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Chapter 1. Hunting Turtles

 
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rd



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

PostPosted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:18 am    Post subject: Chapter 1. Hunting Turtles Reply with quote



available from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com


Murder On A Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy

by Ralph Daugherty
iUniverse
ISBN: 0-595-31847-9


Murder on a Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy also available free to read online here on www.justiceforchandra.com


Broad Branch Road at the bottom of the hill and the creek running along side. - James Forrester



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rd



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

PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hunting Turtles


You would never believe you were in Washington, D.C. The road winds through a steep valley in perpetual twilight under a canopy of trees. Walking along it is to take your life in your hands. A car whizzes around the curve in its pursuit of a Grand Prix win, or at least getting somewhere in a hurry. You jump aside and cling to a hill that forms a wall, hopeful you don't lose your footing and join a dead deer lying next to the road, a deer who had infinitely surer footing than you do.

The car races by, and you venture back out on the road and continue your walk through the primeval forest. Across the narrow two lane road is a creek, the Broad Branch tributary of Rock Creek for which this road is named. Large boulders line the creek bed providing ways to get across for someone who can get to the bottom from the road. The more venturesome can try tightrope walking across a giant fallen tree to get to the other side, although few would find the steep tree covered mountainside across the road very inviting.

It was on the morning of May 22, 2002, reports Michael Doyle of the Modesto Bee, that a man was walking along the side of this road hunting turtles with his dog. According to the report, the dog crossed the road and up that uninviting mountainside, attracted to something. The turtle hunter followed and looked where the dog was sniffing 125 yards up the hill. What the dog had sniffed out and the man found was a skull, buried in leaves with dirt on it.

The unidentified turtle hunter made his way back to the road and found some workers remodeling a house. He alerted the U.S. Park Police with a call at 9:29 a.m. and within 20 minutes a Park Police sergeant arrived, followed soon after by the Washington police. The Washington Post notes that when he showed the sergeant the site where he found the skull he pointed out other items scattered about.

The skull turned out to be Chandra Levy's, identified through dental records provided by the family. The nation had been captivated the summer before by the mystery of her disappearance on May 1, but the greater horror of 9/11 diverted the nation's focus away from the tragedy of a missing intern. Now she was found, but as in almost every other aspect of this mystery, under questionable circumstances.

I would normally expect that he would be walking along the side of the road where the creek was to look for turtles, but he was across the road from the creek and the hillside where Chandra was.

Why would somebody walking along the side of the road say he was hunting turtles? True, he might have been, but wouldn't most people say they were walking their dog if walking along the side of the road? Did he feel it necessary to explain why he would follow his dog up the side of the hill and dig around where the dog was sniffing?

The only presumption one can make is that the dog runs alongside the road and when he detects a turtle he barks and paws and his owner comes and retrieves the turtle. Otherwise it is a very strange story as reported.

I have to think that Michael Doyle was right in describing how the man got to the area, by walking down Broad Branch, but I can't imagine the turtle hunter noticing this about his dog from the road, can't imagine that he follows the dog anytime it runs up a hill, and can't imagine the dog being lured up the hill by the smell of the year old skull buried under a foot of underbrush.

It only makes sense to me if he walked up the hill hunting for turtles, and then the question remains. Is this the first time he or anyone else and their dog walked in the area? Why didn't a dog notice her remains anytime in the previous year?

Also troubling is the refusal to identify the turtle hunter. Some people who watched news reports heard him described as a boy, but was someone who sounded older. He was not shown. Others think he was not identified because he was a juvenile but press reports consistently identified him as a man. For some reason, he remains unidentified.

A turtle hunter's dog being attracted to the site of her remains is very difficult to reconcile with Chandra's body lying there a year. Whether reconciled or not, this is just one of many mysteries surrounding Chandra's disappearance and murder. There is much written here to make sense of this murder on a horse trail, and much that remains to be unraveled.

A powerful Congressman to whom the murdered Chandra was a mistress is part of that mystery, but only part. This is not about getting a powerful politician with secrets. This is about shining a light on a great mystery made more mysterious by what appears to be a coverup, not an explicit coverup, but an implict decision not to pursue a murder investigation into the very halls of Congress itself.

Should the mystery be solved and the murderer found to be only a drifter in a park, it still will be a great mystery and a very public demonstration of the influence wielded by the powers that be to be shielded from what we all would face, and a demonstration of what we would experience if it were one of our loved ones caught in a web of power and deceit.

It is a story whose ending is as yet unknown, a story yet to be told. But in the end the telling of this story will rival the most complex murder mysteries ever told. The search for Chandra had ended, and now the search for justice for Chandra begins.
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rd



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

PostPosted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Next chapter - Paid Intern
http://www.justiceforchandra.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2560

Murder on a Horse Trail - Table of Contents
http://www.justiceforchandra.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2562


Hunting Turtles
Doyle, Michael. “Intern may have had keys made, Dianne Feinstein says Condit
lied to her about his affair with Levy.” Modesto Bee 1 Aug. 2001.

Doyle, Michael. “Medical examiner can’t tell how ex-intern was killed.” Modesto
Bee 29 May 2002.

Twomey, Steve and Sari Horwitz. “Skeletal Remains Found.” Washington Post
23 May 2002.

Twomey, Steve and Sari Horwitz. “With Levy case going nowhere, chance
stepped in.” Washington Post 26 May 2002.
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