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'Finding Chandra' Levy Marred By Critical Mistakes

Chandra Levy, pictured above in a family photo, was a 24-year-old Washington intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. She disappeared in May 2001, and her remains were found one year later in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park.
AP
Chandra Levy, pictured above in a family photo, was a 24-year-old Washington intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. She disappeared in May 2001, and her remains were found one year later in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park.

The summer of 2001 was the summer of Chandra Levy; the 24-year-old Washington intern vanished without a trace -- amid much speculation.

Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz investigated the case for the Washington Post. In their new book Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery, they reexamine the tragedy.

The authors talk with NPR's Neal Conan about a number of "critical mistakes" made by the police investigating the case. First, there was a surveillance camera in Levy's apartment building that recorded who went in and out of the building, but police didn't get access to the video before it was recorded over.

Secondly, police who wanted to see what Levy had looked at online on the morning of her disappearance corrupted the computer's hard drive. "For at least a month," Horwitz explains, "investigators didn't know what she was looking at that morning... She had gone to a site for Rock Creek Park in the nation's capital, and clicked on hiking trails."

So, says Horwitz, in lieu of clues, the police turned their attention to Levy's boyfriend, Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.) "They had a singular focus on him from beginning, and because of that, they weren't looking anywhere else, and that started the press frenzy."

Police didn't get the hard drive back until a month later, when they discovered Levy's search for hiking trails in Rock Creek Park. The police chief called for a search of the entire park, near all the paths and the roads.

"But when they executed the search, they only searched off the roads, not the paths," Higham explains. By doing so, searchers missed Levy's body by barely 50 yards. "If they had found her that day, they would have seen right away, that she was the victim of a violent crime, of a random attack."

Instead, Levy's body lay in the woods for another year, when her remains were found by a hiker. By that time, there were few clues left for investigators to piece together the case.

District of Columbia police determined Levy's death was a homicide, and in April, 2009, Ingmar Guandique was charged with her murder. He has plead not guilty, and is expected to stand trial in 2010.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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