I watched the news intently, hoping for the safe recovery of Annie Le.  I hoped beyond hope that she had run from her wedding, but that wielding fear of death was something I alone did not experience.  I am certain many people hoped for the same.  However, our hopes and fears materialized into reality on the day she was to wed.

When I saw Raymond Clark the third during his arraignment, I wanted to hate him.  I wanted to sit in my recliner and scream at him for what he had done to that pretty, little girl.  I instead felt pity.  Pity for the lives, not just Annie’s, but also the others he had destroyed.  I felt pain for her parents when they learned she was dead.  How at the exact time she was to walk down the aisle, the happiest day of her life, to unite in marriage to her best friend, as she had earlier called him.  How he possibly looked at the clock on that Sunday, and felt the stab in his heart, knowing at maybe that precise time she was being removed from a wall.  I even hoped that the body found would not be that of Annie.  Perhaps selfish hopes, but nonetheless a hope for Annie on her wedding day.  

I watched the emotionless face of Raymond Clark as he stood before the Judge.  I believe I saw a glimmer of fear, but of that, I am not certain.  I had pity for his parents and family. Somewhere inside my Christian heart, I felt for Raymond Clark something other than hatred.  I thanked God that I did not have to sit on that jury which awaits him, or on the bench of the Judge.  I would not under any condition want to be the Lawyer representing him.  I read that one had already dismissed himself from the case.

Another control freak gone askew, over lab mice?  Is that all Annie’s life meant to her killer?  It must have been so, if that were the real reason.  Did he previously plan to kill her when she arrived in her office that day, or was it a spare of the moment decision?  What provoked him to strangle her until she died?  Did they argue before he decided to close her mouth forever, or did he invite her into the lab, grab her, and choke the life out of her?  As the Chief of Police stated, we may never know the details behind the murder of Annie Le.

Raymond Clark the third is twenty-four years old.  He worked for a reputable University, not in a flamboyant position, but one of responsibility.  He had the responsibility to keep the mice cages clean, and complain if someone came into the lab without shoe covers, yet did not have the responsibility to refrain from killing Annie Le.  What happens to cause a person to snap to the point of no return?  Was he just a control freak, or did he have a diabolic mind? 

A young person caught up in evilness beyond comprehension, a mind that is so utterly twisted tells the hands to choke the life away from someone, for the sake of mice.  Unbelievable!

Raymond Clark the third, will either spend the rest of his life behind prison bars, or be put to death by the state, if they honor capital punishment in his state, or by the hand of another prisoner.  Whatever the case may be, Clark did not destroy only the life of Annie Le, he destroyed his own, and his hands have forever affected the lives of many others.  Hands that were controlled by anger and evilness.