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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
To those obsessed with the Levy case, all evidence must lead back to Gary Condit -- even when it doesn't.
Jun 5, 2002 | Late in May, the news broke that Chandra Levy's body had been discovered in a remote section of Washington's Rock Creek Park by a man walking his dog and "looking for turtles." Police searched the woods for more clues that day, and dozens of reporters flocked to the crime scene, hoping for some scoop in the reinvigorated investigation.
I never expected to find a clue searching the Internet.
As a reporter for a small Capitol Hill newspaper, I count as my usual fare campaign finance and congressional elections. We leave the murder investigations for wannabe gumshoes who work the Washington Post's Metro section.
But Chandra Levy -- well, now. This was something special. Not every missing girl who turns up murdered was involved with a sitting member of the U.S. Congress. For this story, I thought, I could justify a couple of hours of research.
Since Levy disappeared more than a year ago, the media had been trailing Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., around the district like paparazzi, speculating on everything from his supposedly kinky sexual habits to whether his wife of 30-some years, Carolyn, has missing digits. (For the record, Carolyn Condit has both thumbs.)
Condit, who admitted to having had an affair with Levy up until shortly before she disappeared, turned what would have been just another girl-goes-missing case into a regular soap opera, filled with intrigue and salacious accusations. He exacerbated the problem when he seemed to dodge questions from not only the media, but from police investigators and eventually the Levy family. In short order, he managed to get on everyone's bad side, and has stayed there throughout his failed reelection campaign and to last month, when Levy's body was discovered, and a new round of cable talk show questioning began.
But while my colleagues speculated on the proximity of Condit's Adams Morgan apartment to the section of park where Levy's body was recovered on May 22, I wondered if the location of her body might point to another possibility: Perhaps Levy really was the victim of a random attack. I know the trepidation I feel each time I jog or bike along the park trails near my own neighborhood on the outskirts of Washington. The charming, leafy streets here are deceptive; Washington has its high crime areas, some just blocks from where members of Congress live in opulent brownstones.
I took a straightforward approach, and clicked through news databases, searching through stories about other crimes that might have been committed in the park. Eventually, I clicked my way to Ingmar Guandique.
Guandique is serving out a 10-year sentence in federal prison for brutally attacking two young women along the Broad Branch trail last May and July. That's the same section of Rock Creek Park where Levy was found. She had gone missing in May of 2001.
I knew I had a good story on my hands. But I had no idea that once I published it, other reporters following the Levy investigation would question my motives, or accuse me of being a pawn of Gary Condit.
