EL DORADO HILLS, CALIF. — In a ceremony filled with tears and song, the people who loved Annie Le best said goodbye to her on Saturday.
The private Mass, held in the sloping foothills of the Sierra Nevada, not far from Le's hometown of Placerville, came nearly two weeks after the 24-year-old graduate student's body was found hidden behind a wall in a Yale University laboratory building in New Haven, Conn.
In eulogies, Le's family and pastor tried to reconcile the young woman's vibrant life with her violent death.
"We could ask a thousand whys for the rest of our life," said her pastor, Msgr. James Kidder.
Le's fiance, Jonathan Widawsky, whom Le was to marry the day she was found dead, did not speak. He looked down somberly for much of the service, his father squeezing his shoulder, while Le's relatives stood up one by one to remember her.
Dan Nguyen, 15, Le's younger brother, said he loved his sister for "her silliness and friendliness." Whenever she came home to visit, Dan said, Le and her siblings and cousins would play with stuffed animals and watch cartoons together. Le never missed a birthday, Dan said, and would "send home presents on every occasion."
Le's mother, Vivian Van Le, read a poem she had written in Vietnamese after she "heard the bad news from New Haven."
In it, she recalled the lullabies she used to sing when her daughter was a child. Now that Le is dead, she said, she will sing a different sort of lullaby. Le's brother Chris, 20, read an English translation of the poem.
The ceremony, which was held at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in El Dorado Hills, was also filled with prayers and hymns. Much of the service, including a rendition of "Amazing Grace," was in Vietnamese.
Le, a Yale graduate student in pharmacology, disappeared from a research building at the university's medical school complex Sept. 8. Five days later, her body was found stuffed into a 2-foot-long crawl space inside a laboratory wall.
The state's medical examiner reported that Le died of asphyxiation. A lab technician, Raymond Clark III, was arrested Sept. 17 and charged in her slaying. Police have not offered a possible motive. And Clark has not yet entered a plea.
In the weeks since Le's death, her family has kept largely out of the media spotlight, even as the case has captivated the nation. On Saturday, more than a dozen journalists from across the country stood outside the ceremony.
