Police: body found in lab is missing Yale student

BOSTON (Reuters) - Police on Monday were hunting for a killer who hid a body investigators found inside a laboratory wall and believe to be that of a Yale University graduate student who vanished last week.

The victim had been due to get married on Sunday and the discovery stunned students and faculty at the Ivy League university where the new academic year just began.

Investigators, armed with blueprints for a building secured by 75 surveillance cameras and accessible only with a university ID, found the body on Sunday after an intensive five-day search, New Haven police said.

Police have not officially identified the body but a senior official and Yale University suspect it is that of Annie Le, a 24-year-old pharmacology student who had planned to marry her college sweetheart on Sunday and who was last seen walking into the building where she worked on Tuesday.

"We are assuming that it is her at this time," assistant police chief Peter Reichard told a news conference late on Sunday, giving no further details because detectives were treating it as an ongoing homicide case.

Fellow students began dropping off flowers at a fence near the building where Le worked and a candlelight vigil was planned for Monday night.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Jackie Frank)