovin murder) that would warrant any action.”
A loss that is still felt
Patrick Gaffney, who was a member of the four-person team appointed in 2007, surprised me with an evening call as I’m wrapping up my research for this story. Our conversation turned emotional. He told me that as a father, he has deep sympathy for the Jovins. “We throw up a shield around our children,” he said.
“We tried really, really hard,” he says. “Sometimes it was emotionally really hard. The police, Harnett, Rosenzweig, they tried hard, too. Everybody wanted to
solve this thing. It turns a young man’s hair white.”
Gaffney 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 only someday somebody could say to the Jovins: ‘Mom and Dad — we know what happened.’”
In April 1999, a few months after the murder of his daughter, Thomas Jovin accepted Yale’s Elm & Ivy Award on behalf of Suzanne. The annual honor recognizes a student’s meritorious service contributions in the New Haven community. In addition, the university established a scholarship in her name which still benefits students a quartercentury later. Her family also created a fund which provides educational and other assistance for girls and women, as well as support for Best Buddies.
While Suzanne’s giving spirit lives on in the memory and contributions of others, those who knew her say her own accomplishments would have been even greater had she lived. That’s why, for her family and friends, it’s not only the personal pain they still feel. It’s also the knowledge that the world was robbed of a person with such boundless potential for good.
“Twenty-five years ago, the Jovins lost their daughter and sister,” said David Bach, one of Jovin’s close Yale friends. “I lost my friend. And the world lost an extraordinary person — a big heart and fierce intellect, a differencemaker. Suzanne is missed, every day, even by those who weren’t fortunate enough to meet her.”
Felsch, Jovin’s friend from Germany, says if Suzanne had lived longer, “She would have excelled in any path she chose. She would have forged an impressive career, perhaps in politics, and would have left a positive mark on others’ lives.”
Her father puts it this way: “Suzanne had a truly exceptional mix of temperament, character and ‘the smarts’ and would have undoubtedly contributed materially to the human condition. In short, ‘our’ loss is ‘everyone’s’ loss.”
Anyone with information about Suzanne
Jovin’s murder can contact the tip line about the case at 866-623-8058 or email jovincase@gmail.com . There is still a $150,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction. Randall Beach can
be reached at rbeach8@yahoo.com.