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Appendix IX. Family, friends try to move on

 
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Joined: 13 Sep 2002
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:22 am    Post subject: Appendix IX. Family, friends try to move on Reply with quote

from www.modbee.com (fair use)

Family, friends try to move on
April 28, 2002
By MICHAEL DOYLE BEE WASHINGTON BUREAU
and MICHAEL G. MOONEY Modesto BEE

WASHINGTON -- John Woodfolk looked up from his key grinder and confronted the past.

Chandra Levy? No, Woodfolk said, he had not heard much about her in a long time.

"Things are just normal," Woodfolk said. "Nobody is saying anything about it."

Woodfolk last year briefly took the spotlight as a potential witness in the Chandra Levy investigation. He had a place in a much larger cast of characters.

Lawyers, detectives, psychics and friends: The Chandra Levy case brought attention, if not notoriety, to many. Some, like Congressman Gary Condit's staff and lawyers, previously knew at least the structure if not the heat of public life. Others, like Woodfolk and Chandra Levy's family and friends, learned harsh lessons about how public dramas unfold.

Some, such as Jennifer Baker, wonder if they will ever feel normal again.

Baker, who had been an intern in Condit's Washington office, organized rallies in Modesto and Sacramento after her friend Levy disappeared. She was the subject of intense media interest after a picture of her and Levy, posing with Condit, was seen nationwide, in newspapers and on television.

"I've tried not to dwell on it," Baker said of Levy's disappearance. "I can't put it out of my mind, so I try not to think about it all the time. I was doing that last fall. I told myself I couldn't do that anymore."

Baker was getting ready to start a new job with Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, when her friend vanished, touching off a media firestorm centered on speculation that Levy had a romantic relationship with Condit.

Baker delayed beginning her job for about two weeks and said she was glad she could do that.

"We were all pretty traumatized," she said. "This is why I don't do (news media interviews) anymore. It's just so sad."

As media interest in Levy's disappearance intensified, Baker sought refuge in her job. She continues working in the assemblywoman's office today.

"I got a hard taste of reality," she said, "with (news reporters and photographers) jumping out of bushes and following me."

Baker said she is trying to move on with her life, even though thoughts of her missing friend never are far away.

"It's something that's lifelong, I think," she said. "You can't really grieve because you don't know. You just don't know."

Lisa Bracken knows what Baker means. She, too, knew Levy from high school and has had difficulty coping with her disappearance.

"It is such a stressful thing," said Bracken, children's activity director at Modesto Fitness & Racquet Club. "It goes through your mind so much. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about her and wonder where she is and what happened to her."

During the past year, Baker and Bracken have become good friends -- a friendship forged by Levy's disappearance.

"I saw Jennifer on TV when this first happened," Bracken said. "I decided I would help out, too."

Bracken said she ended up working as a volunteer for the Carole Sund-Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation. Until Levy disappeared, she had no idea how devastating it can be when a family member or friend suddenly vanishes.

"So many people are missing," she said. "It's just so sad."

Aunt gave up anonymity

Levy's aunt, Linda Zamsky, knew Chandra even more intimately than Baker or Bracken.

Initially appearing in the press as an anonymous source, Zamsky became publicly known and helped propel the story when she released a 15-page statement recounting what she said Levy told her of the alleged relationship with Condit.

The siege has long since lifted on Zamsky's house, and normalcy has more or less returned, save for the big hole in her heart.

"I'm living life one day at a time. That's all I do."

Now she is more or less back to her private life in a small town on Maryland's eastern shore: gardening, tending some tropical birds and managing her husband's medical practice.

Zamsky said she has been kept in the dark about the status of the investigation.

The media swarmed on hardware store employee Woodfolk when the Levy investigation was at its peak. Working across Connecticut Avenue from the gym that Levy frequented, Woodfolk said he recalled selling a duplicate set of keys to someone who resembled her.

Some secrets in the Levy investigation did not last long. Even before detectives showed up one muggy morning to interview him, camera crews were staked out on the sidewalk in front of his store. Detectives, though, quickly determined that Woodfolk's recollection did not match, and the seeming lead was dropped, like so many others.

