www.justiceforchandra.com Forum Index www.justiceforchandra.com
Justice for Chandra Levy and missing women
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Appexdix VIII. The Final Days of Gary Condit

 
Post new topic   This topic is locked: you cannot edit posts or make replies.    www.justiceforchandra.com Forum Index -> Murder on a Horse Trail
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:38 am    Post subject: Appexdix VIII. The Final Days of Gary Condit Reply with quote

from Esquire (fair use)

The Final Days of Gary Condit
What a public man sees just before he dies

by Mike Sager
Sep 01 '02


FOUR PEOPLE IN A WHITE DODGE DURANGO, waiting by the side of a country road. It was five-thirty in the evening on the first Monday in March, an almond orchard on the outskirts of Modesto, California. The sun hung low over the distant mountains, illuminating the clouds, casting golden light across the flat, fertile valley. In thirteen hours or so, the polls would be opening; the voters of the 18th Congressional District would finally have their say. A flurry of white blossoms danced in the air, collected on the windshield like snowflakes.

The engine idled. Elvis played on the radio. A succession of vehicles Dopplered past, whooshing down the dual-lane blacktop, kicking up dust and blossoms. A news van...a microwave truck...a muscular six-wheeler, belching diesel, satellite dish mounted on top....

"There goes CNN," said Gary Condit. He was sitting in the shotgun seat of the Durango, his personal auto, toggled back into a deep recline. There is a slight, soothing Okie twang to his voice; the tone was mildly sardonic--the fox in his redoubt, watching the hounds run by, resigned to persecution, still game. His wiry salt-and-ginger hair, scissor-cut and towel-dried, stood in perfect order around his head. His thick eyebrows were trimmed to a stubble. His cornflower-blue eyes, once known for their Condit twinkle, may forever be remembered for their deer-in-the-headlights glare. "I have not been a perfect man," he'd stammered. That he had not said more had been his undoing.

"There goes ABC," said Cadee Condit, sitting behind Gary, pointing to a Chevy Suburban. Twenty-six years old, dress size zero, she has the same blue eyes as her father, whom she calls Gary or Gar or sometimes the Congressman, but almost never Dad, at least not in public. A former high school cheerleader, deceptively spunky, she was most recently employed as the personal scheduler for Gray Davis, the governor of California, having worked her way up from the mail room to his inner office. Since last August, she'd been living in the modest rancher on Acorn Lane where she grew up, sharing the place with her parents, her older brother, Chad, and his wife and three boys-three generations of Condits under one roof, with Gary's parents only a few blocks away. The wagons were circled. It was a family campaign, just like the old days.

Cadee looked out the window. Long ago, when Gary was just a fledgling state legislator, he used to bring Cadee with him to Sacramento. She'd wander the hallways of the Capitol with his business card pinned to her shirt. At lunchtime, they'd sneak up a back staircase to the domed roof and share a peanut-butter sandwich. Through the years, in secret dreams, Cadee had pictured Gary one day running for president. Never had she imagined anything like this. She tucked an errant string of flaxen hair behind her ear, and then her hand came to rest on the gold cross nestled in the cleft of her collarbone. Give it to God, her PawPaw always preached. Take your pain and your worries and give it to God.

Another news van whooshed past. It was fitted with a telescoping metal tower, a microwave transmitter. "There goes Channel 13," announced Mike Dayton, the wheelman.

The son of a pharmacist and gentleman farmer, Dayton was born in nearby Oakdale, known hereabouts as the Cowboy Capital of the World. He first met Gary and Chad when he was sixteen, at a charity golf outing. Later, having washed out of college, Dayton volunteered to work on Gary's first U.S. congressional campaign, a special election to replace the previous officeholder, Tony Coelho, a six-term Democrat and majority whip who'd resigned following a junk-bond scandal.

Thirty-one, with twelve years of service under his belt, Dayton is the legislative director of Gary's Washington office. Lanky and bespectacled, he commutes by bicycle from his house in Virginia to his office on Capitol Hill. Last summer, he was often seen on television with microphones in his face, issuing firm denials. Another Chevy Suburban whooshed past, followed by another van. "There goes Fox," Dayton said grimly. "Looks like we're in for another clusterfuck."

Cadee did a double take. She gave a look of mock horror. "What did you say, Dayton?"

"Cluster what?" teased Gary.

Dayton sputtered, a bit embarrassed, a bit indignant, and everyone dissolved into giggles, great peals of nervous laughter that echoed around the inside of the truck, then slowly died, giving way again to silence, to the song on the radio, Waylon and Willie. Dayton tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Gary sang along under his breath. Cadee pulled her cell phone from her Louis Vuitton handbag, checked to see if she was still in range. Chad would be calling at any moment. He was headed this way in Aunt Leona's '89 Coupe DeVille.

Their final destination was a few more miles down the road, a small local television station, KAZV, owned by a man named Azevedo. Headquartered in a converted farmhouse in the middle of a vast almond orchard, the channel was not available in the local cable lineup--something Gary had been trying to help correct. As a favor to his old friend, Gary had committed to this appearance, a softball interview with the host of a regularly scheduled farm show called Ag 'n More.

