Chandra Levy

A True Washington Murder Mystery By Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz Scribner. 287 pp. $26 Reviewed by Derrick Nunnally It's been just nine years since Chandra Levy disappeared, touching off a search that exposed the scandal of an affair between a promiscuous congressman and the 24-year-old congressional intern. That the incident can seem further in the past owes much to timing. Its run in the national headlines ended with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and resumed briefly when her bones turned up in a Washington park in May 2002.

The country has been inundated with news about Chandra Levy, the missing Washington intern. Coverage has seemed almost nonstop on cable-TV news, and the story has been Topic A on the chat shows. Even Dan Rather of CBS, who had resisted covering what he considered a tabloid story, had to let his news show include a summary of the search for Levy and the initial reluctance of Rep. Gary Condit, D.-Calif., to help Washington police by telling them about his last meetings with her. The relentless, sensational coverage might make observers despair about the tastes and values of the American public.

Skeletal remains found Wednesday morning in Washington's Rock Creek Park were identified as those of Chandra Levy, 24, a former government intern who disappeared on May 1, 2001. It's been 13 months. What can forensic scientists really tell us about her manner of death? Possibly, quite a lot. The investigation will proceed on two levels, one in the morgue and the other where she was found, and both parts will take into account her final known activities. It's not clear yet if she was murdered, but the case will nevertheless be treated as a potential crime.

Unfortunately, we don't really expect to hear anything, you know, from one day to the next because it's been so long that we haven't heard anything . . . You know, we hope to. We hope to get a call saying they found her and she's alive and, you know, she'll be back. . . . Every day, you wake up in the morning and ... it's the same thing. She's not - we don't have her, we don't know, and we've got to go through another day. - Robert Levy, father of Chandra Levy, "Larry King Live," CNN, April 30 (Chandra Levy has been missing for one year)

MICHAEL Bowman (letter Aug. 28): What was the purpose of your letter? I assume you knew Chandra Levy to be able to call her a "trollop or of low character. " But if you didn't know her and still insist on calling her a trollop- then, Mr. Bowman, I believe you are the one with the low character. Maggie Betancourt, Philadelphia

WITH A thousand suspects and no arrests, and news releases that indicate that damned near every third human being is a terrorist, I anticipate being advised that bin Laden is a fictional character, his portrait being circulated is actually Bill Clinton clad in black beard and trophy panties upon his dome, that Monica Lewinsky will become a White House prayer-posture instructor and that Gary Condit got Chandra Levy a job with a World Trade Center Towers...

There were no bombshells. During his interview with ABC's Connie Chung, Gary Condit revealed next to nothing of his relationship with intern Chandra Levy. He was caught in no lies. He never visibly stumbled. His lawyers are, no doubt, pleased with his performance. But Condit did show something else, something any mother can detect in the eyes of her child: fear. Gary Condit looked scared. Sometimes the trace of fear showed just for an instant, and then the cool demeanor returned.

A lawyer for the parents of a missing California woman yesterday urged Rep. Gary A. Condit to tell police anything that could help determine what happened to her. "We would ask Congressman Condit and anybody else with information to come forward and please cooperate with police," lawyer Billy Martin said in the case of Chandra Levy, who has not been seen in seven weeks. Levy, 24, of Modesto, disappeared a few days after finishing an internship with the federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington.

ON MY WAY to work the other morning, I heard several radio programs talking about Gary Condit's interview with Connie Chung. Many callers were upset because Condit did not say the things they thought he should have said or things they wanted to hear. If there is anyone out there who thought that he was going spill the beans to Connie, they were sadly mistaken. From the very first day that Condit agreed to do the interview, his handlers were prepping him with answers to the questions.

The FBI will be asking the questions when Rep. Gary A. Condit (D., Calif.) is next interviewed about Chandra Levy, the missing intern with whom he reportedly had an affair, law enforcement officials close to the case said yesterday. The FBI yesterday also renewed the questioning of residents of the apartment building from which Levy disappeared May 1, reported a resident who asked not to be identified. Washington's Metropolitan Police Department questioned the residents earlier.

