MURDER & CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AT YALE
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=16701Posted By: Patriotlad <Send E-Mail>
Date: Tuesday, 8-Jan-2002 21:30:50
In Response To: ZANTOP: Botched Burglary Led to Slayings? (hobie)
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" -- Sherlock Holmes to Dr. John Watson in the "The Sign Of Four."
On January 4th, 2002, former Yale Professor Antonio Lasaga entered a plea of "no contest" to six State felony charges, "including two counts of first-degree sexual assault," on a minor, according to the New Haven Register (reporting on January 5th). With this plea, the fifty-two year old expert in geology and geophysics reversed his prior court strategy of stalling and delaying, and maintaining his innocence. The crucial event which caused the disgraced former Professor -- who was convicted on federal charges of distributing child pornography -- was the decision by the presiding judge to admit "overwhelming and often graphic evidence of Lasaga's sexual misconduct".
The young victim of Antonio Lasaga's warped passion, now sixteen years of age, was first molested approximately ten years ago or at about the age of six. Lasaga had actually made videotapes of the child "in sexual poses and performing sexual acts", over a period of years. So writes reporter William Kaempffer of the Register's staff. At least three different videos were to be admitted into evidence, which apparently tipped the scales so drastically against Lasaga that he decided to plead 'no contest,' thus avoiding a dangerously provocative jury trial.
Whatever does this seemingly local-only story have to do with the issues and controversies which appear here at Rumor Mill News?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating Antonio Lasaga on November 4th, of 1998, ostensibly because a graduate student and computer technician reported to them that Lasaga was using the University's internet connections to download child pornography. He was then discovered to have used Yale's equipment to capture these images, which he then transferred to his home computer. When he finally did plead guilty to the federal charges, it was revealed that Lasaga had accumulated some 250,000 pictures of young men and boys, and some girls, in sexual or pornographic poses.
That information, which dovetails with the fact that his State molestation charges came into being AFTER he was being detained under house arrest, now indicate that Lasaga was for ten years or more an active, busy little pedophile. The story grows ever worse for Yale, as these details are revealed, but having Lasaga enter his plea on a Friday afternoon -- so that it hits the thin Saturday edition and not the fat, popular Sunday edition -- was a favorable development. In his plea, Lasaga got the right to appeal his conviction reserved for later use.
What is truly outrageous about the plea bargain reached by this former Professor of Geology and Geophysics, is that he remains free on bail, and living under house arrest in his Cheshire home.
Clearly, Antonio Lasaga has been living a very charmed life. He was able to use "a mentoring program set up by the New Haven Board of Education" to help him recruit this young victim. He was not just an obscure egghead specializing in the chemistry of rocks and stones: Lasaga was a full professor, with tenure, and entrusted by the University with the administration of one of its twelve residential colleges (or dormitories for undergraduates). He had a plum job and all the respect an academic could get.
Compare the favorable, deferential treatment afforded to this convicted pornographer, and child molester, with the rancid and disgusting campaign of rumors and innuendo which were mounted against a lecturer in political science at Yale, when one of his prize students was murdered. Police department investigators deliberately leaked speculative information about James Van de Velde just a few days after a Yale senior named Suzanne Jovin was murdered in New Haven proper, on December 4th, 1998.
Without an eyewitness, without any tangible linking evidence -- like the computer-transmitted images of boys and young men that cooked Lasaga's goose -- and without anything more than assertions and implications, James Van de Velde was basically "hung out to dry." He was put on leave by Yale in 1999. He was dumped from his graduate studies program. Suzanne Jovin was both his student in a seminar on political science, and his charge -- as she had selected him to evaluate her Senior Thesis, a necessity for graduation from Yale College.
Now the story gets really interesting: Antonio Lasaga was first tabbed by the FBI for investigation on November 4th of 1998, and precisely thirty days later, on December 4th, Jovin is killed. However, the manner of her death -- in light of the murders of Half and Suzanne Zantop of Dartmouth College last year -- must now become an issue of extreme importance. The bubbly and vivacious young co-ed from Gottingen, Germany, was stabbed 17 times with a large or military-style knife, dumped on a street corner in New Haven and left to die. Her father, Thomas Jovin, is a world-reknowned expert in molecular biology and microscopic imaging, and plating for microelectronics. He was, in 1998, Chairman of the Max Planck Institute at Gottingen, although he and his two daughters were American citizens.
