Chandra Levy was just 24 years old when she was murdered in Washington, D.C. in May 2001 — and we still don't know who was responsible.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoOne of the last photos taken of Chandra Levy, who disappeared in May 2001 and whose body was found in May 2002.
Chandra Levy had big dreams. A 24-year-old intern working for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she hoped to join the FBI or go to law school. Instead, she became the face of one of Washington, D.C.’s most infamous murder cases — one that’s never been definitively solved.
In May 2001, when Levy was supposed to fly back to her native California for a graduation ceremony after completing her master’s degree program at the University of Southern California, she vanished without a trace. The investigation into her disappearance turned up few clues, but it did reveal that Levy had been having an affair with Gary Condit, a married 53-year-old congressman from her hometown of Modesto, California.
Until the 9/11 attacks that September, the disappearance of Chandra Levy was one of America’s biggest news stories. But even though her body was found in D.C.’s Rock Creek Park in May 2002 — and even though a suspect was arrested, tried, and briefly convicted — her case remains cold.
This is the heartbreaking true story of Chandra Levy, the D.C. intern whose unsolved murder continues to haunt the nation’s capital.
Who Is Chandra Levy?
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 14, 1977, Chandra Levy grew up in Modesto, California. Her parents, Bob and Susan Levy, remembered her as being individualistic, fun-loving, and sometimes bossy toward her younger brother, Adam. Chandra Levy was also ambitious from a young age, and dreamt of either joining the FBI or becoming a lawyer when she grew up.
Metropolitan Police Department of the District of ColumbiaChandra Levy’s high school graduation portrait.
In October 2000, she pursued this dream by moving to Washington, D.C., where she’d found an internship with the Federal Bureau of Prisons as part of her master’s program in public administration at the University of Southern California. But Chandra Levy would sadly never come home.
She hadn’t been in town long when she crossed paths with Gary Condit, a married Democratic congressman from Modesto. Condit gave her and a friend a tour of the Capitol and, within weeks, Levy was quietly telling people close to her that she’d started dating a congressman.
According to an ABC News article from June 2001, she told her aunt Linda Zamsky over Thanksgiving that she’d started a relationship with a congressman in his 50s who “looks like Harrison Ford.” That December, Levy also mentioned the affair in an email that she sent to a friend.
“Everything else here in D.C. is going good, my man will be coming back here when Congress starts up again,” she wrote. “Don’t tell [a friend in Condit’s office] who I am seeing, since [she]… thinks that I am dating an FBI agent.”
Jennifer Baker/Personal PhotoChandra Levy (left) and Gary Condit.
By the end of April 2001, Chandra Levy’s internship had come to an end. She prepared to go back to California to walk in her graduation ceremony (though she had actually graduated back in December) and to figure out her next steps. Before she flew back, however, Levy called her aunt, Zamsky, and left a message, saying that she had something important to tell her.
Zamsky never learned what that something was. Just a few days later, on May 1, 2001, Chandra Levy disappeared — and was never seen alive again.
The Search For Chandra Levy
Five days after Chandra Levy disappeared, her father Bob Levy called D.C. police. He was worried because he hadn’t heard from his daughter, who was supposed to be flying home soon. According to a Washington Post article from 2008, he also learned that she had been in contact with Gary Condit. Chandra’s mother, Susan, told Bob that she believed their daughter was dating Condit, and Bob relayed this possibility to the police.
The police went to Chandra Levy’s apartment, where they found her voicemail full of messages, including two from Condit. The congressman seemed concerned about her whereabouts. They also found Levy’s laptop and — though a police sergeant accidentally corrupted the search history — they were eventually able to determine her last internet searches.
On the morning of the day she disappeared, Chandra Levy checked out several websites, including Southwest Airlines and Condit’s home page. She also visited The Washington Post’s website, where she checked the weather and then read about Rock Creek Park, a sprawling, 1,754-acre city park. Condit lived near the park, but it was also filled with hiking trails. Police speculated that she might have gone for a walk or a run in the park because she’d canceled her gym membership in light of her move home.
Public DomainRock Creek Park is more than twice the size of Central Park in New York City. Though investigators suspected that Chandra Levy had gone to Rock Creek Park to exercise, an initial search of the park turned up nothing.
However, an initial search of the park turned up nothing. And since the police didn’t obtain the security footage in Levy’s apartment until more than seven days had passed, they were never able to determine what time she left or if she left alone — the footage was recorded over every seven days.
