www.justiceforchandra.com

[benn]

Senior Fellow Joseph D. McNamara at the Hoover Institute located on Stanford University wrote an article about the sniper news story in the East, and he said that the public has a right to know, and that all police secrecy is not needed and that the police secrecy can sometimes be detrimental. (This is not a direct quote.) There shoud be an agency that the public can contact, without hiring an expensive attorney, to ask questions about what the police have done or have not done in an investigation.

I am wondering if this would come under the Freedom of Information Act. Nanci might know something about that. She used to mention the Freedom of Information Act once in a while.

Maybe we could use the Act to find out some answers about the turtleman, or at least why it is necessary for him to remain secret.

Myself, I wonder if the turtleman knew Mark Geragos. Geragos told Gary Condit in April of 2002 that Chandra would probably be found in May, and she was. I do not believe in psychics, so if Geragos is not a psychic, how was he so lucky in guessing when Chandra would be found?

benn

[blondie]

DITTO benn. That comment by Geragos really was strange. I remember hearing it on LKL.

[blondie]

"Woman found in Hybla Valley Park Identified"

Police have identified the woman found shot to death in a Fairfax County park Thanksgiving morning as Shawndre Fulton, 21. The 'person of of interest' is the boyfriend. Shawndre is pronounced Chandra. She was pregnant. Strange coincidence.

[propria]

>>> I wonder if the turtleman knew Mark Geragos. <<<


now, there's an interesting possibility i hadn't thought of ... and that would explain quite a few things, too. for instance, i can see why the turtle-hunting lawyer would not accept the reward money if his finding of chandra's body was an arranged event ... taking reward money would only open him up to lots of detailed questions about the find that he most assuredly would not want to answer. i can also see how geragos would confidently make a remark about finding the body in may if he had already made arrangements for the body to be moved to the park about that time, as well as arrangements for it to be found by a turtle-hunting dog shortly after it was placed there.

unfortunately, the reason i have not pursued details like these in a foia [freedom of information act] request is that this is still categorized as a live investigation ... yeah, right!!! ... and matters under investigation are not eligible for foia discovery. isn't that just the handiest thing in all the world ... and don't you just know that this investigation will be considered 'live' forever, precisely so that people like us can't get anywhere near details like that???? how conveeeeeennnnient!!


nanci
_________________
the Truth has a name, and there is power in that Name!

[benn]

nanci, you might try writing to Senior Fellow Joseph D. McNamara at the Hoover Institute, located on Stanford University. He is from a long family line of police officers. He has a Ph.D. and was police chief at San Jose, California, as well as Kansas City, Missouri. He started out on the NYPD, so he is a good person to have some opinions on what we are writing about here.

There is more on him on the Contacts topic here. I will post his address again.

Joseph D. McNamara, Ph. D.
Address: Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-6010
Phone: (650) 725-5677
Email: mcnamara@hoover.stanford.edu

When I wrote to McNamara he replied right away. The reason that I have not written to him again is that I wanted to be able to ask some good questions when I did write, or make some good comments.

benn

[rd]

nanci is right, benn. The police have made Chandra's case a walking zombie case, not live, not dead. It just lies there buried under whatever level of obfucation needed until everyone just goes away.

The occasional public mention made is met with "It's under investigation". Translation: "Move on, nothing to see here. Have a nice day. And we're standing by if someone wants to call us up and confess."

rd

[benn]

Thanks rd, for posting that. I was thinking now that maybe I could take just a small quote from there and put it on a newsgroup. Just an idea, but this next little story that I am going to quote sort of fits in with that, getting some news recognition for whatever you are trying to sell. The story below is about a BailBondsman who tries to sell his BailBond company. We are trying to sell the Chandra Levy investigation.

Here are some lines from one of Gary Condit's google alerts for today. The story is about a San Diego Bail Bondsman. The Bondsman looks for free publicity, for his Bail Bond Company.

>>>Some thought Stahlman's opportunism crossed the line in the summer of 2001 when he publicly offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could find Chandra Levy, the intern to former Modesto congressman Gary Condit who had gone missing that May.

He put a Sept. 30, 2001, deadline on the reward, which fueled speculation that he was doing it as a publicity stunt. Levy's body was found in May 2002.

Stahlman said at the time that his motive was purely sympathy for the family. However, Stahlman's son-in-law and financial adviser Mike Hardwick – who came up with the mayor's race ad – said recently that one of Stahlman's many mottos is: "If they are talking about you, good or bad, they are still talking about you."<<<
David Washburn: (619) 542-4582; david.washburn@uniontrib.com

Maybe there is some way that we can work some of these google alerts into news items for the Chandra Levy investigation. All of these little news items are part of the total story. What we have to do is to sell the story.

benn

[rd]

benn, you and I are very likely the only ones who have Google news alerts on "Chandra Levy". Also, on nearly every news reference, it is that of a news editorial citing Chandra news coverage as an example of the ultimate in excess, so basically what you have are newspeople, almost always small town local yokel columnists, who resent that people are interested iin news coverage of missing women.

Thay usually cite large scale problems in other parts of the world as something that people should want to hear about instead, that coverage of a missing woman is trivial, but hey, what about all the people dying of AIDS, etc. etc.

