Chandra Levy Part IV: A False Tip, A Real Body, And A Case That Never Settles

A single missing person case can turn into a national obsession, and the Chandra Levy story shows what that spotlight does to evidence, motives, and the people trying to find the truth. We walk through the moment former Metro Police homicide detective Joe McCann steps in as a private investigator and immediately treats the disappearance as a potential murder, even as the official investigation faces public pressure, criticism, and nonstop headlines. The result is a tense split between law enforcement and private detectives, with the media not just reporting the case but actively shaping the pace and perception of it.

From the tip line that rings off the hook to the reward that attracts both real leads and pure fiction, we break down how rumors become “credible” when they match the public’s appetite for scandal. The wildest thread takes McCann and Dwayne Staten to California after an informant claims the Hells Angels helped dispose of Chandra’s body following an illegal abortion. The details are dramatic, the fear feels real, and the fallout is dangerous, but the truth reveals something darker about sensational false tips and the people willing to cash in.

Then the case pivots again when Chandra’s remains are found in Rock Creek Park and basic questions refuse to settle: Was the park the crime scene or a dump site? What do knots, leggings, and missing keys suggest and what can’t they prove? We also connect the timeline to other Rock Creek Park assaults, the later spotlight on Ingmar Wandike, and how journalists at The Washington Post revisit the investigation with claims that police missed crucial patterns.

If you care about true crime, Washington, DC history, media sensationalism, and how investigations actually work under pressure, this one will stick with you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves unsolved cases, and leave a review with your theory: what do you think brought Chandra Levy to Rock Creek Park?

Transcript

McCann Joins The Levy Search

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Welcome to the murder book. I'm your host, Kara, and this is another episode of the Chandra Levy case. Let's begin. Joe McCann is quite familiar with the Metro PD. He worked there for 31 years, first as a homicide investigator and later as the head of the department. McCann quit the police force in 1999, and by 2001, he was working as a private detective, sometimes collaborating with his former colleague Dwayne Staten. In May, he got a call from Staten, who had just been asked to help with the Levy case. He had been hired by the family's lawyer, Billy Martin, and everyone figured it couldn't hurt to have two detectives on the case. McKenna immediately had his own theories about Chandra's disappearance. He said, quote, I was an old homicide detective. When you get a missing person and you call me, I think murder. End quote. So he accepted the job. Things became even more strained when it turned out that the cops and the private detectives had opposing agendas. The police, facing an unrelenting barrage of public criticism for their blunders and mishandling of the case, were beginning to resent the media. And although McCann had also loathed reporters when he was the lead investigator with the MetroPD, he found himself approaching this new case with a different strategy. From then on, McCann would be contacting the press to provide information about the case because Billy Martin had made it quite clear he wanted to keep the story at the top of the news cycle. Quite early in the process, he allowed McCann and Staten to speak with Shonda's parents. This is how they found out about her relationship with Cond. They interview her friends and colleagues, walk in her footsteps. They also set up a dedicated tip line and put up a reward. This turned out to be both a good and a bad idea. Every day, more than a hundred calls came in, and there were only two of them so sore fact from fiction. So there were several obviously Chandra could have been sexually assaulted, maybe she was mugged. And then there was Condit. Sure, he didn't seem like the type of guy who shot people, but would he have been capable of ordering a hit on his girlfriend to be determined? The detectives were looking for a motive. Was she a gambler? Had she been involved in some kind of criminal activity? No, domestic murder, which at the time was not yet referred as femicide, was starting to look like a possibility. After all, Gary Condon may have been a congressman, but he was still the boyfriend. One night the detectives were hanging around the office after hours when the tip line lit up. A man was claiming he had information. He wouldn't tell them his name or where he was calling from, just that he had been hired by the Health Angels to dispose of Chandra Levy's body after an illegal abortion gone wrong. At this point, McCann had heard it all and figured the story wasn't any wackier than the rest. Everyone knew about Condit's ties to the Health Angels, and ever since Van Jones had talked about Chandra's female problem, rumors about a pregnancy had been gaining traction. But the informant told them he didn't want the reward. This of course only added to his credibility. Eventually, the informant caved and gave them his name, as well as a California address. McCann and Staten jumped into a taxi and rushed to the airport. En route, McCann got a call from a police investigator looking to discuss a potential lead, but the detective told him he would have to wait until he got back from California. When they met the informant in a hotel lobby, he was nervous and said he was afraid the hell's angels would take him out as they've got wind of his chat with the detectives. His story was the same as the one he had told them over the phone. Someone had called him and promised him a lot of money. All he had to do was put Chandra's body in his car, then drive out to the Nevada desert and bury her. He didn't even know who she was, but once they were out in the desert together, the informant couldn't remember exactly where he had left the body. McKenna and Staten gave him time to collect himself

