You're Wrong About - The Disappearance of Chandra Levy

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

“It’s a mess and a nightmare and maybe it’s disingenuous to think you can turn the story of someone being murdered into anything else.” Mike tells Sarah about a missing intern, a shady politician and a nationwide obsession. Digressions include speed dial, “La La Land” and Perry Mason. The Summer of the Shark gets a bonus debunking.Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks!”Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery”Gary Condit’s book, “Actual Malice”The Washington Post’s 13-part series on the investigationAn American Journalism Review article on how the Chandra Levy saga took off A deep dive on Condit’s Connie Chung interview Support the show

That's really how it is. We all just eventually live long enough to become problematic. Welcome to You're Wrong About, where we talk about the stories that scared the big Jesus out of middle school-aged Sarah and also other people. Is that true? You were scared of this one? Yeah. This was one of the great white dead girl cases of my own white girl adolescence. I'm Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for The Having to Post. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the satanic panic. And we're on Patreon at patreon.com slash You're Wrong About and PayPal and selling t-shirts. And cool if you don't want to buy a t-shirt or support us in quarantine. I just love hearing how this little pattern is going to go every time because I feel like each

time you're you're refining it to something a little bit shorter. And it's like we're traveling vaudevillians and I'm watching you opening in different towns. It's really nice. And today we're talking about Chandra Levy, who is yes, one of the great missing white girls in recent American history. And I believe she went missing in 2001. Yes. And it was one of the last big news stories before September 11. Yeah, this is one of the numbers that I came across was that between June and September 11, the Nightly News broadcasts ran 63 stories on Chandra Levy. And then in the year after 9-11, they ran three. We moved on. Wow. I mean, I do think like the central mystery of this episode is not just why Chandra Levy disappeared and sort of what happened

to her, but why this was a big deal in the first place. Like as people have pointed out, in 1999, a woman named Joyce Chang, who was a congressional intern, disappeared and turned up murdered and nobody paid any attention to it. In the same time period that Chandra Levy went missing, 126 other women were missing that had been reported to the DC police. None of them got any coverage. Yeah. And I'm guessing that there's a lot that went into this and there's a lot of, you know, weird, fluky things about the news cycle that privilege certain stories at certain times over others. I think there's a lot of arbitrariness and chance that goes into this, but also I cannot imagine that race isn't a major

factor here. That's true. But also what's interesting is I think arbitrariness and chance actually play less of a role in this one than in others because this controversy was manufactured. It was deliberate. All right, Mike. Jump in. Let's do this. I'm ready. Tell me what you remember about the Chandra Levy story. I remember that Chandra Levy was a beautiful intern of some kind for a congressman named Gary Condit. Yes. California House of Representatives guy. Okay. I remember thinking because I was 13 when this was in the news, like, oh, she's really beautiful. She's like technically an adult, but only a little bit older than me. And I also remember thinking based on this and Monica

Lewinsky that like interning in DC seemed like a really dangerous thing for girls, especially Jewish girls. And so I knew she was missing. I knew that Gary Condit was highly suspected of being involved in her death. And I think the general mouth feel of the scandal was like, isn't that exactly what a congressman would do is to have an affair with an intern and then have her murdered? Yeah. Like we were just very ready to believe that, which I think is meaningful. One of the things that I do think also has been memory hold about the Chandra Levy case and the insane amount of press attention that this got was that it was also the summer of the shark. Do you remember this? Oh, that there were a bunch of shark attacks. I do remember this. Do you want to know

why I remember this? I remember this because as you know, my family lived in Hawaii and I hadn't even seen jaws, but I saw like an A&E special about the making of jaws. And I was like, I don't want to go in the water. There are sharks in there. And my mom was like, Sarah, there is a coral reef, the sharks cannot get through it. People in Hawaii do not get attacked by sharks. And right after we left, there were these shark attacks. And she was like, I guess you were right. I guess sharks are getting through the reef. And I was like, yeah. And I felt very vindicated by that. But what's funny about that is your mom's original contention was correct that people have looked into this sense. And there were actually fewer shark attacks that summer than on a normal

summer in America. It just happened to have gotten a lot of press attention. Well, but that means that there were always sporadic shark attacks. And I was right. Excuse me, Michael. I just think it's very important to know that especially cable news, but the entire US media was just at a total rock bottom. Was there just nothing happening? Is that where we were? Because like, must be nice. But let's get into it. Let's talk about Chandra. All right. So there's various accounts of Chandra's upbringing. She grew up in Modesto, California. Her parents are wealthy, which becomes important later. Her dad is a surgeon. One of the through lines is that she's somebody who was like super outdoorsy, super fit, super sporty. She went to the gym all the time.

But she wasn't concerned about her looks. She didn't need to have the coolest jeans. She didn't wear a lot of makeup. She didn't spend a lot of time doing her hair. Like she worked out a ton, but she wanted to be like strong. And also because her parents were like Northern California, super crunchy, typical 80s and 90s boomer parents. Her way of rebelling was that she got really into criminal justice and like law and order stuff. So she's like a little Alex Peeke. Yeah, exactly. And so it's not clear to me how exactly she did this. But in high school, she started just hanging out at the Modesto police station and like going on ride-alongs with the cops. Like this was something that she was really interested in. And so she eventually got a degree in criminology. And then

she went to graduate school for public administration. Like she wanted to do something in the justice system, but she wasn't sure what that would be yet. Like she just had like this affinity for law enforcement, apparently. Yeah. And like seemingly in a good way. This is how Gary Condit later describes her. She was a vegetarian. She was always upbeat. She took vitamins. She didn't take drugs or drink. She was mature for her age and very savvy. He also described her as frugal and noted that her wardrobe looked like it came from a Macy's type department store, not Nordstrom. I don't understand the difference between Macy's and Nordstrom. So I don't understand the context for that quote. You know, that makes me think they weren't having an affair. That's

like, I don't know, just kind of a clinical observation to make about someone. But she's very smart. She's very ambitious. She ends up getting a internship with the governor's office in California. She eventually interns with the mayor of LA. She ends up going to grad school and getting an internship at the federal bureau of prisons. So she ends up moving to DC in the fall of 2000. Interestingly, she was not Gary Condit's intern. She was a random intern at this federal bureau. So that's a class. That's a that's one of the classic you're wrong about misremembrances where you just mistakenly remember sort of a more direct connection between people because like, if you were writing a screenplay, you'd be like, I think she's an intern because that makes it easier

to advance the story. Yeah, I think another really good show of character is people's search history. So when her laptop is eventually seized by the cops and they release her search history the night before she went missing, she's checking the Washington Post, the Modesto B, USA Today, National Geographic and the Drudge Report. And she's also on Amtrak Southwest Airlines and gofrance.about.com. So she's potentially thinking of going abroad. And she's also looking at the Baskin Robbins website. Apparently, it's free scoop night the following night. And so she's like planning this in advance. Well, you just got to make sure that it's like available at all locations and stuff like that. Yes. So shortly after she moves to Washington, she meets Gary Condit.

