It appears that the D.C. police are finally going to arrest somebody in the 2001 murder of Congressional aide Chandra Levy in Rock Creek Park in Washington D.C. No, it's not the Great White Defendant, former Rep. Gary Condit (D-CA), who was having an affair with her. Rep. Condit captivated the attention of the police and media in 2001 and distracted from the pursuit of the real killer. It seemed like a Law & Order episode come to life!
No, the prime suspect now turns out to be another boring, depressing usual suspect. (Actually, this guy had been on the radar screen for years.) Last year, the Washington Post's reporters Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sylvia Moreno took a look at the man the police are finally saying is most likely to have done it:
While D.C. police focused most of their investigative efforts on Rep. Gary Condit and his relationship to missing intern Chandra Levy, they were slow to recognize another lead. It involved a man who was attacking women in the woods of Rock Creek Park.
The day Chandra disappeared, May 1, 2001, Ingmar A. Guandique, a 19-year-old illegal Salvadoran immigrant, did not show up for his construction job. Around that time, he went to stay with his former landlady, Sheila Phillips Cruz, the manager of an apartment building on Somerset Place NW. Cruz noticed that Guandique looked like he had been in a bad fight, his face battered and bruised. He had a fat lip, a bloody blemish in his eye and scratches around his throat.
Guandique (pronounced GWAN-dee-keh) had come from a hard-scrabble hamlet near the city of San Miguel in El Salvador. ...
Guandique wanted a better life in America. A friend of the family lent him $5,000 to pay a "coyote" to smuggle him across the Texas border with more than 50 others. The seventh-grade dropout left home in January 2000, eventually swimming across the Rio Grande, crossing the border near Piedras Negras and arriving in Houston in March 2000. From there, he made his way to Washington to join his half-brother, Huber, and other family friends.
Within a month, Guandique began picking up day jobs on construction sites and sending small amounts of money back home. He also had financial obligations to the family that paid his way. And he had another obligation: his ex-girlfriend, who was pregnant when Guandique left and later gave birth to a boy.
In fall 2000, Guandique met a new girl, Iris Portillo. ...
Guandique was having a hard time adjusting to living on the bottom rung of the American economy. He barely spoke English. He was not used to the routine: waking up at dawn, getting to the work site on time, spending the day toiling at a menial job. He struggled to pay the bills, send money home and buy the nice things Portillo wanted.
In early spring 2001, Guandique started to spend more time drinking and hanging around Rock Creek Park. He began to carry a six-inch knife wrapped in a red cloth. After finding letters from one of Portillo's old boyfriends from El Salvador, he struck her. He once bit her hard above her breast, leaving a scar, and he warned her not to stray.
He attacked at least two other joggers in Rock Creek Park in 2001:
- "Halle Shilling, 30, a tall, blond, athletic aspiring writer"
- "Christy Wiegand and her fiance were jogging in the northern section of Rock Creek Park. It had been raining on and off all day. Wiegand, 25, a former varsity rower at Princeton and a recent Cornell University Law School graduate, was an anti-trust lawyer for Arnold & Porter. Her wedding date was seven weeks away. She was tall and blond, her 5-foot-11 frame moving steadily along the trail, wearing her Walkman. Her fiance ran ahead and was soon out of sight."
It's a good article about the wildly different worlds of D.C., where Rock Creek Park serves as a border between two worlds.
The Condit connection should seem familiar to readers of Raymond Chandler detective novels, where a dead body leads to all sorts of embarrassing revelations about big shots as collateral damage. A dead body with a hole in it demands attention, and winds up shining a light on the private lives of people who didn't kill anybody, but were tangentially involved with the victim.
It shouldn't have taken until 2009 to arrest Guandique. Amy Keller wrote in Salon way back in 2002:
But while my colleagues speculated on the proximity of Condit's Adams Morgan apartment to the section of park where Levy's body was recovered on May 22, I wondered if the location of her body might point to another possibility: Perhaps Levy really was the victim of a random attack. I know the trepidation I feel each time I jog or bike along the park trails near my own neighborhood on the outskirts of Washington. The charming, leafy streets here are deceptive; Washington has its high crime areas, some just blocks from where members of Congress live in opulent brownstones.
I took a straightforward approach, and clicked through news databases, searching through stories about other crimes that might have been committed in the park. Eventually, I clicked my way to Ingmar Guandique.
