They come from around the country to study the science of murder, and to prepare themselves to catch criminals. For many, until last week, crime was something from a textbook, something ugly they had yet to confront personally.
Christian Principe, a student at John Jay College, writes in a book of condolences for the family of Imette St. Guillen, who was killed last weekend.
Mourners lined up to pay their respects during a wake at a funeral home in Boston for Imette St. Guillen, a graduate student in criminology whose body was found in Brooklyn last Saturday.
A crime scene unit searches the Brooklyn site where Imette St. Guillen’s body was dumped last weekend.
Now, students at John Jay College of Criminal Justice on the West Side of Manhattan are reeling from the killing of one of their own: Imette St. Guillen, whose ravaged body was dumped in a desolate stretch of Brooklyn on Saturday after she had been strangled. The crime remains unsolved.
The students are grieving, raising reward money, planning a memorial. Many are heading to Boston for the funeral today. But these are, after all, students of criminal behavior, forensics and crime scenes, budding criminologists, detectives and crime-scene experts. And many of them are spending their study time not poring over books and fictional cases, but trying to solve the real-life murder of a beloved classmate.
"There is a certain catharsis to discussing the case, even though, at this point, it is purely speculation," said Richard Saulnier, interim vice president for enrollment management. "For people here, this is their life's work, and it's a way to honor her memory."
Chris Cordero, 31, a forensic psychology major, said he used principles from his criminal psych classes to try to profile the attacker.
"Was it more than one?" he said. "Was it somebody who knew her? Imette was interested in helping women who get into the very situation like the one she wound up in. How horrible is that?"
Christian Principe, 22, another forensic psychology major, said he had discussed the case in class. "We were trying to look for tendencies about the guy and if he'll strike again. He's definitely done something like this before and will probably do it again. It looked like he enjoyed what he did, taping her face and everything."
"The fact that it's a big news story, it's definitely part of his thrill," Mr. Principe added. "He wants people to know he's doing this."
Ms. St. Guillen was a graduate student at John Jay, a campus of several buildings clustered around 10th Avenue and 59th Street with 14,000 students, 60 percent of them women. She was initially a forensic psychology major, and switched to criminal science. She was on the dean's list and was to graduate this spring.
Last Saturday night, the police received an anonymous 911 call directing them to Ms. St. Guillen's body, bound at the hands and feet and face wrapped in tape. She was found to have died by asphyxiation by compression of the neck and occlusion of the nose and mouth. She had last been seen leaving a bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side about 4 a.m. on Saturday.
Right after Ms. St. Guillen's death was announced, Professor Saulnier said, counselors received a flurry of calls from students. "It had a terrible effect on them," he said. "Some people stopped going to class and some we advised to take a little time off." Counselors are forming support groups.
"It's a combination of the nature of the crime and the person who was killed. Imette really connected with people here."
He looked at Ms. St. Guillen's school record on the computer.
"Let's see," he said as it scrolled across the screen, "she took a female offenders class, research methods, crime and justice. This semester, she was taking crime scene investigation. She got almost uniformly A's."
He added: "A wonderful student."
Dr. James Malone, the college's senior counselor, said:"Our students have seen plenty of philosophical and theoretical cases, but to experience it up close and personal is different. Students are reading in the paper about a member of their own family killed, and it's just hit us extra hard. They're always looking at case studies, but this is something you feel."
Jeremy Travis, John Jay's president, wrote a letter to the students calling Ms. St. Guillen "full of promise."
He, too, said that the nature and details of the crime had seeped into discussions in hallways and classrooms. "The natural inclination of people here is to speculate, just like the general public is," he said. "But we're not trying to solve the case here. The Police Department is."
Mr. Travis said he hoped reward money being raised by students would help honor Ms. St. Guillen's memory by leading to the arrest of her killer.
Tacked to a bulletin board in a busy hallway is a jacket from a forensic science book, "The Cases That Haunt Us." The college's chapter of the national criminal justice honor society, Alpha Phi Sigma, has created a scholarship in Ms. St. Guillen's name. In several campus lobbies, school officials have placed a poster of Ms. St. Guillen and a book for students, faculty and building employees to log their sympathies. Next to each is an arrangement of tulips.
The books will eventually be given to her family.
The school's chapter of the Alpha Phi Sigma criminal justice national honor society has allocated a $30,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.
Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, a professor of forensic science who is an expert on crime scenes and DNA evidence, called the killing both "heartbreaking and a fascinating crime case."
"I see a lot of tragedies, but this one just seems to stand out," he said. "The femininity, that smile: She represents so many people here, and it could have been one of them."
"What makes it even worse," he added, "is that as it's happening, she knows what's going on because she has studied psychopaths and social deviants. So she's seeing it unfold."
The police reported no major progress on the case yesterday. In the afternoon, 150 officers did an inch-by-inch "grid search" of the thickly reeded, debris-strewn lot where Ms. St. Guillen's body was found.
Last night, in the Boston neighborhood of West Roxbury, relatives and friends gathered for Ms. St. Guillen's wake. A line of mourners stretched from the white painted door of the Gormley Funeral Home, down the concrete steps and along the sidewalk outside. The mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, paid his respects shortly before the start of the 4 p.m. wake.
Richard Gormley, the funeral director, made a brief statement to reporters on behalf of the family, thanking them for coverage of the continuing investigation to find Ms. St Guillen's killer.
Kevin Fitzgerald, whose son John attended the Boston Latin School with Ms. St. Guillen, said his son and his son's former classmates were devastated. "It's absolute disbelief," he said as he left the wake. The way she died and "her character and personality were so different and distinct," he said.