The way that they meet is that her and her friend Jennifer are just like walking through the building where the House of Representatives offices are. And I guess one of them gets the idea, hey, we can just visit the office of like your house rep Chandra, like the guy that you elected. That's such a cute nerdy thing to do. Like, oh, let's visit our congressman. And apparently, they go into his office expecting like whatever, some random secretary will be like, Gary's out right now. But like, you can leave a message or something. But apparently, like, Condit himself walks out and is like, hi, it's nice to meet my constituents. And then he takes her and her friend on a tour of the building. That's so cute. That's, you know, like Roman

Polanski taking Tom Barbieri to the Sistine Chapel. He's like, she's a beautiful young model who needed to see some art. That's immediately how I took it to that. It's like two attractive women in their early twenties popping by his office. And he's like, yeah, let me take like 45 minutes out of my schedule to like show you the building and stuff. It's like immediately like, and you know what, like that doesn't mean he had an affair with anyone because you can also just get a charge out of being like, hello, you're young and gorgeous and giggly. And you think it's intoxicating that I have this stupid job that's draining my soul away. So I'm going to send you a picture that is taken on this on this historic occasion. Yes.

Boom. So that's Chandra on the left. This is really cute. Yeah. Gary Condit definitely looks like he's wearing some new balances. I know that he is not, but you can see that that face has felt the feeling of new balances. Can you describe him physically? Oh, he's just like, if you were casting a movie about like a meteor about to smash into the earth, he would be like politician from Nebraska. He has the generic face of a politician. Totally. And Chandra Levy has huge hair. Yeah. You can really see the DC humidity in this picture and it's just like fully surrounding her head like a beautiful halo. Yeah. And she just has this smile of like, I'm in fucking Washington DC. Like she seems genuinely pleased. She almost looks like she's holding back a smile, but she

can't help herself. Yes. She looks like she's holding back a big grin actually. Yeah. She's just like, look at me, little Chandra Levy. And she will later tell her mother that Gary Condit looks like Harrison Ford, which- No. Yeah. Her mother and I had the same reaction to that. I was like, I don't see it. I don't know. Yeah, no, he doesn't. But you know what? Like when you have feelings for someone, you want to express how they make you feel. And I can see her maybe finding a congressperson very sexy and having some Ford feelings about that. Yes. I get it, Chandra. I get it. So this is the part where I have to tell you about Gary Condit's upbringing and his history. That he's a Lutheran. He's got a Lutheran face. He's a preacher's kid actually, although Baptist. So

I was onto something. You were close. I mean, when you say he has a politician face, he also has like politician life. Does he have a wife named Deborah and four beautiful children, and they all go skiing and veil? I mean, other than his wife actually being named Caroline, basically. But in the same way that when we talked about Dan Quayle, it's just like he's like a standard issue Republican. Gary Condit is a standard issue Democrat. He wrote a book. He wrote like a true crime book that's not like not quite a memoir. It's trying to be a true crime book about the disappearance of Chandra Levy. That's a weird thing to do, Gary Condit. It's weird. It's also not very good. But what's really interesting to me about it is that his description

of his own life and why he got into politics is literally one sentence. The purpose of politics is to like better people's lives. But there's nothing in there about like, I saw poverty in Central California and I wanted to help. Nothing. It's literally he's working in like some sort of armaments factory. And one of his older colleagues says like, well, you know, when the Vietnam war is over, we're not going to have jobs anymore. And then all he says is something along the lines of like that ignited in me an idea I had been toying with for years. I ran for the city council. And like, what, what did that ignite? It's like the war is going to be over. So you want there to be wars forever. So you can have a job. Like it's not. But yeah, you're like, but what was ignited,

Gary? Like, and does he talk about his family or his childhood or anything like that? I mean, the most interesting thing about his childhood is that he lied on his application for a marriage license to say that he was 21 when he was actually 19. But like, that was to get married to the woman that he's still married to. That's like getting a fake ID to buy wine for communion because a priest asked you to. But so his career is just like he's a centrist Democrat. He's basically it's like a very red district. And so his entire career, he's basically like middle of the road Democrat or like the Republicans don't really love him or hate him because he'll sometimes cross the aisle to help them. And the Democrats don't really love him or hate him either because

he'll kind of help them when it matters because he's so he's like a team player. Yes. But it's just like, it doesn't seem like he has any like real values as a politician. Like it doesn't seem like there's any issue that ignites him. There's all these attempts to like write features about him later and to sort of humanize him. And the only interesting thing that anybody latches on to is that when he moved to DC, he got an apartment in Adams Morgan, which apparently is like a cool neighborhood. And they're like, they try to make a thing out of like, he moved to a hip neighborhood and like he ate ethnic food. Like what an interesting guy. And you're like, is it? You're like, is this the best you could find? He's having a non.