Competing Agendas And Media Pressure

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and suggested meeting up again the next day. They piled back into the car and drove around the city. It was dark out, and they were in a deserted industrial area where McKenna noticed they were being tailed by another vehicle. There were a few parked trucks between them, but the detective could make out headlights on the other side. When he sped up, the other vehicle sped up too. When he made a turn, it followed. After some time, McKenna managed to lose the other car and drop off the witness, now more agitated than ever, at his per at his trailer park. The next day, McCann and Staten drove to Podesto to see Chandra's parents and talk to some of their friends. One thing was now clear to them. The pregnancy and abortion lead was highly unlikely. Chandra's parents didn't know if she was still taking birth control pills, but her father had given her a prescription for them years earlier. Everyone told them that Chandra would be have been happy to find out she was pregnant, and that although she was pro choice, she would never have agreed to an abortion for herself. But could she have been forced into it? Possibly. But her aunt Linda Zansky remembered that during the Passover visit, Chandra had needed to borrow a few tampons. If she had been on her period, how could she have been pregnant? And already aware of it just three weeks later at the time of her disappearance. A few other details were bugged in McCank too. If the informant had been paid so much money, why was the guy still living in a shabby trailer? And why was he talking? Who would accept money to bury a young woman without asking any questions and then suddenly feel bad for her parents? The detective circled back to talk to their witness and Staten stay in the car while McKinnon knocked at the plastic door. What followed was a heated altercation. McKinn shouted, the informant shouted. McCann said he had better show him the money if he was even real. The men pulled a bag full of banknotes out from under a table. $10,000. He pulled out a gun too and pointed it at McCann. Gingerly McCann turned around and put his hand on the door handle, every motion deliberate. He slowly walked back to the car. McCann was unarmed. All he could do was keep his cool. Once he was finally in the car, the detective sped off and asked what had happened. And so he asked, remember the phone call from the police? As if he he's lining up to tell a good joke on stage. And he said, That guy stabbed me in the back. He went to the media, the inquirer, and said, Hey, the Levy investigator is flying to California. So the inquirer followed us and they eventually found the guy. So I don't know how, and gave him the $10,000 for the story. That guy was a professional BS artist. He had been on TV on a well-known talk show, pretending to be a fire investigator. He's been locked up now. So Staten and McCann went on to follow many leads like this one until the body was discovered in May 2002. For several weeks the perimeter was courted off by the police. Once the crime scene was released, McCann and Staten headed for Rock Creek Park, armed with a shovel and two rakes. They wanted to pour over the area themselves and make sure all evidence had been collected. It took them only half an hour of raking to uncover a bone. They looked at each other, incredulous. The bone was white with slight bite marks, and was about twelve inches long. It was hard to miss. McCann pulled out his phone and called his former employer, the Metro PD. An officer came back to collect the evidence, saying it was probably just an animal bone. Except it wasn't. It was Chandra's left tibia. So the police returned and searched the area for 19 more days. This time around they found bones from her hands, foot and back, one bone from her heel, and most embarrassingly, a femur, the largest bone of the human body. On the day the tibia was discovered, McCann and Stetton was asked to drop by the poly by the police station for an interview. This was standard police procedure, so they complied. McCann was about to leave when an officer, clearly embarrassed, instructed him to sit back down. His bosses wanted him to take a polygraph test. McCann was insulted and basically he told them no, you know, he used explicit expletive words and he left. Afterward, he says the relationship became even more strained, and even years after the Chandra Levy case, the Metropidi never missed an opportunity to make life difficult for both McCann and Staten. Much water has flown