And that, of course, was the reason for the parade of news trucks down this lonely stretch of Iowa Avenue. On the night before the Democratic primary, with Gary facing a crowded field of challengers, the international press corps had once again descended upon the Central Valley. The appearance at KAZV was tonight's must-have media get: Gary Condit on the eve of judgment day.

Time dragged. More trucks and vans rushed past. At length, the fourth occupant of the Durango spoke up. "What's your favorite story about the press?" I asked.

"Dayton here probably has as gooda stories as anybody," Gary offered.

"I don't know.... "Dayton said modestly.

"How about the red car?" prompted Gary. There is a humble, good-natured quality about him: easy to laugh, eager to please, nurturing, almost ministerial. He rested his hand encouragingly on Dayton's shoulder.

"Why don't you tell it?" said Dayton.

Gary shrugged and twisted his body around a bit to face his audience. He was dressed in faded jeans, a fleece pullover, and a scuffed pair of brown leather slip-on boots, a crust of mud on one heel. His hands--preternaturally pale, oversized in comparison with his slight, buff frame--were clasped prayerfully in his lap. The skin and meat along the top of his thumb and index finger were bitten and chewed. It looked raw and painful.

"The first time the media really staked out my condo--this was in D. C., right in the beginning--I mean, there were like thirty or forty of them. It was midafternoon, and they were all laying around in those lawn chairs like they do when they stake you out. And I had to get out of there. I had to get to Capitol Hill and go vote.

"So I called up Dayton and I said, 'Pick me up at three, but drive the Escort.' See, he used to have this little red Escort, and then he got a new truck and a guy in the office took over the Escort, and it has sort of rotated around since then. It's about a ten-year-old car, right?"

"Yep," confirmed Dayton. "It's sorta faded to a maroon color You know how they get."

"Um-hum," said Gary. "So he pulls up right in front of my apartment in the Escort, and he just sets there. And the whole press is just settin' there on their lawn chairs, not doing nothin'. And then all of a sudden, I open the door of the condo and come walking out. I get into the Escort. We pull away.... And you woulda thought they missed Santy Claus! They went crazy! They were stepping all over each other, falling down, yelling and screaming. I wish somebody had been filming that!" He slapped his thigh, threw his head back. Haw-haw-haw!

"That was the greatest!" Dayton enthused. He tapped out a drumroll on the steering wheel.

They sat for a moment, and then Dayton took a serious tone. "I always wonder: What do they think you're gonna say, anyway?" For almost a year, since the disappearance of Chandra Ann Levy, Gary and his family and his staff had been subjected to intense public scrutiny, to say the least. They'd been hunted by the press, staked out at home and at work, followed in their cars, photographed while sunbathing in the backyard. They'd been interrogated by the police and the FBI; they'd had to hire lawyers; Gary had submitted a DNA sample, had taken a polygraph test. They'd received hate mail and credible death threats. They'd turned on the television at any time of the 'day or night to hear people who'd never even met Gary calling him a liar, an obfuscator, a pervert, a hypocrite, an adulterer... even a cold-blooded murderer.

"I know what they want me to say," Gary answered. He turned his head, looked out the window--row upon row of almond trees, evenly spaced, dark and spindly branches covered with fine white blossoms. He ran his right hand through his thick, bristly hair. He spoke quietly. "They want me to say that I did her."

A shocked silence filled the vehicle. Gary turned back toward the others.

"Not gonna do it," he said, his voice rising in volume, his face rearranging itself into a comic mask, a send-up of an old skit from Saturday Night Live--a thin-lipped, nasal, rodenteyed impersonation of former president George H. W. Bush.

"Not gonna do it!" said Gary Condit. "Not gonna do it!"
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

THE AG 'N MORE INTERVIEW having concluded without incident--the affable host limiting the questions to politics and policy--Gary and his party collected themselves inside the KAZV studio.

"You did good," Chad said to his father. He is a bit taller than Gary, with the same small but athletic frame, the same flat behind, a slightly different kind of gentle twang, a version indigenous to Modesto.

"Real good," Cadee agreed.

Gary smiled earnestly. "I felt pretty good."

"You ready?" asked Chad. He had the tight look of a cornerman, working a wad of gum.

Gary nodded. "Let's get this over with," he said. His Adam's apple bobbed.

"How many you think are out there?" Dayton asked.

"Fifty?" Chad ventured. "I don't know, maybe seventy-five--a shitload."

Chad was sporting day-old stubble, a leather jacket, and hip Nike slip-on shoes; at home he is known to wear a nylon do-rag and baggy hoops wear, a predilection he shares with his sons. Chad was married at twenty-one to a half-Mexican, half-Italian named Helen, the prettiest girl at Ceres High. A Navy veteran (he joined during the Gulf war in a fit of patriotism, without telling his parents), a three-sport little-league coach, he'd worked for several years as a night security guard at a trailer park. People in the valley say Chad has his father's gift for connecting with people. Senior citizens find him respectful and cuddly. Farmers find him folksy. Businessmen find him comfortable at an expensive lunch. Even the media enjoyed his wry sense of humor, his gum-chewing, wisecracking version of the Condit twinkle--especially the females, a grizzled lot with whom he chastely flirted.

