What's difficult is finding any reporting on what happened next. Which was:
The hotel manager quickly retracted his story about a previous incident.
Levis took, and passed, a lie-detector test.
The charges were dropped from felonies to misdemeanors.
And they were dismissed altogether on Jan. 27, 2010.
The hotel manager no longer works at the SpringHill Suites. Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful. Three sources, however, confirmed that he later retracted his statement about the earlier incident.
Levis is naturally happy that he no longer faces prosecution. At the same time, his life has been turned upside down forever. He hasn't been able to get another job in baseball. His wife, Joan, has had to go back to work. This is how it goes. The original, sensational charges get headlines. Subsequent developments are almost always overlooked afterthoughts.
"They [the police] didn't listen to anything I said. They didn't care about my lie-detector test. They didn't want to listen to my attorney or anything. It was just, 'You're guilty.' And the Internet just ran with it," Levis said recently while sitting in the living room of his Fort Washington home.
"It was a mess. It sat in limbo for almost 2 years. A lot happened in the middle of that as far as losing my job. The Red Sox held on to me as long as they could. They put me back to work and I worked that whole 2008 season. They didn't renew my contract because [the case] was still pending.
"It was terrible. I had no benefit of the doubt. My whole life I built a good name and I was a good person. And I am a good person. And in an instant . . . "
He snapped his fingers. "I just couldn't understand how this could drag on so long. Once you get into that legal system, it was a disgrace how long it took.
