The case
Chandra Levy disappeared in Washington in May 2001. Here is the case as the book tells it, and what happened after the book came out.
§1 The disappearance
Chandra Levy, a young woman from California’s San Joaquin Valley, came to Washington in the fall of 2000 for an internship at the federal Bureau of Prisons. She was last seen on May 1, 2001; her parents alerted the D.C. police on May 6, 2001.
§2 The congressman
The search turned into a national story when Levy’s relationship with Representative Gary Condit of California became known. Police never named Condit a suspect, and he was never charged. On March 5, 2002, he lost the Democratic primary for his seat, and he left Congress on January 3, 2003. The book describes how the focus on Condit drew attention away from other leads.
§3 Rock Creek Park
On May 22, 2002, a man walking his dog found Levy’s remains in a remote part of Rock Creek Park, in an area that searchers had supposedly covered the year before. On May 28, 2002, the D.C. medical examiner ruled her death a homicide.
§4 The Post investigation
In 2007 the case was cold. Editors at The Washington Post asked Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz to revisit it. Their 13-part series, “Who Killed Chandra Levy?”, ran in the summer of 2008 and focused on Ingmar Guandique, a young man from El Salvador already in prison for two attacks on women in Rock Creek Park in 2001.
§5 The charge and the book
On March 3, 2009, a D.C. Superior Court judge issued an arrest warrant for Guandique; he was charged with Levy’s murder on April 22, 2009, and pleaded not guilty. Finding Chandra was published on May 11, 2010, while he was awaiting trial.
§6 Trial, new trial and dismissal
On November 22, 2010, a jury found Guandique guilty of first-degree murder, and on February 11, 2011, he was sentenced to 60 years. The defense later argued that a key prosecution witness had lied on the stand; in June 2015 a judge granted a new trial. On July 28, 2016, prosecutors said they could no longer prove the case and dropped the charges.
§7 Where the case stands
Guandique was deported to El Salvador on May 5, 2017. Chandra Levy’s murder remains officially unsolved.