Not very long ago, Chad, thirty-four, had been a young man with a bright future. He'd been working as a top aide to Gray Davis, the governor's main man in the Central Valley, $110,000 a year plus benefits. Two months before Chandra Levy went missing, Chad had been tapped by state Democrats for his first try at political office--a run for the California General Assembly.

All of that was history now. The future was unfathomable. He was doing his best to live in the present--running this campaign, dealing with the press, trying to salvage his father's career and his family's name--while living in a three-bedroom rancher with seven other people and two large dogs, paying his bills out of the dwindling proceeds from the sale of his house. Private school wasn't cheap, but he knew better than to argue with Helen. Dark-eyed and olive-skinned, a stark contrast to the peaches-and-cream Condits, she does all the cooking for the extended family. They call her Sugar because she's so sweet, the nickname bestowed by her mother-in-law, Carolyn Condit, the undisputed matriarch of the household.

"Okay, Gary," Chad said. "We're giving a short statement, then we'll take a few questions, then we're outta here. We're stressing your experience, your record, your thirty years of public service."

"And remember to smile!" Cadee said. She cocked her head and beamed up at him--her own thousand-watt version of the Condit twinkle.

Fifty-four years old, Gary Adrian Condit has held public office since the year he graduated from college, working his way up the political ladder from city council to mayor to county board of supervisors to California General Assembly to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was born in Locust Grove, Oklahoma, the son of a Free Will Baptist minister, the great-grandson of a sharecropper. A mix of German, Irish, and American Indian, he is a registered member of the Cherokee nation. At nineteen, married to a Catholic girl from the better side of town, with an infant son born six months after their elopement, Gary came to California to attend junior college. Four years later, in 1972, while the other kids his age were marching and burning draft cards, Gary was finishing his B.A. degree, selling paint at Montgomery Ward, going door to door on nights and weekends in the small town of Ceres, population eight thousand, wearing a short-sleeved business shirt and a tie, mounting his first political campaign.

Over the years, in a heavily Republican district, Gary never lost an election. In 1994, in the November of Newt Gingrich's Republican revolution, with the Democrats taking heavy losses nationwide, Gary won his own seat with 66 percent of the vote. A savvy, effective, elbow-swinging inside player, he had a detailed command of the difficult issues important to his district--air and water, agriculture and trade, immigration and Social Security, veterans' affairs. Never much of a floor speechmaker, he stayed below the radar; he often fixed it so colleagues shared his credit. He never pandered to the leadership, choosing instead to navigate his own path, the one that best suited the needs of his electorate. He pissed people off sometimes, but they were mostly other politicians. Like the time in Sacramento when he and four other young legislators tried unsuccessfully to unseat a powerful Willie Brown from the speakership. In the aftermath of the failed coup, Gary was stripped of all his committee assignments. But Gary's comeuppance in Sacramento actually played well among the voters, an example of his resolve to do right by them, regardless of personal political cost. Next election, they made him their congressman.

During his thirty years as an elected official--twelve in the House--Gary became known for his tireless constituent service. A hands-on congressman, a voracious cross-country commuter, he spent at least three days a week at home, where his family had chosen to remain after his election to Congress. He was beloved by his electorate, the residents of a conservative, racially and ethnically diverse, agrarian district in the Central Valley of California, the place portrayed in the movie American Graffiti. In real life, they called it Condit Country: You couldn't throw a peach pit without hitting someone whom Gary or his family or staff had helped through a personal crisis.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In time, Gary became one of the most powerful men in California, even the nation: the second-ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, the leader of a conservative Democratic congressional coalition called the Blue Dogs, a close confidant of Governor Davis's, considered for a spot in George W. Bush's Cabinet. On May 2, 2001, his hometown newspaper, the Modesto Bee, lauded Gary for his bold bipartisan work with President Bush. "Other leaders could learn from his example," glowed an editorial.

Just about the time that piece was being written, in the early afternoon of May 1, Chandra Levy disappeared. Gary had met the twenty-four-year-old in Washington the previous October--a graduate student, an intern with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a petite and vivacious young woman from his district with a history of attractions to older, married men. In his own carefully chosen words, he and Chandra "became very close." When pressed by Connie Chung, in his first public interview on the matter, about a hundred days after Chandra's disappearance, Gary told a television audience of twenty-four million: "We had a close relationship. I liked her very much."

Though D.C. authorities publicly chided Gary for waiting until a third interview with police to admit the true nature of that relationship, they also said repeatedly that Gary was not a suspect in her disappearance. It should also be noted, for the record, that the notion of a link between Chandra and Gary was leaked to the press by unnamed police sources following their first interview with Gary. For his part, Gary asserted, "I answered every question that the law enforcement asked me."

No matter--the damage was done. There were countless articles, endless deconstruction by pundits, boundless gossip among ordinary citizens. One by one, most of Gary's friends and colleagues from both parties denounced and deserted him. The Modesto Bee urged him not to run for another term. Even Governor Davis--who many said owed his election to Gary-lined up and took a shot. Chad was informed of Davis's public statements by Larry King at the top of a live interview. The next day, Chad and Cadee resigned their jobs.