What then links Suzanne Jovin to the doyen of child pornography? Antonio Lasaga was the Master of Saybrook, the residential college or dormitory and dining hall complex where some 400 Yale students live during the academic year. Jovin was not enrolled in his college, as her home base was Davenport (one of the twelve colleges or dorms). But every residential college at Yale has both a Master (who is the "university parent" and who gets both living accomodations and a nice budget for social events on campus), and an academic overseer or dean.
The Dean of Saybrook residential college when Lasaga -- the now-convicted child molester and pornographer -- was the boss there, was none other than James Van de Velde. Add to that the fact that this rising star in political science at Yale was both United States Naval Reserve and intelligence, and was taking a graduate study program in media at Quinnipiac College (nearby). Furthermore, Van de Velde had finished a short tour of active duty with Navy intelligence in the Bosnian deployment, working both in Italy and in Bosnia, in 1997, before rejoining Yale.
Add to that this fact -- his spunky, liberal-minded, exuberant, over-achieving student, Jovin, was working up a thesis paper on none other than Osama bin Laden. She had, in fact, just handed in a revised draft of the paper only hours before she was mortally wounded and dumped in one of the nicest neighborhoods in all of New Haven. Dumped like a used-up streetwalker.
Remember, this was December of 1998, or just a few months after the embassy bombings in eastern Africa, which were then supposed to be the work of bin Laden's group (now called Al Qaeda). Jovin was one of those very special young women who seem to have an inexhaustible source of energy. She had volunteered for four years with "Best Buddies," a group in New Haven which matched Yale people with mentally retarded adults, for social events. In fact, Jovin was the president of that organization as a senior, and was in charge of running a pizza party for "the Buddies" in the hours before her death.
Now to complete the circular diagram of this puzzling mystery: on a Saturday night in late January of 2001, it is alleged that James Parker, 16, and Robert Tulloch (17) somehow entered the home of Half and Suzanne Zantop -- Dartmouth professors -- and murdered them both with a military-style knife.
The two boys, from Chelsea, Vermont, were absolutely underage by the standards of any of the laws which concern pornography, and had apparently been admitted to the Zantop home sometime around 6:30 PM, even though the two professors were planning a dinner party. This murder case baffled police investigators at the very start.
Here is a snippet from a news item off the United Press International wire service for February 18th: "A neighbor discovered the dead bodies when she arrived at the Zantops for dinner. The door to the house was wide-open at that time. Police theorize that Half Zantop was stabbed to death first, and that Suzanne Zantop struggled fiercely before she succumbed to multiple slashings on her head and chest from what is believed to be a 'military-style' knife." Suzanne Jovin was stabbed 17 times in her neck and head, with a portion of the weapon used breaking off in her skull. The police in New Haven sought every possible way to put "a military style" knife in the hands of James Van de Velde, but no weapon was ever found in 1998, and no one could recall ever seeing the lecturer with any such blade.
Because the Zantops kept their doors locked and had an alarm system, police were initially inclined to believe they opened the door to the killers. So the question which occurred then, and which must re-occur now, is -- what were two boys under the age of 18 doing at Professor Zantop's house on a Saturday night? Was the geologist at Dartmouth also an afficionado of child porno? Was he, like Antonio Lasaga, fond of sexual encounters with boys and teen-agers? Or is just a coincidence? A coincidence that a professor of Geology lets two boys from a middle-class hamlet in Vermont talk their way into his home, where they then commence to stab him to pieces before assaulting his wife (who did put up a fierce struggle), and murdering her with great brutality?
So, at the end of January in 2001, two of the country's leading experts on geology, vulcanology and geophysics are very much out of business. One scientist is in disgrace and facing prison time, while the other has been brutally murdered in his own home, by two young teenage boys (who may have known him rather better than anyone wants to admit), seemingly for no reason.
