Lab worker Raymond Clark sentenced to 44 years in jail for killing Yale student Annie Le

A former lab technician gave a tearful apology today as he was sentenced to 44 years in jail for killing a Yale University graduate student just days before her wedding.

Raymond Clark III, 26, had already pleaded guilty to strangling 24-year-old Annie Le, whose body was found stuffed upside down behind the wall of a research building on the day she should have been getting married.

He broke down in Connecticut Superior Court as one by one Miss Le's family came forward to give their emotional testimony.

She kept her voice calm as she said: 'I will never hug Annie again. The world will never know what she had to offer. I will never see her walking down the aisle. I will never hold my grandchildren.

Clark, who cleaned out mouse cages in the lab where Miss Le, of Placerville, Califoia, worked as a doctoral student, told the court he took full responsibility for her death in September 2009.

He said: 'I am truly sorry I took Annie away from her friends, her family and most of all her fiancé.

'I took a life and continued to lie about it while Annie's friends, family and fiancé sat and waited.

Tearful: Vivian Van Le, mother of Annie Le, told Clark she would never be able to understand why he had killed her daughter

Love: Annie Le was engaged to Jonathan Widawsky who was in court

Betrothed: Miss Le was due to marry fiancé Jonathan Widawsky five days after she was strangled Today her killer was sentenced to 44 years in jail

'Annie was and will always be a wonderful person, by far a better person than I will ever be in my life. I'm sorry I lied. I'm sorry I ruined lives. And I'm sorry for taking Annie Le's life.'

Soon after, Judge Roland D. Fasano sentenced Clark to 44 years in prison for what he described as a 'mindnumbing' crime.

The sentencing came after a plea agreement in March, in which Clark pleaded guilty to murder and entered an Alford plea to sexual assault.

When he entered the plea, prosecutors revealed he left behind evidence of sexual assault and desperately tried to cover his tracks.

Prosecutor David Strollo said there was evidence that Clark tried after the killing to generate an alibi, scrub the crime scene and even fish evidence out from behind the wall.

He appeared happy in CCTV footage recorded before the killing, but later he was alone with his face in his hands at a time authorities believe was after the killing, Mr Strollo claimed.

Court: Joseph Tacopina, attoey for the Le family, speaks as Vivian Van Le, mother of Annie Le, left, and family friend Mary Nguyen, listen

Last sighting: Ms Le, a pharmacology doctoral student, was sexually assaulted before she was strangled. Her family gave an emotional testimony in court

He said that Ms Le had a broken collar bone and jaw, injuries suffered while she was alive, and that her underwear had been disturbed.

The graduate student was only 4ft 9in tall and weighed 89lbs, while Clark was 5ft 9ins and weighed 190lbs.

Mr Strollo also cited DNA evidence including Clark's semen and a green-ink pen under Ms Le's body that had her blood and Clark's DNA on it.

Police have said Clark signed into the secure building with a green pen on the day Ms Le disappeared. DNA from the graduate and Clark was also found on a bloodied sock found hidden in a ceiling.

Investigators claimed Clark tried to hide a box of cleaning wipes that were later found to have traces of Ms Le's blood.

Two notes were found in his sock after he was arrested in which he had reached out to co-workers to provide an alibi for him, prosecutors claimed.

Family: Raymond Clark II walks with his wife Diane, left, and son Raymond Clark III's girlfriend Jennifer Hromadka

A backpack with his DNA was also found which contained fishing line and a lure that authorities believed he intended to use to try and retrieve the pen in the wall.

Miss Le was a doctoral pharmacology student who worked on a team that experimented on mice as part of research into enzymes that could have implications for treatment of cancer, diabetes and muscular dystrophy.

At her memorial service, family and friends remembered for her academic success, sense of humor, ambition, love for shoe-shopping and love for her fiance, Jonathan Widawsky.