Yeah. So basically he's just like this boring guy, but Chandra likes him. And I imagine the fact that he's a politician could be really attractive to her. There's also some semi problematic reporting later that like she has a thing for older guys. Honestly, if you're 23 years old, like guys your age and slightly younger are like not that great of a field to pick from. It's hard to not have a thing for older guys when you're a 23 year old intersectional woman. So according to Gary Condit's book, she starts showing up at his office and asking him for career advice because she's been doing this internship. She's graduated from graduate school. She doesn't really know what she's going to do next. And what's interesting is this

fall 2000, but sometime before Thanksgiving is when they begin having an affair. According to? According to everyone except Gary Condit. Okay. Well, then I really inclined to think it happened. Oh yeah. I mean, to this day, he maintains that they didn't have an affair, but like we will get into the evidence that they had an affair and it is incontrovertible. Okay. There's also, it's one of those things where the evidence that they had an affair is extremely strong and the evidence that he had anything to do with her disappearance is extremely weak. So basically they begin carrying out this affair because she cannot tell us her side of it. We're relying on sort of second and

third hand accounts. One of the best pieces of evidence that they are having some sort of intense relationship and this is an extremely like early 2000s thing is that he is number seven on her speed dial and his office is number eight on her speed dial. The slots in your speed dial were a really big deal. Yes, because there were only nine of them. We always have these stupid little technological ways of demonstrating to ourselves that we are moving on from someone and used to be deleting them from your speed dial. Yeah. She also starts telling people, but like in these cryptic ways. I'm seeing a Harrison Ford. Yes. That's exactly what she tells her mom is that I'm seeing a guy, he's a bit older, he looks like Harrison Ford and you know, I can't talk about it much,

but like you'll understand in five years. I guess to mention her mom hearing this and then seeing a picture of Gary Condit being like, oh, sweetie. Shondra also importantly, she tells her aunt that this is going on. She's again coy about who exactly this person is, but she says she's been seeing somebody. He's an important figure. She also says, and other people say this too, that Shondra told them that her and Gary had a five year plan where he was going to leave his wife and run away with her. Sure. I can see him either A, planning to do that, B, feeling like that's a good idea at certain moments, or C, not wanting to do that, but telling her that. I know. So that this nice thing can continue for a while. All those three things are totally plausible, right?

Yeah. There's also, there's other signs of this too. He gives her tickets to George W. Bush's inaugural ball, but he can't take her because it's in public. So she goes with like a buddy of hers. He later talks to the Washington Post and he says like they had to stop by his house on the way to the event to like pick up the tickets. And he's like, who's this guy that you're dating? And she's like, oh, I can't say, but like you've heard of him or like she's being coy, but like it's clear that she wants to tell people and she's happy about this relationship. It's because I'm looking at this picture of her still with her face just looking sort of like stifling this feeling of joy. I know. But yeah, it's very easy to picture her just being like,

this is so exciting. And this is such an important man. And I guess enjoying it, which is really nice to think about, right? Because she like, it doesn't matter that we think he lacks charisma, like she is enjoying it. Yes. So the first event that leads to her disappearance is on April 27th of 2001, she loses her job. And that's because the Bureau of Prisons finds out that she's already graduated from graduate school, and the internship program is only available to people that are still enrolled. So they're like, sorry, technical reasons, but like, we have to fire you. I'm really sorry. So she can't do that anymore. And she immediately starts planning on moving back to California. So she disappears on Tuesday, May 1st of 2001. The last her parents hear from her

is around 11 in the morning, she emails them with like flights. She's like, there's one on like Wednesday, there's one on Friday, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then that's it, they don't hear from her. So she disappears on May 1st, but no one sort of reports it or like notices that she's disappeared until her parents call the cops on May 6th, five days later. And what's really interesting is after they start getting worried about this, they also start looking through her phone records because I believe they're paying for her cell phone bill so they can see the itemized list of all the phone numbers that she's calling. And they notice the same number again and again and again, like constantly calling this number. They dial it, it turns out it's Gary Condit's congressional office. And so

they start putting two and two together, like she's been talking about this older guy that she's seeing he's quote unquote important. And then there's like 50 calls to this dude's office. Yeah. And they're like, well, you know, she's passionate about water quality, but so basically, as soon as they call the cops to report that she's missing, they're like, oh, and by the way, we're pretty sure she's dating this Gary Condit guy who's like a rep for her district. And like, we just wanted to let you know. Interesting. And so the first thing that happens is the cops get a warrant to search her apartment. What they find when they get there is this becomes like a huge thing in the media that like nothing is missing from her apartment.

The only thing that is gone is her keys and a ring. Her ID is there. Her wallet is there. Her credit card is still there. Her cell phone is still there. There's no sign of any foul play whatsoever. And it also like it bears mentioning that at the time, like you wouldn't need to bring your cell phone everywhere because you didn't really use it casually. You might have just used it when you like needed to make a phone call. Right. And like it couldn't help you as a navigational aid. Yeah, they also find her telephone answering machine is full has 25 messages on it. Two of them are from Gary. And so he called her on May 3rd. This is two days after her disappearance, just like chirpally, Hey, haven't heard from you just checking in. How are you? And so again,

this is a sign that like him not having heard from her in two days is enough for him to like check in on her. The detectives also importantly find a pair of panties that are stained with semen. Okay. So they know she's got semen in her life, which is normal for a 23 year old. That does not come back for another couple of weeks, but I'm dropping it now as foreshadowing. Okay. The first and I think maybe the biggest blunder or the second biggest blunder of this entire case is that there's a laptop in her apartment, right? And so when somebody goes missing, a really important thing to find out is what was the last thing they were searching for? Because like if I disappear and the last thing I'm searching for is like Greyhound tickets to

Portland, like hotels in Portland, like that gives you a sense of where you should start looking, right? So they open up her computer, they look into her search history, and I do not know how they did it, but a cop manages to wipe her search history. Oh, it does seem like there are a lot of stories where the police accidentally behave in a really silly, yes, tech ignorant manner and are like behind even a normal person and knowing what to do in a technological situation, which is because you know, proof of a lack of resources generally among other things. Because when they finally in five weeks get her search history back, they see that like the last 10 things that she was searching for are extremely congruent with she was going for a jog. So she checks the weather.

