Chandra Levy was murdered, but there’s too little evidence to say how the former government intern died or who might have left her body on a rugged park hillside a year ago, Washington’s medical examiner said Tuesday.
The exact cause of death may never be known, Dr. Jonathan Arden said six days after the 24-year-old’s remains were found in sprawling Rock Creek Park.
But Washington Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey emphatically said his investigators, who have been baffled by Levy’s disappearance for nearly 13 months, will find the killer. ”We will solve this case, I guarantee you that,” Ramsey said at a news conference.
In her hometown of Modesto, California, more than 1 000 mourners joined Levy’s parents at a memorial.
”Somebody went to extraordinary means to conceal Chandra’s body,” Billy Martin, the Levy family attorney, said after the service. ”We hope that this case will not go unsolved.”
Arden said he did not have enough evidence to say conclusively how Levy died, or whether she was killed where the remains were found.
”However, the circumstances of her disappearance and her body on recovery are indicative that she died through the acts of another person, which is the definition of a homicidal manner of death,” Arden said.
Among the hypotheses police are considering is that Levy was killed elsewhere and her body dumped down the steep hill not far from a picnic and parking area, a law enforcement source said. Police have scoured the area for clues.
Ramsey said it’s too early to label anyone a suspect. Police have yet to begin another round of interviews with people they have talked to about Levy’s disappearance, he said.
That list includes Rep. Gary Condit and Ingmar Guandique, a Salvadoran immigrant who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for attacking two women in the park. One assault occurred two weeks after Levy disappeared May 1, 2001.
Condit admitted to an affair with Levy during an interview with police, a police source has said. Condit has denied any role in her disappearance and police have repeatedly said he is not a suspect.
Martin said the Levy?s continue to believe Condit knows more about Levy’s final days than he has said ”as a result of his relationship with Chandra.”
Deputy Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said investigators still are trying to trace Levy’s six kilometres path from her apartment to the site in the park where her remains were found.
”Either she ran up there, walked up there or was taken up there,” Gainer said.
Ramsey said most of the evidence found at the scene was clothing, including tennis shoes, shirt and a sports bra. He said there was nothing evident on the clothing – no apparent hairs, fibres or blood. The FBI crime lab will analyse the clothing, he said.
Ramsey and Gainer would not comment on Levy’s knotted leggings, which sources said were found near her remains. Investigators are trying to determine whether she had been tied up.
Arden said he examined the majority, but not all, of Levy’s bones. Other medical examiners said the absence of telltale signs of a bullet or stab wound, or a beating, makes strangulation a more
likely cause of death. – Sapa-AP