Of Liars and Lie Detectors
The cops smell a rat, but can they grab him by the tail?

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
July 16, 2001 12:50 p.m.

ell 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 .)