Guandique is serving out a 10-year sentence in federal prison for brutally attacking two young women along the Broad Branch trail last May and July. That's the same section of Rock Creek Park where Levy was found. She had gone missing in May of 2001.
I knew I had a good story on my hands. But I had no idea that once I published it, other reporters following the Levy investigation would question my motives, or accuse me of being a pawn of Gary Condit.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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68 comments:
Wow.
I'd read about this man in the papers *years* ago. The Salvadorean illegal immigrant who had chased joggers.
Hadn't he gone to jail for chasing those joggers? I remember reading that the judge thought Guandique was a real weirdo.
And I remember people writing then, years ago, that he was Chandra Levy's killer. (I remember reading it in the WSJ's OpinionJournal, for instance). That police had chosen to focus on the high profile Condit rather than on him.
I'd always assumed Guandique had been arrested and tried for her murder. I can't believe that police haven't done it yet.
Just wow.
Rock Creek park is entirely in the NW quadrant of DC, which is the good quadrant, and mostly borders safe neighborhoods.
What this brings to mind is the illusion, and it is only an illusion, of safety and security that White Women have about their daily lives.
I am sure that most of the White women who were of the upper class jogger type victimized by Guandique would be the first to protest his arrest because of "racism."
Now, that only makes sense once you realize who the enemies of the White Yuppie class are, particularly White yuppie women. Their enemies are the middle/lower class men who they find in competition for jobs with, and slightly lower class white guys who approach them in bars and cause them discomfort.
Their risk calculation is that probability of violent assault by a Guandique < daily competition and hassle by male near peers.
Steve
I am not sure what you are implying with the term "usual suspect".
In 1997, there were 1,920 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents that were submitted to the FBI for its Supplementary Homicide Report.
More than 12 times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,689 victims) than were killed by male strangers (137 victims).
If someone created a profile of a "most" likely killer of Levy, Condit would fit that profile to a tee. He was married to someone else and the "relationship" with Levy ended under strained circumstances. In addition, based on the strained circumstances under which their relationship ended, he could have reasonably believed that she would go to the Media with evidence of their relationship, sans another Capitol intern/California native/Jewish party girl (Mo Lewinsky).
It did not require a giant suspension of disbelief to infer that he might kill Levy out of anger or in fear of his political position. I believe the police investigation of him was reasonable and fair - they followed the evidence where it led them and when that evidence did not pan out, they cleared Condit. When this Salvadorean guy popped on the Rock Creek radar screen as an attacker, they pursued him , also in a proper fashion.
You often chide liberals for ignoring, or not understanding, statistics to attack HBD proponents. When making (actually in fairness to you, implying) significant conclusions about race, you should hold yourself to the same standards.
Anonymous said - When this Salvadorean guy popped on the Rock Creek radar screen as an attacker, they pursued him , also in a proper fashion.
No they didn't.
Here's an amazing article from 2002!!! that tells the story of the hunt for The Great White Defendant.
At last: a solution to our enforcement problem!
Tthink of all the Congressmen who might now worry that they'll get caught up in a scandal when their mistress gets murdered by an illegal. That would absolutely wreck their careers. Enforcement is just around the corner!
So what was Condit doing that the powers that be got so peeved off with?
More than 12 times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,689 victims) than were killed by male strangers (137 victims).
Where'd the racial aspect go? Up the chimney?
How many of the stranger killings were intraracial vs. interracial? How many of the non-stranger killings? What are the rates compared with population percentages? Controlled for poverty?
Spin it how you want, two things are obvious: NAMs are a much greater violent crime threat, and this story is "no longer interesting."
Dear DYork:
Thanks, I'll add that to the posting.
Big Media can now reveal DC police botched homicide investigation by paying too much attention to Big Media.
The DC police were slow to thorougly investigate Guandique partly because the investigation was being driven by the press, including The Washington Post, and the Levy family. Sometimes it is just better to let cops do their jobs.
I am sure that most of the White women who were of the upper class jogger type victimized by Guandique would be the first to protest his arrest because of "racism."
Oh come on; you can't be serious, especially about the "most" part (i.e. more than half). I think people, including women, are able to make distinctions regarding public/their personal safety.
Such hyperbole is best avoided.
DYork
Actually, the article that you cite seems to suport what I am saying. As the author points out, at the beginning of the investigation the police didn't even knew that her body was in Rock Creek Park. If my memory serves me correctly, there were some email exchanges between Levy and others that indicated that she was going to run through the park the day that she went missing, but nothing else. When the police discovered her body in Rock Creek Park, a year later and after any DNA evidence could be preserved, they began to look harder at this Guandique.