All the while, Gary maintained a stubborn public silence, refusing to disclose any details of his relations with Chandra Levy. He insisted repeatedly that he was taking what he believed to be the proper legal and moral steps-posting a reward, telling the authorities what he knew, asking forgiveness from his God and his family (though he would never say for what), carrying on with his duties as a lawmaker, praying for Chandra every night. It was not his obligation to unburden himself to the press, he insisted: The media was not his father confessor. His own father, the Reverend Adrian Condit, concurred: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," he told a radio audience, relating the story of Jesus, the prostitute, and the mob.

But the longer Gary kept silent, the worse it became. Shut out, the media laid siege. Inside the castle, desperation led to bad decisions, worse results. A flight attendant surfaced, and then a hastily discarded watch box, a couple of comely former staffers, a special answering machine that played romantic music, a wellspring of lurid rumors-leather chaps and a studded harness, knotted neckties under the bed, Arab slave traders, Hells Angels, a possible pregnancy. In short order, a man who was once seen as the ideal grassroots legislator, a true man of the people-the man you could call to get a pothole fixed, your aunt's problema con la Migra cleared up, your lost VA check reissued-that man was no more. He had become instead the nation's most reviled figure.

Now Chad opened the door of the KAZV studio. Gary and his entourage stepped outside.

Immediately, spontaneously, totally ... they were enveloped by the press. Wielding microphones and metal sound booms with furry covers, whining motor drives with stroboscopic flashes and phallic telephoto lenses, shoulder-mounted video cams and handheld microcassette recorders, the odd pad and pen, reporters mobbed the Condit party like so many white blood cells attacking a microorganism, surging and bumping and jostling, shouting hysterically, for they were hungry and tired; they'd been standing in the chill of the almond orchard for hours, watching the sun go down, looking at their watches, considering their deadlines, needing something from Gary, some usable footage, some live quote, some tasty new morsel they could carry home and drop at the feet of their editors, who in turn would feed it to the masses. "Gary! Congressman! Mr. Condit!"

"Could y'all stand back?" Chad pleaded.

Dayton gritted his teeth and leaned against the newspeople, doing his best to clear a lane, fighting his Oakdale instinct to swing his elbows. Cadee held firmly onto the crook of her father's arm as they were tossed by the crowd like castaways on a leaky lifeboat in a storm, a perfect storm, the perfect news story, sex and power and murder and mystery all rolled into one. Cadee hated these crowds. You never knew what to expect. In the back of her mind, she always imagined a crazy man lurking in the seething throng, a crazy man with a gun.

Gary held his ground the best he could, trying to maintain his composure, his balance. In his blue eyes-a beautiful shade of blue, really, the blue of a semiprecious turquoise bolo necktie--you could see that familiar look, that combination of fear and pluck, of cluelessness and determination: that deer-in-the-headlights glare he'd shown to Connie Chung.

People who saw that interview, people who knew Gary, his friends, said that the man who'd appeared on TV that night was not the Gary Condit they knew. In fact, Gary did the interview against his better instincts; his lawyers put him up to it, he says. They'd figured he'd get in front of the cameras and be moved to say a little more than he wanted to, maybe bow to public pressure and admit some kind of fault, ask for some kind of forgiveness. If he did, they'd figured, maybe it would take some of the heat off. If he admitted to being an adulterer, maybe the press and public would be less inclined to think the unthinkable--that Gary had killed Chandra, or at least ordered her death. But once he got out there before the cameras, it all went horribly wrong. "I felt like I'd been put in front of the firing squad," Gary says.

In Gary's mind, the Chung interview boiled down to this: "It was one thing for people to ask me questions about the incident. But they have to respect the answers. You and I may not agree, but you need to respect my answers." About the time she asked Gary the second question--"Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?"--Gary said to himself, I can see where this interview is going. I'm putting a stop to this now. Right then and there, he would tell me later, "Connie Chung became President Putin to me. She wasn't gettin' anything out of me; she wasn't going to break me, no way." He told himself, I just gotta sit here and bear you, but that's it.

"It's mean, but screw her, you know?" Gary says. "To be honest, if people look closely at that interview, if anybody bothers in history to watch the tape, they'll see where she went into a daze-she just lost it. I mean, I knew I wasn't going to say anything. She just went blank on me at some point. She had no place to go. She had this yellow legal pad. She just kept looking down at her pad. And she asked the one question like ten times, maybe twenty times. I knew this was not going over well. I came very close to saying, 'Hey, Connie, do you got any other questions besides the ones on that yellow pad?'"
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

And now, on the night before the Democratic primary, in an almond orchard outside Modesto, accosted once again by the media--Lord, how sick of them he had become--he had to reach down deep and gut it out again. He was running for his seat in Congress because there was no reason for him not to run, absolutely no reason at all. Do you think Gary Condit is a quitter? He's not a quitter. He would never quit. He'd never quit. He'd never quit. So what if his protégé, practically an adopted son, was running against him? So what if the members of his own party had redistricted his beloved 18th, removing much of Condit Country, adding the inner city of Stockton? So what if he had to sink the entire profits from the sale of his Washington condo, $50,000, into his campaign? So what if many people in America thought he killed Chandra Levy? There was no reason not to run.

