Who Killed Chandra Levy? D.C. Intern’s 2001 Murder Remains Unsolved

On a spring day in May 2001, Chandra Levy, a 24-year-old federal intern from Modesto, Calif., vanished without a trace. Levy had finished her internship in Washington, D.C., the previous month and planned to head home to California. She was last seen on April 30, 2001, and last heard from in an email to her parents the following day.

Levy’s skeletal remains were not discovered until more than a year later on May 22, 2002, in Rock Creek Park, and the medical examiner could never determine a definitive cause of death. A conviction in the case was later vacated, leaving it unsolved.

The Metropolitan Police Department had considered early on the involvement of Ingmar Guandique, already jailed for two other attacks on women in the same park. But investigators instead focused heavily on Levy’s relationship with then-U.S. Rep. Gary Condit.

Erica Hutton, director of Trine University's Cold Case Unit and an assistant professor in the university's Department of Criminal Justice, moved to Washington, D.C., in 2002 and recalls how Levy’s case “dominated the national news cycle” just after the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal unfolded.

“The dynamics felt eerily familiar,” Hutton tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Here was a young woman in the capital entangled with a powerful political figure.”

Levy’s disappearance also drew comparisons to the deaths of Joyce Chiang and Christine Mirzayan, two other young professional women who had gone missing or been killed in the same Washington neighborhoods in the years before. At the time, some speculated that a single predator was responsible for all three cases, though Chiang and Mirzayan’s cases were later solved independently of each other.

Condit acknowledged an affair with Levy, and DNA evidence collected from her underwear matched his, but he was never charged in her death and has said he was cleared by authorities.

Coverage died down until a 2008 Washington Post investigative series prompted police to reopen the case. A warrant was issued for Guandique’s arrest on March 3, 2009, and he was formally charged with Levy’s murder on April 22, 2009.

Guandique was convicted of first-degree murder on November 22, 2010, in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Since there was no forensic evidence, murder weapon or eyewitness account of what happened to Levy, the case hinged almost entirely on the testimony of his former cellmate, Armando Morales, as well as circumstantial evidence.

“Cases that rely on jailhouse informants are always risky because the witness usually has something to gain,” Peter Christiansen, founder of Christiansen Trial Lawyers, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Maybe it’s a lighter sentence, better treatment or some other benefit. That doesn’t automatically mean they’re lying, but it does mean their credibility deserves a hard look.”

The absence of independent evidence meant the jury was asked to rely on one conversation inside a jail cell to convict Guandique, a gap that would later put the conviction into question.

“Prosecutors need to know everything about a cooperating witness,” Christiansen adds. “Whether the witness has cooperated before, changed a story or come forward only after seeing a case in the news are all details that must be examined before a case can be built around their testimony.”

Despite this, Guandique was sentenced in February 2011 to 60 years in prison.

Four years later, in June 2015, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Gerald Fisher granted Guandique a new trial after questions surfaced about Morales’ credibility and prosecutors’ disclosures about him.

“At that point, prosecutors have to step back and honestly evaluate what’s left,” Christiansen says. “It isn’t about what they believe happened, it’s about what they can still prove in front of 12 jurors.”

Prosecutors have an obligation not to pursue charges they cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt. That may mean retrying a case, negotiating a plea or dismissing charges.

On July 28, 2016, prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges against Guandique, saying they could no longer prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Guandique was deported to El Salvador in May 2017, following a March 2017 removal order.

In 2023, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility found that former prosecutor Amanda Haines had violated disclosure and confidentiality rules by withholding evidence that could have discredited Morales, recommending a 60-day suspension of her law license. A Washington, D.C. appellate court ultimately decided not to suspend it. The board dismissed all charges against her co-counsel, Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez.

“When disclosure issues affect the credibility of a key witness, they can undermine an entire conviction,” Christiansen says. “Once that happens, the damage extends well beyond one case, because it affects confidence in the justice system itself.”

Twenty-five years after Levy’s disappearance, her case remains officially unsolved and classified as cold. No new suspect has been publicly identified, and no new DNA leads have been reported.

According to Hutton, moving the case forward today would require a fresh forensic audit of what evidence still exists. One detail she points to: Levy’s leggings were recovered tied in knots.

“The sheer physical force required to knot that fabric means the assailant’s hands had tight, high-friction contact with the material,” Hutton says. “That creates a protective micro-environment where touch DNA may still be preserved inside the folds, shielded from the environmental degradation that typically destroys outdoor evidence.”

Forensic DNA processing has changed drastically over the past 25 years, and older cold cases are routinely solved with newer techniques, Hutton notes. Forensic genetic genealogy could also play a role, though it would require a viable, high-density suspect profile to compare against existing databases.

The dismissal of the charges against Guandique was without prejudice, meaning the door remains open to refile. But prosecutors cannot simply recycle a weak case.

“Witnesses’ memories fade,” Christiansen says. “People move away or pass away. Physical evidence can deteriorate or become harder to test. Investigators retire. Records become more difficult to locate. None of those things make it impossible to prosecute a case, but together they make meeting the burden of proof much harder.”

Levy’s parents, Susan and Robert, continue to publicly advocate for the case. They gave an interview to NewsNation in May 2026, on the anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance, with their own theories about what happened to Levy. Robert told the network his daughter “knew about the UFOs” and that Condit was on the “[House Intelligence] Committee to learn about UFOs.”

“It left me thinking, knowing Chandra, she’s very inquisitive,” Susan Levy added. “Could she have known something that she wasn’t supposed to know? And could she have been wiped out because she knew too much?”

Although Susan and Robert claim they were told to, “not touch this subject,” they remain determined to find answers.

“I’m stepping on a limb,” Susan continued. “I’m asking for disclosure. Someone knows the truth of what happened to my daughter, Chandra, and what has happened to a lot of other people who have disappeared, gone missing, that have disappeared in some mysterious ways.”