Many people criticize the DC police department for not finding her body sooner, but I was in the city at that time and I remember an entire police academy class searching the park for clues for a couple of days.
A quote from the article:
"Nonetheless, police sources admitted to me on background that under the circumstances, they are taking a renewed look at Guandique. At the time they spoke with Guandique, "We didn't even know her body was in the park," one police source said, explaining that now they have a whole new set of questions to ask him.
After I broke the story, I received calls from nearly a dozen other reporters -- most of them TV news broadcasters asking me for more details about "this Guandique guy."
Did I know what prison he was in?"
Jun 3, 2002
"Who let ingmar in?"
"The tragedy of Chandra Levy first brought to light a congressman's illicit affair. Now it may spotlight one of the problems with illicit immigration."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200206/ai_n9097779
May 23, 2002
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110001747
"...Occam's razor demands that we favor the simplest explanation: that Levy did not know her killer and was the victim of a random crime. (Matt Drudge picks up a Roll Call Daily report that D.C. police are taking a "closer look" at Ingmar Guandeque, arrested in July 2001 after attacking two women joggers, one in May and one in July. In September, according to a Justice Department press release, Guandeque pleaded guilty to two counts of assault with intent to commit robbery.)"
The question is, why did it take so long to get around to arresting this man, Ingmar Guandique?
Okay, okay, so everyone had a field day over the Condit-Levy affair.
But after it became obvious that Condit had nothing to do with Levy's murder, why didn't the authorities arrest Guandique in 2002 itself?
Did they think it would make them look bad, after the big to-do over Condit?
"So what was Condit doing that the powers that be got so peeved off with?"
Good question. My first guess was "oppose unrestricted immigration" but his record in that regard is mixed. I'm not finding anything on him trying to ban affirmative action or fighting the Eastern media establishment on anything either.
Chandra Levy's parents suspected Gary Condit, it seems. (Quotes below).
I followed the story quite closely when it came out in 2001. I too thought that Condit might have something to do with her disappearance (I think).
But, now that I've been a regular isteve.com and isteve.blogspot.com reader for 6 years, I don't think I would suspect a Condit type character if such a story came out today. Instead, I would assume a "usual suspect" had done it. I'm just much more wordly now.
Perhaps the Levys had watched too many episodes of "Law and Order"?
---------------------
"Robert and Susan Levy were furious at Rep. Gary Condit. They believed he was hiding what he knew about the disappearance of their daughter, Chandra. On June 14, 2001, the couple took the dramatic step of holding a national news conference to plead with Condit to disclose whatever he might know..."
"Her mind reeled with questions: Where is my daughter? What are you hiding?"...
"When she asked if he knew where Chandra was, he said, "Mrs. Levy, I don't know. Really, I don't."
"She believed he knew more than he was saying."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/specials/chandra/ch5_1.html
More than 12 times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,689 victims) than were killed by male strangers (137 victims).
If someone created a profile of a "most" likely killer of Levy, Condit would fit that profile to a tee.
If that someone were you, maybe. If that someone had a better understanding of criminology and victim profiles, they would take all sorts of things into account that you're ignoring. The 1689 victims surely shared things in common with one another that they didn't have in common with the 137, no? In which group were women who hang out alone in parks overrepresented? In which group were women who date violent thugs overrepresented?
Levy spent lots of time in DC. Levy was not married. Levy and her boyfriend were both articulate people with real futures, related to their cognitive ability. Levy's boyfriend was under an extraordinary amount of scrutiny and presumably knew it. (I say "presumably" because some members of Congress genuinely seem unaware that anyone might be watching them for missteps!)
It did not require a giant suspension of disbelief to infer that he might kill Levy out of anger or in fear of his political position.
But it did require a giant suspension of awareness to forget that Washington DC is a den of barbarians, not all of whom are disgusting white gringos of the typical Hollywood "Gordon Gecko" villain type.
Quoted from the Salon article:
"... the victim -- an intelligent and athletic young woman who has asked that her name be withheld -- still has horrifying memories of what happened to her on May 14, 2001, just two weeks after Levy vanished."
In my experience, intelligent, athletic women have little to fear from their intelligent, athletic friends and families, and a whole lot to fear from their habit of relying on their spunkiness and muscle tone to keep them safe as they hang out alone hitchhiking through Turkey, or biking through New Orleans, or sunbathing in India. If this bucks the "most murders are committed by non-strangers" trend, consider how many intelligent, athletic people there are in this country - as a percentage.