The Hells Angels Disposal Story

SPEAKER_00 12:08

under the bridge since then, but McCann is still type-lipped about it. Today he's sure of one thing though. It's an instinct. Really, call it a gut feeling. Sometimes the first suspect is still suspect number one. We'll be right back. Did the discovery of Chandra's body prove that Condit was innocent? When the news of her death spread across the country, Condit was no longer a member of Congress. He had not been re-elected in in March 2002, after a painful campaign in which journalists were more interested in finding out where he had buried his mistress's body than hearing about his political platform. Could Condit be the perfect example of how a national thirst for blood, sex, and scandals can lead to innocent lives being sacrificed on the altar of sensationalism and ratings. Twenty years from now, will he be remembered as a victim or as the person responsible for Chandra's death? It's anyone's guess. The fact that her body was found in a park suggests she was assaulted, perhaps in an attempted mugging gone wrong, or maybe she was sexually assaulted. The knots and the leggings suggest the pants were used to tie her up. But why tie her up? To rape her or rob her or for consensual sex play? Unless the pants were used to move her body? There's no way to know for sure. And the most basic question is still unanswered. What was she doing in Rock Creek Park? Journalists initially wrote that she was out jogging based on statements from anonymous sources. Her clothes could also suggest that this was her intention. She wore leggings, sneakers, property of USC athletics t-shirt, and had a walkman with her. But are the clothes enough evidence to make this assumption? Leggings are not necessarily sportswear, especially in the US, where people, you know, here we, you know, they we tend to wear them more as everyday pants. In many Levy family home videos, Chandra is wearing leggings and a big sweater. The police stated that they found her workout shoes in her apartment. Did this mean that she had multiple pairs? Or did she use the reebox found in the park as non athletic footwear? And why bring lipstick on a jog? All of Chandra's friends and family members have maintained that she had never run outside, instead keeping two treadmills in the comfort and safety of her gym. Sven Jones, Jennifer Baker, Susan Levy, and Linda Samsking had all adamantly said that Chandra would never had gone for a run in the park. She didn't like it, and the place spooked her. Chandra was simply not the type to venture into risky places. She was the kind of person who walked around with a can of pepper spray in her purse and bugged her girlfriends to do the same. In fact, she was so cautious that when the landlord was dropped by to pick up an item she had forgotten in her place, she wouldn't let him in. Instead, she closed the door while retrieving the item. But according to Chandra's browser history, there is no question she did look up a map of the park. Is it possible then that she was on her way to see someone who had suggested they meet there? The police never figure out how Chandra got from her home to the park. She had not used her MetroCard, she had left her credit card in her apartment, and none of the city's taxi companies reported charging her as a client. Could she have shared a cap with someone else? Has she gotten a ride in a car on or on a motorcycle? Chandra could very well have walked to the park, but it would have taken her an hour and twenty minutes on an eighty degree Fahrenheit afternoon. What we do know for sure is that Chandra left behind all her belongings, even her cell phone, which she always had on her. She took her walkben and keys, but the keys were never found. Some people, like Joe McCann, assume she went out in a hurry, given the state of her apartment. She didn't take a second to put on her necklace, the one she always put back as soon the one she always puts back on as soon as she s she steps out of the shower. In the entrance on the floor, the police found a clean comforter. Yet McKenna claims that according to all the people he questioned, Chandra was very tidy, not really the type to leave a comforter out on the floor for hours. Maybe Chandra had been washing the comforter when someone called, suggesting they meet up. She could have quickly gone to the laundry room at the end of the hall and brought it back to the apartment before heading out in a hurry. On the kitchen counter was a bag of dirty laundry containing a pair of underwear that could later turn out to have Gary Condit's DNA on it. Maybe she had not had enough time to get a second load started before leaving? What if there had not been a call at all? What if the date had been set the day before or the day before that? On the morning of May 1, Chandra had also checked out the Baskin Robins website to see a map after store locations. There was a one franchise near Rock Creek Park, but the cops interviewed the store manager and according to him, none of the employees remember seeing Chandra. It was hot out though, and the store had been busy that day. The fact that a Baskin Robbins ice cream wrapper was found in one of the park garbage cans could be just a coincidence. Or maybe Chandra had bought a pint to share with someone in the park. According to the press, this bit of trash was sent to the FBI. It's one of many pieces of evidence that were collected by the police, but then no one can say for sure were ever analyzed. Another mystery is whether the location in which she, you know, the body was found, isolated and relatively inaccessible, is in fact the scene of the crime. The spot is flanked by the road and a trail. Someone could easily have parked on Rich Road Northwest near Picnic Grove 18 and dumped Chandra's body into the ravine, then driven off. Furthermore, the police never

