www.justiceforchandra.com

[blondie]

[Rainbow]

I am unable to comment on anything further than what has been speculated on publicly, as the investigation into the murder of Chandra Levy is still ongoing.

[rd]

Sprocket wrote on www.crimenews2000.com:

The forum owner actually wrote a book on the case, from his extensive net postings/research.

Thanks for the info, Sprocket. The book, Murder on a Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy
, is now available to read at Justice for Chandra.

I wanted to publish it as a $6 paperback but publishers responded that they will not publish on open cases. I had seen the value of Dominick Dunne and Mark Fuhrman's books on Martha Moxley's case, but apparently 30 years have to go by before publishers feel safe enough to do so.

So it's up and available to read. I hope all find it an interesting mystery and informative, and maybe someone will be able to shed some light on the many questions throughout.

Chandra's disappearance was clearly too politically sensitive to pursue from the beginning, but at least we can make sure the unanswered questions are accurate and known.

regards,
rd

[rd]

CrypticOne wrote on www.crimenews2000.com:

I was a member of the Where's Chandra forum back then. I respect rd and his opinions although I could never get on aboard with his insistence that her body had been stored elsewhere (in some lime caverns as I remember) and then later moved to the park.

And yet, Chandra's skeleton was spread for yards across a hillside below a picnic area. To think that a body could be disassembled so throughout the months of May through July when searchers were traversing within 150 yards on the upper side on Ridge Road and below on Broad Branch Road without anyone's dog doing all those months what the Turtle Hunter's dog did is very hard to believe, if not impossible.

And Condit was in Luray in cave country at midnight two weeks after Chandra disappeared, leaving the House floor that morning when the DC police were searching the dumpster behind his apartment building.

There is no explanation for him being there. He was back in Congress the next day.

Certainly it is not a requirement that her body was moved to explain anything, other than every animal on that hillside tearing her body apart without anyone's dog bothering to check until the next May, when a dog was drawn to her all the way up from Broad Branch Road to find her.

That none did so for the entire previous year, especially in those early months, is extremely hard to believe.

Thank you, Sprocket, those were just amazing days as each revelation became more and more bizarre. The analysis truly required a book to do justice.

And then Chandra's case did get good analysis on Where's Chandra after that until it shut down too. Thanks to you too, CrypticOne.

rd

[gozgals]

[rd]

slim wrote on www.crimenews2000.com:

i do think he co-operated with police and they know he was never a possible suspect, but that certainly did not stop the media and all those seeking their 15 minutes.

Anyone who believes this please read Chapter Alibi in Murder on a Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy.

I did a thorough analysis of all the reported statements from DC police and lawyers involved. Condit gave at least seven versions of what happened when Chandra disappeared, one for each time he was questioned by police, two versions of a timeline for police, and yet another version for reporters when he went public for re-election.

These are not minor variations on a theme either. They are substantively different in theme of his relationship and dealings with Chandra up to the time she disappeared. The theme changes were so dramatic that I named a chapter after one of them (Obsessed). Only one of them can be true, but in my opinion none of them are.

A close analysis shows that at no time did Condit divulge anything which wasn't already known by police. In fact, if you were to watch a typical crime show and watch the perp try to explain away each thing the police found or were told, then you would have a good idea of how the seven versions of Condit's story unfolded.

He told the police whatever it took to explain away what they already knew, even though as they knew more and more his story changed completely and dramatically through the ensuing months after Chandra disappeared.

The significance of this to Chandra's case is that Condit's first version of events, Obsessed, had the police convinced that Chandra was suicidal or a runaway, with a vindictive attempt to have Condit blamed for her disappearance.

The DC police were so convinced of this that even two and half months after she disappeared, they released mockup photos of Chandra with different wigs on and asked the public to report any sightings of her. That the mockups looked like they were done by a kindergarten class with scissors and magazine pictures is beside the point. This is directly attributable to the lies Condit initially told, and continued to tell as each version of his earlier lies were found out.

To give you an idea of the range of his lies from beginning to end, he started out by saying that Chandra stalked him and he had to refuse her calls just before she disappeared, to a seventh version where they talked about her train trip home and made sure she had her ticket and was on her way home.

That he never told the seventh version to police or Chandra's parents when they called asking about her is typical of the "cooperation" the poster attributes to Condit.