He'd been an effective congressman. He had a great record in public service. He had learned his trade; he knew what he was doing. He hadn't gone to Washington to serve the leadership or the president or the boys in the back room. He'd gone to serve the people in his district-so let them decide. If the voters were going to say that they didn't want Gary Condit to represent them, fine, he would go quietly. But he wasn't going to bow out of the race because of what the press said, because of what the pundits said. As he told Connie Chung: He did not kill Chandra Levy. The press had taken a missing-persons case and turned it into a romance novel. He wasn't even a suspect: The police had said so clearly. The only evidence against him was a bunch of lies and innuendo and hearsay, stuff dredged up by the press, stuff they kept repeating on television again and again.

Gary stepped forward, alone, into the klieg lights. The crowd of reporters formed a tense and expectant semicircle around him. He spoke into the garden of microphones swaying before him like so many colorful tulips. He invoked his campaign themes: his thirty years of public service, his record of effectiveness, his loyalty to his constituents. And then Chad opened the floor to questions.

Everyone shouted at once. The loudest guy had a British accent. "What do you believe happened to Chandra Levy?"

"Where are you from?" snapped Gary. His hands were clasped prayerfully at his waist.

"The BBC," said the man.

"Where do you live?"

"Los Angeles."

"I don't have any idea," Gary said.

"Congressman! Gary! Mr. Condit!"

"You," Gary said, pointing.

"If the polls are right and you lose tomorrow--"

"Whose polls are you citing?" Gary, interrupted.

"Well, ah--"

"You have to identify your polls. Where are you from?"

"Inside Edition."

"Oh, God!" Gary groaned and rolled his eyes heavenward, half serious, half goofing around, the Gary that few people ever see. It was a spontaneous reaction, a real human moment. It elicited a good laugh from the assembled press, and with that, something turned; you could feel it in the crowd. The edge came off; everyone seemed to calm down a bit. The press was getting its footage. Gary was surviving another clusterfuck, even doing well, connecting, trying a little something new, a new tack here in the late going, a technique he'd arrived at rather spontaneously: a game called Question the Questioners. It seemed to be working. The twinkle had returned to his eyes. For once, facing the media, he seemed to be ahead in the count. "Ask your question," Gary said magnanimously to the man from Inside Edition.

"If the polls are right and you do lose tomorrow, is there one thing you will blame for your loss, or one person?"

"I'm not blaming anyone, no," said Gary. "You're not gonna hear me whine and blame. That is not Gary Condit. This is not a blame game. I'm out here doing what I'm supposed to do. I'm out here fighting till the end to win the election. I've tried to be a gentleman. I've tried to be dignified. I've tried to focus on what's important--and you guys have had to decide how to respond. If you think your response has been dignified, like gentlemen and ladies, you'll decide that for yourself. Time will tell if you were right .... "

It continued in this vein for fifteen minutes or so, portentous questions from the national folks, issue-oriented ones from the locals, the normal give-and-take of a political campaign. Then Chad stepped forward. "One more question," he said. He pointed to a woman in the crowd.

"What do you want to tell the people of this district, given your affair with Chandra Levy?"

Gary's blue eyes saucered; his pearly smile disappeared. He grimaced, a look of maximum distaste. Wherever he went, every single time, every interview he gave, impromptu or prearranged, it was always the same. He never knew exactly what form it would take or when it would come, but it always did. As if every single one of them--from the London Sunday Observer to NPR to Inside Edition to Good Morning America--entertained the fantasy that he or she was somehow going to be the anointed one, the one who managed where all the rest had failed, the one reporter in the entire world who was going to trick Gary Condit into confessing that he'd done it with Chandra Levy.

The deer-in-the-headlights glare returned. He raised his right hand and pointed with his index finger--the knuckles up, the thumb tucked, the finger raw and bitten, quaking with rage--intent on making one thing perfectly clear. "I am not going to acknowledge that," he said through clenched teeth. "You're citing hearsay, rumor, and innuendo."

And that was it. The sound bite they ran on the news.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GARY'S HOUSE ON ACORN LANE has beige siding and brick trim, a shake-shingle roof, a cherry tree in the front yard covered with delicate pink blossoms. At the rear property line, a row of cypress trees rises thirty feet, dwarfing the cookie-cut tract home, giving it the appearance of a dollhouse. The cypress is Gary's favorite tree, known to bend but not break in high winds. Many had been the times that he'd brought a troubled person outside and pointed up at the towering row of evergreens. "You gotta be like them trees," he'd say.

It was ten o'clock in the evening, the first Tuesday in March, Election Day. The polls had been closed for two hours. Outside the house, the media buzzed and swarmed in the odd, shadowless white light cast by the kliegs. News vehicles lined the block on both sides, engines running. The smell of exhaust mixed in the air with the smells of woodsmoke and tree pollen and holstein manure, the Central Valley being the largest milk-producing district in the world.

Last summer, after Chandra disappeared, Modesto was lousy with press. With Congress in recess, the media staked out Gary's office in Modesto and his house in Ceres, seven miles south, grown now to a thriving town of thirty-five thousand. At one point, Chad was accused of attempting to run over a newsman with a white Ford pickup. At another, Cadee was sitting by the pool with a girlfriend when two cameramen came over the back fence. In both cases, police were summoned. According to the Modesto Bee, news organizations spent more than $1 million locally before pulling up stakes after September 11.

