On Wednesday, September 9, 2009, Bass got word that a Yale student had gone missing the day before. He put up a brief item about the disappearance and left it at that. Both Bass and Bailey believed that this was a Yale story, not a New Haven one. Baileywho, like Bass, graduated from Yalesays, On the day Annie Le disappeared, we had seven hot aldermanic primaries coming up. I didnt see why a missing person case should take center stage, just because the person went to an Ivy League school. [1] Independent reporters didnt normally focus on Yale students; it was Yale qua institution that concerned them. Says Bass:

We cover them as an employer, because theyre the largest employer in New Haven , theyre a huge impact on our cultural life. Were not that interested in students. Were interested in Yale as a business, Yale as an employer, Yale as a cultural influence, Yale and its interactions with government and neighborhoods.

Friday. But on Friday, September 11after dozens of law enforcement officials and journalists had descended on New Haven to look into Les disappearancethe Independent team realized that this was no ordinary missing person case, and perhaps not a missing person case at all. The storys magnitude sunk in," Bailey says, and we decided to go after it. [2]

What did it mean to go after it? We were really going to check our sources, Bass says, cover whats happening, day to day, hour to hour. They quickly made up for lost time. Relying on their knowledge of the area and strong sources, they got out front on a story that other news outlets had been covering for two days.

On Friday afternoon Bass put up a general piece about the case, bringing readers up to date. He led with the news that Le had written a piece for a Yale publication about ways that students could avoid becoming victims of violent crime. Now, Bass wrote, the student may have become a crime victim herself. [3]

Bass included all the details that had captured peoples interestthe fact, for example, that Le was supposed to get married that Sundayand he mentioned that the New York Post had dubbed her the brilliant beauty. At the same time, he kept a measure of distance from what he called the press frenzy, pointing out that this story was receiving inordinate attention because Le went to Yale. He quoted New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, who said, It becomes a national story because its a national institution.

Saturday . After taking a break for the Jewish Sabbath, Bass got back to work on Saturday night. He posted a story about new evidence suggesting that Le had been murdered in the lab where she was last seen. The FBI had announced that items that could potentially be evidence have been seized, and there were numerous media reports, Bass wrote, that investigators had found bloody clothing stashed in a ceiling. [4] The FBI also said that after reviewing tapes from 75 security cameras, it had no evidence Le had left the lab. These developments, along with the state attorneys visit to the lab were, Bass wrote, leading to a sense that a grisly crime might have taken place right there.

Bass also interviewed Yale vice president Linda Lorimer, who definitively rejected reports in New York tabloids that one of Les professors was a suspect. Hanging over this investigation, and informing the Independent s coverage of it, was a botched investigation into the unsolved 1998 murder of Yale student Suzanne Jovin. Police had identified one of Jovins professors as a person of interest, but no evidence implicating him ever emerged. That, Lorimer told Bass, was a story you can replay in your mind.

Sunday . On Sunday morning, September 13, at a brunch to celebrate the Independent s fourth anniversary, Bailey found out that Bass had worked on the story most of the night. That was when we really heated up, Bailey says. They had heard reports that investigators were searching the Hartford incinerator that handled trash from Yale. Christine Stuart, the Independent s Hartford reporter, knew where the incinerator was, and when she went there, she found at least a dozen investigators, some in white hazmat suits, searching through trash. [5] Crews from the police and fire department were also on the scene. The police said the search was routine; still, it was a scoop, and the Independent s story, written by Stuart and Bass, went online at 10:55 a.m.

Sunday night, the New Haven police held a press conference and announced that a body had been found in the lab. Bass, at the press conference, called in the story, and Bailey, at a home office, wrote it with him. State police had, they wrote, found the remains of a female human body secreted inside a wall in the building. They noted that Les body was found on the day she was to be married. [6]