Yale stabbing and suicide were the result of 'a threesome gone horribly wrong'

Police discovered Alexander Michaud on a chair, naked and bleeding profusely from his neck Eight stories below lay the nude, lifeless body of Tyler Carlisle Report says Carlisle, Michaud and an unidentified female student were engaged in a ménage à trois

The May 26 incident made national news, mostly because it made no sense (Getty Images)

The apartment was only a few blocks from the hallowed halls of Yale University, but the horrors inside were unrecognizable from any Ivy League ideal.

As police pushed aside the apartment’s already open door, they found a crime scene the likes of which had never been seen in the upper tier college town of New Haven, Conn.

“In here,” a woman screamed.

Inside, Alexander Michaud sat on a chair, naked and bleeding profusely from his neck. The woman, also naked, was tending to his wound.

When the cops asked what happened, the woman pointed toward an open window.

Eight stories below, sprawled on a terrace, lay the nude, lifeless body of Tyler Carlisle.

The May 26 incident made national news, mostly because it made no sense. The two men were acquaintances, if not friends. Michaud was a talented Yale undergraduate. Carlisle, meanwhile, was a brilliant young man who in high school had been voted most likely to succeed. He had excelled at Yale, studying philosophy and emerging as a conservative political leader on campus. He had just graduated days before, promptly enlisting in the Army.

Posted by Tyler Carlisle on Thursday, 21 May 2015

“You expected him to be a senator,” friend Emelia Attridge told the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Now he was dead — the culprit in what cops called an assault and suicide.

New Haven Police were coy with the details. Authorities had “a pretty strong sense” but were staying mum until the investigation concluded, officer David Hartman told the Union Leader, located in Carlisle’s hometown of Manchester, N.H.

“The people who need to know will or already do know,” a close female friend of Carlisle’s told The Washington Post shortly after the suicide. “I can’t even express how much anguish would be avoided if the press would leave us our privacy.”

“The Post can know that I have been released from the hospital, but other than that, I’d like to keep the details of the incident among intimates,” echoed Michaud in an e-mail.

Some people close to Carlisle said they didn’t need answers.

“Knowing the reason behind it, it still isn’t going to lessen the pain. He’s still gone.”

&#13; <p>Tyler Carlisle's childhood friend Liz Kulig</p>&#13;

“Knowing the reason behind it, it still isn’t going to lessen the pain,” childhood friend Liz Kulig told the Union Leader. “He’s still gone.”

Four months after the incident, however, the pieces have begun to come together thanks to a police report. But the bigger picture isn’t likely to lessen anyone’s pain.

According to the report, Carlisle killed himself after a threesome went horribly wrong.

Carlisle, Michaud and an unidentified female student were engaged in a ménage à trois when Carlisle became violently jealous, according to the report.

Just because a cat has kittens in the oven doesn't make them biscuits

Posted by Tyler Carlisle on Saturday, 24 May 2014

“Michaud, [the woman], and Carlisle had all been drinking,” reads the report, which was first obtained by Gawker and People and redacted to protect the woman’s identity. “The three of them were having sex in the bedroom, and Carlisle started to get jealous of Michaud and [the woman]. 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,” the report continues. “Michaud sat on the chair in the living room and told [the woman] to call ‘911.’ [She] 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 windowsill and said he was going to jump. Michaud did not see Carlisle jump out of the window.”

When officers arrived to the apartment at around 5:30 a.m. on May 26, they found it “covered in blood.” Michaud sat on a chair, naked, as the woman tried to stop his neck from bleeding.

Roughly 100 feet below, police found Carlisle’s body.

Although the police report completes the initially hazy picture, it doesn’t explain why Carlisle killed himself. Perhaps he knew the police were coming, and he thought an arrest would ruin a career in the Army or in politics. Perhaps he was heartbroken.

Perhaps we’ll never know.

Both men were from Manchester, the Hartford Courant reported. Both men were active in The Party of the Right, the most conservative of Yale’s seven political parties. Carlisle had worked on Rick Santorum’s 2012 campaign for president and managed a local Republican candidate’s unsuccessful congressional campaign in 2014. Michaud was the publisher of the conservative Yale Free Press.

And both men were involved — at least for one night — with the same woman.

When Carlisle was buried in early June, Michaud did not attend the memorial service, mutual friend and current Yale student Reed Morgan told the Yale Daily News.

“He worried that his presence would make it more about the incident and less about Tyler’s life,” he said.

© Washington Post