Police Call Levy Case ‘Very Unusual’

Although there is still no evidence of a crime, the disappearance of Chandra Ann Levy is a “very, very unusual case,” Washington’s police chief said Saturday.

“You have to be concerned,” District of Columbia Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said. Ramsey made his comments at a candlelight vigil to honor the missing USC graduate student--a vigil organized by the brother of another woman who disappeared from the same neighborhood two years ago. Her body was found four months later.

Ramsey said four detectives were pursuing leads full-time from across the country in a desperate effort to find Levy. Police were poring over her cellular phone and bank records, trying to reconstruct her computer messages and following up on tips from places as far away as Florida and New York.

The chief said he spoke to Levy’s parents Saturday morning at their home in Modesto. The distraught couple traveled to Washington last week to plead for more help in finding their daughter.

“They’re nervous and scared and anxious, the same way I would be if it was my son who was missing,” Ramsey said.

Levy, 24, had just finished an internship at the Bureau of Prisons and was preparing to return to California when she vanished. She was last seen April 30 at a local sports club, where she canceled her membership. Her mother received an e-mail message from her May 1.

But when her parents did not hear from her again, they began to worry. Police found Levy’s packed bags, wallet, money and credit cards inside her apartment. Only her keys were missing.

There were no signs of a struggle.

“All her personal stuff we know of was there,” Ramsey said. “It just adds to the unusual nature of it.”

Ramsey said police were interviewing everyone they could find who knew the pretty, petite woman. He said police had spoken to Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres), who has described Levy as a “great friend,” early in the investigation.

“We spoke to him about the last time he spoke to her and the last time he saw her,” Ramsey said. “He came forward with that.”

The chief would not say what Condit told police. Ramsey said there were no suspects in the case because there was no evidence yet that a crime had occurred.

But he stressed that the circumstances were different from those of a person who simply “needed some space and had to get away for a while.”

In January 1999, Immigration and Naturalization Service lawyer Joyce Chiang, 28, vanished from the same Dupont Circle neighborhood where Levy was last seen. For four months, Chiang’s friends gathered in the park, holding candles and passing out fliers.

Then her body was discovered in the Anacostia River. The killer has not been found.

Her brother Roger, who lived with Joyce when she disappeared, set up Saturday’s vigil to honor Levy in the same park where the community gathered for his sister. “Every passing day gets harder and harder” for the family, he said.

Aides to California’s senators, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, read statements of support for Levy and her family. One of Levy’s former USC professors stood in the crowd.

John Chiang, Joyce’s brother and a member of the State Board of Equalization, said Levy’s friends have called him for advice.

“I think those who are in the predicament . . . share a special understanding and bond,” Chiang said from his home in Chatsworth. “I offered what emotional support and compassion and empathy I could. I certainly share the same sense of pain and frustration and agony.”