While living in Washington, she really led two lives: one as an intern working hard to improve her resume and her future chances of employment with the government and two, a second, secret life; one that she shared with few, that of the girlfriend of then California Congressman Gary Condit, a married man some 29-years her senior. Investigation would later suggest that Condit had other extra-marital relationships prior to Levy, relationships that he kept secret from his family and just as important, his congressional constituents and the media. All of this changed, though with Chandra Levy.

During her secret relationship with Condit, Levy usually entertained him at her upscale DC apartment, and when they were together on the street, she would wear various disguises so as so not to compromise him. Levy finally confided in an aunt concerning her amorous affair with Condit, perhaps hoping beyond hope that it would grow to be something more than a Washington fling. When the Bureau of Prisons found out that Levy had already met her requirements for graduation, her internship was abruptly terminated and she used her laptop computer to make her plans to return to her parent’s home in Modesto, CA.

On May 1, 2001, Levy had most of her bags packed in preparation for her travel west. Although she usually worked out in a local gym, she had cancelled her membership the night before, and though not known to jog on the streets near her apartment, she nonetheless used the Internet that morning to search the nearby Rock Creek Park area, to look for airline fares home, and to e-mail her parents, logging out of her computer shortly after noon. It appears that she then went/ran to Rock Creek Park to jog, dressing in tights and sweat clothes notwithstanding the 82 degree weather. No one saw her leave her apartment, one she apparently never returned to.

It was five days later that Levy’s parents contacted the Washington, DC Police Department, indicating they had not heard from their daughter in almost a week. Although the police visited Levy’s apartment, it was not until they were informed about her suspected relationship with Congressman Condit that they obtained a warrant to search her apartment. The trail was now nine days old and the film from the surveillance cameras in her apartment building had recycled after seven days. There would be no photographic evidence to suggest how, or perhaps, with whom she left that last faithful day.

Police would conduct numerous searches near her apartment and along the trails of Rock Creek Park with no success. When Levy’s relationship with a US Congressman became public knowledge it created a media firestorm. Every network covered the story wall to wall. Congressman Condit first refused to acknowledge the relationship, an action which served to only wet the media and the public’s appetite for more information. Soon friends and relatives of Levy were on TV telling all they knew of the secret relationship and the more the congressman denied the stories, the greater the stories became, to include revelations about other clandestine relationships with other women, this while his wife dutifully stayed home in California to manage their home and care for their children.

Like most media stories, though, it only takes one new story to take the old one off TV and off the front page of the newspapers. In this case it was the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01. America was in a war mode and the salacious details revolving around the congressman and his young girlfriend became old news overnight. Many believed Condit to be a liar and a lecher, but few saw him as a killer. He would, however, eventually lose his congressional seat, a loss most attribute to the Levy case.

It was almost one year after Chandra Levy disappeared that a man walking his dog in Rock Creek Park would make a terrible discovery; human remains a short distance off of a walking/ jogging trail, hidden by the bushes and weeds along the roadside. The remains were some four miles from Levy’s apartment, a long distance for her to have traveled by foot. Responding police would recover not only human remains, but clothing; some turned inside out or knotted as if used to bind someone, and personal possessions, to include a ring and Walkman, all belonging to Levy. Missing, though, was her apartment key and a check for $54 she was presumed to have carried with her to cash that day. While Levy’s exact method of death was undetermined, the absence of soft tissue accounting for this, the medical examiner would identify her by dental records and indicate her cause of death as homicide, probably by strangulation, perhaps by using the very clothing she wore the day she died.

With the location of Levy’s remains, Condit would once again became a person of interest for many, but the police and the FBI never actually declared him a suspect and no information was ever developed to tie him to Levy’s murder. A suspect had, however, had been developed almost one year before Levy’s remains were found, a man who apparently knew Rock Creek Park far too well.

Shortly after Levy’s disappearance in May, and again in July 2001, two different female joggers were attacked by a man armed with a knife, a man who lay in wait along a remote jogging path in the park, a location within walking distance from the spot where Levy was thought to have assaulted and murdered. Both women were able to fight off their their assailant and would later identify Ingmar Guandique, then a 20-year-old Salvadorian illegal immigrant, as their attacker. Guandique, who had been made to leave his mother’s DC area residence in April 2001, and who had lost his job and, therefore, did not work the day Levy disappeared, was later tried, convicted, and sentenced to a 10-year-term in federal prison for these two attacks. He denied any knowledge of Levy’s initial disappearance and apparently passed a polygraph test administered by police. Due to his limited knowledge of English, though, many would question the results of this test.

While his presence in the park and his “MO” of attacking lone female joggers would make him an obvious suspect in Levy’s initial disappearance, it was his other actions and statements that made him an even more likely suspect. On May 7, 2001, Guandique allegedly broke into a local apartment. When arrested for this crime, this shortly after the disappearance of Levy, Guandique was alleged to have scratches on his face and body, perhaps evidence of a recent confrontation, again noting that Levy had disappeared just six days before. He was later arrested for the assault on the two female joggers and while in the DC jail on August 26, 2001, he allegedly told another jail inmate that he killed Levy, a statement he would subsequently deny to police and the FBI.