Or they say that it happens all the time and why did Chandra and Laci and Elizabeth and Lori get the coverage when (insert name of local missing woman) did not. I argue there has to be compelling circumstances to get that coverage, and in fact every example cited by a local yokel columnist doesn't meet the test of a compelling story. The boyfriend was into drugs, or she was on the shady side of the law, or she'd run away before.

The local yokels get picked up by you and me because they mentioned Chandra Levy, but no one much else agrees with them. It seems to be a small time columnist problem with "why don't people care about what I write about?". In other words, they have nothing interesting to say.

Meanwhile, however, there is a consensus in the news world that Chandra was overhyped and they will not deal with her story again without some compelling information or a statement from authorities or the family, and maybe not even the family, that is the simple fact of the matter. Whether we've stirred the pot up enough for that I don't know, but certainly we have given it our best, that I know.

rd

[benn]

Well, here is a little information from Modesto. Maybe we can find more.

We have to pick up the information where we find it. I answered a newsgroup on Modesto, and I got a short reply. My message was really a little off subject because the other messages are trying to get away from the bad news that Modesto has had. I have snipped the messages, and they are out of order.
benn

>>>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
From: Kevin McClarty <k...@inreach.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 04:18:20 -0800
Local: Wed, Dec 8 2004 4:18 am
Subject: Re: Our Little Town...Modesto.. Besieged by Agony
Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Report Abuse<<<(snip)

That is the start of the newsgroup. Below is part of my message.
benn (alias nocodemus) (this name started because I mis-spelled Nicodemus)

> Stanislaus County has done a good job in the Scott Peterson case, and
> it could probably do a good job in the Chandra Levy case, if not
> prevented from doing so by outside authorities. Here is hoping that
> local law enforcement will get a chance.

> Nocodemus<<<< (alias benn)

Perhaps they will get a chance to investigate it. We do have a really good
Sheriff, Les Wideman. Perhaps he can do something. He can't stand Gary
Condit, believe me! They are dire enemies!

-Kevin

(Well, that is something that we have not quite heard before. It is good to get a cross section of public opinion. That could even lead to a lead, maybe.)

benn

[blondie]

Interesting that the sherrif and Condit are enemies!!

[rd]

and at least not protecting him like Washington, DC did, blondie. I think the sheriff and DA in Modesto can move on this case even if the FBI and Washington police won't. At least we'll keep asking them to.

rd

[rd]

Here's a good answer from the Minneapolis Star Tribune to a question about the status of Chandra's case:

from www.startribune.com (fair use)

Q&A on the news
December 28, 2004

Q What's the latest on the case involving Chandra Levy, the intern who was missing in Washington and later found dead? Former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit allegedly was involved in the case in some way.

A No one was ever charged in the 2001 disappearance of Levy, 24, of Modesto, Calif. She had worked as an intern at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in Washington. Her remains were found the next year in a Washington park. The coroner declared her death a homicide. According to Washington police detectives, the Levy investigation is in the cold-case file.

Shortly after Levy disappeared, Condit characterized her as a "good friend," but he has never publicly gone beyond that. Police have said Condit is not a suspect.

As reported by the Modesto Bee, the latest wrinkle in the case occurred Dec. 8, when Judge Peter Leisure of U.S. District Court in New York ruled that Condit must answer questions about his private life if he is to pursue a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against author Dominick Dunne. Condit is suing Dunne for $11 million over statements Dunne made on "Larry King Live" and two other TV programs.

[benn]

rd, you have taken your book to some of the big shows, but how about just some of the so so radio talk shows. All talk shows don't have the biggest stars in the world on all of the time. Probably the little talk shows don't have hardly anyone on most of the time. You could get on and discuss the book.

A lot of talk show hosts might not be much interested, but from the talk shows and radio programs I occaisionally listen to in the Sacramento area there are a large variety of talk shows on the air, maybe on the same station, just depending who the talk show host is.

Maybe even a host who disagreed with you might be good for the discussion. That way he would be talking your book down, but at the same time he would have to give you some time to discuss the book.

I know I am not a person to want to phone in to talk shows, but I did phone in two or three times in the distant past, once about the Japanese Relocation, sometime after the Congressional hearings had taken place, and a couple of times to the Bible Answer Man. I felt a little better with the Bible Answer Man, but not too good even there.

I think radio talk shows are one way to go, and since you are an author some of the producers will at least let you through to the talk show host. It is not going to rock the world if one radio station starts having a discussion about the Chandra Levy case, but it might start more discussions going.

There are a lot of disinformation people out there somewhere who are trying to support Condit by mixing up the facts and producing any other kind of chaos to the investigation that they can. We have to counteract that as much as we can. Who else here on the board wants to phone in to a radio talk show to talk a little about the Chandra levy case? It is true of course that Condit has scared much of the media away by his lawsuits, but it might be now that the media is seeing that Condit's case is not as good as they thought it was, and the media is going to talk and write no matter who is suing who.

benn

[rd]

Some good thoughts, benn. Camper on websleuths.com suggested Art Bell. I will see of I can get a book to him. I can talk about it but I prefer to talk in person, but more importantly, prefer the regulars on these shows to discuss and critique as they do let's say Condit's suit against Dunne.

I believe I've got the book to Ted Williams. Maybe I should send to Nancy Grace c/o Court TV.

rd

[jane]

YES, Nancy Grace would be an excellent choice, I think.