Rock Creek Bones And Police Blowback

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started or sorry, stated whether Chandra's DNA was found in the surrounding soil, and they never provided any evidence that her body had in fact decomposed in that spot. To the people who are sure Kanda did it, one fact stands out. Wasn't he the only person Chandra went out to meet without carrying ID? When the police searched her apartment, they found two messages from the congressman on her answering machine. In the first he says, It's eleven forty five. I'm sorry, I have been tied up for the last few days, but you already know that. Give me a round down kind of what your schedule is. Things are looking pretty good for me today anyway. Bye. End quote. The message was stated may third. Condit's wife had just left DC. A little later that same day he left a second message. Quote, it's around six thirty. I haven't heard from you. Maybe you're out of the country or something. Anyway, give me a call if you get this message. Bye. End quote. Chandra had been missing for two days. Was Condit actually trying to reach her? Or were these messages just an attempt to build an alibi? If the latter were true, it was a risky bet. If he was trying to avoid being connected to the case, wouldn't he have opted to keep his ties with the victim hidden for a little longer? As the months went by, every lead seemed to dry up. The Metro PD didn't have enough evidence to charge Condit, and they have too little to focus on another suspect. Like so many before it, Chandra Levy's disappearance was slowly becoming a cold case. In another part of the city, at the same time, one woman was suffering through sleepless night. Ever since Chandra's body had been found, Haley Schilling couldn't stop thinking about it, about her attacker's dark eyes, the glint of the small knife in his hand. She remembered feeling something primal click in her head when she decided she wouldn't let him kill her. She remember a voice shouting no, no, no, and then realizing it was her own voice. She remembered how in a flash lessons from an old self defense class had come to her, and she had dug her nails into her attacker's mouth. She remembered the sound of his footsteps speeding up as he fled. The attack occurred on may fourteenth, two thousand one in Rock Creek Park. In the spring of two thousand two, Holly Schilling was a thirty one year old college professor. Her attacker had been in prison for months and had recently been handed a ten year sentence. But she couldn't stop watching the footage aired over and over of the police collecting Chandra Levy's bones. That could have been her. Could the attacker have assaulted her just a few days after killing Chandra? She waited for the police to call, but the call never came. Amber Fitzgerald didn't know Halley Schilling. But she too was having trouble sleeping. A young lawyer with long blonde hair, she was replaying a scene in her head nonstop. In may two thousand one, she had crossed paths with a man while out jogging in the park. Her boyfriend was faster than her, so he was far ahead, and she found herself alone somewhere along with one of the trails in the West end of the park. She sensed someone was watching her and locked eyes with a man standing in the underbrush underbrush. He was about five feet six inches tall with dark eyes and a hood pulled down over his head. He seemed to be coming toward her. Fizgero put her head down and picked up the pace. She lost sight of the man and then as if in a nightmare, he was suddenly in front of her, motionless and blocking her way. Fitzgerald was terrified. She ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction. At the time, she didn't it didn't occur to her to report the incident. Nothing had actually happened, so what would she have told the cops? But she had since checked several times comparing the dates in her calendar with those of her ex boyfriend. It had definitely been may first, 2001. Wasn't that the day the intern was supposed to have gone missing? Hadn't she been found in the same park? In 2003, unable to wipe the coincidence from her mind, Fitzgerald finally contacted the police. The officers nodded and thanked her, and they never call her back. We'll be right back. The year was 2010. It was October 25th, and a trial was about to begin for the man accused of murdering Chandra Levy. The distinguished gentleman with the gray hair was Judge Gerald Fisher, and next to him the young 44-year-old with a big laugh was Amanda Haynes, the prosecutor. She was charismatic and warm, and everyone liked her. By her side was Fernando Campo Amor, her partner. On the other side of the room, the small woman who barely ever smiled was the defense attorney, Amanda Haynes' rival. Her name was Santa Sonnenberg. At her table was Maria Hawilo, a little younger in her thirties. In the second row, the woman writing in a notepad was Susan Levy, Chandra's mother. The judge gave her permission to attend entire trial.