She goes to jogging.com and reads an article called How To Jog. And she goes to the website of Rock Creek Park and like looks at a map of all the hiking trails. But they don't know this for five more weeks. That's sex. So one of the main reasons that they make so many blunders in this case is because they don't have basic information of like what was on her mind in the 15 minutes before she disappeared. And then I would imagine that five weeks later, they're going to be really reluctant to be like, Hey, so we take back all the stuff that we've insinuated for the past month or so. Right. Like that's hard to do. Yeah. They also fuck up in that her building has security cameras that monitor people in and out. So they could have gotten the

security cameras and find out exactly what time she left the building and crucially what she was wearing. Right. Like she had like a Walkman and like running pants on. And did they see Gary Condit going in? Exactly. Or like abducting her or anything. But the building only keeps the tapes for seven days and they forgot to ask. And so the building wipes the tapes. And so they never get the tapes. Oh, that sucks. That sucks. So basically as soon as this happens, they have no leads. They have no information. All they know is that she left her apartment and her apartment doesn't seem fucked with. Right. So they're like, wherever she disappeared from, it probably either she was taken from her apartment by someone she trusted or whatever went wrong,

went wrong after she left. Yes. So the only lead they have really is like this politician dude named Gary. So they go over to his house, they interview him and they're like, Well, we've already fucked up twice. So let's talk to Gary. So they go over to his house. They ask him like, What's the nature of your relationship? And he tells them the same thing that he's been saying ever since of like, we were friends. I was giving her career advice. And you know, maybe she came over to my house once or twice. But you know, I can't really recall people come over to my house all the time. Her gym was nearby. And is he living in DC like on his own? Like he has his own apartment and his family is in California or what? Yeah. So every weekend, he visits his family in California. So

like he's in DC from like Monday to Thursday. And then Thursday night, he flies back to California. So he's alone in his apartment during the week. That's a bummer. I know. His wife talks about with great pride that like he's always home, like he's such a family man, he comes home every weekend, he never misses it. This is actually important. But it's also just like a perfect little bachelor pad because there's no one to monitor him at all. It's totally segmented. He's like Harvey Dent or nurse khaki. So apparently, the cops say, did you have an intimate relationship with Ms. Levy? And he says, I don't think we need to go there. And you can infer whatever you want with that. And then the cops start looking into him more. And it seems like from very early in the case,

the cops are actually pretty convinced that he didn't do it. Among alibis that we have ever talked about on this show, his is like by far the water tightest. Was he voting? He was literally voting. He was like on C-Span voting on stuff the evening that she disappeared. Plus this is nuts. While like at the moment of her disappearance, like somewhere around noon of May 1st, he was meeting with Dick Cheney. So like Dick Cheney ends up being like a character witness. Oh, that is a great alibi. It also shows you what kind of Democrat he is too, right? That he's like hanging with Dick Cheney and talking about like, how can we work together on stuff? But then I mean, his entire the whole kind of like couple days before the disappearance,

couple days after the disappearance, like he's a politician. He's constantly doing stuff like on camera in public. And so there aren't holes in his schedule where like a murder could have taken place. It really speaks to like the the ability of the American people to ignore the facts that like we still, I think there's still is kind of a patina of suspicion around Gary Condit because totally it was implied so heavily for so long that he had done something nefarious. And yet from the beginning, it was obvious that like there was just no advantageous window in which he could have committed a murder. And we're just like, yeah, but it's actually a good story though. Come on, let us have it. And there's also something really interesting that he does almost

always fly home to California every single weekend. However, the weekend that Chandra disappeared, like before the day that she disappeared, his wife was visiting him in DC. So the day after Chandra disappeared, he's like at a restaurant being seen by other people having dinner with his wife. And so this comes to be seen somehow as evidence, just because it's out of the ordinary, like his wife was there. And so he snapped. But it's like, it actually seems like a really bad weekend to kill your mistress, because like there's someone else in your apartment that weekend. Well, I love how you always, you know, you're just very practical in your true crime analysis. And you're like, this doesn't seem thought out at all, because like this is the worst time to

commit a murder when you have like no real alibi witness in a tiny little window of time. Yes. One of the main rumors actually about Gary Condit is that he was having rough sex with Chandra. He accidentally killed her and then he hid the body, which putting aside all of the issues of like, there's no evidence that he was into rough sex. There's no link between people who have rough sex and people who murder people. It's just like, when? Like there is no time that that theory could have taken place. Right. And so this is actually a pretty interesting period because the Gary Condit lead is kind of petering out because his alibi is so good. They look into two other dudes that Chandra had hung out with a couple of times,

but those also peter out pretty quickly because there's no indication that those guys had intense relationships with Chandra. They just hung out with her like two or three times. I mean, she's someone who's only lived in DC for six months. Right. So it's not like she has like this robust network of like Xs and people that would have a motive to kill her. So they really don't have anyone to look into except for this congressman who is lying about the affair that he had with her for some reason. But then this answers the question of why Chandra Levy was such a big deal. Because her killer was a shark. Her parents do something that is very, I think, unfortunate but also very understandable. It's been now two weeks since their daughter

disappeared. They are convinced that the police are not taking this seriously and that they're not looking into Gary Condit enough. So they hire a PR firm. So there's this firm that has done a sort of national campaign to find three hikers that got lost in Yosemite in 1999. And so the Levy's hire this group to sort of like get national attention onto their missing daughter to try to help find her. And so one of the first things they do is they hold a candlelight vigil for her in California where they hand out Reese's peanut butter cups because those were her favorite candy. And this gets them like local coverage. And then they fly the Levy's to DC to have a news conference saying like the police aren't doing enough. We're looking for our daughter.

Please help us. And this PR firm has contacts in the media. So this is when they're able to get like the Washington Post and these other news organizations to like cast this as a national story. And there's this really heartbreaking thing where when the Levy's come to Washington, they're driving around and Robert Levy, her father, talks about he's looking on the streets and he's looking for her. Part of him still thinks that it's just this big misunderstanding and they're going to drive past like a whatever a Wendy's and she's going to be standing in line or something. He says it's like completely compulsive. And so I think it's very understandable that they did this like any parent if they could would do this. Yeah. And I wouldn't say it's a bad idea because

if you feel like, you know, maybe a national spotlight will like make something happen or spur the police into action, like, yeah, yeah, what else are you going to do if you have those resources? Why not? It's just a matter of like who has those resources, right? Like who can turn their daughter into a national story and who can't. And so after this news conference on May 15th, so almost exactly two weeks after she disappears, this is the story that like makes this a national scandal and brings gary condit into this because right now there's been a couple like page 35 whatever stories of like intern goes missing. But like, there's no reason for this to be a national story or a political story remotely. But the Washington Post publishes the story on May 17th

that is kind of amazing. It just kind of goes through the news conference and how she's missing and they're frustrated with the police investigation so far. And then in like toward the end, it says like gary condit who's her representative from Congress has donated $10,000 to a reward fund for her. And then they quote him as saying, Chandra is a great person and a good friend. We hope she's found safe and sound. And it's one of those things where people look at this and they're like, great friend. Like why is this 53 year old male congressman calling this 23 year old girl who wasn't his intern a great friend? You had a beautiful friendship say more about that. And it's also interesting because he didn't have to say that like he could have just been like,