The talk of cable TV

The national media, particularly cable news talk shows, ran with the story through spring and into summer when Washington lawmakers took vacations. But it was ABC's Connie Chung who landed a much-anticipated prime-time talk with Condit.

The Aug. 23 program, taped on a Modesto-area ranch, drew more than 23 million viewers.

Chung has since moved on to CNN, and CNN's Greta Van Susteren left CNN to join Fox News Channel.

At CNN, Van Susteren rallied guests to discuss every angle of the Levy case. Then came the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Said Betsy Goldman, a booking agent for Van Susteren, "That was the end of the Chandra Levy story, as far as I was concerned."

Van Susteren has not done much on the Levy case with her new Fox show, but said she would if the case "hit the radar screen" again. She ticked off the compelling elements: a missing young woman, a middle-aged congressman, the marble halls of Capitol Hill and sex.

"People were intrigued by the ingredients," she said. "It was the kind of story that had all these different kinds of facets."

Attorneys juggled cases

At CNN, Van Susteren never was able to land as guests the two main lawyers involved in the case: Billy Martin and Abbe Lowell. She had dealings with both in her previous life as a lawyer.

The Levy family hired Martin, a former federal prosecutor, to be their Washington voice. He would keep track of the police investigation, and use his own investigators to conduct a parallel search. In time, he would spar on national television with his former colleague, Lowell, whom Condit had hired.

The Levy case was not the only touchy issue occupying Martin's time.

In early April, one year after a police shooting shook Cincinnati, Martin helped the city resolve its legal problems. It was a tough case, but not as troubling as the Levy matter.

"It's one of the most frustrating investigations I've ever been involved with," Martin said.

Lowell, a fixture in the Washington legal circle, worked with Condit on arranging police interviews, preparing Condit's wife, Carolyn, for her interview with investigators, and privately urging a more forthcoming public strategy for the congressman.

"My representation of Congressman Condit came right in the middle of one of the longest and most intense criminal trials I've ever done," Lowell said.

He would spend days on one case, nights on another. Eventually he won acquittal in federal court for a Dallas businessman accused of racketeering and conspiracy.

Lowell had brought in Washington-based public relations specialist Marina Ein to help on the Condit matter last summer. Ein never met Condit, but she took part in numerous behind-the-scenes strategy sessions.

Ein is now back to her core public relations work.

"It's grown a little bit, but I don't know if that had anything to do with Condit," Ein said.

Flight attendant back on job

By Thanksgiving, Lowell had handed off Condit to Southern California lawyer and cable television regular Mark Geragos. Periodic tension had arisen between Lowell and the congressman.

Long before becoming Condit's lawyer, Geragos had spent the summer on cable television speaking up on Condit's behalf. He would be identified simply as an experienced defense attorney, though he had spent some days conversing privately with Condit or his closest California allies.

Geragos has not returned repeated telephone calls seeking comment over the past two months.

Condit's first lawyer, Joe Cotchett, did not look back after leaving the case; like Lowell, he thought Condit's stiff-arming of the press to be imprudent. He is now chairman of the California State Parks Advisory Board.

Mostly now, they -- and others once in the eye of the media storm -- are trying to go about their lives.

Jim Robinson, a Seattle lawyer who represents flight attendant Anne Marie Smith, said he was too busy with other cases to discuss Condit and Levy.

Robinson made headlines last summer when he unsuccessfully tried to convince Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton and the county grand jury to indict Condit.

Robinson claimed Condit and some of his key staff members had urged Smith to deny the affair that she alleges she had with Condit.

Smith, meanwhile, said she recently returned to work for United Airlines. She also is working in a restaurant and trying to get on with her life.

So is John Woodfolk.

In his hardware store, near the gym that Chandra Levy once favored, Woodfolk leaned back over his machine and ground a new pair of keys for another anonymous customer.

Somewhere, a door is waiting to be unlocked.
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