Meanwhile, the story about a D.C. intern who’d had an affair with a congressman — and then disappeared — catapulted the Chandra Levy case into the media stratosphere. Publicly, Condit did not admit to having a relationship with Levy. Privately, he admitted the affair to investigators.
Brad Garrett, a lead investigator in Chandra Levy’s case, said that Condit “was initially not helpful,” but doubted that he was responsible for her disappearance. As Garrett put it: “What would be his motive in harming her? His life was going on. He was still married, he was still a congressman… She was somebody that was passing through his life.”
For Gary Condit’s part, he adamantly denied harming or killing Chandra Levy. “I’ve been married for 34 years,” Condit said in an August 2001 interview with ABC News that attracted about 24 million viewers. “I’ve not been… a perfect man, and I’ve made my share of mistakes. But, out of respect for my family, and out of a specific request from the Levy family, I think it’s best that I not get into those details about Chandra Levy.”
By that point, speculation about Chandra Levy’s disappearance had reached a fever pitch. But then, the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place.
How A Suspect Was Finally Identified
With the nation consumed with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Chandra Levy’s case was all but forgotten for several months. But then, on May 22, 2002, a man and his dog found human skeletal remains in Rock Creek Park.
Dental records confirmed that the remains belonged to Chandra Levy. But investigators found only a handful of other clues. They recovered a sports bra, underwear, a sweatshirt, running shoes, a Sony Walkman, and — disturbingly — jogging pants with knots tied at the bottom.
Public DomainOne of Chandra Levy’s shoes, recovered in Rock Creek Park.
Investigators believed that the knotted pants could be evidence that Levy was restrained before her death. But aside from declaring her case a homicide, they could not determine how she’d died. Or who killed her.
But in 2007, investigators circled back to a man who’d attacked women in the park before: an El Salvadoran immigrant named Ingmar Guandique. In 2002, he’d been sentenced to 10 years in prison for assaulting two women at knifepoint in Rock Creek Park, one in May 2001 and one in July 2001.
And on May 1, 2001, the day that Chandra Levy vanished, Guandique had apparently missed a day of work at his construction job.
Investigators had initially considered Guandique as a suspect in Levy’s disappearance before deciding that he wasn’t involved. But one of Guandique’s cellmates, Armando Morales, later told investigators that Guandique had confessed to Levy’s murder as a robbery-gone-wrong, allegedly saying: “Homeboy, I killed that… [expletive]. But I didn’t rape her.”
D.C. Department of CorrectionsIngmar Guandique’s mugshot.
In 2009, Guandique was charged with Chandra Levy’s murder. In 2010 — though a small amount of DNA found on Levy’s clothing didn’t match him (or Condit) — he was found guilty and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
But the case would have one last heart-wrenching twist.
Why The Case Remains Unsolved To This Day
In 2015, prosecutors agreed to a retrial for Guandique due to the fact that Morales, the star witness, had hidden his history of working with law enforcement. But even before the trial began, a woman named Babs Proller came forward and claimed that Morales had been lying all along.
According to a Washington Post article from 2016, Proller initially contacted Levy’s mother, Susan, saying she had important information about the case.
Levy FamilyChandra Levy working on a paper during college.
It turned out that Proller had met Morales, learned about his time in prison, and started recording their conversations. Proller claimed that Morales eventually told her that he had lied about Guandique confessing to killing Levy. But even though she had several recordings of him, none of them appeared to back her claims up. Indeed, Morales’ attorney said that Morales “never says he lied about his conversation with Mr. Guandique” in the recordings — and that he never said this to anyone else, either.
Nevertheless, it was apparently enough for Guandique’s trial to be called off and for the charges against him to be dismissed. In July 2016, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. announced that it could “no longer prove the murder case against Mr. Guandique beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Ingmar Guandique was deported back to El Salvador the next year, and Chandra Levy’s murder remains unsolved to this day.
As such, numerous unanswered questions about Levy’s death remain. When exactly did she leave her apartment? Was she alone? Had she planned to meet someone at the park? Or did she simply plan to go on a solo run? Was her killer someone she knew — or was she murdered by a stranger?
“Every morning, I get up and I have the same old feeling of incompletion,” Susan Levy told The Modesto Bee in a 2021 interview alongside her husband Bob. “Something’s missing… For us, we just go through life as best we can. We’re wounded. Just like a limb’s missing.”
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