>Suspect in Yale killing to plead guilty, attorney says

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A lab technician charged in the strangling of a Yale graduate student less than a week before she was to be married plans to plead guilty Thursday, his attorney said.

Raymond Clark III will plead guilty at a court in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of a plea bargain, according to public defender Joseph Lopez.

Lopez would not divulge the details of the agreement.

The 26-year-old had pleaded not guilty in January 2010.

He is accused in the killing of Annie Le, 24, who was pursuing a doctorate in pharmacology at Yale when she went missing on September 8, 2009.

Le’s body was discovered inside a wall of a Yale lab building four days later after an extensive search by the FBI and police.

She had planned to marry Columbia graduate student Jonathan Widawsky on the day her body was found.

Clark was not a Yale student, but had worked as a lab technician at the university since 2004, after graduating from high school. He lived with his girlfriend, who also is a Yale lab technician, according to police.

A Yale faculty member described Clark’s job as maintaining colonies for animals used in research.

A motive in Le’s killing was unclear, but police said they were treating the case as workplace violence.

Calls to the New Haven district attorney’s office and Yale University seeking comment were not immediately returned.