Who Killed Chandra Levy? - Chapter Three: A Private Affair

By Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham and Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writers
July 15, 2008

At 9:55 p.m. on May 9, 2001, three days after learning that Chandra Levy was missing, D.C. Detective Ralph Durant and his sergeant went to Condit's Adams Morgan condominium.

The congressman told them he had no idea of Chandra's whereabouts. He said they met in fall 2000, when she came to his Capitol Hill office with a friend whom he hired as an intern. He said he and Chandra became friends, and he acknowledged that she had visited him at his apartment and had spent the night a couple of times.

"Did you have an intimate relationship with Ms. Levy?" the sergeant asked.

"I don't think we need to go there," Condit said, "and you can infer what you want with that."

He said he had not seen Chandra since the last week of April. She did not appear to be upset. She was uncertain about her immediate future, but she told him she planned to be an FBI or CIA agent one day. The last time he spoke to her, Condit said, she told him she was considering taking a train back to California.

Condit says now he did not believe he had anything to worry about. He thought that in four or five days Chandra would show up. "They'll find out what happened to Chandra and everything will be fine," he said. "They will find that I had nothing to do with this."

Condit then asked the detectives if he was a suspect. "And they just looked at each other and said 'No.' But it didn't feel right. The way they were going, it didn't feel right."

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In his three decades as an FBI agent, Jack Barrett thought he had seen it all: drug-trafficking cases in New Orleans, organized crime in Newark, police corruption cases in Washington. In May 2001, recently retired from the FBI, Barrett was starting a second career as the chief of D.C. detectives.

And now he had the case of a lifetime.

Over the next few weeks, Barrett and his detectives would hear several stories about Condit and other women, stories Condit would later dismiss as untrue. "They led the police on some wild goose chase," he said. "Did I know some of them? Yeah. But did I know them in the way that they described it? Not at all. It had nothing to do with Chandra Levy."

But the more the detectives heard, the more they focused on the congressman. Could his lifestyle have anything to do with Chandra's disappearance?

One woman who called was Joleen Argentini McKay, a junior aide for Condit during the mid-1990s. At 22, she was petite and pretty and crazy for the congressman. The affair was supposed to stay secret, she said, but people in Condit's Capitol Hill office knew. McKay told police she gave him a $1,500 brushed-steel Tag Heuer watch and a red Trek mountain bike. She said their relationship lasted about three years and Condit had been manipulative and controlling. She was concerned about Chandra.

Police would also talk to Anne Marie Smith. In July 2000, the attractive flight attendant said she first saw Condit sitting in a business-class seat on a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Dulles. Smith, 39, said he introduced himself simply as Gary, and offered her a piece of his power bar and his phone number.

Smith recounted their courtship to police.

She was smitten by Condit. He was low-key and handsome. After the flight touched down, she and another attendant looked him up on the manifest. Congressman Gary Condit, it said. Two days later, Smith and Condit met at a restaurant in Georgetown.

Over dinner, Smith was excited but cautious. She was wary when she found out that Condit was married.

She didn't date married men, she told him. Still, she found him enticing. She returned home and noted the day she met Condit in her diary. "July 10, 2000: Met a new friend. Spent 30 hour layover and time with friend."

She told police that they soon began to date, and Condit showered her with attention. He gave her a leather bracelet studded with sterling-silver hearts. For Christmas, she said, he gave her a gold bracelet. She gave him a good-luck bell for his Harley-Davidson and a Tim McGraw CD. She said that Condit told her the relationship could last forever - as long as she didn't tell anyone.

They met at hotels and inside his fourth-floor, turn-of-the-century condo at the top of Adams Morgan, an eclectic neighborhood of ethnic restaurants, offbeat shops and jam-packed nightclubs near the National Zoo and Rock Creek Park. It was not a typical neighborhood for a conservative congressman from a right-leaning agricultural district.

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During the second week of May 2001, rumors about a relationship between Chandra and Condit began to spread around Washington. Smith said Condit phoned her and asked her not to call him for a while - he would call her.

"Is it your family? Is it your job?" Smith asked.

"No. I can't tell you," he said, she would later recall. "I may have to disappear for a while."

Next chapter: Chandra's parents go on the offensive.

The Washington Post spent a year reconstructing the disappearance of Chandra Levy and the investigation of her death. Reporters interviewed scores of people, including police officials, investigators and suspects — many for the first time — and obtained details about dozens of previously unknown private conversations and events.

© 2008 The Washington Post Company