That the police never considered Condit a suspect is also not an accurate statement. In fact, here's what Chiefs Ramsey and Gainer had to say, from Chapter Grand Jury:

Chief Ramsey used the Connie Chung interview to describe to WUSA what it was like trying to get information from Condit about Chandra's disappearance:

"I think that people pretty much got a glimpse of
what we've been going through over the last four
interviews we've had with the congressman -- a lot
of conversation, but not a lot of substance," Ramsey
said. [10]

And Chief Gainer added:

"He answered every question that Connie Chung put to
him, and did you feel more informed after that?"
Gainer asked. "Did he answer all her questions?
Yeah. Did he answer all her questions to her
satisfaction or the public's satisfaction? No."
[11]

10. “D.C. police chief says Condit ‘difficult’.” CNN 30 Aug. 2001.

11. Dvorak, Petula and Allan Lengel. “Absent evidence, Levy probe stalls.” Washington Post 9 Sept. 2001.

rd
_________________
ralph@ee.net

[jane]

Good point, rd.

What a helpful guy he was - feeding back to the police what they already knew. What a prince.
_________________
"There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known."
Christ

[rd]

Sprocket wrote on www.crimenews2000.com:

I really bow down to rd's knowledge of what we know about the case, however, I don't believe she was moved either.

I certainly understand that is hard to see happening. That a Sacramento lawyer's wife did move her murdered husband's body from a refrigerator a few months later to bury in a vineyard some miles away during the very same time Chandra was missing shows it does happen, whether hard to believe or not.

On the other hand, I don't make this claim in Murder on a Horse Trail, and it isn't required to explain anything. I analyze the crime scene on a side of a mountain below a horse trail and picnic area in Chapter Found based on her being brought dead or murdered there.

To me whether she was moved there later is one of the most inconsequential questions of the entire case, but the analysis in Found is based on her being brought there dead or murdered there.

Most bodies found in Rock Creek Park were brought there and dumped. I see no basis for an exception in Chandra's case.

But the more pressing questions remain.

rd

[rd]

The Wikipedia article on Chandra is being actively edited and improved, even as recently as last week. I had decided to highlight the part about a jogger finding Chandra's body that I posted awhile back was seriously in error and misleading, and was finally going to get around to bringing it to an editor's attention (in lieu of me registering and making proposed changes).

I was pleased to see that the sentence has been replaced with:

District of Columbia Police Chief Charles Ramsey announced on May 22, 2002, that remains matching Levy's dental records were found by a man walking his dog and looking for turtles in Rock Creek Park near Levy's apartment in northwest Washington, D.C.

end quote

I read the rest of the latest version of the article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Levy) and there are no other inaccurate or misleading statements in it as it stands now.

So thanks to the editors of Chandra's article for a good job.

rd

[rd]

The wheels of justice are grinding slowly, but they are grinding. Michael Doyle is reporting in the Fresno Bee of some more legal shenanigans from Condit:

Another attorney quits a Condit case
Ex-Valley congressman faces Baskin-Robbins lawsuit.
By Michael Doyle / Bee Washington Bureau
03/03/07

http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/33002.html


Briefly, Condit's lawyer in Oklahahoma he hired to defend against the Baskin-Robbin's suit, to take back his franchises based on non-payment of fees, $14,000 at the time, has asked to be withdrawn from the case.

This also happened recently in his second suit against Dominick Dunne.

Baskin-Robbin's is advising the judge to carefully consider as it appears to be a legal ploy by Condit to delay the discovery and trial scheduled this October.

Doyle reports on how Condit frequently uses this ploy when discovery is imminent.

And as a topping, Chad and Cadee' s lawyers (Geragos for Cadee I believe) are scheduled to meet Monday with California to schedule a trial date for the campaign funds suit filed against them by the state of California.

The time when Condit could do a "tell all" for some big money may have passed, even though it would be interesting to see whether it matched one of the six previous versions given to police or a seventh to the press, or yet an eighth version of the final days of Chandra.

