Nine years after her corpse was buried in Washington's Rock Creek Park, the once controversial case of Chandra Levy's murder was finally closed when a jury convicted Ingmar Guandique of killing the 24 year old.
For months in the summer of 2001, Levy's disappearance captivated the US media, which many pointing fingers at US congressman Gary Condit, a Democrat from California who eventually confessed to having an affair with Levy.
Condit was investigated by police and rejected as a suspect in Levy's murder. But revelation of the affair, the high-profile police attention and heated media coverage of the case – especially lurid claims about Condit made by Vanity Fair journalist Dominick Dunne – destroyed his political career.
After the 9/11 attacks and series of Washington sniper murders, interest in the murder faded, unsolved, even after her body was finally discovered in 2002. But a revived police investigation in 2007 was followed by a hefty probe by the Washington Post naming Ingmar Guandique, a Salvadoran immigrant convicted of attacking women in Rock Creek Park near the time Chandra had disappeared, as Levy's likely murderer.
Detectives interviewed Guandique – and discovered a photo of Levy in his prison cell. A fellow inmate told police that Guandique had confessed to the killing, while two other women attacked near the scene by Guandique also gave evidence. After four days of deliberation, a jury in Washington DC convicted Guandique of first-degree murder. He is already serving a 10 year term for his previous convictions.