Sorry to be at least slightly off-subject, but how did this Salvodorean wind up with a given name like Ingmar?
How many other Ingmars would there be in El Salvador?
PV van der Byl
Their enemies are the middle/lower class men who they find in competition for jobs with, and slightly lower class white guys who approach them in bars and cause them discomfort.
Who cares? We don't know anybody like that.
"The police relied heavily on the polygraph results to eliminate Guandique as a suspect."
Isn't this incompetence?
Or do police departments routinely do things like this?
Why didn't the police weigh the nature of Guandique's previous crimes against the polygraph?
"how did this Salvodorean wind up with a given name like Ingmar?"
Maybe his mom was a regular at all the Bergman retrospectives at the Salvador film festivals?
Seriously, isn't there a minor Latin American predilection for giving kids northern European names, especially Slavic ones (like baseball slugger Vladimir Guerrero), because they think they sound cool?
I think the "wanting a better life" meme is one of the best out there. See, America's a fairy land, with a magical "better life" for anyone who skips across the borders.
Riding a train somewhere in India once, I was engaged in conversation with a group of upper caste Hindoos. One woman's daughter was a doctor in Virgina, she told me, and she'd visited her after completion of her residency. "It (America) is a very beautiful place," she said, "So clean." Then, I swear, like some crazy comedy routine, she threw the wrapper of whatever she'd been eating out the train window.
Give me fifty families of my own choosing and a few thousand acres of watered land in Ukraine and in twenty years I'd have a place that Guandiblahblahs and Indian doctors would also clamor to get into for a better life.
"how did this Salvodorean wind up with a given name like Ingmar?
There was significant German migration to Central American in the late 19th and early 20th century. Even if the suspect isn't German, his parents could have become ware of the name through German immigrants
Is it true that Guandique's crime will be considered a white-perpetrated crime? I.e. that Hispanics don't count as a possible category of crime perpetrators? Or is that only true of hate crimes?
"If someone created a profile of a "most" likely killer of Levy, Condit would fit that profile to a tee."
This is pure Hollywood, TV-detective story plot. The odds of the murderer being Condit, in real life, is next to nil. It just makes for a good twist in a story line for the culprit to be the most improbable person -- the one with the most to lose in terms of career and reputation. I think, in the end, such a person asks himself: "Which is better, that I lose my career, family and reputation by exposure as an adulterer, or lose my career, family and reputation as a convicted murderer?"
People from Condit's background tend to shiver at the thought of committing such a crime or of getting someone else to do it.
I felt at the time that the investigations of Condit were far-fetched.
-Victoria
In support of the Anon who noted that intimate murder rarely happens among high IQ Whites, inductivist.blogspot.com has a post up with GSS data, on just that subject: hitting a woman -- you can see big racial differences among same social mileu setting (College Kids).
It's interesting data.
And yes, Eh, most White Yuppie women are firmly in favor of continued open borders and large scale affirmative action. The Late Adrienne Shelley would be an example of the kind of attitude I'm taking about. She was murdered by an illegal alien working on a downstairs apartment in her rather luxurious NYC apartment. Police bungled the initial investigation there too, for PC reasons (they thought it suicide the way the killer staged it). Refused to look at the likely suspects because it would be "profiling."
Her movie "Waitress" is all about the brutality of the title character's blue collar husband (she directed and acted in it as a supporting character) ... typical of the mythologizing of the "authentic and caring" non-White world and the "brutality" of the blue collar White guy.
White women are in competition for the limited White collar jobs, and have reached a large scale cultural, social, and political alliance with non-Whites, and the few PC Mandarin Yuppies of largely hereditary wealth (think Bill Ayers) to keep this going.
They trade-off security, including personal security, through lower policing, more PC, etc. as a price for the alliance to keep opportunities for themselves and out of the hands of the White male competitors.
agreed with testing99.... we should let women know they're not as safe as they think they are
Her movie "Waitress" is all about the brutality of the title character's blue collar husband (she directed and acted in it as a supporting character) ... typical of the mythologizing of the "authentic and caring" non-White world and the "brutality" of the blue collar White guy.
I wouldn't doubt that Shelley was a hard left liberal, but while one white guy may have been a villain that doesn't mean she made minorities the heroes. There were several loveable white men in that movie. It was a great flick, in fact, and Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion ("Firefly") were both charmers.
