Life has changed for Joe Avery — back to normal.
He couldn’t wait.
Avery, the police department’s affable spokesperson, found himself crushed by a swarm of national news crews all last week after cops discovered the body of Yale graduate student Annie Le stuffed in a Yale medical lab basement.
As suddenly as it took over New Haven, that media horde has vanished, on to the next mega-story. Monday all the satellite news crews camped out across from the Amistad medical lab at Cedar Street and Washington Avenue were gone; the only trace was the word “Fox” in yellow tape staking out turf on the sidewalk in front of Lupi-Legna Marchegian Bakery.
“Thank God,” said Josephine Lupi, taking a mid-morning break inside the bakery. “No more news.”
CNN, The Today Show, NBC national news, NBC local, ABC national, ABC local, Fox News, WTNH — their trucks and more, which had occupied the block of Union Avenue in front of the police station for a full week, were all gone. A lone local affiliate was present for a morning report. The department taped off the concrete steps in front of the station to resume repairs suspended amid last week’s crush.
Who knows? Health care reform might even return to some of the spotlight.
That’d be fine with Joe Avery (pictured). Even if “Officer Joe Avery” now turns up over a million Google hits. He’s happy to exit the spotlight.
He got his first good night’s sleep in a week Saturday at his “weekend retreat” in the woods, freed from the unmeetable urgent demands by packs of New York and D.C. media bigshots.
In his 18 years as a cop, Avery said, he’s never encountered a group of people as rowdy and difficult to control.
This from a guy who’s chased his share of crooks.
“There are a lot of nice people” amid the correspondents and camera crews who besieged him with nonstop demands for information he often didn’t have, Avery said. “Their way of doing business is terrible. They were badgering you to the point where you were feeling helpless.”
Last Tuesday, for instance, Avery stepped out onto the concrete landing atop the steps leading to police headquarters to let reporters know he had no news to report on the cause of Annie Le’s death. Crews from the satellite trucks camped out along Union Avenue descended on him in a crush.
He affably agreed to string out multiple versions of no comment. The crews pressed closer, competing for position. A tumble ensued; heavy equipment fell onto the head of a Good Morning America booking person (ouch!) and onto the arm of 32-year-old NBC News producer Alycia Savvides. Savvides had her arm in sling after being treated by an ambulance crew. (Read about that here; click on play to watch the video.)
“I’ve never seen a bunch of people so out of control in my life,” Avery said, his head shaking.
Then there was the 3 a.m. phone call at home from CNN. They wanted to know if anything was new.
“If you don’t answer the phone they keep pushing the button,” Avery said. “You’d have 20 messages from one person because you were on the phone with someone else.”
Then there were the false stories — some wildly off — that appeared in national media outlets as desk editors badgered reporters for fresh scoops by the hour. Avery, mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga and Chief James Lewis tried to extinguish rumors quickly before they took on lives of their own.
There was Friday’s fiction bombshell du jour, the report aired by Fox 61 that a second arrest was imminent, of an accomplice.
There was the New York tabloid report of a “manhunt” on for the supposedly AWOL murder suspect. The story even featured a report about a “roadblock” manned by Hamden cops.
The story was false. At that moment city cops had the suspect in their sights, as they had since Saturday, around the clock.
“We were on him. We had the guy under surveillance“ at every moment, Police Chief James Lewis recounted in an interview Thursday. “That was bizarre.”
Another network-disseminated story had Le’s body turning up in a Hartford landfill over the weekend.
Chief Lewis was home watching TV on Monday when he saw commentators revive the report — even though the news had broken on Sunday that Le’s remains had apparently been discovered in the basement of the Yale lab building.
The commentators argued that despite the news, they’d been right all along and the cops were covering up.
“They didn’t even believe us,” Lewis said in an interview Thursday, “when we found the body.”
Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga continued to receive some national calls over the weekend, but the rush was over for her, too.
The moment she’ll remember most?
A midnight call at home last week from a national news organization at the end of an endless day.
The call came to her home phone. Mayorga’s home number is unlisted.
“I had finally just given my [three-month-old baby] a bath, and he had just fallen asleep,” Mayorga recalled. “This of course woke him up.”
The call? About another wild rumor. It wasn’t true.
Previous coverage of the Annie Le case:
Thursday, Sept. 17
• After Annie Le Murder, Union Chief Sends Rallying Call
• Annie Le Suspect Knew Cops Were On His Tail
• Cops Arrest Lab Tech In Annie Le Murder
• Suspect Arraigned (live blog)
Wednesday, Sept. 16:
• Ex-Girlfriend “Shocked” About Annie Le Target
• Cops Stake Out Annie Le Target’s Motel
• Annie Le Case: It’s Coming Down To The DNA
• Annie Le Was Strangled
Tuesday, Sept. 15:
• City, Yale Learned From Jovin In Annie Le Case
• Suspect In Annie Le Case Has Fiancee
• NBC Producer Trampled At Annie Le “Briefing”
• Cops Take DNA From Annie Le Target
• Was That Annie Le’s Killer?
Monday, Sept. 14:
• Body Identified As Annie Le
• “Serious” Suspect In Annie Le Case
• You Can Get In The Wall With A “Butter Knife”
• Lab Building Shuts Down
Sunday, Sept. 13:
• Remains Of Annie Le Believed Found; “A Time For Compassion,” Levin Says
• Annie Le Hunt Extends To Hartford
Saturday, Sept. 12
• Focus In Annie Le Probe Less On “State Lines”
Friday, Sept. 11
• City Cops Join Search For Annie Le; $10,000 Reward Posted