But they were back again now, in force; the smell of political death was in the air, too. They milled about, swapping tall tales and restaurant reviews, drinking Starbucks, talking on their cell phones, monitoring the network feeds, littering the street with wrappers from the fast-food joints that lined nearby Hatch Road, the nearest exit onto Highway 99, the main artery through the valley. .

Inside Gary's house, about fifty friends and family, the inner circle, had gathered to await the results. A grim sort of siege atmosphere prevailed, albeit one masquerading as a potluck supper. Supporters and media were also gathered at three other locations around the district. Though they had no money to pay for polls, the Condits' collective gut feeling was this: During the last weeks of the campaign, they'd started gathering momentum. Maybe Gary could pull this out. That's what Carolyn and Cadee believed; they were the ones who'd insisted Gary run in the first place. At a family meeting held in the living room on the afternoon of the filing deadline, last December 7, Chad had voted no. He'd been out there collecting signatures for Gary. They'd come up short. For the first time in thirty years, they'd had to pay the filing fee to run.

But Gary had decided to run anyway. First, because he had no reason not to run. And second, because if he didn't, Chad would. He had his own papers ready to file, a try for the General Assembly, sure political suicide. "It's better I get clobbered than my son get clobbered," Gary told a trusted friend. The friend had just finished telling him: "Your problem politically is not that people think you killed Chandra Levy; it's that people think you're a fuckin' jerk."

Along with his 2001 Dodge Durango, Gary's house is his most valuable asset, estimated at slightly more than $200,000. The Condits have lived there for twenty-two years; it's the only house they've ever owned. The front door leads into an entryway. To the left is a small eat-in kitchen and the living room, with sliding glass doors that open onto a small swimming pool, the line of cypress trees beyond. To the right, down the hall, are the bedrooms. A few years back, in the mode of empty nesters, the Condits upgraded their master suite and reconfigured the third bedroom, creating two small rooms: a den/gym for Gary and a reading nook for Carolyn. These days, with the consolidated households, the boys' upright piano was shoved into the nook. The gym was now the boys' dorm; there were GI Joes everywhere. In the name of kidproofing, Carolyn had boxed all of her nice things--the crystal pieces and candlesticks, the knicknacks collected carefully over the years--giving the place the barren feel of a furnished rental.

Here tonight, as always, were Gary's folks, the Reverend Adrian and Velma Jean Condit, known to all as PawPaw and MaMaw. Gary's little sister, Dovie--an attractive, fortyish grandmother--used to work for Dennis Cardoza, Gary's chief rival in the congressional race. Everyone in the Valley agreed that Cardoza owed his career to Gary. Cardoza's election party--complete with a band and a full bar--was being held tonight in Modesto, in the main ballroom of the convention center at the DoubleTree. Flush with Washington money, he'd outspent Gary more than six to one.

Burl Condit, Gary's older brother, is a beefy man with a flattop haircut, a retired Modesto police sergeant, a former lieutenant who made a couple of missteps along the way. Burl's two boys, a deputy sheriff and a firefighter, were sitting around the kitchen table with their wives, one of whom was very pregnant. With them was Dovie's boy, also a firefighter, and his wife. Gary's younger brother, Darrell Wayne, known as Hoppy, was not there. He has a history of troubles with methamphetamine and the law.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the Condit women--Carolyn, Cadee, Helen, and Velma Jean--busied themselves dishing out MaMaw's famous chicken enchiladas and peach popovers. Other women busied themselves trying to convince the Condit women to sit down and allow them to do the work. It was hot and overcrowded in the small space; the phone on the wall was ringing and ringing. In some ways, over the last three decades, very little had changed.

Carol and Gar, as they call each other, met when they were both fifteen, sophomores at Nathan Hale Senior High in Tulsa. He was really darling--a little bit pious, a little bit wild: typical preacher's kid. She was a mirror of Cadee--just gorgeous, a real good person, too, from a real good family. They were married after their senior year; they followed his parents to Ceres when Chad was just an infant, making the journey west in Gary's '63 Chevy, her little Corvair in tow. Gar wanted to go to junior college: School was cheaper and better in California. It was a big move for Carol. She had never been away from home. She was lonely for her brother and her two sisters, and for her parents, Big Mom and Big Pop, who owned a chain of discount clothing stores, one of the first to specialize in factory seconds. Often, Burl would tease Carol about being so homesick; MaMaw would have to tell him to hush. After almost four full years in Ceres, Carol still hadn't unpacked most of her things. She was ready to move back to Tulsa as soon as Gar finished school.

But then one night during his senior year at Stanislaus State, Gar came home and told her, "Carol, I think I'm gonna run for Ceres City Council." She just looked at him. "I didn't even know what a Ceres City Council was," Carol says. "The only thing I knew about politics is you got an ice cream cone when your parents voted."

At first, Gar started campaigning by himself, just going house to house. He told Carol, "I think this is what I'm supposed to do." Then one day he said, "People think I'm running for student council. I need a picture of you and Chad and me." They took a Polaroid; the print shop made it into a flyer. Soon, others hopped on the bandwagon--old folks from their block, college friends, young couples from church. Every Saturday, while MaMaw and PawPaw minded the kids, the volunteers walked precincts. After dark, they'd gather for a big spaghetti dinner.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So it went until Election Night, the first Tuesday in November, 1972. As Carol likes to tell the story, she and Chad were alone in the little rented house on K Street, waiting for Gary to come back from campaigning. "I was glad I'd just picked up the house, because at about six-thirty, people started knocking on the door."