I'm giving $10,000 to her parents because they're from my district and I'm concerned. Like if he was going to deny a romantic relationship, he didn't have to imply this like close platonic relationship. That sounds worse. I mean, it's like, you know, if you disappear and I'm like looking for you and there's an article about it and it's like George Lucas says her commercial was a great screenwriter. You'd be like, whoa, wait, that seems like the story here. Wait a minute. There's been corresponding with George Lucas. Let's pull on that thread a little bit. So basically, this is essentially when like the attention on gary condit goes nuclear. Every story from now on is all about gary condit and like what was their relationship?

What did he know? This poor bland idiot. I know. Well, there's also something interesting in that in front of cameras and sort of at podiums, the cops are always saying we don't think this guy did it and there's no reason to think that he's a suspect. While they're doing this, they're also behind the scenes leaking to reporters. He's our prime suspect. Yeah. What starts happening is from now on, there's just a drip of stories every single day putting gary condit, Chandra Levy and disappearance in the same paragraph. Because the American consumers were like, I'm bored. There's just no interesting news. They end up searching the woods outside of his office and they don't find anything in the woods. But the fact that they're searching the woods is

again like, well, why are the cops doing this if he's not guilty? Also, why would he dump a body near his office? That's such an idiotic thing to do. Like he would take her to like an estuary in Maryland or something like that. Yeah, it also creates this really bad cycle where the only person that the cops are looking into is gary condit and Chandra Levy's parents are on the news every night holding news conferences because they have this PR firm saying, why aren't they looking into this condit guy? I just don't understand why they're not putting the spotlight on this condit guy. We think this condit guy had something to do with it. Yeah. Which is why grieving parents aren't placed in charge of investigations, right? I know. That's the reason. They want to find their

daughter and like this guy is shady as fuck and he's lying about the fact that he had an affair with their daughter. Yeah. And so like, of course, they're mad at him. Of course, they think he did it. There are so many reasons why this didn't happen. But imagine if Mr. Bland Harris and Ford could like level with everybody and be like, yes, we were having an affair that I didn't kill her. Like that make him like better or worse, probably worse at this point, because he's denied it for so long. But at the same time, it's like, the longer you deny it, the worse that gets. So like it's really it's a it's a it's a rhubarb of a pickle of a jam. Yes. There's, I mean, he makes so many dumb mistakes throughout this. Yeah, I'm not being impressed by like, you know,

the political savvy of gary condit at this time. And so this is also the time when the Levy's meet with gary condit. No cameras, no anything. They're like, I just want to look at you face to face. Just want to look at this non Harrison Ford fucking face. And apparently her dad is like, I can't even look at this guy. I'm not going to go. So it's only her mom in the end. So her dad has been like visualizing this man murdering his daughter, presumably if he like can't stand to look at him. That's intense. Yeah. And then he can see them clinging to this theory in the face of grief when you make sense as a human thing to do. Yes. And so he shows up, he tries to shake her hand and she refuses to shake his hand. She immediately goes into these

questions of like, how did you meet? How often did you see her? When did you see her last? Did you have anything to do with it? He answers but again, he denies that they had a relationship, which just adds fuel to the fire because she knows like her daughter's been telling her about this relationship with this older guy. Because if someone is saying like, I didn't kill your daughter and I'm not lying to you. I know. And I will try and gain your trust by lying to you. Yeah. That doesn't help. And so she basically thinks that he's full of shit. And at the end of the meeting, he's like, can I give you a hug? And she's like, absolutely not. Yeah. So is there is there further evidence for the affair or have we gone through everything? I mean, the best evidence

and it doesn't come in for like another week or two is that his DNA matches the semen on the panties that are found in her apartment. Yeah, I mean, they were having an affair or he is, you know, openly masturbating in her home with her clothing. So I'm going to go with option A. What's actually interesting about that detail, which is by far the most damning evidence they did have an affair, is that that actually doesn't go public until 2008. Interesting. People don't know that at the time. So at the time, all we know is the shit about like the speed dial and her aunt and her mom. So the evidence isn't as strong in 2001 as it is now. But it's like, the evidence even then was overwhelming. He had admitted that she had spent the night and had

come to his apartment, which like, yeah, it's close to your gym, fine. But like, Gary Conda is not that fucking famous. They can go to like Panera Bread. This was in the Gary Hart episode. And I want to just emphasize that your idea for a solution to all of these problems, and I agree with it, is that there is nothing less romantic than a Panera Bread. If you want to meet like an attractive young staffer or farmer rep or just like demonstrate to someone through context clues that like nothing will be happening, take them to Panera Bread. And the world will also know. They'll be like, oh, look, Panera Bread. That looks bleak. He also does really dumb shit. Like he's mad at the cops for leaking, which like fair enough. But he basically like, he calls the

cops and he's like, I'm not going to participate in this anymore. If you guys keep leaking stuff. And they're like, that's not for you to decide. Right. Like we are the police, Gary Conda. And so the cops come and they do interview him again. I mean, they end up interrogating him four times. He changes his story. He originally said, no, no, she's never been to my house. I've never been to her house. Then maybe she's been to my place once or twice. Then she was coming over a couple of times a week. It is so interesting because I'm feeling animosity toward this guy, right? Where it's like, so you're telling me that this girl platonically slept over at your house, that you as a sitting member of Congress just had a platonic sleepover with a hot 23 year old.

Like that implies either you're a liar or you are so unaware of how that will look to anyone that you really shouldn't be a politician because you lack the ability to gauge human reactions. And when someone is clearly lying to your face like that, it really makes them seem like they're lying about everything. Yeah, it's not great. It's actually amazing to me that he didn't admit it. It is. That's really commitment to a bad idea. Yeah. But it is like affairs happen and like she's missing and like admitting to the affair might help the cops solve the case and catch her killer before he kills someone else. Right. So like it's actually like kind of shitty to not just like take the L and admit that you had the affair for the good of her and her parents.

