Missing Yale Student Annie Marie Le was to Be Married Sunday

Police are still looking for missing Yale student Annie Marie Le, who disappeared on Tuesday. A doctoral student in pharmacology, Annie Marie Le was last seen outside of her lab in the medical complex, which is located about a mile from the Yale main campus. According to Fox News and the Associated Press, that last sighting was an image of Annie Marie Le from a surveillance camera located at the complex. Authorities and school officials are worried because the missing Yale student was to be married Sunday.

Yale security officials have searched the surveillance video footage and seen where Annie Marie Le left Sterling Hall of Medicine and walked several blocks to another lab facility. A security camera there captured her going into the lab and she swiped her Yale ID card going in as well.

And that is it. Thus far, security officials have found no video images of Annie Marie Le leaving the lab.

Annie Marie Le's purse, credit cards, money and cell phone were found in her office. According to Yale spokesperson, Tom Conroy, there was no evidence of foul play. University Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer, who said that the University is responding as if it were a "bad situation," told the Yale Daily News, "You don't just not go home for a couple of days."

Described as very intelligent, friendly, pretty, and happy, Annie Marie Le, 24, seems to have simply vanished. She has not contacted her fiance, Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student in physics at Columbia University.

Widawsky has cooperated with officials and is not considered involved in Annie Marie Le's disappearance.

Annie Marie Le's simply vanished. No trace. Another fiancee, Kristi Cornwell, disappeared on a rural road in Blairsville, Georgia, while taking a walk on August 11. Unlike Annie Marie Le's image being caught on video, the last anyone had contact with Kristi Cornwell was via cell phone, where she yelled, "Don't take me!" after sounds of a struggle. Cornwell, a student at Dalton State College, had been talking to her fiance, Douglas Davis, at the time.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, FBI, and local authorities thus far found some personal items at the scene where they believe the 38-year-old Kristi Cornwell may have been abducted. Her cell phone was found a few days later three miles away.

Kristi Cornwell remains missing.

Although the missing Yale and Dalton State students' cases are serious matters and must be investigated with alacrity in case there exists an unknown danger to the missing victims, there always exists the possibility that they do not wish to be found. Disappearing without a trace before marriage has become an all-too common occurrence and has to be considered as a possibility.

Probably the most famous case of a female disappearance before a wedding was that of another Georgia woman, Jennifer Wilbanks, who ran away from a 600-person wedding, disappearing for five days in April 2005. Jennifer Wilbanks vanished from her home in Duluth, Georgia, on April 25 and resurfaced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, claiming she had been abducted.

As CBS News reported, it was later discovered that her story of abduction was a falsehood and a subsequent story of sexual abuse was as well. She finally admitted that she had vanished to rid herself of the pressure she felt she was under and avoid the wedding.

Hundreds of people participated in the search for Wilbanks, a search that was ongoing when her fiance received the call from New Mexico. The city of Duluth considered billing the runaway bride for the resources and man-hours used in the needless searches, which ran into the thousands of dollars.

That this is the case with Annie Marie Le and Kristi Cornwell is not known but it must be considered as a possibility for their disappearances.

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Sources:

Yale Daily News
FoxNews.com
Associated Press
CBSNews.com