Chandra Is Found

By Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham & Sylvia Moreno

Washington Post Staff Writers

Shortly before 9:30 a.m. on May 22, 2002, Philip Douglas Palmer, a 42-year-old furniture maker, walked his dog down a ravine off the Western Ridge Trail in Rock Creek Park. Palmer had been hiking trails in the park for 30 years, and he was looking for items to add to his offbeat collection of deer antlers and animal bones.

The ravine was shaded by poplars and oaks, the forest floor covered with thorny vines, patches of poison ivy and mountain laurel. Palmer spotted a red piece of clothing and noticed a shallow depression in the ground. Beneath the brush, he saw a bleached-out object that he thought was a turtle shell. He swept away some leaves, uncovering a human skull. Palmer marked the spot by hanging a blue leash and a sweat shirt on nearby branches and left to call 911.

Ten minutes later, U.S. Park Police Sgt. Dennis Bosak arrived. He took one look and thought: Ingmar Guandique has been here. The crime scene -- tucked away between the Western Ridge Trail and Broad Branch Road -- was eerily similar to the site along Beach Drive where Christy Wiegand was attacked a year earlier. Guandique, a Salvadoran immigrant, had been convicted of attacking Wiegand and another woman in the park.

The new scene was near an area of the park called Grove 17, where police had searched nearly a year earlier for Chandra's body. Bosak saw a red Aero sports bra, a pair of Victoria's Secret panties and a pair of Pro Spirit black stretch pants, turned inside out. Oddly, each leg was knotted.

Bosak spotted a dirty gray T-shirt, size small, also turned inside out; printed on it in red letters was "Property of USC Athletics." Also at the scene was an Aiwa AM/FM cassette player, model TX-377; a white Reebok jogging shoe trimmed in blue; and bone fragments scattered about. Most of it was strewn down the side of the ravine in a 10-yard radius from the base of a tree.

Lawrence Kennedy, one of the D.C. detectives assigned to the Chandra Levy case, arrived a short time later and interviewed Bosak. "Does this scene remind you of any other crime scene that you have been on?" Kennedy asked.

"Yes," Bosak replied. "The attempted sexual assault case involving Guandique."

"What about this site is reminiscent?" Kennedy asked.