Police Scour Park for Clues in Chandra Levy’s Death

WASHINGTON -- Awaiting word from medical examiners on the cause and timing of Chandra Levy’s death, police continued hunting for more evidence Friday as they reconstructed the possible crime scene.

Conceding that sweeps last year had skipped the wooded slope where a man walking his dog discovered Levy’s remains Wednesday, investigators now are relying on forensic anthropologists and a computer positioning device for a more thorough canvassing for clues.

“If the body was there during the search [last year], it’s obvious we missed it,” said District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey.

The “total station” computer grid normally is used to measure skid marks in traffic accidents. But investigators were plotting evidence found along the steep hillside in Rock Creek Park in hopes of learning whether Levy died at the scene or whether her body was discarded there after she was killed elsewhere.

Medical examiners said they likely would not make a determination on the cause of death until next week. They were conducting a pathological examination on a cracked portion of Levy’s cranium, still uncertain what caused the fissure. But reports mounted Friday suggesting that police had already made up their minds.

Medical examiners need to “do further tests on the remains that they have,” said Deputy Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer. Asked if investigators were leaning toward ruling Levy’s death a homicide, Gainer said: “Given the circumstances, it seems like that.”

Ramsey and other senior Metro police officials declined to comment on unconfirmed reports that detectives had found some of Levy’s clothes knotted together, suggesting she may have been restrained before she died.

“I’m not talking about the specifics of a crime scene,” Ramsey said. “And because I can’t comment on it, it gives it some validity.”

At one point Friday, one of the lead homicide detectives in the Levy case and other investigators were seen crossing their wrists as they talked over their findings near the grassy site.

Officials did say that it would have been difficult for someone to have dumped Levy’s body so deep in the woods. Her remains were recovered just off a rugged hiking trail thick with trees and rocks, more than 100 feet away from the nearest road, across a rock-clogged creek and up a steep incline.

“There’s no way you are driving a car right up to where that body was found,” Ramsey said. But investigators also reportedly are mulling the possibility that Levy’s body could have been dumped from the top of the hill.

Meanwhile, Washington lawyer William R. “Billy” Martin, who has led a private investigation for Levy’s parents in Modesto, said he already has concluded that the 24-year-old former intern was killed.

Police, Martin said, “will upgrade this death investigation to a homicide investigation. Chandra Levy did not walk over to that park, fall down that hill and die.”

In Modesto--where Robert Levy and his wife, Susan, have not emerged from their house in two days--family friends said they were making preparations for a town memorial service Tuesday in a civic hall.