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Enter into this equation, two additional facts: One ? that the Al Qaeda combat team inside of the United States was known, in 1998, as Force 17 ? and thus it is possible to know why Jovin was stabbled seventeen times and not more or less. That it helps mask her murder as ?a crime of passion? is just a bonus. Second, recognize that the long-standing neo-Nazi movement in these United States has been actively assisting the Al Qaeda network for many years, perhaps even back to 1992 and the emergence of Osama bin Laden. Certainly they have been co-operating since around early 1995, as the continuing scandals over the Oklahoma City bombing and as the established links between Iraqi intelligence and certain Germans abound.
Recognize, too, that these neo-Nazi leaders have gained considerable skills in the arts of blackmail and intimidation; and recognize, too, that few people are more prone to such blackmail than prominent men who indulge themselves in pedophilia, and who collect child pornography. Men like Antonio Lasaga, important men with prestige and access to vulnerable and troubled youngsters, on a daily basis.
Recognize further, that once the Taliban obtained complete control of Afghanistan, they and their friends in Al Qaeda had a pressing need to get top-drawer advice from those who are experts in all things Geophysical ?- like the structures and strengths of limestone caves, and underground sources of water. Where would they need to deploy such advice, and for what reason?
Does the name of the mountain fortress ?Tora Bora? ring any bells? And further recognize that Afghanistan suffered some rather disastrous earthquakes in 1998, and it becomes painfully obvious that geophysics and vulcanology would be areas of expertise that Al Qaeda would definitely need to access!
"Blackmail," a police investigator once said, "is a funny business:" it requires both the threat of force and actual intimidation to be effective. It isn?t always the case that simply promising a beating or talking about a maiming will do. It is much more effective to demonstrate such things to the person being blackmailed. And, when an operative is weak and exposed, terrorists like those in Al Qaeda would have every reason to impress on that person the utter futility of co-operating with the police or FBI.
What better way than by staging "a message killing?" Now it helps to know that Antonio Lasage was arrested just a few days prior to the murder of Suzanne Jovin, but it is clear that the FBI had him in their "crosshairs" some thirty days in advance of the charges.
The most cogent and believable explanation for the murder of Suzanne Jovin thus revolves primarily around the exposure, arrest and ruination of Antonio Lasaga: consider that he was either being blackmailed by neo-Nazi hoodlums, or used by Al Qaeda for his expertise, or maybe both. Perhaps his neo-Nazi handlers kept him at an arm?s length and simply traded him pornography for information. Maybe he danced with them quite willingly, or maybe it was done under a false flag. Either way, once he was exposed and arrested, the "control" network had to act and act fast. His exposure meant a significant loss in expertise. His arrest meant that he might intentionally -- or accidentally -- tell investigators about the neo-Nazi blackmailers, or their middlemen, or about Al Qaeda's plans to improve Tora Bora.
Quite clearly, Suzanne Jovin?s investigative work on Osama bin Laden would make her a target for Al Qaeda, but she would have had to be in the process of discovering something important to be marked for death, right away. Without examining her senior thesis, page by page, and looking at her then-current research notes ?- there is simply no way to know just what it was, what facts or theories, she was finding.
She may have found something which she thought was insignficant, but which the Al Qaeda or their neo-Nazi allies found most threatening and sensitive. After all, they would know where one incriminating bit of information might lead! And consider the view from their angle -- her thesis advisor is U.S. Navy and intelligence, too. He was on the other side from them in Bosnia.
Furthermore, since it is now fairly well-known that Van de Velde rather liked and respected the spunky young coed, Suzanne Jovin, the theory that he killed her because she didn't like him flies out the window. They were not having an affair. They were not, apparently, social friends. But they were both bright, curious and aggressive researchers!
So it is entirely possible that Al Qaeda operatives watched them both for a time. Perhaps they were looking at him and she just walked into the picture. Or, perhaps the bin Laden group had no real interest in Van de Velde, until their source for scientific information -- Lasaga -- was compromised, arrested, and ruined. Then in a matter of days, they would have put him under suspicion as being a surreptitious member of a Pedophile Eradication Team.
