A mysterious stabbing and suicide that rocked the campus of Yale University last spring took place in the midst of a three-way sex romp gone terribly awry, according to newly released documents from the New Haven Police Department.

The student body was shocked in late May when recent Yale graduate and conservative activist Tyler Carlisle attacked his friend, undergraduate Alexander Michaud, with a knife in his New Haven apartment and promptly leaped to his death out of his 9th floor window. Details on how and why the crime occurred were scant at the time, leaving the event shrouded in mystery.

But a police incident report obtained by Gawker under Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act shows that the men were not alone at the moment of the grisly crime: They were engaged in a threesome with a female Yale undergraduate, whose attentions on Michaud apparently inspired Carlisle to stab his longtime friend in the neck and then kill himself.

The circumstances of the incident, and the presence of the female undergraduate, have never been reported, leaving people who knew Carlisle and Michaud baffled by the crime. Both men grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire and were members of Yale’s Party of the Right, a hardcore right-wing division of the campus debating society. Most of their friends, according to the Yale Daily News, were “unaware of anything but friendship and intellectual camaraderie” between them.

“He had a lot to live for, and it was nothing I would have expected,” a friend of Carlisle’s told a local paper. The crime was statistically anomalous, too: According to a 2012 study commissioned by the Violence Policy Center, “a male victim being specifically targeted by a male offender in a murder-suicide is relatively rare.” Pressed for details of the attack at the time, New Haven police would only say that they had “a pretty strong sense” of Carlisle’s motivations.

A report submitted by three police officers who responded to the incident shows where that sense came from. According to the document, Carlisle stabbed Michaud in the middle of an alcohol-fueled threesome between the two men and a female Yale student, apparently after Carlisle became “jealous” of Michaud and the other student.

Officer Tiffany Ortiz, the author of the report, described the following scene upon arriving at Carlisle’s apartment on College Street, which runs through the center of Yale’s campus:

Upon arrival, Officers Hwang, Lavache, and I approached [apartment number redacted] and heard a woman screaming, “in here” and the apartment door was open. As we entered the apartment, we saw the victim, later identified as Alexander Michaud, sitting in a chair, naked, in the living room covered in blood. A female, later identified as [name redacted], who was also naked, was holding a white t-shirt to Michaud’s neck attempting to apply pressure. We were informed by [the female undergraduate] that the offender, Tyler Carlisle, jumped out of the window prior to our arrival.

AMR medics arrived shortly after our arrival. They assisted Michaud on scene, then transported him to Yale-New Haven Hospital Emergency Room at 20 York Street. Michaud was treated for a single puncture wound to the left upper neck area, and was declared in stable condition by medical personnel.

Gawker is redacting the female undergraduate’s name because it has not been previously released in connection with the crime and because we were unable to reach her.

Officer Ortiz later interviewed Michaud at the same hospital (apparently before doctors placed him in a medically-induced coma or after he awoke):

I met and spoke with Michaud at 20 York Street and he stated the following:

Michaud, [redacted], and Carlisle had all been drinking. The three of them were having sex in the bedroom, and Carlisle started to get jealous of Michaud and [redacted]. Carlisle grabbed a knife that was on the nightstand next to the bed. Carlisle stabbed Michaud in the neck area. Michaud does not remember how he got to the living room. Michaud sat on the chair in the living room and told [redacted] to call “911.” [Redacted] grabbed a white t-shirt and held it to Michaud’s neck to stop the bleeding. Carlisle then went to the living room and started pacing back and forth, saying “I’m sorry.” Carlisle sat on the window sill and said he was going to jump. Michaud did not see Carlisle jump out of the window.

The same police report indicates that the female undergraduate was “too distraught at the time of the incident to give a statement.” Efforts to reach her were unsuccessful. Two other witnesses listed in the document, both of whom lived on the same floor as Carlisle’s apartment, did not respond to emails.

Reached by telephone, Michaud declined to comment: “I have no interest in talking to any member of the press about this.” According to their university’s online directory, both he and the female undergraduate remain enrolled at Yale.

Email the author of this post: trotter@gawker.com · Photo credit: Shutterstock