Levy Was Slain by Unknown Means, Examiners Say

WASHINGTON —  WASHINGTON -- Chandra Levy was slain soon after her disappearance last year, but forensic tests on her remains could not determine exactly how the former federal intern died, the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner ruled Tuesday.

Despite reports indicating that Levy’s skull was cracked and that she might have been restrained by her own knotted clothes, chief medical examiner Jonathan L. Arden said he could not “conclusively ascertain the specific injury that caused her death.”

Instead, Arden said, he based his conclusion of homicide on the “circumstances of her disappearance and discovery” and on personal effects found near the remains of the 24-year-old Modesto native.

The items reportedly included a USC sweatshirt, leggings, a sports bra, one running shoe and a personal stereo and headphones. Deputy D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said Levy’s keys have not been found.

After a week spent analyzing Levy’s remains, Arden said, he was unable to provide a precise date of her death. But he said it was “consistent with the time frame in which she disappeared” from her Dupont Circle apartment sometime after May 1, 2001. Arden said he also was unable to determine whether Levy had been assaulted before her death.

The paucity of medical conclusions is a clear sign of the difficulties that police face as they attempt to detail Levy’s last hours and track her killer.

The shabby state of her remains is the most immediate obstacle. More than 13 months of erosion and exposure limited the usefulness of the nearly complete skeleton that police recovered last week on a remote slope in this city’s sprawling Rock Creek Park.

The absence of any remaining soft tissue, sources said, prevented forensic experts and detectives from narrowing in on the exact cause of death, a category Arden described Tuesday as “inconclusive.”

If Levy was strangled, for instance, there is nothing that forensic specialists could use to clearly establish that manner of death. And while Arden and other examiners inspected for evidence that Levy may have died of deliberate “blunt force trauma,” a crack in the cranium found last week did not provide a neat answer.

“The fact is the body’s deteriorated and there’s nothing you can do,” one former D.C. police official said. “They’ve lost opportunities. Tying someone to that scene is going to be tough.”

Without telltale evidence and no immediate suspects, the team of detectives working the Levy case has limited options, a number of former and current D.C. police investigators and officials said.

In the coming weeks, detectives likely will turn to more laboratory work and basic police shoe leather. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said Tuesday that Levy’s recovered clothes and artifacts will be sent to the FBI’s crime laboratory in Quantico, Va., to see if they have “any evidentiary value.” He also said DNA tests on the items are probable.

Detectives also will begin canvassing people who live and work near where the body was found and revisiting witnesses, said those familiar with the Levy investigation. Ramsey repeated Tuesday that Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres), with whom Levy had been romantically linked, is one candidate for more questioning, even though he is not publicly considered a suspect. Ramsey said police also may question Ingmar Guandique, a Washington-area man now serving 10 years in a federal penitentiary in North Carolina for assaults on two women in Rock Creek Park last year.

The knowledge that Levy’s death occurred soon after her disappearance also will allow detectives to question people who live near the park about any suspicious activities that took place last May. Investigators also likely will look closely at habitual users of the western edge of the park and at workers who drove into the neighborhoods near that site 13 months ago.

Police already have rummaged through a picnic area that looms over the site and reportedly are looking into the possibility that Levy’s body was dumped from above.

“Somebody went to extraordinary means to conceal Chandra’s body,” William R. “Billy” Martin, the Levy family attorney, said after a memorial service in Modesto.

Detectives “will saturate the area,” one former D.C. police official said. “Anyone who did repairs in that time frame will be looked at. They’ll look at who uses the roads that cut through private land around there. Anyone who was around at the time is fair game.”

Former D.C. police officials and homicide investigators themselves are split among the likeliest scenarios. Some, such as lawyer and former D.C. homicide detective Ted Williams, lean toward the likelihood of a premeditated killing. Williams said Levy’s reported reluctance to visit Rock Creek Park and her last-minute computer map search of a stone mansion in the area indicates “she went there to meet somebody.”

But others, such as retired Deputy D.C. Police Chief Ed Spurlock, suggest police still have to focus closely on the possibility that Levy was killed by a stranger.

“The odds are somebody saw her and took the opportunity” when she went to the park, he said.

The fact that Levy was dressed in athletic clothes and carried a stereo points to that scenario, even if she rarely used the park for exercise, former investigators said. Others noted the difficulty of dumping a body so deep in the woods. The recovery site is a slope 100 yards from the nearest road and reachable only through rough terrain.

“You can’t get in there by car and you’d get ripped up pretty good trying to drag someone in there,” said Peter Chiles, who frequently hikes through the park’s woods. “Foot traffic makes it impossible to get away with in the daytime. Even night’s risky.”

With such sparse evidence to go on, Ramsey said Tuesday that the Levy investigation could stretch on for years. “Whether it’s a day from now or 10 years, it doesn’t matter to us,” he said, adding that “our people are capable of closing any case they have.”

Arden gloomily noted the realities. “It’s possible we will never know specifically how she died.”