But we have to give Ray the benefit of the doubt that his actions were not out of line with what he was doing or the instructions given to him on what to touch or what not to touch. If he was a PhD researcher doing that, it would probably be more suspicious than an Animal Tech employed by Yale to keep that room running smoothly. Whether he regularly did cleaning on the sink area has not be told to us. Out of context, and with the suspicion of him being Annie's killer, it looks bad. But if the warrant went into such details about his work habits, then that would take the wind out of sails of the investigators. Unfortunately for him, he has to take the costly route of defending his work behavior in a court of law.
[Let's be clear: Clark was an animal tech, not a janitor or the person in charge of keeping the room running smoothly. By the reports we have seen, he was not known for being an exceptionally superlative worker; indeed, he had not received one promotion during his entire five year tenure. He was, however, known for being an authoritarian worker, someone who approached researchers to complain that they weren't performing their duties. Officer Wood's detailed description of him with the Wipe Alls indicates clear and particular deception, not a general clean-up of the area. Similarly, the cleaning of a drain area already adjudged clean by two trained police officers is suspicious. And one would expect that a stickler about job descriptions like Clark would recognize this assignment as a task for janitors or lab techs, not animal techs.]
Clark was the last person to admit to having seen Annie. He was the one person who was there almost all the time, except during the fire alarm. So he naturally became the prime suspect. If the killer was one of the PhDs or another lab worker, and they never admitted to seeing Annie, then naturally, it would look worse for Ray. That's the problem with murder investigations, when you take ownership of being the last person to see a victim alive, you become prime suspect when the police don't have any evidence to go after someone else. That's what leads to wrongful conviction, faulty deductions. If no one else admitted to seeing Annie after 12:30pm, even though she very well may have been alive, then Ray automatically becomes the target of the investigation. It's not even clear fully when Annie was killed or when the killer had the opportunity to move her body from room to room, and hide evidence in drains and ceiling tiles.
[Clark brought himself under suspicion by his behavior and his inconsistencies and, not least, by forensic evidence, not all of which we have yet seen. According to you, the killer not only had the opportunity to move her body from room to room, hide the corpse and other evidence at several locations, but also find someone to frame, plant evidence, and leave no incriminating evidence.]
The semantics of how the warrant is worded can be interpreted in your way, and it can be interpreted the way I see it. Putting September 8th at the end of that sentence may be poor English, but I don't take it to mean he was the only person to scan in that room the entire day. If that was a supply closet for the various rooms in that lab, then other Animal Techs or Lab Techs probably scanned in and out of there too. But my interpretation of how they say it is that he's the only one recorded scanning into G22 around the supposed time of her death (sometime after he scanned into G13).
[The police statement is unequivocal. "The only card used to access G22 after the victim swiped into the Amistad building on September 8th" doesn't leave a shadow of a shadow to indicate that it means "the only one recorded scanning into G22 around the supposed time of her death (sometime after he scanned into G13)," as you claim. This is somewhere between wish fulfillment and total denial.]
I think the space was described as being about 2 feet wide? Since it's located behind a toilet, then I'd image it would be an opening higher than waist level on the average size man, but the opening would not extend to far above the top of the toilet stall, or all the way to the ceiling, so standing on top of the toilet seat to maneuver anything or anyone into the chase would not be to one's advantage. Plus, you'd risk having your foot slip into the toilet. The killer probably straddled the back of the toilet, keeping both feet on the ground. So the pen could not have fallen out of a pant pocket, it's possible it could have fallen out of a shirt pocket, but I think that would have happened in the initial struggle with Annie.
The warrant doesn't state if Ray asked around that afternoon if anyone had seen his missing green pen. I hope that comes up during the trial. If he really was concerned about his green pen being in the chase, then he would have found another green pen as a replacement.
[I defer to PatientOne's response on this one. I would assume that on the day Clark committed his first murder, he would have worries more pressing than asking people to replace his green pen.]
The police claimed they looked in the Amistad building for the jacket he was seen wearing into the building September 8th, but not seen with when exiting that afternoon. They never talk about how he could have taken it home. I don't see why his street clothes would be missing, if he committed the murder in his scrubs and lab coat. If he was going to hide his street clothes or dispose of them where the police couldn't find them, then why not use the same approach with the scrubs or glove or other evidence he left lying around with blood?
[Unplanned killings often result in such spontaneous, unmethodical fix-it actions. As for the missing street clothes, it's possible that they somehow picked up some clean-up blood.]