Yale student feels threatened by former mugger

New Haven is getting safer—at least that's what the statistics say. Yet these numbers are no comfort to Margie Klein, DC '01, who is frustrated by the Yale Police Department's (YPD) response to her recent sightings of a man who robbed her at gunpoint on the night of Thurs., Sept. 24, 1998.

The 1998 robbery took place on Wall Street near the Silliman Master's House. Klein reported the mugging to the YPD, but the perpetrator was never apprehended. Then, almost a week later, Klein was walking on Elm Street in front of Trumbull when a man ran up and took her wallet—in broad daylight. The assailant then charged hundreds of dollars worth of footwear on her credit card.

"Then two weeks later I recognized the man harassing the owner of Store 24," Klein said. "I called the police and they made me ID him on the spot as the man who mugged me—he was not in a lineup, and he could see who I was. He mumbled that he was going to come get me, but I didn't think much of it at the time."

Klein called the YPD later to see what had come of the incident, but they claimed they were too busy to talk. Later she found out that the man had been arrested, but that he had jumped bail.

A year later, in late October 1999, Klein started seeing the same man on the street. "I saw him three times," Klein said. "He had a malicious look on his face like he was going to kill me. The first time I saw him I went to the police. They treated me like this annoying person and said I shouldn't worry."

The YPD and the New Haven Police Department refused to comment on Klein's case.

Klein then went to Davenport Master Gerald Thomas and Dean Susan Wennemyr for help. According to Klein, after they intervened, the detective who had been assigned to Klein's case finally took definitive action. Wennemyr refused to comment on her interactions with Klein and the YPD.

"The detective was helpful, and went to the house of the man who had robbed me," Klein said. "The people there were very unhelpful and said he didn't live there anymore. They might have just hated the police, or they might have been hiding something." The next day, Klein's bedroom window was broken and her roommate's computer was stolen.

"It probably wasn't the same person," Klein said. "But I've never felt so paranoid before. I really thought he might come and kill me. I just wanted to get out of here, and the police, my master, my dean, my parents, and my friends all agreed I should leave, both for my safety and my sanity. I went home to New York for four days." Klein went home a week before Halloween, and she was so upset that she could not go out that night, imagining her mugger jumping out at her like the murderers in the movie Scream.

A week after she returned to school, Klein's friend Dan Smokler, TD '01, sighted her mugger walking near her apartment on Lynwood Place. Klein and Smokler both ran to the Yale Police Station, but the police officers demanded that she present her case number before they took action—information which she didn't have with her. "Instead of letting me talk to my detective, about six police officers insisted on hearing the whole saga, taking up valuable time in which we could have caught Mr. Stalker," Klein said. By the time they let her call her detective, he had left work. "He came to my house the next day to apologize and to explain that the different parts of the police department aren't in good contact with each other, which didn't comfort me that much."

Klein often uses 2-WALK to get around campus, and she recently bought a scooter to avoid travelling by foot. "She was so scared—she hates to walk home alone," her roommate, Shakti Belway, DC '01, said. Klein now hopes to install a security system and bars on her windows. She shares a house with eight other students including Adams and Belway on Lynwood Place.

"Every time I walk into the house alone I'm expecting someone to be here," Belway said. "We considered moving but we've put a lot of effort into making this house a home." Belway and Adams began taking self-defense classes, partially in response to Klein's robbery.

Klein said she had not seen her mugger since the time of the incident a week after she returned from New York. "I'm praying he has gotten the message that the police are looking for him and that he has left town," she said.

Harriet Bograd, Klein's mother, expressed hope that her daughter's situation would improve, "Of course I have some concerns about [Margie's] safety, although I love New Haven and the community she's part of. She seems more comfortable now, and that's good."

Still, Bograd questions the YPD's motives in handling Klein's case. "A student who has three criminal incidents in a year is a PR problem for Yale," she said.

Photo by Patrick McGarvey.

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