Time will tell.

rd

[rd]

A nice followup story by Mike Weiss of the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm not able to add anything that tells it better than the poignant quotes Weisss gets for this sixth annual story on the disappearance and murder of Chandra Levy.

rd

from sfgate.com (fair use)

Still no answer
Five years after Chandra Levy's remains were found in a park in Washington, D.C., her mother hopes the cold case will be solved
Mike Weiss, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Although he is no longer an FBI agent, Brad Garrett still visits the steep, wooded hillside in a Washington, D.C., park where the skeletal remains of Chandra Levy, a federal intern from Modesto, were found five years ago this week, a year after she disappeared.

No one has been charged in the killing of the 24-year-old, whose disappearance generated enormous publicity after authorities revealed that she had been having a relationship with her married hometown congressman, Gary Condit. Condit was defeated in 2002 by his former aide, Dennis Cardoza.

"The key to cold cases is being creative," Garrett, a private investigator and a consultant to ABC News, said in a phone interview. Until his mandatory retirement last year at the age of 58, Garrett was a high-profile agent who had solved some of the bureau's most intractable cases -- but not the Levy murder.

"I go to Rock Creek Park sometimes, yeah, and go over the crime scene, over and over again," he said. "What have I missed? The whole atmospherics is very important. It's very frustrating that it's not resolved. It's troubling."

On May 1, 2001, Levy used her computer in her apartment in the Dupont Circle area of northwest Washington to look up the National Park Service headquarters in Rock Creek Park, about a mile distant. She had recently completed an internship at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and planned to return to Modesto, according to her mother, Susan Levy.

Friends and family became alarmed when Levy was not heard from, and a search began. It wasn't until a year and three weeks later, on May 22, 2002, that her remains were found in the 1,700-acre park, which is considerably larger than Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

"It's the first thing I think about every morning," Susan Levy said in a recent telephone interview. "You think six years heals, but it doesn't. It's like losing a limb or having your guts ripped out."

Last summer, the family set up a Web site --www.whokilledchandra.com-- in the hope that an anonymous tip might lead to the killer.

On Wednesday, Susan Levy will be in Washington to meet with Police Chief Cathy Lanier, something she has done every year since her daughter disappeared, her lawyer, Steve Mandell, said in an e-mail.

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department lists Chandra's death as one of 6,000 cold cases. Since her disappearance, the case has been investigated by Detective Ralph Durant, a 37-year veteran of the department. In a phone interview, Durant said, "There are still persons of interest, yes, but we can't tell you who they are. We still get phone calls and e-mails."

In 2001, authorities interrogated a Salvadoran refugee now in prison for attacking two other young women in Rock Creek Park. But no charges were filed against him in the Levy case.

Levy's body was discovered by a man searching for turtles. Her remains, which had been exposed to heat, snow, rain and humidity, were far enough down a steep grade that she was invisible from the trail, where Garrett believes she was walking when whatever happened to her occurred on a pleasant spring day.

"One of the difficult things about this case," Garrett said, "is that you don't really know what drew her to the park. Did she go to the park on her own and something awful befell her because there was a bad person, a stranger, in the park? Or did someone pick her up and take her to the park? Or did she go on her own to meet somebody? We don't know the answer to that question. So we don't know the motivation."

Over the past six years, there have been a handful of leads worth following up, he said. None has yielded a suspect.

"In all probability," he said, it will take a tip or a confession to solve the case.

Initially, media attention focused on Condit, the Modesto Democrat 30 years Levy's senior. Police have said repeatedly that they do not consider him a suspect. In the years since, Condit and his family have been em- broiled in several lawsuits. He and his wife, Carolyn, sued American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, claiming they had been defamed by the supermarket tabloid. The suits were settled. No terms were disclosed.

Condit also settled a suit against Vanity Fair magazine columnist Dominick Dunne.

Last year, the California Fair Political Practices Commission filed a $2.4 million suit against Condit's grown children, Cadee and Chad, alleging they had been improperly paid $226,000 by their father's political action committee to make a documentary film that was never produced. Through an attorney, Condit said the lawsuit is unfounded.

A spokesperson for the political watchdog agency said the case was "ongoing litigation, and we're unable to comment beyond that."

Although the senior Condits still have a home near Modesto, they spend a lot of time in Arizona, where the family opened two ice cream shops in Glendale in 2005. "It's a family-run shop," Chad Condit told CNN's Larry King in 2005. "We scoop ice cream." Last year, Baskin-Robbins filed a federal suit claiming that the Condits had breached their franchise agreement.

Gary Condit did not return phone calls made to his homes.