What Was Chandra Doing There

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And there, of course, with the beige jacket, his tattoos hidden by a turtleneck, he seemed to wear a different one every day, so the reporters had begun to joke, calling him the collection. That was the defendant Inkmar Wandike. Sari Horvitz and Scott Higgin needed no such introduction. Pulitzer Prize winning journalists from the Washington Post were shaking hands with people in the courtroom halls. They have literally written the book on the case Finding Chandra, a true Washington murder mystery. The Pulitzer Prize winning journalists from the Washington Post were shaking hands with people in the courtroom halls. They have literally written the book on the case Findings Chandra, a true Washington murder mystery, published six months earlier. Now here they were hugging Susan Levy. In 2007, when everyone had stopped talking about the story, the editors of the Washington Post had asked Sari Horwitz to revisit the case. She didn't need to ask twice. Horowitz was quite familiar with the Chandra Levy case as she had been working on it when the story exploded. Then in 2002, she was pursuing a serious lead when snipers began shooting random people on the streets of Washington, D.C. So she had been moved to this new investigation, eventually leading to the arrest of John Alan Mohammed and Lee Boyd Marlow, who were charged with killing 10 people over a three-week period in October 2002. But she never stopped being obsessed with the Chandra case. In the years that followed, Horbitz kept a copy of the missing poster of Chandra pinned up at her desk. In 2007, when she was assigned to the case again, the first thing she did was call back the source who had given her the promising lead five years earlier. That person, who has remained anonymous to this day, met with her for months in cars, parks, restaurants. Each time, Horwitz left with confidential documents that she opened only once she was back in her office. After carrying out a year-long investigation with her colleague Scott Higgin, they published Who Killed Chandra Levy, a series of articles featured on the front page of the Washington Post for 13 days in a row in the summer of 2008. They claimed the police had conducted a botched investigation and missed the real murderer. They claim his name was Ingmar Wandike. Christy Wiegan, a 26-year-old lawyer, was jogging in the park that Sunday afternoon when she ran by a man sitting on a kerb in the parking lot. When he began to follow her, she didn't stop running but pressed the pause button on her workman. A few seconds later, she felt someone grab her from behind. The attacker held a knife to her throat and covered her mouth with his other hand. Then he dragged her toward the woods and a steep slope. She fought him off as they rolled down into a small ravine. Within seconds, Wigan felt isolated, far from help. Here, no one could hear her. No one could see her. She screamed and continued to fend off the stranger. She was taller than him and eventually he grew tired and ran away. Wigan hurried back up the hill and called the park police. Forty five minutes later, Ingmar Wandike was arrested by two park police officers on a street near Rock Creek Park. Now in february 2002, he was on trial for the two assaults facing 13 years for each crime, twenty six in total. But before Judge Noel Anquatel Kramer could hand down a sentence, prosecutor Christina Ament asked to speak with her. She approached the judge's bench. Ament quietly explained that, well, it was kind of absurd and highly confidential, but she felt obliged to point out that Ingmar Wandike's name had come up in the Chandra Levy case. It turned out that five months before the hearing, in September 2001, the police got wind of a confession that Wandike had allegedly made to a fellow inmate. Apparently, he has said that Condit paid him $25,000 to kill Chandra Levy and leave her body to rot in Rock Creek Park. At the time, the park had been canvassed just a month and a half prior, and the police had found nothing. Investigators were still focused on the congressman lead, but the idea that he might have flagged down a stranger in the Adams Morgan neighborhood to tend them to them, hand him a picture of a young woman and ask him to kill her for money. Well, it sounded ludicrous. However, it was the first time investigators were hearing about this man who had attacked two women shortly after Chandra's disappearance. Two detectives have been sent out to interrogate him in prison. Wandike denied any involvement in the case, claiming he had only ever seen Chandra on TV. The investigators had both Wandique and the informant take a polygraph test. Since both men were Spanish speakers and not fluent in English, an interpreter was called in, even though the presence of an interpreter was known to affect polygraph test results. The imant failed to the test and Wandike's results were inconclusive, but the person administering the test chose to write that Wandique was telling the truth. Now, Wandike was before Judge Kramer, and Ament wanted to stress that her client, the defendant, had been cooperative. He didn't have to agree to undergo a polygraph test. She added that Wandike had only sought to rub his victims so he could afford to pay his rent, as he was undocumented and sometimes struggled to find work under the table. The judge brushed aside any mention of the Chandra Levy case, deeming it a satellite issue. After