It was a long, hot summer of great import for the United States - only months after a course-changing election, and on the cusp of monumental decisions about war and tax cuts and, as it turned out, a national tragedy of epic proportions. And America's couch potatoes and their fix-feeding TV producers got lost in the news that fateful summer of 2001 - none of that serious stuff, but the case of an attractive missing-and-later-found-murdered Capitol Hill intern named Chandra Levy, who'd also had a fling with a congressman.

A True Washington Murder Mystery By Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz Scribner. 287 pp. $26 Reviewed by Derrick Nunnally It's been just nine years since Chandra Levy disappeared, touching off a search that exposed the scandal of an affair between a promiscuous congressman and the 24-year-old congressional intern. That the incident can seem further in the past owes much to timing. Its run in the national headlines ended with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and resumed briefly when her bones turned up in a Washington park in May 2002.

Former California congressman Gary Condit has settled an $11 million defamation lawsuit he filed against Dominick Dunne for comments the writer and Vanity Fair correspondent made about Condit's alleged role in the '01 disappearance of intern Chandra Levy, whose body was found in a park in Washington in May 2002. According to the Sacramento Bee, Dunne, who must pay an undisclosed sum and issue an apology, said in a statement that he did "not say or intend to imply that Mr. Condit was complicit in her disappearance, and to the extent my comments may have been misinterpreted, I apologize for them.

Gary Condit sues writer for slander in Levy affair Lame-duck Rep. Gary Condit yesterday sued author Dominick Dunne for slander, alleging the Vanity Fair columnist lied in broadcast interviews and at celebrity parties about the California Democrat's involvement with intern Chandra Levy, who was murdered. The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks at least $11 million in damages. Condit, who is married, admitted having a "close relationship" with Levy, but maintained he had nothing to do with her disappearance.

In a time of warfare and economic decline U.S. Rep. James Traficant (D., Ohio) gave America the one thing it needed: a freak show. Thank you, Mr. Traficant, for teaching us to laugh again. The whole thing was just plain weird. At various times during his testimony before the House, Traficant invited the IRS and the Justice Department to kiss him in a certain place. He likened the House to an elephant eating a portion of him. And he vowed to run for reelection from a prison cell.

Chandra Levy's death was ruled a homicide yesterday, but the city's medical examiner said there was not enough evidence on her skeletal remains to determine how the 24-year-old former federal intern was killed. "It's possible we will never know specifically the injury that caused her death," said Jonathan L. Arden, Washington's chief medical examiner. Police expected to finish by today their search of the densely wooded section of Rock Creek Park where Levy's body was found last week.

Skeletal remains found Wednesday morning in Washington's Rock Creek Park were identified as those of Chandra Levy, 24, a former government intern who disappeared on May 1, 2001. It's been 13 months. What can forensic scientists really tell us about her manner of death? Possibly, quite a lot. The investigation will proceed on two levels, one in the morgue and the other where she was found, and both parts will take into account her final known activities. It's not clear yet if she was murdered, but the case will nevertheless be treated as a potential crime.

Despite the ravaged and fragmentary state of Chandra Levy's skeletal remains, they may hold enough clues to answer two vital questions: Was she murdered, and, if so, who killed her? Telltale cracks in the bones, traces of another person's DNA, or even a carpet fiber could help unravel the mystery of what happened to the 24-year-old Washington intern. In cases such as this, crime-scene investigators generally work in layers, starting with any clothing that might be left intact, said John Durante, the Montgomery County sheriff, who has been doing crime-scene investigations for 30 years.

Investigators yesterday continued to comb the densely wooded parkland where Chandra Levy's body was found and examine her skeletal remains in hopes of determining how she died. The search for clues in the death of the former federal intern might not be limited to the crime scene in Rock Creek Park, however. U.S. Park Police said yesterday that they had arrested a 20-year-old Washington man last summer for two knife-point attacks on female joggers in the park, including one on May 14, 2001 - two weeks after Levy disappeared - half a mile from where Levy's remains were found.

The remains of Chandra Levy were found in a Washington park yesterday, ending an 13-month search for the federal intern whose disappearance riveted the nation and cost a congressman his career. Police said they still had no idea how Levy died. A man walking his dog and looking for turtles in Rock Creek Park found a skull and other bones, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said. The medical examiner used dental records to confirm the remains were Levy's. The 1,754-acre park had been scoured by police before.