There are lots of movies critical of the white guy - but not really this one.
I was the one who informed Sam Francis of the identity of the suspect. I was told of the suspect's identity by my late Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack was a retired Washington, D.C. homicide detective. He investigated the murder of the Hanafi Muslims at the hands of Malcolm X, as well as the assassination of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-303670.html
As for Gary Condit, he was most likely pilloried because he is a white, Christian, European male. Don't forget that he is the son of a Baptist minister. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CEFDE1031F935A1575BC0A9679C8B63
And the usual suspect?
Uncle Jack told me that he investigated over 800 murders. Of these murders only 11 involved white victims. And this was at a time when Washington, D.C. was still largely white.
So, usual suspect?
Absolutely.
Testing99.
You are hitting around the edges of something that has been percolating in my mind for a while:
To wit: as manufacturing and construciton jobs both dissapear and become wholly hispanic, lower class white men who can indeed read quite well and know windows, will be trying to get jobs in offices, putting them in DIRECT competition with white females.
White women will hate them like never before.
Hey, wait a minute. This new information conflicts with the worldview I've constructed from movies and TV shows. Therefore, I reject this new information. Besides, the clinching evidence against Gary Condit is that he just looks like the kind of guy who listens to opera. Nazi bastard!
Anon says:
More than 12 times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,689 victims) than were killed by male strangers (137 victims).
Perhaps women should learn to associate with a better class of males.
"slightly lower class white guys who approach them in bars and cause them discomfort."
This doesn't make sense. What exactly is the trauma of being not interested when hit on? How does this mold how a class of women start thinking?
Please write fewer comments testing. Please.
I knew I had a good story on my hands. But I had no idea that once I published it, other reporters following the Levy investigation would question my motives, or accuse me of being a pawn of Gary Condit.
THE "JOURNALISM" PROFESSION ATTRACTS MANY OF THE WORST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.
It's tempting to think that only the modern journalism industry is full of power trippers, group think cowards, bureacracy tyrants, pathological character assassins, hardcore Marxist subversives, and hypocrite elitists, but no, it's always been that way.
In many ways journalism = the gutter.
THE FINANCE JOURNALISM INDUSTRY IN AMERICA COVERED UP FOR MADOFF FOR MORE THAN A DECADE.
As Steve's buddy Karl Denninger alludes, yes, the Wall Street press had plenty of opportunity to blow the whistle on Madoff but they did not do it.
13 Years?!
In every corrupt society there is a corrupt media industry...and rule #1 of that industry is to understand that there are many, many stories that "simply cannot be reported".
As for Gary Condit, he was most likely pilloried because he is a white, Christian, European male. Don't forget that he is the son of a Baptist minister.
Actually, I think the reason Condit was "pilloried" has more to do with what can only be described as certain unsavory facts about him in relation to this case:
When the affair began, Condit was 53 and Levy was 23...Condit's reputation suffered not just from the contrast between his "pro-family" politics versus his adultery with a woman two years younger than his daughter and his attempts to mislead the police...
Again I think hyperbole is best avoided, especially where Occam's Razor seems to be in play.
Hah! It's like a reverse Law and Order episode: the innocent-but-suspicious suspect was a rich white guy.
One of the factors many officers miss, is that if you start looking at one suspect, you quit looking at the others.
Condit probably obstructed the investigation or at least slowed it because of his bizarre life. I have had more that one investigation go wonky when you're looking for one thing then find that the victim's husband was into three-way honey covered dog and pony bondage or something equally weird.
Somebody always wants to focus on the odd-ball and you might find they committed other crimes but the weird thing is that they seem 'dirty' because they are, just not for what you are looking at them for.
It's worth remembering that in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping a few years back, everyone just knew that it was a guy named Richard Ricci. Ricci had a record of quasi-violent crime; he had worked for the Smart family; and he had a jeep in service he had taken out of the shop and put several hundred unexplained miles on, returning it coated with dust and mud a few days after the disappearance.
And yet it was not Ricci, but a more unlikely culprit (though perhaps not in Utah) - a religious freak who wanted to take the 14 year old girl as his plural wife.
Occam's Razor is a useful rule. Never disgard the most obvious answer; but never assume, either, that it automatically removes the less obvious possibilities from contention.
how did this Salvodorean wind up with a given name like Ingmar?