Meanwhile, Susan Levy and her husband, Robert, an oncologist, are trying to keep interest alive in the hope that new evidence or a tip eventually will lead to their daughter's killer. "Somebody out there knows what the truth is," Susan Levy said.

"May is an especially difficult month. The day she disappeared. The day she was found. And Mother's Day. And my birthday," she said.

On April 14, Chandra would have turned 30.

"Sometimes," said Susan Levy, "when I'm out on my horse, I can see a butterfly following me. I speak to my daughter in the great ecology of the universe. She doesn't speak back."

© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.

[jane]

I wish there was something I could say to Chandra's family and loved ones. I guess it would be:

I'm so sorry for your loss.

No one can take away the precious memories of her that you cherish.
_________________
"There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known."
Christ

[rd]

An update from WUSA in Washington (fair use)

Here are some critical excerpts:

Chandra Levy's Mother To Meet New DC Police Chief
Written by Gary Reals
9NEWS NOW
May 23, 2007

Susan Levy, the mother of slain intern Chandra Levy, is scheduled to meet with Washington's new Chief of Police, Cathy Lanier, on Thursday. She will plead for a re-opened investigation of her daughter's murder... Susan Levy tells 9NEWS NOW she believes the original probe was "botched" and "political." ...

According to Levy, the police search for her daughter covered parts of Rock Creek Park, but missed her remains which were found in the park one year later.

She also points out then-Congressman Gary Condit, with whom Chandra was having an affair, arranged his own polygraph test....

Susan Levy tells 9NEWS NOW she is determined to keep pushing for answers to her daughter's murder.

click to read rest

http://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=58995&provider=gnews

Copyright 2007, W*USA 9 & Gannett Co., Inc.

[jane]

Way to go, Susan Levy! More power to you!
_________________
"There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known."
Christ

[James Anderson]

I found this over at the abc news website. I guess Chandra's mother was interviewed on Good Morning America today. I only wish FBI agent Brad Garrett was honest enough to say 'I Know What Happened'.

Chandra Levy's Mom: 'I Know What Happened'

More than five years after Chandra Levy's body was found, her mother, Susan Levy, has not found closure -- and she doesn't expect to anytime soon. It was a missing person's case that stunned the nation.

On April 30, 2001, 24-year-old Chandra Levy, an intern for the federal department of prisons, left her Washington, D.C. apartment -- and vanished.

Levy Was Killed, DC Examiner Says Cops Eye Convicted Attacker in Levy Case
Within weeks, her name dominated headlines -- particularly after it was revealed she'd been having an affair with then-California congressman Gary Condit.

A year after vanishing, her body was found in a Washington, D.C. park. Investigators determined she'd been killed -- but still don't know by whom.

A man serving a prison sentence for attacking two other joggers in the same park in which Levy's body was found remains a person of interest, but no evidence has been found linking him to her death.

"I have optimism this case will be solved," said former FBI agent Brad Garrett. "You always like a case to be in the eyes of the public because the more it's in the eyes of the public the odds are someone will call you ... keeping a case alive is an important aspect of a cold case investigation."


No Closure for Susan Levy
More than five years after her body was discovered, ABC's Chris Cuomo spoke with Levy's mother, Susan Levy, who is in Washington, D.C. this week and plans to meet with Police Chief Cathy Lanier about the case.

Levy said she doesn't think authorities have done all they can to find her daughter's killer.

"I think there were some mistakes in the beginning," she said. "The beginning of this case was very important to get information and some people were not very forthcoming."

Though Condit has repeatedly denied his involvement in her daughter's disappearance, Levy believes he is still relevant to the case. She also thinks her daughter knew who killed her.

"I'm a mother and like a mother lion I know what happened," she said about her instincts.

Levy said the time spent waiting for word of what happened to her daughter was "like being in a war." Years after the discovery of Chandra Levy's body, her mother has yet to find any closure.

"[The] word closure is poor use of language for all of us who have been victims, there's never any closure," she said. "Probably the only closure you get is when you die because then you're together with you're loved one."
Unlike Garrett, Levy's not sure the mystery surrounding her daughter's death will ever be solved. She hopes for justice but cannot count on it.

"To tell you the truth, I hope, but I don't know in my lifetime whether there will be an answer or not," she said.