Investigators would consider a number of different suspects in the murder of Levy, and looked at similarities between her murder and the 1/9/99 disappearance and subsequent death of DC resident and US Government employee Joyce Chiang, but there was no other linkage to suggest either Levy or Chiang were the victims of the same killer, perhaps, suggested a few, even a serial killer. Police would even offer up the possibility that Chiang’s death may have been a suicide, something her family forcefully refuted.

Almost a decade has passed since the murder of Chandra Levy, and while the trail to her killer had grown cold, looking at such trails was the job of DC Police/FBI Cold Case squad members; looking at unsolved murders with both old and new investigative eyes. What had they missed and who could have done this?

Guandique never fell too far off the investigative radar scope; this as he was just too good a fit. But could he have progressed from murder to attempted assault/murder? Since Levy was apparently wearing her Walkman and earphones while in the park, she likely never heard her assailant coming. Were her attacker to have been Guandique, and were he armed with a knife; he may have simply overwhelmed Levy, assaulted and murdered her, and then rolled her body into the underbrush. Should this be the correct scenario, then Levy may have simply been a victim of opportunity; a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time while Guandique lay in wait, looking for his “perfect” victim whom on that day he may have identified as Levy.

While Guandique serves out his sentence in Federal Prison in California, noting his release date is in 2011, he appears to have confided in yet another fellow inmate, i.e., he allegedly told another prisoner that he was Levy’s killer. The now 28-year-old convict is once again the primary suspect in Levy’s murder and media reports indicate that DC Police and the FBI will soon serve a warrant on him and bring him back to Washington for arraignment for the murder of Levy. But investigators know very well that at times you can’t put all your trust, and build your entire case, around a jail house snitch, someone usually looking for his own “get out of jail free card.” They will need other evidence to corroborate a murder charge against Guandique. Some reports indicate retesting of DNA recovered from the body disposal site has linked the suspect to the murder. This is the type of linking evidence needed to hopefully seal the killer’s fate. While critical mistakes had been made, and multiple opportunities had been missed in this case, finally, it appears, that someone will be held responsible for Chandra Levy’s death.

The man believed to have confessed to Levy’s murder on at least two different occasions, the man who assaulted two different lone female joggers in the same area that Levy was murdered, and the man who later told investigators that he had seen Levy in the park, but not attacked her, may be coming back to the scene of the crime; his crime. Chandra Levy’s parents are relived that their daughter’s murder may finally be solved. It is their hope that should Guandique be responsible for Chandra’s death, that he be stopped from returning to the streets of America where he could once again hunt, stalk, and perhaps murder another young woman, someone who could also meet his profile of “the perfect victim.”

Update: Murder Warrant Issued for Ingmar Guandique

It took a little while, almost seven years in fact, for a warrant to be issued for the suspected murderer of Washington, DC intern Chandra Levy, but now authorities believe they finally have their man. Levy’s murder is not believed to be linked to a former boyfriend, but, as many times is the case, she was the victim of a random act of violence; someone in the wrong place, at the wrong time, who came into the sights of a sexual predator who decided she “looked good.” According to at least one of two teenage witnesses and co-conspirators, the teens were sitting on a Rock Creek Park bench smoking marijuana and cocaine with Guandique when Levy jogged by. Guandique allegedly told the two that he was going to “get her.” That was it. One simple, drug induced decision as who would live and who would die that day.

The witness indicated the three then followed Levy along a remote path where they jumped her, pulling her down the side of the trail into some brushes. Levy fought back, likely yelling for help as she scratched and clawed at Guandique, ultimately leaving defense marks on him that he would tell others were the results of an altercation with his girlfriend. Fearing her screams would attract attention, Guandique allegedly choked the very life out of his victim. We know that when her remains were found a year later, her clothing had been turned inside out as if violently stripped from her. Her leggings were found in a knot as if used as a crude binding to restrain her nude body.

So now investigators have the statements of at least one of Guandique’s believed co-conspirators, one of the two who helped take an innocent life that day. Yet another witness has reported that a man resembling Guandique had chased her in the same park on the same day that Levy disappeared. Another witness reported seeing facial injuries on Guandique shortly after Levy disappeared, and at least two jail house snitches have stated the prime suspect confessed he had committed crimes against women, to include rape and murder. Another witness said Guandique had acknowledged his attempts to rape two different women at knife point in the same park where he killed Chandra Levy, a picture of whom was found in Guandique’s prison possessions.

All of the above suggests a strong circumstantial case, one that will still need to be proven in court. If convicted, Guandique will not see his anticipated release from federal prison in 2011, and, in reality, will face an additional 30 to 60 years for Levy’s murder. Family members of former Congressman Gary Condit, while suggesting that the identification of Guandique will never heal the pain the Levy and Condit families have suffered, still must face the fact that had the congressman been totally truthful from the start, this investigation might have gone in an entirely different direction. Had Levy’s body been found sooner, the inconclusive polygraph examination of Guandique might have carried far less weight in the investigation, a killer might have been caught far sooner, and perhaps, just perhaps, the congressman from California might have even kept his job. If things had been just a little different…