DEL.ICIO.USATLANTA
Bauder students took on Chandra Levy case
Criminal justice students at Atlanta college researched murder case, worked with mother
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, March 02, 2009
They aren’t your typical college students — a waitress, a single mom of teenage twins, an entrepreneur — but they had a hand in unraveling the 8-year-old murder case of Chandra Levy.
Levy was the Washington, D.C., intern whose death captured national attention and mystified police.
Joey Ivansco/jivansco@ajc.com
Members of Bauder College’s Cold Case Investigative Research Institute (a voluntary club formed by criminal justice students), Michelet Alexandre (CQ)(orange shirt), talks with Kirsten Andrews (CQ)(glasses), as Tammy Williams (CQ)(above), Alesha Brown (CQ), Lynette Brown (CQ)(far right), discuss the Chandra Levy murder case using a timeline that they built. The club has spent the last year conducting their own investigation of the infamous murder case. Levy’s mother credits their investigation- along with that of the Washington Post - with keeping D.C. police investigation alive long enough to narrow in on a suspect.
MBR
Chandra Ann Levy, a 24-year-old graduate student from University of Southern California, seen in this undated file photo released by the family, has been missing since April 30, 2001, after completing a federal internship. Media reports Saturday Feb. 21, 2009 in Washington and California say that an arrest may be close in the slaying of the former federal intern whose disappearance ended Gary Condit’s congressional career. The warrant is expected to be for a prison inmate convicted of attacking two female joggers in the same Washington park where Levy’s remains were found. (AP Photo/The Modesto Bee)
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Criminal justice students from Atlanta’s Bauder College examined the details of Levy’s death over the past year. Their research was volunteer work, done outside class and in the midst of hectic lives.
As police named a possible suspect last weekend, Levy’s mother, Susan Levy, credited the nearly 100 students — members of a club known as the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute — and The Washington Post with resuscitating a case that all but died amid police mistakes and the 9/11 terror attacks.
“The Post did an investigative series, and at the same time, Bauder … with their talent were doing their own research,” said Levy, who visited the students in January 2008. “Anytime you have anybody doing extra work, it brings extra attention.”
Bauder began the Cold Case Institute in 2004 to train tomorrow’s police officers, investigators, victim advocates and corrections officers.
Each year, the students explore high-profile unsolved cases for no course credit, putting in long hours despite their own full-time jobs or family obligations. Often, they are motivated by their own experiences with crime.
The lesson begins
Chandra Levy’s mysterious death was a perfect case study for the Bauder students for one of the very reasons it was so difficult for investigators: Her body wasn’t found for more than a year after her disappearance.
“Every time we pick a new case, we pick an area they have not previously studied,” said Institute director Sheryl McCollum. “Was she shot? Was she stabbed?”
Those were lessons they learned by working the Atlanta child murders and rapper Tupac Shakur’s death. The Levy case presented new opportunities:
Why did it take investigators so long to find her body? What could her remains alone reveal? The students would use forensic anthropology to rebuild the case.
Levy disappeared from her apartment in May 2001. Months were spent chasing a failed theory — that an apparent affair between Levy and California Rep. Gary Condit had led to her disappearance. Then police found her remains in Rock Creek Park.
Some Bauder students were dubious about undertaking the case. They were won over when McCollum flew in Levy’s mother to speak to them.
“It turned more personal for us, because you saw the pain in her face,” said Naomi Barkley, a 49-year-old student. “I put myself in her position … How would I have felt if that were my daughter? Was she hollering for me, and I wasn’t there to help? “
The connection Barkley, who has twin 16-year-olds, made to Susan Levy drove her to put in “another 20, 40 or 100 percent” for the Institute on top of her devotion to school, family and her job as a communications technician for the Atlanta police. “Sometimes, I’d go two or three days without sleeping.”
Studying the clues
The students began analyzing data from public records and the Levy family. They did not have access to police files.
They built a time line. They constructed a victim profile. They studied possible suspects.
“One of the first things that stood out in the time line was a police report of a scream heard from her apartment,” said Danielle Zaya, pointing to an early theory the students explored. “It was the night before she was considered missing.”
Police responded to the 2 a.m. call from Levy’s neighbor, “but nothing happened,” Zaya said.
Resources were short for working the case. The school footed the bill to bring Susan Levy to campus. It also paid for a skeleton the students used to replicate Levy’s body.
“But we couldn’t get to D.C.,” Nathaniel Wilson said. “We needed to see the crime scene.”
So McCollum called on a local landowner for help.
“Mac [McCollum] re-created the scene for us,” Zaya said. “She found a site that was just like where they found Chandra.”
McCollum also asked criminal justice experts to share their knowledge. Former DeKalb County Police Chief Ed Moody spoke to the class. A park ranger from Washington told them how animals can affect a crime scene.
A session with Atlanta police detective Vince Velasquez was a turning point for Kawanda Taylor, who aspires to be an undercover cop. “He said, ‘Murder is not always complicated,’ ” Taylor recalled, after students had debated a number of more elaborate murder scenarios.
The detective’s words validated a theory she’d harbored since early in the exercise.
She can’t discuss it in detail because of a confidentiality agreement the students made with Susan Levy. But the idea would become the consensus of the group.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you all along,” she remembered telling her fellow students.
Taylor’s cool demeanor — the 105-pounder wears shades at night and rarely shows excitement — belies personal turmoil that helped focus her resolve during the case.
In 2006, Taylor’s cousin was murdered. “It made me more eager to want to find out what happened here,” Taylor said of Levy’s death.
Break in the case
The group sent their findings to a Washington cold-case detective. The intent, McCollum said, was to offer recommendations, not claim credit for working the case.
When Susan Levy announced last weekend that charges are imminent against Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique, students stopped short of saying they knew it.
“It made total sense to me,” student Janelle Boyer said of the man already in jail for assaulting two women in Rock Creek Park.
Ralph Daugherty, author of “Murder On a Horse Trail: The Disappearance of Chandra Levy,” believes the students’ findings were on point. “They made progress that wouldn’t have been expected eight years later.”
Barkley, the student who all those months ago found a strong connection to Levy’s mother, woke her teenagers the morning the news broke, with screams of excitement.
Barkley had fought tough odds to stay involved with the investigation. Last June, a car accident left her in a coma for three weeks.
“When I woke up, the first thing I thought about was the case,” she said. “I didn’t want to let Mac [McCollum] down. She saw potential in me when nobody else did.”
Looking ahead
This year, students are tackling an even older cold case: the 1946 lynching at Moore’s Ford Bridge near Monroe, Ga. And once again, some have already found a personal connection.
Student Janelle Boyer said her grandparents knew the four victims killed by the mob in the state’s last known mass lynching. “It would mean so much for me to be able to give them some closure,” she said.
The 2008 class set the bar high for this group of student investigators. But Jennifer Scandrick, a 31-year-old freshman, is ready.
“When I see the passion that they put into the Levy case,” she said, “it lets me know that this is where I’m supposed to be.”
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