Chandra Levy Case Finally Comes To An End With Guilty Verdict

Nine years after the fact, and after a year or more in which Congressman Gary Condit was dragged through the media circus, the Chandra Levy murder case finally came to an end today:

A D.C. Superior Court jury on Monday found Ingmar Guandique guilty of first-degree murder in the slaying of former federal intern Chandra Levy.

The jury of nine women and three men reached its verdict after 3 1/2 days of deliberations.

The verdict was a major victory for the U.S. attorney’s office in the District.

The Levy case was challenging for the prosecution from the start. There was no forensic evidence linking Guandique to the crime scene; no murder weapon; no eyewitness; and no definitive ruling from the medical examiner on what killed Levy. Numerous mistakes by police and forensic scientists further hampered the investigation.

Levy, 24, disappeared May 1, 2001. She was having an affair at the time with Gary A. Condit, the married congressman from her California home town, who was 30 years her senior, and Condit was the first suspect in Levy’s disappearance. Levy was in Washington after having completed an internship as part of her master’s degree studies at the University of Southern California

The Levy murder, and Condit’s supposed involvement, was fodder for the local and national media for much of the summer of 2001, and it wasn’t until the September 11th attacks that the case largely disappeared from the news. For Condit, though, the damages was done. He lost a primary the following spring and left Congress in 2003. Considering the fact that the most he did was have an affair with an intern, one wonders if he’s asking the same question that former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan did after he was acquitted in a racketeering trial in 1987:

“Which office do I go to get my reputation back?

Indeed.

FILED UNDER: Open Forum, ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Steve Metz says:

    “…the most he did was have an affair with an intern”??  So he’s only a slimeball, not a killer.  Is that the standard for our elected officials?

  2. legion says:

    Indeed, Steve. I thought we indicted a President who did much the same*. Condit needs to STFU and find a less-public career field.
    *-Yes, I know Clinton was actually indicted for the lying under oath that went with the affair, but is Condit really guilty of anything different?

  3. RWB says:

    If there was no forensic evidence connecting him to the crime, on what basis was Guandique indicted and convicted?

  4. Yeah, sure Steve and legion, murdering someone is just like having sex with them. Idiots.
    RWB, from what I saw about the trial, and I didn’t follow it too closely, there was a jailhouse confession and similar attacks by Guandique in the same area at the same time that Levy disappeared.

  5. Not to defend the baseless charges made against Condit, but he definitely could have handled the situation better than he did.

  6. Steve Metz says:

    Timothy, since no one said or implied that your comment is…well..adolescent if not idiotic.

  7. I call bullshit:
    <blockquote>There was no forensic evidence linking Guandique to the crime scene, no murder weapon, no eyewitness and no definitive ruling from the medical examiner on what killed Levy. Numerous mistakes by police and forensic scientists further hampered the investigation

    Without any forensic evidence, prosecutors based their case on two primary pillars. First, they argued, that Guandique preyed on women in Rock Creek Park and that the attack on Levy was part of a pattern. Guandique was convicted in 2002 of attacking two female joggers in the park around the same time Levy disappeared, and those joggers testified at the trial. </blockquote>
    This is just a prosecutor who wanted to close a big case and didn’t care if they’d actually caught the guilty party.  So he just railroaded a scapegoat with an appeal to anti-immigrant feelings in the public and getting a con to testi-lie against his cellmate.

  8. TG Chicago says:

    When a married 53-year-old Congressman has an affair with a 23-year-old intern, that’s not merely “having sex”. It’s also “cheating on your wife” and “abusing the powers of your office”. In his case it was also “lying to police investigating a murder”. And “being a total hypocrite, given his comments about the Clinton affair”.

    Condit’s reputation is where it belongs.