Defendant Offers First Apology in Park Death Case

Robert Chambers, apologizing for the first time to the family of Jennifer Levin, was sentenced Friday to 5 to 15 years in prison for strangling the 18-year-old in Central Park.

The sentence was agreed to when Chambers pleaded guilty three weeks earlier to first-degree manslaughter, bringing an abrupt end to the celebrated “preppie murder” trial in the ninth day of jury deliberations.

“The Levin family has gone through hell because of my actions,” Chambers said in his first public apology for killing Levin. “Whoever said time heals all wounds is all wrong.”

Chambers, 21, stood silently while state Supreme Court Justice Howard E. Bell handed down the sentence in a crowded Manhattan courtroom. As he did while pleading guilty, the defendant shook his head “no” several times during the session, including once when Bell repeated his guilty plea to manslaughter.

“Jennifer’s looking down, looking and wondering why this all happened. I don’t know,” Chambers said later during his brief statement. “I never wanted any of this to happen. I wish to apologize to her family and all her friends.”

Agrees to Plea

Chambers, a former altar boy who attended exclusive prep schools before dropping out of college, agreed to the first-degree manslaughter plea in a deal with the district attorney as the jury deliberated second-degree murder charges against him, abandoning his story of an accidental death during “rough sex” in the park.

By pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter, Chambers admitted that he intended to hurt Levin during an encounter in Central Park on Aug. 26, 1986, and ended up strangling her.

Levin’s bruised and nearly naked body was found beneath a tree behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The couple had run into each other earlier at a popular Upper East Side bar.