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now, it's all getting a bit thick, isn't it? With its elements of
illicit sex, proximity to political power, and accusations of police
bungling, the Chandra Levy case is morphing into some hideous amalgam
of the O. J. Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey, and Clinton-Lewinsky circuses,
which in each case saw justice smothered in its cradle and, on a
personal note, caused the Dunphy blood pressure to rise to gravely
high levels. (When ordering breakfast, I still ask for "orange juice"
rather than use the vile initials.) We should all pray that Chandra
Levy, tanned and rested and just off a plane from the Seychelles,
pulls up in a cab at her parents' home one morning and asks what
all those reporters are doing out front.
But I don't think it will happen.
Unfortunately, many of the dramatis personae from those previous
carnivals are back and in full voice. Here's Robert Shapiro, there's
F. Lee Bailey, and everywhere else we see "former federal prosecutors"
and "retired police detectives" popping up like so many mushrooms
after a storm. I suppose I must have been imagining it, but is it
possible that Cynthia Alksne was on the Fox News Channel and MSNBC
at the same time the other night?
The libel laws prevent me from bluntly saying what I think has become
of Chandra Levy. But I can say, looking through lenses sharpened
by 20 years as a cop, that when all the clues start pointing in
one direction it's usually a good idea to start heading that way.
It might make for a dull movie, but in the real world the most obvious
suspect usually turns out to be dirty. Yes, the police have repeatedly
said Gary Condit is not a suspect. Well, okay, sure he isn't. Indeed,
there isn't yet a verified crime for him or anyone else to be a
suspect in. But, despite the criticism heaped on them from some
quarters, the detectives on this case are nobody's fools. They smell
a rat, and I hope that in time they'll have him by the tail.
The cops got off to a rough start on this one. But, unlike the Boulder,
Colorado police who botched the crime scene in the JonBenet Ramsey
investigation, the D.C. cops had no crime scene at all to work with.
They had a case of a missing woman, with no evidence of foul play
at the outset. At present there are 141 open missing-persons investigations
in the District, and hundreds more are opened and closed over the
course of a year. Most of the time people turn up. And when they
don't, well, you have to start digging into their lives. You talk
to their family and friends, their coworkers, the folks down at
the dry cleaners and the corner store. And, yes, you talk to any
congressmen with whom they might be having affairs. If any of these
people gives you the runaround, you have to give him a real hard
look. And if further he hires some hot-shot defense attorney and
a p.r. flack, and then he asks his other girlfriend to sign
an affidavit swearing she was not his girlfriend, the prudent
detective has to sit down and ask, What's up with this guy?
Clearly, the D.C. police are engaged in game of strategy with Condit
and his attorney, Abbe Lowell. The latest gambit came on Friday,
when Mr. Lowell indignantly announced at a press conference that
Condit had passed a polygraph test administered by a former FBI
agent. Lowell released few details of the examination, but said
Condit "was not deceptive in any way" in denying involvement in
Levy's disappearance. That's mildly interesting, said the cops,
but we'd like to put him on the box ourselves.
The man who examined Condit, Barry Colvert, enjoys a sterling reputation
as an expert in the field. But he who pays the piper calls the tune,
and in this case it was the Condit team who arranged for the test.
For such a test to be probative, the subject must know he is in
jeopardy if he answers a question falsely. Condit surely knew that
even if things went badly in this test the results could be buried
behind the shield of attorney-client privilege. A thorough polygraph
examination involves much more than simply asking, "Did you do it?"
A police polygraph examiner is usually armed with "polygraph keys"
— facts of the case known only to investigators. He takes the
time to zero in on the important details after developing a baseline
through innocuous questioning. I'd be curious about any medications
Condit may have been taking the day he was examined. If he had taken
enough Valium, for example, or whatever it is that keeps that insipid
grin on his puss, he might not have budged the needles even if he
were being mauled by a puma. And is it unreasonable to presume that
Mr. Condit, a congressman since 1989 and in politics since 1972,
is well practiced at keeping a straight face while telling a whopper?
He certainly seems to have fooled his wife on a few things.
One thing distinguishing the Levy case from the JonBenet Ramsey
investigation is the experience of the respective detectives. Homicides
are rare in Boulder, which is all well and good for everyone but
those few unfortunates who happen to get killed there. Much of detective
work involves instincts, which are developed only over the course
of many investigations. In Washington, some mornings you might have
to walk around four or five homicide scenes just getting from the
Metro station to the office, so the cops there gain experience at
a pretty fair clip.
Oddly, it was a lack of experience that derailed a high-profile
murder investigation at Gallaudet University last year. Eric Plunkett,
a 19-year-old student at the Northeast Washington school for the
deaf and hard of hearing, was found beaten to death in his dorm
room last September. Fellow student Thomas Minch was soon arrested
by D.C. police but released the next day when prosecutors found
the evidence against him insufficient. When a second Gallaudet student,
Eric Varner, was murdered in February of this year, a different
team of detectives arrested Joseph Mesa Jr., also a Gallaudet student,
who confessed to both killings. It was shown that the detective
assigned to the Plunkett murder failed to notice some important
clues at the crime scene, such as the victim's missing wallet, and
instead focused on Minch, who had admitted hitting Plunkett during
an argument.
But that sort of thing won't happen this time. My impression from
way out here in Los Angeles is that the D.C. cops will see justice
done. But in case they don't, maybe O. J. Simpson can lend a hand
after he finds the guy who killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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