Yes. It's very odd. And also that like Gary, like you were having an affair. Like if your family finds out about that or if your constituents find out about that, like you did do it. Like it's not an unjust outcome. I also feel like it's reasonable for him to fall back on this perspective of like, why can't the police clear me if I have so many good alibis, one of them Cheney related. And just being like, just do your jobs and stop talking about me. So it's hard because like you expect the police to be able to not bow to public pressure in the way that they are and to be objective about this. But on the other hand, they basically never behave that way. So why would you hold them to that standard? Yeah. And why not just be like, yes, like we were having sex. Yeah.

And when you're having sex with someone and it's going well for both parties, you don't want to murder them even a little. Yeah. So I'm as confused and sad as everyone. Let's all link hands. But so I mean, another really bad for Gary incident that happens at this time is that the Washington Post publishes a story saying two police sources have confirmed to them that Gary admitted having the affair with Chandra. But then they of course go to Gary for comment and he's like, I did not admit that because he didn't. Oh, so the police are just also lying. So everyone's lying. That's a good system to have. And also, it's amazing in this story, if you were the first like couple paragraphs are all like two police sources with knowledge of the

meetings, blah, blah, blah, say that he admitted it. And then in paragraph like 12 or whatever, the cops say Gary Condit was not a suspect before the meeting. He was not a suspect during the meeting and he is not a suspect after the meeting. But they're leading with the affair. They're not leading with the innocence thing. Yeah. This is also because it's gotten so famous. They get the same thing that we saw with the DC snipers where there's like an 800 number and people are sending in tips because she's still missing at this point, right? Like there's no other leads other than Gary. So like they're chasing down every single lead. There's a psychic calls in to the hotline and says she got like a vision that Chandra was put into a body bag and stowed in the basement of

the Smithsonian, which is national treasure. She's literally been watching national treasure. Well, also if you're putting someone in the Smithsonian, like why use a body bag? Why not just use a sarcophagus of which there are probably many down there? What's kind of amazing to me is the police go check the police go to the basement of the Smithsonian and like look around. Oh my god. Oh my god. There's also another caller that says that she's been murdered and dumped in the Potomac, but they get all these divers and go check and she's not there either. Like they're actually running down these leads and spending an incredible amount of time on it. Yeah. There's also one person calls in with a tip that Chandra was the victim of a suicide bombing in Israel. What? And they chase

that down. They like call Israeli authorities. What if they have known if she'd gone abroad before dying? I mean, so the tip line is essentially a place for people to just call and just say something that they think would be neat. Yes, exactly. It's a place to pitch your screenplay ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Last one. There's also a rumor that she died in Nevada during a botched abortion because she was carrying Gary's baby. Why would she go to Nevada to get an abortion? It's 1948. And then they bring in the Secret Service and then they like check abortion records in Nevada. Like again, this takes ages. Okay. And so they don't know where she went because this is during the five week window after they've deleted her search history and they haven't gotten it back yet.

No, this is actually, they have the search history. The search history has come back. Oh, why do I always offer this charitable interpretation that turns out to be wrong? No, like they know what she was searching for 15 minutes before. Okay. So police at this time have searched Rock Creek Park, but they haven't found her body. And they've kind of convinced themselves that what really happened was the reason she was looking at Rock Creek Park wasn't because of the hiking trails. It was because she was meeting somebody there. So instead of seeing this as competing with the Gary Condit theory of the crime, they see it as reinforcing it. Right. And so this is the part where basically every journalist in the country just starts going

after Gary Condit. Like there's no real story to the Chandra disappearance. Like there's no information. They're like, we're bored. Yes. So there's a stewardess who says that she had an affair with Gary Condit. Wow. This is also just like an interesting flex. She says, in July 2000, the Attractive Flight Attendance says 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. A piece of his power bar, man. That's like such a move. Why would you want a piece of someone else's power bar? Not even a whole power bar. That's so wishy like standing there looking woozy or what? I know. I mean, again,

you're like, maybe this didn't happen at all. But if it did, then like, this just seems like a Gary Condit thing to do based on my intimate knowledge of the man from, you know, gossiping with me about him for an hour. She also later says that he asked her to sign an affidavit saying that they didn't have an affair. Wow. Which he at first denies, but then later admits to. Gary, that's so cold. Gary, dude. Why are these women having affairs with you? I know. Do you like have to get your blood temperature up by lying on a rock? Like, tell me about your life, my dude. There's also a woman called Jolene McKay, who was an aide in his office at 22, who says she had a three year long relationship with him. And then his wife called her and was

like, I'm begging of you, please don't take my man. Oh my God. She says that he was, quote, manipulative and controlling. Hard to imagine and a politician, to be honest. There's also a guy in California who's a preacher who says that Condit had an affair with his 18 year old daughter. And then the FBI comes to him and are like, yeah, like, tell us more about this story. And then he's like, oh yeah, I was lying. I was just doing that to be in the newspaper. But it doesn't matter because like this thing of like him being into young girls continues to follow him even after this person recants. Right. You can't take pee out of the pool. Yeah. This is morally speaking, this is really bad that both the stewardess and Jolene, his aide, say that he told them

that his wife was like infirm. Like sexually? No, like disabled. Like in a coma? He told them that she had encephalitis of the brain. What? And then other like politicians will say this too. That he's telling them that his wife is infirm? Yeah. That's weird. There's interviews with Carolyn, his wife, who actually seems like a really nice lady. And she's like, I have migraine headaches. I've had migraine since I was young. Okay. Like it's pretty fucked up to tell people that your wife is disabled, like to get chicks. So whatever he's saying, it appears that he's trying to get to the meaning of like, Carolyn isn't well. Yeah. And we're married, but I'm more of her caretaker and it's not sexual. Yeah. Like it is with you. Yeah. And I think I have no evidence

for this, but I think it's also something he tells his colleagues too, so that if they get a hint that he's sleeping with younger women, they'll be like, Oh, you know, his wife's infirm. So like, it doesn't really matter. Like they won't judge him to the same extent. That's so gross. That's pure conjecture on my part. But like, that's, that makes some sense to me that why everyone would think this. I love how we're doing this podcast that's like the media piled on Gary Condit and that was wrong. And now we're like piling on him. Like I feel like there's something, he's like, Lutz on 30 Rock, you're just like, why do you always want to hit that guy? It's funny because like I'm falling prey to like the same impulse that I'm railing against and I see it.