Of course she invited them in. Before she knew it, she was having a party. The phone was ringing off the hook. When he'd left that morning, Gar had predicted he'd come in fourth. But the television was saying otherwise: It looked like he was going to win!

Carol was so excited. When she heard him turning the corner toward the house--the little Datsun needed a muffler--she went running outside to meet him. She felt just like a little girl at Christmas. Oh, my God! Look! And when Gary came into the house and saw all the people, tears welled in his eyes. He took Carol's hand and squeezed. It was amazing: all these folks here supporting them, just so excited that they'd had a part in this, that they'd actually pulled this off, that they'd actually won.

The next day, Carol unpacked all her things.

And now, thirty years later, at about ten-fifteen on the first Tuesday in March, 2002, many of the same people were in attendance. The party was going on and the phone was ringing; the results were being broadcast on TV. This time, however, things didn't look so good. With 43 percent of the precincts reporting, Gary was up a hundred votes in Stanislaus County--his home territory--and down a thousand in Merced, Cardoza's hometown. In the new part of the district, they were losing two to one. Down the hall, the door to the back bedroom slowly opened. For the first time all evening, Gary appeared.

Chin high, smelling of soap, he strode down the hallway, easing past the capacity crowd watching the returns in the den, touching shoulders and shaking hands, moving toward the front door. He paused just outside the kitchen. He was joined by Chad and Cadee and Carol.

Everyone gathered around. This is just an election, Gary told himself. This is the way democracy goes. Don't make more of it than you should. No matter what happened, he was going back to Washington: He still had a term to finish. You just keep on clicking, man, you just keep moving, you walk, you put one foot ahead of the other and you just keep going. That's all you can do.

"Everybody in the house, listen up," Chad said. His voice was thin and strained. Ever since he could remember, he'd been active in his father's campaigns. He'd gone to the parades, worn the T-shirts, handed out the flyers. His father was the center of everything, and it made him proud. This was the very first election that Gary had ever lost. "In one minute, Gary's gonna walk outside. I want everyone here to follow him out and stand behind him in the yard. He's gonna make a statement, and then we go from there, okay? Can everybody handle that?"

"Yeah," came the desultory response.

Chad cupped his hand to his ear. "I can't hear you!" he sang.

"Yeaaahhh!" everyone cheered, louder this time, Cadee the loudest. She thrust a fist into the air like a cheerleader.

"No tears, people," Gary said. He clapped his hands together a couple of times, like a little-league coach on the wrong side of a victory. He scanned the crowd around him. He smiled: the Condit twinkle. If there was an upside to this whole ordeal, it was standing around him right now. His friends, his family--you go through something like this, you learn a lot about loyalty and love. Carol was, quite possibly, an angel in disguise. And the kids: The way they stood behind him, there was nothing more precious than that. People will think this sounds hokey, but the Condits had been through a war together; it is something they will always have, something they will always cherish as a family.

"No tears!" Cadee repeated, dabbing at her eye with her knuckle, trying to keep her mascara from running.

"Okay, here we go," said Gary, opening the front door. "Everybody smile!"

On a warm afternoon in the middle of March, a couple of weeks after the primary, Carolyn Condit was sitting on the love seat in her living room. All was quiet in the house: You could hear the kitchen clock ticking. Cadee was in a back bedroom, recovering from some surgery she'd been putting off during the campaign. The boys were in school; Helen was food shopping with the baby. Gary was in his office in Modesto, having just returned from Washington. Earlier, as he was leaving the house, Carol reached up and took his far cheek in her palm, then pulled him close, kissed him gently on the near cheek--the casual, intimate gesture of a loving wife. Chad was sitting next to his mom. She was visibly nervous; this was her first interview with the press in many years.

"I wouldn't wish this on anyone," Carol was saying. Petite and attractive, with a sweet, lilting voice, she was wearing a pair of her daughter's jeans. She tucked an errant string of flaxen hair behind her ear, and then her hand came to rest on the gold cross nestled in the cleft of her collarbone. "It just gives me goose bumps to think about it. The helicopters. The lie-detector test. The searching of our apartment. I mean, we stood right there while they were searching. And they just glared in your eyes and ripped open our closets like they were gonna find just horrid stuff. And they even hooked this gadget up to our sink. It was just so invasive. They were so vindictive. It was just like: How can you do this to a guy who wouldn't even hurt a flea?

"I never felt, for one minute, that Gary did this or that. Never once. And I don't think I'm naive. I don't think I have a cover over my head. Everybody else has said--the out-there people--they have said that Gar has had an affair. And it's all just ludicrous. It's just so blown up. It's like they're talking about two people that aren't even us. I mean, Gar and I were kids together. We grew up together. There's not anything better that anybody would like than for me to pack a bag and walk out, so they can write another story. But to me, it just seems like they took this healthy, gorgeous man and put an IV in him and drained him of everything, just took his heart out and stomped it. They tried to ruin something really good."