Other Attacks And A Missed Pattern

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hearing testimonies from Schilling and Wigan, she also seemed to accept both women's claims that they were sure Wandike intended to rape or kill them and that the attacks were absolutely about more than stealing a walkman or jewelry. Wandike didn't even look at the impressive engagement ring. Wigan had been wearing on the day of the attack. On February 2, 2002, Judge Kramer sentenced Ingmar Wandike to 10 years in prison for the two assaults. The Washington Post series, written by Horwitz and Higgin, later revealed that more facts and evidence had been dismissed. Even after Chandra's body was found in Rock Creek Park, the police didn't look for potential ties to other assaults in the area. No one interviewed Halle Schilling and Christy Wigan until 2008. Another year went by after Wendika's interrogation before the police even remembered he existed. But one man had not forgotten. His name is Joe Green. With 30 years experience under his belt, Green was one of the older park police officers, and he was the first to interrogate Ingmar Wandike. After his arrest for the assault of Christie Wigan, Guandike had spent the night in a cell in the small Rock Creek Park Police Station. It was 1 a.m. when Green, his colleague, and an interpreter stepped into the tiny room. Green managed to get Wandike to confess to the two assaults. Then striking while the iron was hot, and since Chandra Levy was absolutely everywhere in Washington at this point, Green showed Wandike a photo of Chandra and asked if he had ever seen her around. Wandike said yes. Green asked if he thought that she was pretty. Wandike said yes. He said he had only seen her once, then never again. Green did not include these two questions in his report. In July 2001, he figured it was irrelevant. When the Washington Post articles entitled Who Killed Chandra Levy came out in 2008, they brought the story and perhaps even the case itself back to life. While some people vilified the police for their mistakes and negligence, others were outraged that the paper would spend so much time and energy on the murder of a single woman when thousands of others had died since. The DC police wasn't particularly fond of the revelations either. At every opportunity they were quick to point out they had reopened the case before the Washington Post articles came out. In 2006, police chief Charles H. Ramsey had been replaced by Kathy Lanier, who assigned new detectives to the case. According to them, this new investigation and no other factors had led them to the indictment of Ingmar Wandike in March 2009. Still, Amanda Haynes did not invite the police to attend the trial. When the proceedings began on October 25th, 2010, she did admit in her opening statement that the investigation had been hindered by many failures and that the police had been distracted by the romantic entanglement between the young intern and the congressman. She went on saying, This is also a case about the secrets of a man named Condit, Gary Condit. He was having an affair with Chandra Levy, but it has nothing to do with the murder of Chandra Levy, and thus she set tone for the trial. Thank you for listening to the murder book. Have a great week.