After all -- he was working closely with Antonio Lasaga, at Saybrook -- he was straitlaced and U.S. Naval intelligence. He was known to have been detailed to the CIA. Perhaps a plan to destroy Van de Velde was put into motion just days after the Al Qaeda learned that Lasaga was under suspicion, which would mean that they had access to sensitive FBI files well before December 4th!! That is not outside the realm of possibility, now is it?
But, back to the murder of Suzanne Jovin, on a balmy evening in early December. She has been busy. She tells a friend she is tired at about 9:20 or :25 PM. She then somehow gets from the center of the Yale campus to a quiet street some two miles distant, and up a very steep hill. There is nothing related to Yale on that corner, although the Divinity School is just a few blocks away (or, precisely, one-half of a mile). There is no bus stop there, no cab stand, no reason for any young woman to be standing around waiting for a ride or a friend. It is a quiet residential street where many of the most prominent people of New Haven live. Folks are out with their dogs or going jogging.
The scenario of her final hours then plays out like this: German-speaking neo-Nazi operatives contact Suzanne Jovin at some point prior to her final disposition of the senior thesis. They win her trust and establish a rapport, by means as yet unknown. They promise her some important information about Osama bin Laden, something which will make this ambitious young woman willing to meet with them again, with more than one person, and to meet very soon. They pre-arrange a meeting for that Friday, perhaps in the mid- to late evening.
Perhaps one of their operatives follows her from the pizza party. Perhaps one of the volunteers at the party was also one of theirs, or maybe it was a devotee of child pornography. After all, Antonio Lasaga -- convicted child molester -- was an active volunteer with certain groups in the New Haven community. Who knows who he was recruiting, too, beside victims for his twisted sexual fantasies? No one has questioned him about Jovin's death.
Certainly, it is known that after turning in the keys to the Yale vehicle she had used that evening, and after stopping in at her apartment and checking her e-mail as well, Suzanne Jovin quick-marches across the central campus to Phelps Gate. There the Yale campus police have their central office.
Fifteen minutes later she has dropped off the keys, said hello to a friend or two, walked away from the police office and has ?- by about 9:30 in the evening ?- met up with the operatives who are laying in ambush for her. Her time is accounted for up to about half-past 9:00.
In the final twenty-eight minutes of her life, she goes with them somewhere, they talk and they put up a smokescreen. She is, perhaps, well-fooled at first and thinks this is going to be exciting, albeit dangerous fun. In the last few minutes she realizes, perhaps to her utter dismay and horror, that they want her to lure James Van de Velde out of his apartment on Edgehill, where he will be crippled or perhaps killed with her, i.e., ?suicided? and thus made to look like they were in a lovers? quarrel gone desperately bad.
After all, the killers think of Van de Velde as a bad hombre, a dangerous man, a trained intelligence officer. To go up against him in the clear might be very difficult. But using Jovin to lure him out of his lair, into an ambush ....? Possible.
In a desperate bid to salvage the situation, she misleads them and takes them fully ½ mile past Van de Velde?s digs, where a vicious argument (and a very short fight), ensues. She marks one of the men in the killing team with her nails -- the New Haven police wait more than year to release the fact that she had DNA under her nails, and not from Van de Velde -- and then is promptly stabbed seventeen times. This is done to send a message to anyone who is looking and listening for such things ?- that Force 17 of the Al Qaeda has worked its plan and that their killers have hit their mark. This would encourage their operatives in cells around the country. And ... even a man in federal lock-up on child pornography charges would hear about such a shocking and brutal murder! A Yale student butchered.
They dump her at the streetcorner on Edgehill and East Rock, which deliberately fixes James Van de Velde as a, or rather THE potential suspect. After all, the lecturer Van de Velde has an apartment on that same street, although it faces the Yale Divinity School and is not adjacent to the fine private homes which dot East Rock. It is nearby. She was his student.
After all, there is no other reason for her to be on his street, at a few minutes before 10:00 PM, unless they were a romantic duo, "an item." A whispering campaign is then easy to create.