I know exactly one person from El Salvador and her name is Ingrid. How weird is that?
I wonder if it's due to parents trying to give their kids a leg up in society.
I'll admit the Chandra Levy details have gotten blurry for me, but I wonder if the Salvadoran guy really makes sense...
Didn't Chandra Levy *disappear*, not just turn up dead on a jogger's trail? If that laborer just attacked and killed her as a random crime, why would he take all the time and effort and risk to bury or hide her body or whatever? After all, he had no connection to her.
How many mugger-killers in America bother to hide the bodies of their victims?
By contrast, it makes much more sense for her Congressman-boyfriend to just want her to "disappear" rather than turn up dead with a bullet-hole or something.
Even incompetent detectives might have reasoned in the same way
I feel bad for his parents. They must have had enough hope in him to give him a name like Ingmar. And there he goes.
In support of the Anon who noted that intimate murder rarely happens among high IQ Whites, inductivist.blogspot.com has a post up with GSS data, on just that subject: hitting a woman -- you can see big racial differences among same social mileu setting (College Kids).
If you mean the Inductivist's latest post, the question asked of college students was whether they had hit another person within the past year, not whether male students had hit women.
Peter
1/ I'm surprised no one here is checking on Condit's voting record when it comes to illigal immigration.
If Condit was weak on illegal immigration doesn't what happened to him (he was never arrested for the crime he didn't commit) a (weird) form of payback?
2/ Its basic human nature (unfortunately) that when a person is murdered for people to want to have a more interesting solution than simply a mugging.
That's what made most Agatha Christie and others (but maybe not Chandler) rich.
Now, that only makes sense once you realize who the enemies of the White Yuppie class are, particularly White yuppie women. Their enemies are the middle/lower class men who they find in competition for jobs with, and slightly lower class white guys who approach them in bars and cause them discomfort.
Women don't generally mind being approached by working class men unless they're particularly class-conscious. What women hate is being approached by men they consider beneath themselves for other reasons not necessarily connected with socioeconomic class: overweight men, physically unattractive men, and nerds (this last one is self-limiting because deeply nerdy men usually can't approach women at all).
Give the typical highly educated affluent white woman a choice between (a) a fit, masculine-looking, sports-loving man with wide array of friends, but who struggled through a mediocre college and now has a mediocre job, and (b) an overweight, introverted, Star Trek nerd with poor social skills, but who has a Cal Tech or MIT degree and earns $250K a year in IT, and 99% of them will choose (a).
Peter
When the affair began, Condit was 53 and Levy was 23...Condit's reputation suffered not just from the contrast between his "pro-family" politics versus his adultery with a woman two years younger than his daughter and his attempts to mislead the police...
Do I detect a hint of jealousy?
Good for him, I say.
Eight years later, what [tangible, physical] evidence will they be able to produce in court?
Presumably any bloody clothing or bloody shoes Guandique was wearing have long since disappeared to the bottom of a landfill somewhere.
And who will have any memory of Guandique's whereabouts on the May 1, 2001: If Guandique were innocent, he certainly wouldn't remember, nor [in either case - true guilt or true innocence] would any of his contemporaries [who might be called as either defense or prosecution witnesses].
Unless the police get extraordinarily lucky, like one-in-a-million struck-by-lightning lucky [maybe they ran DNA tests on his clothing from the other two cases, and got a Chandra Levy hit?!?], then I just don't see how they could produce anything now [eight years later] other than the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.
Even then, it would barely qualify as "evidence" per se: Guandique was a bad dude, Guandique had a habit of attacking chicks in the vicinity of Rock Creek Park, Guandique's former landlady recalls that he displayed signs of having been in a fight in that general timeframe.
Sorry, but eight years later, that just doesn't sound like "beyond a reasonable doubt" to me [even under normal circumstances] - and with the DC demographics which feed into the potential jury pool, the prosecutor could have a really tough sell to make in this case.
Awesome thread. The only issue on it that I feel needs to be more seriously resolved is the actual stats regarding murdered white women and who killed them. Of course there are all sorts of other variables to take into account but I think that it would still be highly instructive to know the answer to this simple question:
Among murdered white women who were not known to be hanging around with violent guys or NAMs, what percentage turned out to have been killed by:
1) People they knew
2) People who know (of) them
3) Strangers
Anybody have any data that can shed light on this?