But this is the thing. I actually think it's fine to think that he's a creep, but he's a creep and he murdered someone on a specific day in a specific way are two very different things. Okay. So is there any evidence or anything described as evidence at this time that Gary Condit is responsible for her murder? So you know that I'm like a big like Lexis-Nexis Queen. Yeah, that's exactly what the patch I'm going to get for you for your next birthday says. I actually looked pretty hard for sort of the case against Gary Condit. Where's the sort of he did it type essay. And what was fascinating about is I found a couple of these like various columns and newspapers and things like that. And what's really interesting is all of the evidence

quote unquote that he murdered Chandra Levy is actually just evidence that either he's a shitty dude or he's fucking with the cops investigation. Okay. All right. So let's go over it. I want to hear this. So like the main sort of case against him is basically what we've already said that he's changed his story. And so the idea is like, well, if he didn't kill her, why does he keep changing his story? Why is he making it so hard for the cops to investigate her murder? And I actually think like that's this weirdly performative stupidity that you sometimes see in these cases when to me, it actually makes a lot of sense that a public figure would lie about having an affair. It makes sense for anyone to lie to the police at any time because everyone can feel they have

something to lose. I mean, I also think on a more broad level that like we should all internalize the idea that people lie to the cops all the time. That doesn't mean that they've done the crime that they're accused of. Right. If I accuse you of like stealing the hope diamond on Arbor Day, and then it's like, well, Sarah's alibi one day she said she was home and the next day she said she was at the store. Boom. Yeah. So I mean, just the idea that the police make someone nervous and the only reason they can make someone nervous is because the person they're talking to has committed the specific crime. That's a wacky idea, right? The police are scary. The police have many ways of scaring people. Right. And also, one thing that's interesting is one of the only

noteworthy events in Gary Condett's entire political career before this is that he was one of the first democratic politicians to call for Bill Clinton's resignation in 1998. So there's a very good in universe explanation for this. Oh, this is some book of aster's shit right here. Yeah. There's also the category of evidence that we love on the show, which is basically that you're bad on TV. Yeah. So there's like footage of him getting out of a car and there's this scrum of reporters and he sort of smiles and waves and then it's like, there's a missing intern, sir. Why are you smiling? They play the tape over and over again. And how can you know what the right thing is to do when you're at the center of a murder

investigation? There's apparently no news. Yeah. And every, you know, I mean, he can't win. There's also the worst evidence against him, but like that kind of made the rounds was also this thing that Chandra was pregnant. Oh yeah, I remember this one. The only evidence for this. You're gonna love this. Her Aunt Linda said in the last conversation she had with Chandra a couple days before her disappearance, Chandra said, next time we talk, I'm gonna have big news for you. Can't wait to tell you. Linda. That's it. We're basing the news on what Linda thinks constitutes big news. And it's like, yeah, it could have been like, I'm gonna take the train across France. She's 23. She wants a career. That could be so many things. Because the problem with Gary Condit

is there's no motive, right? Like, if you're going to kill your mistress, the week before she leaves DC forever is not a good time to kill your mistress. Yeah. And something that I've been thinking about is like, is there anything to the idea that he could have hired someone to kill her? That's the only theory that actually makes sense, right? Because his day is pretty packed. The reason that I don't find the idea that he hired somebody particularly convincing is A, he still doesn't have a motive. B, the cops did like search his apartment and search his laptop and get his phone records. And there's nothing in there. And the idea that like maybe he's some incredible criminal mastermind who manages to do this while leaving no trace.

Or she went jogging, of which like all of the evidence is completely congruent with. It's like she took her Walkman. She didn't bring her wallet. She didn't tell her friends she was going anywhere. She has a history of jogging. The first thing we've learned about her basically is that she's just loves to jog, jogging around town. So it's like you actually, you don't have to do any gymnastics to believe that like she went for a jog and then something bad happened. Whereas for Condit to be involved in any way, you have to have him being this criminal mastermind and her this like master of deception for no reason at all. This relates to my theory that one of the reasons we're so obsessed in the

United States with the figure of the murderer is because the murderer has to be such a terrible category to be put in partly because it is the only category or one of the only categories that can rob a middle class white male of that privilege. That's interesting. Yeah. Right. Like the only thing that's going to allow us to cast doubt on these sort of white male patriarch figures is like, well, if there is a category that can rob them of that power, that's one way to get rid of it. And one of the things that robs you not just if you're white male privilege of your humanity is the murderer category. Right. So yeah, that's one of my theories. There's also this hilarious thing where the cops search his apartment so they finally get a search

warrant, search his apartment. But the day before the search, Condit is seen throwing away a box in a trash can like outside of McDonald's in Alexandria, Virginia. Wow. And this random guy like sees him and he's like, oh, I think I recognize that guy from the news. That's Gary Condit. Yeah. And it's like, I wonder what he just threw away. And so he goes up to the trash can picks out the thing that Gary threw away. And it's like a box that had a watch. It's like a tag Hoyer, however you pronounce that watch box, but like with no watch in it. But then it's one of those things where he like mentions it to his colleagues, he's like, lol, I saw this guy throwing away a watch box, like whatever. And they're like, you should call the cops and tell them.

So he does. And then this of course leaks out. And it turns out this was a watch that Jolene, his aide had given him like years before. Oh my God. But he had it in his house. This is so dumb. I know. We just ran out of news and we're like, let's dissect the boring sad affairs and the boring sad man. One of the lines I love from this Washington Post series is they say, at the time, detectives were puzzled. They tried to eliminate Condit as a suspect, but he was making it difficult. It's like, yes, dude. At that point, the media is involved and like, don't the police feel they look bad? I imagine if Gary Condit keeps doing stupid things, and the media is like, this Gary Condit guy looks bad. And the police are like, yeah, we know.

