New Haven police have questioned at least two former employees of a now-closed coffee shop frequented by Suzanne Jovin ’99 and showed them pictures of a man who might have known her, the New Haven Register reported Tuesday.
The Daily Caffe occupied the space at 316 Elm St. — right around the corner from Jovin’s Park Street apartment — until it closed about four months before her murder.
The cafe’s former owner, Steven Shapiro, told the Register that police officers showed him “a bunch of mug shots” and asked him if he recognized anyone. He added that he did not know anyone in the pictures.
Another former employee told the Register that she was also shown what appeared to be a surveillance photograph.
Yesterday marked the third anniversary of Jovin’s murder. On the night of Dec. 4, 1998, the Davenport senior was found stabbed 17 times in the back and neck in New Haven’s affluent East Rock neighborhood — less than 1.5 miles from the Yale campus.
James Van de Velde ’82, a former lecturer in the Yale Political Science Department and Jovin’s thesis adviser, remains the only suspect New Haven police have named.
–Brian Ginsberg