Chandra Levy case unsolved 25 years later, detective says search failed

Twenty-five years after Washington intern Chandra Levy vanished, the high-profile case remains unsolved — and still haunted by questions about whether early missteps allowed a suspected killer to slip away.

The case drew national attention in 2001, fueled by intense media coverage and scrutiny of Levy’s relationship with a sitting congressman. The prime suspect, however, turned out to be an illegal immigrant twice convicted of assaults on other women around the time of Levy’s suspected murder and in the same park, according to federal prosecutors.

Ted Williams, a former Washington, D.C. homicide detective and contributor who has been following the case for decades, said authorities failed to thoroughly search Rock Creek Park early on, delaying the discovery of Levy’s remains — and potentially weakening the case built largely on circumstantial evidence.

Digital has reached out to city police for comment.

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Levy’s skeletal remains were found in a remote area of the park in May 2002, just over a year after she vanished.

“They did conduct a grid search of portions of Rock Creek Park, but they never went really down into the ravine, the area in which Chandra Levy’s remains were found,” he told Digital. “And the only way that those remains were discovered was that there was a man who, walking his dog, came upon the remains. Absent that, we may very well still be looking for Chandra Levy.”

If a more thorough grid search had been conducted earlier in the investigation, investigators may have been able to recover physical evidence linking the suspect to the crime, Williams said.

“Twenty-five years later, because of the manner and the reckless manner in which they conducted the investigation, we are still left with a question mark as to who killed Chandra Levy,” he said.

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Chandra Levy is shown in this undated handout photo from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. (REUTERS/Metropolitan Police Department/Handout)

Levy, a California native, was a 24-year-old intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. She was last seen in public at a gym near her apartment in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2001. Investigators tracked her internet usage the following morning, showing she was still alive at 1 p.m. on May 1.

Chandra Levy, a Washington intern who went missing, is shown in this photo. (Mai/Getty Images)

On May 6, her parents called D.C. police and their congressman, then-Rep. Gary Condit, a California Democrat who would later be alleged to have been carrying on an affair with the missing woman.

The affair ended Condit’s political career, leading to a loss in the Democrat primary in his district in 2002. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

“I don’t think that the congressman really had anything to do with her having gone missing,” Williams said.

Then-U.S. Congressman Gary Condit (D-CA) pushes past news media after leaving his apartment building in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, July 12, 2001. Condit admitted to police authorities that he was romantically involved with Chandra Levy before her disappearance. (Reuters)

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However, the congressional tie ignited a scandal that likely distracted investigators, Williams said.

“Because he was a member of Congress, it appears as though law enforcement officers were intimidated by his status, and they were not able to get a great deal of information out of him,” he said.

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Police later cleared him as a suspect and refocused on another man.

In April 2009, they arrested an illegal immigrant from El Salvador named Ingmar Guandique, also known as Ingmar Guandique-Blanco, who had attacked other women in Rock Creek Park around the time of Levy’s murder.

Ingmar Guandique pictured in federal custody in an undated photo provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When prosecutors declined to bring him to court for a retrial in the murder of Chandra Levy, the purported MS-13 member was deported to El Salvador. (ICE)

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Guandique, described by the government as an MS-13 member, had been accused of stalking a woman in the park on the same day of Levy’s disappearance. He was convicted later that year of attacking two more women in the park with a knife, one on May 14, two weeks after Levy’s murder, and another on July 1.

He served a decade in prison for the knife attacks. Then jurors found him guilty of Levy’s murder after a trial in 2010, partly thanks to the testimony of a fellow inmate who described a jailhouse confession.

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ICE released this image of a deportation flight preparing for takeoff along with an announcement that Ingmar Guandique had been deported to El Salvador after prosecutors dismissed their case against him in the murder of Chandra Levy. (ICE)

But his attorneys convinced a judge to grant a new trial in 2016 amid concerns over the witness’ credibility.

In a courtroom surprise, prosecutors moved to dismiss the case due to “unforeseen developments” rather than try him a second time. So the case was dropped, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent him back to El Salvador.

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“They deported perhaps a killer rather than to put him on trial a second time,” Williams said. “That is also a mystery.”

While he said he still believes Guandique is an important suspect, the case officially remains unsolved 25 years later.

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“I’m just very clear that the family will never be able to get over the death of this promising young girl who came to Washington as an intern,” Williams said.

‘ Stephanie Nolasco and The Associated Press contributed to this report.