A case that riveted the nation and ended the career of a congressman more than a decade ago is back in the headlines. Later this year, the man who was convicted of murdering government intern Chandra Levy was slated to get a new trial amid reports that the star witness in his original trial lied on the stand. However, on Thursday, federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia abruptly announced that they had dropped all charges against the suspected killer, based on “unforeseen developments” that made them conclude they couldn’t go forward with the retrial.
Well, now we know what those developments were. The Washington Post reports that the man responsible for sending Levy’s suspected killer to jail was caught on tape admitting that he had lied under oath.
For those who don’t remember, Levy, an intern at the Bureau of Prisons, disappeared in May 2001. It subsequently emerged that Gary Condit, the congressman from Levy’s hometown of Modesto, had been having an affair with her. The story dominated the national news for much of the spring and summer of 2001 until the September 11 attacks. Levy’s remains weren’t discovered until May 2002, in Washington’s Rock Creek Park.
Although police initially suspected Condit was involved, they later cleared him. However, the perception that Condit knew more than he was letting on, as well as the fact he was having an affair with a woman 30 years his junior and two years younger than his daughter destroyed him politically. He was defeated in the 2002 Democratic primary.
By then, prosecutors and police had turned their focus to Ingmar Guandique, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who had admitted to attacking two other women in Rock Creek Park. However, the investigation fumbled and stumbled along until 2009. That year, Guandique, who was serving 10 years in prison for the admitted attacks, was charged with Levy’s murder. He was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 60 years in prison–effectively a life sentence.
Despite the lack of forensic evidence, a murder weapon, or eyewitnesses, the jury was apparently swayed by the testimony of Armando Morales, a former cellmate of Guandique’s at the federal maximum-security prison in Inez, Kentucky. The two bonded early on due to their shared gang ties. Guandique is a member of the MS-13 gang, and Morales was a member of a Fresno gang with ties to MS-13.
Morales claimed that Guandique had told him in 2006 that he’d collared Levy and dragged her from the trail to the bushes, intending to rob her. However, when she stopped struggling, he believed she was unconscious and took her fanny pack. According to Morales, Guandique confided in him because he feared that when he was transferred to Vacaville, California; inmates would brand him a rapist for his admitted attacks on women. He supposedly believed that he’d have an easier time of it in prison if he were seen as a murderer rather than a rapist.
However, the defense maintained almost from the start that Morales was lying. They’d discovered that Morales had been a jailhouse informant with a reputation for being untrustworthy–information that prosecutors hadn’t disclosed to them. They believed that Morales lied about Guandique’s “confession” to rehabilitate himself.
To their credit, in May 2015, prosecutors dropped their objections to a new trial. This raised the prospect that Guandique would be back on the streets at the end of his sentence. But according to The Post, the case collapsed altogether when a D.C.-area actress, Babs Proller, revealed that Morales had admitted to her that he’d made the whole thing up. The Post’s Keith Alexander appeared on Friday night’s “Inside Edition” to discuss the case. Watch here.
Proller, who briefly appeared on Netflix’ “House of Cards,” befriended Morales in early July when they were living in neighboring rooms at a Maryland hotel. When Morales threatened to beat up her ex-husband, Proller feared she might be implicated. To protect herself, she secretly recorded several hours of conversations. On one tape, Morales admitted that he’d lied about his conversations with Guandique in hopes of improving his own life in prison.
Horrified, Proller said she contacted Levy’s mother, Susan, who put her in touch with prosecutors. Technically, recording someone without the other person’s consent isn’t permitted in Maryland. While the U. S. Attorney’s office in the District hasn’t commented, it appears that they had the integrity to realize that the prospect of someone being jailed on the basis of perjured testimony is unacceptable–regardless of how it comes to light.
Guandique won’t be going free. He will be turned over to immigration authorities for all-but-certain deportation to El Salvador. Hopefully the next step will be to make sure Morales is sent back to prison himself. After all, because of his lies, the Levys have been denied closure–and their daughter’s real killer may still be on the loose.