A little more than a year after her disappearance, a man walking his dog--it was said he was hunting for turtles--found the remains of Chandra Ann Levy at the bottom of a steep, overgrown slope in a secluded area of Rock Creek Park in Washington, D. C. Both Levy's and Condit's apartments, about a mile apart, were convenient to the woodsy, seventeen-hundred-acre park. Friends and family say that Levy, a small-town girl who aspired to a career in law enforcement, tended to avoid the park; she preferred to jog on a treadmill at her health club. Around the time of her disappearance, at least two female joggers had been victims of armed assaults in the park. Their assailant is currently serving a ten-year sentence. More than thirty bodies have been recovered in the park over the last twenty-five years.

Along with her skeletal remains, police found a Walkman-type radio, a jogging bra, panties, a USC sweatshirt, a lipstick, and a pair of stretch pants that had been tied in a knot--possibly to restrain her. Still missing, according to police, are Levy's keys, her ring, and the bracelet allegedly given to her by Gary Condit, the identical twin to a bracelet given to the airline attendant who allegedly was having an affair with Condit at the same time.

Police have officially ruled Levy's death a homicide. They have been unable to determine a cause. As of this writing, in early July, detectives are examining several scenarios: that Levy was killed elsewhere and her body was dumped in the park; that she was attacked while jogging in the park; that she was lured to the park by someone and killed there.

Police have repeatedly said that there is no evidence linking Condit to Levy's disappearance or homicide. However, a grand jury has been looking into allegations that Condit obstructed justice by trying to persuade the flight attendant to lie to investigators about their alleged affair, and also by trying to discard a watch box--given to him by another alleged former girlfriend--several hours before investigators searched his D. C. apartment. Condit appeared before the grand jury in mid-April. A source close to Condit told Esquire that he invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

For a U. S. congressman, a lifelong politician, Gary Condit seems like a pretty regular guy. He has a decent sense of humor, a healthy appreciation for a nice ass walking down the street in a pair of jeans, a determined first step to the seven-foot hoop, especially when the game is on the line. In my time with him--a month in the Valley, five months overall on this story--he evinced an impressive command of the issues, an almost ministerial commitment to the people of his district. No matter what his political stripe, it is clear that Condit is gifted at his chosen profession--part power broker, part man of the people: the ideal grassroots legislator.

But then there are the women. On the one hand, Condit plays the role of a dedicated family man; he is a dedicated family man. On the other hand, the preponderance of evidence says that he's a serial adulterer. It is something good family men don't do. Does it matter? Is it any of our business? Should it ruin him?

Perhaps this whole situation could be explained away. Like the plot of a TV drama, maybe this was a case in which a husband--panicked, trying to cover up an affair, terrified of being caught by his wife--starts telling half-truths and making disastrous missteps. In time, everyone comes to believe he is guilty of murder.

Having spent time with Condit, I have to say it seems impossible that he could have killed someone. But isn't that what the friends and neighbors always say? It also seems improbable that he contracted a killer--though certainly, with his thirty years of public service in the roughneck Central Valley, he must know a few shady characters who could do the job. According to Levy's aunt, Linda Zamsky, who has given the fullest public account of the alleged affair to date, she was becoming increasingly impatient with her role as a mistress. There was even a five-year plan, the aunt said. Could Levy have pushed a little too hard? A twenty-four-year-old can be a dangerous loose cannon, especially to an older man who's been married for nearly thirty-five years to his best friend.

But really, now. Could Condit and his accomplices have been so diabolically shrewd? Could the man who lost a face-off against Connie Chung really mastermind the perfect crime?

Still, of the 233 murders reported in Washington last year, only three were of white women. So why Chandra Levy? How can people not be suspicious of Gary Condit? In the end, I put it to him bluntly: "Gary, either you are guilty, or you are truly the most monumentally unlucky man who ever lived."

He answered without hesitation: "It was obviously unlucky. I mean, that's obvious, it was. But I do think there is a fundamental problem here. I might not have gotten it across very well, but for the last year, I have been fighting for a principle. A lot of people in history have stood on principle, and sometimes the country was with them, and sometimes they went against the grain. The thing is, you have to be bold enough and brave enough to stand up, no matter what the cost.

"To be honest with you, it's gonna sound immodest on my part, but if you track my career, I'm always ahead of the curve. Political people and other people in public life, sooner or later, they'll have to get where I'm at now. If they don't, you'll have no privacy. At the first sign of a personal tragedy, you'll be gobbled up for frivolous entertainment value. Any person, any family, any individual at any moment who gets themselves into a situation that they can't explain, or that they don't have answers for, and the press puts a camera on it--they could end up having their life destroyed. Freedom of the press is one thing, but I have rights, too. All I could do was draw a line and say, 'I'm not crossing that line.' History will be my judge.

"I don't think that anyone outside of my district, outside of my people, my family, really knows who Gary Condit is. And I don't know that I can ever get them to think of me as who I really am. I've been portrayed by the press the way they wanted to portray me. I don't think anything anybody could ever do can redeem my name. The damage has been done. I can't get anything back. And I'm not going to go around trying to change that. That's not me. That's not Gary Condit. I know who I am. I know what I'm about. I know what happened and what didn't happen.

"What more can I say."
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   This topic is locked: you cannot edit posts or make replies.    www.justiceforchandra.com Forum Index -> Murder on a Horse Trail All times are GMT - 4 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group