Through a series of 13 stories – which became Finding Chandra – they explored the case from the police’s botched efforts, politics and political scandal and an illegal immigrant from El Salvador named Ingmar Guandique, who was later charged and sentenced to 60 years in prison after being convicted of Levy’s murder in 2010.
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“Finally, the government has had to concede the flaws in its ill-gotten conviction”, the lawyers said, noting that Guandique had passed an FBI-administered lie detector test regarding his involvement.
Unfortunately, C.L.’s remains were found more than a year later in a park where she had gone jogging the day of her disappearance. The New York Times reports that Guandique was granted a new trial in 2015 after “prosecutors acknowledged that they had withheld evidence that cast doubt on the credibility of their main witness”. Now, “based on recent unforeseen developments”, the charges against Guandique have been dropped. The information was not disclosed.
A wide-ranging search turned up few details on Levy’s whereabouts but brought out allegations that she had an affair with Gary Condit, then a member of the House of Representatives.
“Aggressive sex involving bondage is not an entirely safe activity, and Mr. Condit would have had a powerful motive to dispose of Ms. Levy’s remains – and her tights that had been tied in knots – if she died during sexual activity with Mr. Condit”.
Proller said after she told Levy’s mother, Susan Levy, about the recorded conversations she had made.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is deeply committed to ensuring that justice is served in all of its cases.
“He said he never meant to kill her”, Morales testified. The California senator was eventually cleared and the case went cold for six years. But because there was little physical evidence, prosecutors did not charge Guandique with Levy’s murder until 2009. But he was also a commanding, dynamic presence on the witness stand when he told jurors that his cellmate, Ingmar Guandique, confessed to the murder of Washington intern Chandra Levy.
“Ms. Proller indicated to us that Mr. Morales had told her that he had lied when he testified against Mr. Guandique”, said one of Guandique’s attorneys, Katerina Semyonova. He offered little help to investigators, dodging camera crews and reporters trailing him and refusing to comment about his relationship with Levy or the police investigation.
“I want the true person who did this to be found”, Proller told the Post.
Levy was 24 and an intern with the Federal Bureau of Prisons when she went missing in May 2001. According to court papers, the cellmate said Guandique confessed to killing Levy.
“It is now clear that the jailhouse informant, who was central to the government’s case, was a perjurer who too easily manipulated the prosecutors”, attorneys with the D.C. Public Defender Service said in a statement. An ICE spokesperson said Thursday that agents would take Guandique into custody within two days and move him to a prison or jail in Virginia.
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Wood added today that Condit’s counsel was informed Thursday by prosecutors that Condit “is neither a subject nor a target of the investigation into the murder of Chandra Levy”.
