"As of right now there is no arrest and no anticipated arrest"

Here's a tragic story hitting headlines everywhere -- however, no stories I've found have seriously discussed the surveillance technology at play nor the length of time this investigation has taken.

Late last week, a Yale pharmacology grad student's body was found hidden in a wall in the basement of a Yale medical research building after she had been missing for almost a week.

However, due to the access control restrictions on the building, investigating officers believe this not to be a random act, but rather one committed by someone in the Yale community. Yale University President Richard Levin was quoted on Monday as saying, "We know everyone that was in the basement. There were limited number of people in the basement and we passed that on to police. There is an abundance of evidence."

And as CNN has reported, security cameras registered Le entering the building, but after searching hours of surveillance tapes, had been unable to find images of her leaving the building. The NY Daily News even reported that more than 100 FBI investigators and three police departments spent over six days pouring through building blueprints and surveillance footage -- and even used bloodhounds to search the building. Six days is a long time.

What does this tragic event teach us? While we await the murder details (expected to be revealed today), the value of using analytics and more sophisticated surveillance tools to search and comb through footage may have reduced the time needed to come to the conclusions we reached in seven days to maybe only a couple of hours. While even the tightest access control restrictions and clearest surveillance cameras cannot prevent a human from taking another's life, technology has the ability to hasten investigations and also equips security personnel with the eyes and ears needed when the human equivalent is not an option.

Using a variety of facial recognition, color tracking and other analytics, we may have been able to identify the student upon entering the building and followed her whenever she appeared on camera. We also could have also identified each person's face that entered and exited the building that evening, as well as tracked articles of clothing by color. We might not have an answer for the cause of such a brutal and senseless attack, but we do know that more stringent access control and surveillance technology may have helped in the investigation process.