The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Washington asked a judge to dismiss charges against Ingmar Guandique, a Salvadoran immigrant who was found guilty in 2010 of first-degree murder of Chandra Levy, whose death contributed to a congressman’s downfall, the Daily Forward reported Thursday.
Advertisement
In 2009, they charged Ingmar Guandique, who had been convicted of attacks on women in Rock Creek Park. 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”.
Prosecutors announced Thursday that they were dropping all charges against Guandique, whose request for a new trial was granted previous year after doubts were raised about a key witness at his 2010 trial.
The 15-year-old mystery of who killed Washington intern Chandra Levy is again an open question after prosecutors dropped charges against the man who once stood convicted of her murder. Still, more potential damage to the government’s key witness was enough to prompt prosecutors to abandon a new trial for Guandique.
Proller’s lawyer says in a statement to Inside Edition: “She did this because she believed then, and believes now, that it was the right thing to do”. It’s not clear why prosecutors moved to dismiss the case against Guandique. “Finally, the government has had to concede the flaws in its ill-gotten conviction”. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia said that he could not confirm or deny specifics of any investigation. With Condit’s help, Levy landed an internship in 2001 at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and settled into an apartment near D.C.’s Dupont Circle.
Condit was considered a person of interest at the time, but was never named an official suspect by authorities.
Morales told the court in November 2010 that Guandique confessed to him in a federal prison cell in 2006.
Guandique – an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador – is now being held on an immigration detainer, according to the US attorney’s office.
Guandique’s lawyers, however, had indicated before charges were dropped that they might have pressed the theory that Condit was the real killer.
He was charged in 2009, and the case relied heavily on the testimony of a fellow inmate, Armando Morales, who said Guandique had admitted to killing Levy. Some of the women expressed fear of the former congressman and said he instructed them to keep their relationships secret.
An illegal immigrant from El Salvador, Guandique was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the murder of Levy, a 24-year-old intern whose remains were found in a Washington park in 2002 almost a year after she disappeared the previous summer. At a January hearing, one of Guandique’s attorneys told a judge Condit misled the jury with his testimony at the 2010 trial, but he did not elaborate.
Lawyers who represented Condit did not return calls seeking comment Thursday. Efforts to reach Levy’s parents were not immediately successful Thursday.
Now that Ingmar has been cleared of the charges, he will be deported back to El Salvador.
Chandra Ann Levy of Modesto, CA poses in this undated file photo.
Advertisement
The man accused and convicted of killing Chandra Levy will soon be set free – only to be placed back into the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he’ll face deportation. According to the statement, prosecutors concluded they could not convict Guandique “based on recent unforeseen developments that were investigated over the past week”.