On the subject of Law and Order, I would assume that there would have to be a site out there that professionally fisks the show in terms of its portrayal of the police and legal systems. Does anyone know of one? I mean, what ARE the actual laws regarding when arrests can be made, what evidence is acceptable and all that jazz. It would be pretty neat to be actually look up a cop and/or lawyer's take on any particular show in the series to see what was accurately portrayed and what wasn't, does anyone know of such a site?
They're saying they're about to arrest Chandra's murderer, but they're NOT saying it's NOT the Gary Condits. Go to http://picasaweb.google.com/RickAHyatt/GaryConditSLongListOfVictimsAndIVeKnownManyOfThem# to see why I am able to say that. He just is trying to make out that he's been successful, once again, in doing what he always does, that is to say, utilize government data bases (His high-level police and political connections and protection) to find the perfect patsy to frame for the event, in advance, like the Salvadoran guy.
"How many mugger-killers in America bother to hide the bodies of their victims?"
If a mugging was the only point you could be right - take the swag and run, but the condition of Levy's body, such as position of clothes, etc indicates that rape, not mugging, may have been the motive. I'd guess that a rapist might want to be off the jogging trail to complete the act without another walker/jogger showing up. BTW I think that Levy's Walkman was found with the body, which sort of makes Guandique's statement that he was attaching women for their Walkmans kind of fishy. Those other 2 were just lucky.
Generally speaking, if you are jogging alone in somewhat isolated areas, best be aware of your surroundings, that is, don't wear a Walkman.
How much does the incompetence of the DC police have to do with this sick farce?? Under the beloved crack-smoking Marion Barry the DC Metro Police were turned into a haven for affirmative action droolers,gangbangers,relatives,girlfriends and assorted nincompoops. It was truly a disaster. In the late 90's our own(Chicago) Terry Gainer assumed the 2nd in command,in 2002 he became the chief. In the spring of 2001 I wonder how much progress had been made in turning the DC police into something more than a 3rd world force. I am sure many white detectives had been purged,destroying a huge amount of experienece and knowledge. A similar thing happened here in Chi when Daleys boy Jody Weis took over;he ditched some old(white)hands who were extremely knowledgeable re gangs,and the results are in the paper almost every day.
If you link to the original story there is a picture of his family's home in El Salvador which looks how you'd imagine it would look. The secondary theme of the article, that of an illegal immigrants journey, seems to be very telling about the general profile of illegal immigrants to the U.S.
Of course the national CBS and ABC news broadcasts did not mention the fact that he was here illegaly (not sure about ABC). It's interesting that the short dark haired Levy differs physically from his previous known victims which were all tall and blond.
Interesting that some folks would mention garbage TV like Law and Order.
I remember an episode of C SI Miami from a few years ago.
Seems a working class Russian immigrant had been murdered. After some sleuthing the victim's brother was brought in for interrogation. Instead of interrogating him in English, and then bringing in an interpreter if necessary, the Hispanic detective proceeded to interview the suspect in fluent Russian!
It was amazing. The odds of this happening in real life were less than finding a virgin in a whorehouse. Which is to say, non-existent. But it didn't stop the producers from putting it in the show.
To this day I watch all network TV with a jaundiced eye.
Speaking of strong women who can make their way in the world, I wonder how the fact that it is mostly men who are being laid off is going to play in the 2010 elections.
an overweight, introverted, Star Trek nerd with poor social skills, but who has a Cal Tech or MIT degree and earns $250K a year in IT,
Not too many people earn $250K in IT. Them be senior VP type salaries.
Re: Low-risk women being murdered by people they know. It is certainly true that most policemen will take a hard look at the woman's significant other or husband. Usually they figure out rather quickly whether that direction will prove fruitful or not. This is a form of profiling and about the only one not currently being condemned. Profiling is simply looking at the most likely suspects, but you'd never guess that hearing the rant from the ethnic lobbies.
Cho, who murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech in April, 2007, before killing himself, was a beneficiary of this profiling. His first kill was a female student who had just been dropped off at her dorm Monday morning by her boyfriend who attended Radford U about 20 miles away. His second was a male student who had come to her defense.
The police naturally assumed that the killer had been her boyfriend and that a triangle was involved. Some of the police force was occupied at the murder site, others tracking down the boyfriend. Meanwile Cho mailed his "media packet" at a nearby post office and went on to Norris Hall some distance away to kill 30 more and then himself.