The two German-speaking operatives leave in the van while 'their spotter' drives his car up the hill and turns onto Prospect, his face fixed in a mask of agony and frenzy, having just seen a beautiful young woman murdered with skill and aplomb. Two people travelling home on Prospect see this young man as he cuts left in front of them and drives off towards Dixwell Street, and they well remember his dark face and his small red car. He was in such a mad rush it alarmed them, but his face simply scared them.
But he isn?t the fair-skinned James Van de Velde and he isn?t driving a big red Jeep. He is swarthy, perhaps an Arab student or a young man from Pakistan, but one who can drive fast and very well. The witnesses only see him for a few seconds but they can never forget the frenzy etched on his face. This they tell the police in the immediate aftermath of Jovin's murder.
Not long after Jovin?s death, either Al Qaeda or its neo-Nazi operatives in the New Haven area begin the whispering campaign which places Van de Velde firmly in the center of attention. He is blind-sided by a pig-headed media investigation and ?- voila!! ?- his career at Yale is terminated, and his reputation ruined.
Remember, now, Holmes' advice to Watson -- when the impossible has been eliminated -- like the impossibility of there being an affair going on between bubbly Jovin and the cold, precise man from Naval Intelligence. Besides, she had a boyfriend.
So, when Van de Velde is ruined, the Muslim adage of ?an eye for an eye? has been scrupulously observed. In addition, a pesky young woman who was snooping into Osama bin Laden?s network and career has been silenced. Earlier in this day, January 8th, Judith Miller of the New York Times described the Al Qaeda as being security-conscious, remarkably secretive, and definitely paranoid about their terror cells. She was interviewed on "the Imus in the Morning radio show". It is not hard to see such an obsession at work in the murder of Jovin, if one looks at Al Qaeda and its allies first, and not for some bogus love affair.
In addition, as a double bonus, the brutal murder of Jovin makes Antonio Lasaga aware that his Al Qaeda or neo-Nazi handlers will let him live only so long as he does not ever discuss his other contacts in the Ivy League, his other pornographic adventures, or the disaffected young men ?- really, teen-aged boys ?- that the neo-Nazi movement is recruiting and indoctrinating all around the country. Boys who are sometimes used in the pornography, boys who are sometimes used to lure grown men ? like Half Zantop at Dartmouth? ? into the snares of the neo-Nazis and their Al Qaeda allies. So far, there is no proof that Zantop was an Al Qaeda operative, and he and his wife Suzanne were prominent liberals who worked for every liberal and politically-correct cause. But he was a noted expert on geophysics and a native speaker of German. Child pornography is an addiction as strong as the cocaine or compulsive gambling -- one's politics might not be allowed to get in the way of feeding that hunger.
Before dismissing this as pure fantasy, consider the following facts: when the investigation into the murders of Half Zantop and his wife began, the first question asked was ? how did the killers gain entry to his home, which was well-built and alarmed?
Why, then, did two under-age boys go to his home at 6:30 on a wintry Saturday? If they were intent on burglary, how did they know there was anything worth stealing in the place? What would they want, fine jewelry or electronic toys? Why did they stab him and Suzanne Zantop to death with a military-style knife, one possibly similar to the one which was used to kill Ms. Jovin, if all they wanted was money (or was it drugs)??
Robbery is a bogus motive: the boys were ? like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine High School fame ? well situated and from good families. One of them apparently had a flirtation with neo-Nazi propaganda, but that too has been downplayed by the police and investigators in New Hampshire.
Does the pattern of the abuses and the conspiracies now begin to appear? Antonio Lasaga took his plea on the State charges, in attempting to molest a young man AFTER he had been bounced out of Saybrook College! He was already disgraced! He was out on bond from the federal charges!! Additionally -- the early reporting on Robert Tulloch and James Parker -- the two boys accused of killing Zantop and his wife, indicated that they clearly resemble the Columbine duo! There was a suggestion of neo-Nazi propaganda. Were they, like Harris and Klebold of Columbine, also fans of the German heavy-metal band KMFDM??
