New Haven’s police chief and state’s attorney will announce an increase in the reward currently posted for information relating to the 1998 murder of Suzanne Jovin ’99 Tuesday, the television station WTNH reported Monday night, citing unnamed sources.
Police spokeswoman Judith Mongillo said New Haven Police Chief Melvin H. Wearing and New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington would make an announcement at a press conference scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, but she would not specify what they would announce.
Jovin’s sister Ellen is also scheduled to be present, Mongillo said, as are Yale Police Chief James Perrotti and NHPD detectives assigned to the case.
Dearington and the Jovins’ attorney, David Rosen, also declined to comment on the announcement. Dearington said it would not be an announcement of an arrest.
The current $50,000 reward was originally posted about four months after Jovin was murdered in early December 1998. New Haven police put up posters for the reward around Old Campus in April 1999.
No one has ever been charged with Jovin’s murder, and the case has remained at a standstill publicly since shortly after it occurred. In the last year, Yale has retained the services of Andrew Rosenzweig, a private investigator, to re-examine the case.
University officials named James Van de Velde ’82 as a police suspect when they cancelled his classes for the 1999 spring semester, but he has always maintained his innocence.
Van de Velde called for Yale and the NHPD to publicize and increase further the Jovin reward in two open letters published in the Yale Daily News over the past two years.