I will always believe that Cho shot the first student as a diversion to keep the campus police occupied while he got famous. He appears to have been hanging around outside the dorm (security camera), followed her in, and shot her right after she arrived. It's hard to say who knew whom on a college campus, but there was no obvious link between them. The second student had the bad luck to try to help her and would have been the only witness had he lived. Apparently no one else saw Cho committing the crime; and, once he put the gun away, he looked like a student in a town full of students.
D Flinchum
PS No, I'm not related to the VT police chief who had the bad luck to have to handle this.
What's most surprising to me is the type of woman that was targeted (tall, blond, athletic). Most Salvadoran men are tiny - around 5'6 at most. Seems like these women should have been able to get the better of him. Maybe they did.
The other two women that Guandique attacked were tall and athletic. They were able to fight him off. Chandra Levy was small and petite.
Most Salvadoran men are tiny - around 5'6 at most. Seems like these women should have been able to get the better of him. Maybe they did.
Oh, I don't think height matters all that much. A lot of the same men probably have much denser muscles than women, and could best most women in this sort of dirty fighting.
A former girlfriend of mine was 6'1" and used to work at a steakhouse in DC. The male staff were mostly Salvadoran men who didn't find her height intimidating, and didn't seem to think gringo rules about personal space applied to them. They were intimidated by her punching them in the face ... which she only did when they would put their hands on her.
The point is, they weren't psychos who were out to kill anyone. They were just from a (sub)culture where if a woman lets you molest her, she is "yours". So the incentive for sexual harassment is high.
I'll let the progressives untangle that one....
"As for Gary Condit, he was most likely pilloried because he is a white, Christian, European male. Don't forget that he is the son of a Baptist minister."
Right, and Chandra was young, beautiful and Jewish.
In defense of the DC police, before the body was discovered and Levy was just a missing person, it made a lot more sense to zero in on Condit.
For one thing, when they asked him about the affair he lied. Cops tend to think you're whole story is bogus if they catch you lying about one thing.
For another, the connection between Guandique and the crime didn't exist until the body was discovered. I remember reading articles at the time about how the cops were thinking Condit probably didn't do it within a week or two of the body's discovery.
Now, how they could have enough to charge Guandique now when they didn't a few weeks after the body turned up is something I'm kind of curious about.
Eric, your argument makes a lot of sense. My guess is that people are on a hair-trigger about this because of the Duke LaCrosse hoax, Jena, etc. Nothing wrong with being vigilant - each of us is worried he's going to be the next one to get Nifonged.
A better reply would probably be: be as scrupulous about every aspect of your life as you can. Don't commit adultery with the Chandra Levys in your life. Be a complete gentleman. It reduces your odds of being next. It's not perfect, but it's better than drowning in paranoia.
"A better reply would probably be: be as scrupulous about every aspect of your life as you can. Don't commit adultery with the Chandra Levys in your life. Be a complete gentleman."
Thank you Thomas Paine.
This is a form of profiling and about the only one not currently being condemned.
What is that, a joke? Profiling of males is standard practice everywhere, and not a peep about it. Nor should there be.
What's most surprising to me is the type of woman that was targeted (tall, blond, athletic). Most Salvadoran men are tiny - around 5'6 at most. Seems like these women should have been able to get the better of him. Maybe they did.
I'd bet on the average 5'6" Salvadoran male against the average 5'10" European female every time, sight unseen.
A 4" height advantage doesn't do much when most of your weight is in your hips and you have a woman's muscle development and hormones.
Here are Bureau of Justice racial stats on homicide. Addresses victims who knew perps etc (toward bottom).
"Black" here could stand roughly for "NAM", probably similar numbers.
Hey Steve, it's now about four years later [early 2013], and it's looking like the prosecution's case is crumbling:
Father of Chandra Levy concerned about latest development in case
By Cristina Corbin
Published January 24, 2013
foxnews.com
Prosecutors and defense attorneys from the Chandra Levy murder case are meeting secretly to discuss the testimony of a witness, according to Levy's father, who said he hopes the conviction of his daughter's killer is not in jeopardy.
The U.S. attorney's office in Washington has not commented on the post-trial proceedings, but lawyers on both sides have reportedly met twice since December. Robert Levy told FoxNews.com he had been told the talks involve the testimony of a witness, but did not know the specific subject matter.
"It's all secret," Levy said of the meetings in Washington between federal prosecutors and lawyers for Ingmar Guandique, who is serving a 60-year sentence for Chandra Levy's murder. "No one is allowed in there. It's about some witness"...
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