Jovin was raised, at least partly, in Germany. Al Qaeda has been shown to have deep resources in Germany and in Holland, with many operatives who have hidden there or transitted there. Half and Suzanne Zantop were German natives, and his work dovetails precisely with the career of Lasaga! If Suzanne Jovin was, truly, a classic liberal Democrat, then the feminist writings and political posture of Suzanne Zantop -- with her German expertise -- would have created a fine sense of confidence and trust in the younger woman. A street-smart young woman who would never get into a van or a car with two men she didn't know, but who might trust taking a ride with a man and a woman.
Finally ?- the particulars: somewhere in time, more than five years ago, Al Qaeda operatives begin to come to the United States to set up safe houses and establish their identities. They are then assisted by neo-Nazi hoodlums. The neo-Nazi leadership knows that many prominent and important men share a disturbing taste, a fantastic taste for pedophilia and child pornography. They keep their lists and check them twice, using blackmail and intimidation wherever and whenever possible, to get prominent earth science experts into their control.
Al Qaeda, which is short of manpower, has money to give and share. The neo-Nazi leaders take their money and indulge their own plans, including the hatred and destruction of Israel. Along the way, they use their considerable skills in psychology and manipulation to recruit disaffected young boys and men. We now know, for example, that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had vivid fantasies ?- which they wrote down or recorded ?- about escaping from the massacre at Columbine, and taking or hijacking a large airplane which they would then crash into a tall building.
Again and again we see that these disaffected young men are apparently recruited in pairs, and that they are always bright, promising, sexually confused youngsters. Eric Harris was being treated for his obssessive behavior with Luvox, a mind-control drug which creates insomnia and has sexual side-effects. That is just what a confused teen-age boy needs, to go sleepless and to be sexually frustrated, all while playing "Doom" and tracking the lastest songs from KMFDM. It is mesmerizing and conditioning! And so, too, child pornography mesmerizes those who get hooked.
Thus the murder of Suzanne Jovin on December 4th 1998, leads from a long-standing obsession with child pornography and sexual molestation, to the alliance of neo-Nazi leaders in American and Europe with Osama bin Laden?s groups, to the massacre at Columbine and thence to -- 9/11/2001. The procession is logical.
If the sole reason to kill Ms. Jovin was to be silencing her and stopping her research, she could have been dumped anywhere in New Haven or its suburbs, or simply just ?disappeared.? But to wound her mortally -- and then dump her on Van de Velde?s street ?- accomplishes so many useful purposes that it has to be considered as a deliberate action and not as one that was accidental. The Al Qaeda believe in omens and dreams, not in coincidences, and this story is dreamlike and fantastic.
It is entirely possible that Suzanne Jovin never knew what it was that got her condemned to death.
But it is possible, and in fact, it is highly likely that she was being wheedled into going to Van de Velde?s place, to decoy him or lure him out of his apartment, that she figured this out in a flash of inspiration ? and that it got her killed, and very quickly. In that case, the false accusations against the lecturer -- James Van de Velde, hide this brilliant truth ?- that Suzanne Jovin gave her life to protect Van de Velde and was not trying to ruin his career.
Even if she was just fighting for her own life, she was an heroic character. Because -- she is thus, not only the First Victim of 9/11/2001, but its first true hero, and as sweet-tempered a heroine as any in American history. Maybe she was totally surprised and only got one good punch and scrape in before succumbing to her killers. Maybe she played them as cleverly as she could, looking for a way to escape, before fighting for her life like those who fought their hijackers on 9/11.
Finally, this Suzanne Jovin is not some pathetic victim, some we-are-so-sorry you're dead dilettante, but rather she is someone for all the men and women of Yale to remember, to venerate, and to celebrate -- to praise her for an honorable life and to drink a toast to her courageous death, instead of mourning.
Thus, it is all the more piteous, and an insult to justice, that the sick, perverted malefactor Lasaga can enjoy the serenity of his own home (albeit under house arrest), while Jovin's murder goes unsolved and Van de Velde's career remains in a ruined condition.
There is a special ring of hell for men like Antonio Lasaga.
It is a cold, dark, lonely place. Not many go there. He will.