That's just his personality. I know. And like, it's a seven year old watch. Like, why are you throwing it out hours before we search your apartment? And then lying about it, of course, when they question him and then admitting it eventually. And then being like, the police can't find out that I had an affair with Jolene and she gave me a watch. And it's like, the police don't really care about Jolene. Okay, there's like bigger fish to fry right now. It's, it's funny because like, it does suggest to me that like, he's not thinking of this woman with whom he was in an intimate relationship and who, for all he knows, could be dead. And that he's like, God, get rid of this watch. Like, that's what this is all really about. Like, it does suggest

a lack of character to me. Oh, totally. Again, and like, someone can suck and not be a murderer. Like, there are so many men who just suck, but they're not murderers. And we could just honor that truth. That is like the Gary Condit like campaign slogan. Like, I suck, but I'm not a murderer. Like, that's as close. Like, that's as close as I get to like, defending him. So there's polling on this that by late July of this summer, 65% of the country thinks that he had something to do with Chandra's disappearance. Wow. The crescendo of this entire affair is August 23rd. So we're three weeks before September 11. Now, when this is going to completely disappear from the media, he does an interview with Connie Chung, where his condition for the

interview is no editing. I'll sit down for 30 minutes and like, we're going to do it live to tape and you're going to air the entire thing. Oh, great. A lot of awkward pauses on that. That'll be fine. A lot of people having to drink water. And so this is also just baffling. Obviously, she starts with like, did you have an affair with Chandra Levy? And so this is what he says, Connie, I've been married for 34 years and I haven't been a perfect man. I've made my share of mistakes. But out of respect for my family and out of a specific request from the Levy family, I think it's best that I not get into those details about Chandra Levy. Did the Levy family request that? That seems a little hard to imagine. No.

They're like, Gary, we need you to deny that you had an affair with our daughter before she disappeared. No, seriously. That's what we require from you. The first phone call from everybody is to the Levy family, which is like trying to get in the media as much as possible because they want to find their daughter and they're like, fuck no, we didn't give him any specific request. We would, in fact, love for him to speak about his relationship with our daughter. That's snake behavior, honestly. And also to lie on something that could be so easily checked up on and then immediately was, it's like, why are you in this job, Gary? Like, what's what is here for you? Also, like, what's amazing to me is like, he gets super rattled in this interview and like, kind of lies

and stumbles over things. And it's like, did you not think they were going to ask you about whether you had a relationship with Shondra Levy? Like, you didn't think that would come up? Yeah. Why do you think you're talking to Connie Chung? See, she can ask you about policy, obviously. Like, how would, how do you not have like a really good answer to this? I know. And then you're just like, there's so many idiotic white men of whom this is true where you're like, listen, buddy, like, you are cut out for managing like a large and busy sonic franchise. Like, that's where you're cut out for a pal and you just accidentally rose all the way to this extremely powerful position that requires a skill set you absolutely do not have. We're sorry. We know that this is how it

felt when the La La Land people thought they won the Oscar, but it's not your Oscar. We're very sorry. This is my favorite one. She asked him about the watch box. She's like, why did you throw away this watch box in a dumpster? And then this is what he says. First, he says, well, the watch box had nothing to do with Chandra Levy. And secondly, I threw it in a trash can, not a dumpster. Really, Gary, that's the hill you want to die on. It wasn't a dumpster. I mean, look, a trash can does, there is something more in it various about a dumpster than a trash can. Don't give him credit for this, Sarah. I'm not giving him credit. I'm saying that my cold, mirrored heart identifies with his in this moment. And also I'm like, oh, honey.

You're not going to make it better. How can you look better? Oh, Gary. So let's play Gary's advocate. Is there an argument to be made for he truly wasn't having an affair with Chandra Levy? So I think considering this as a podcast about the media being overconfident in its conclusions when the evidence doesn't warrant it, I think we should entertain the possibility that Gary Condit is not lying. I think there is a possibility that they had an intense platonic relationship. And Chandra liked him. And so she told people that there was a relationship happening. It is possible. I do not consider it probable. I mean, to me, it's much more probable that he's simply lying about the affair. And what's interesting

is he never actually gave an alternate account of their relationship. He never said like, here's what's really happened. All he's ever really said is I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to go there. Right. So maybe he's being super classy. And like he just doesn't want to drag her name through the mud because she may have exaggerated the extent of her relationship. Yeah. But like this is the kind of show where like we have to leave the door open. So like maybe we're wrong. Yeah, that's fine. Maybe she's a vampire slayer and he's her watcher. And that's why she had to spend the night all those times. You know, that would be something that you really couldn't explain to the media. Yes. So this is where before we get to 9 11 when this entire story

dissipates, the final crescendo of this is a cameo by friend of the show, Dominic Dunn. Yes. Oh, I'm so Dominic, you're here. Hello. I know. What do you have to share with us? Can you, who is Dominic Dunn for people who haven't been watching the OJ series? Okay. Dominic Dunn became a friend of the show through OJ Simpson episodes because he is one of my favorite crime writers. He covered trials for Vanity Fair. So he covered the Menendez Brothers trial. He covered Heidi Fleiss and he covered OJ Simpson. He was one of the journalists who was inside that teeny little courtroom for about 10 months. So I imagine that in 2001, he would end up connected to this because he was kind of the fancy alleged murderers beat for Vanity Fair in 2001. Yes. And his columns

on Gary Condit are unhinged. I'm so excited. I mean, Dominic Dunn is a good vessel for all of the insane theories that go around about Gary Condit during this summer. So this is by far the best rumor to come out of this case is that Gary Condit's wife has no thumbs. What? Which has nothing to do with anything. But is one of these things that if you read tabloids, they'll just have like he was visited by his wife, comma, who has no thumbs. What? And it just goes on and you're like, wait, he doesn't have anything to do with anything and it's not true. And then why? And then where would that come from? And like, is it, I'm just like, what it affect? What is he like hitting on women, you know, in beltway bars being like, yeah, it's been tough for me. My wife has no thumbs.

And his wife seems so nice. And she's constantly having to respond to these rumors like, no, I have thumbs. Why do you keep asking me about this? Oh, my God. There's also the rumor that Dominic Dunn eventually gets sued over that Gary Condit is in the Hell's Angels and that he kidnapped Chandra as part of some like Hell's Angels ritual thing. No. Dominic. Which first of all, the evidence that Gary Condit is in the Hell's Angels is that he rides a motorcycle. That's it. There's no association with Hell's Angels. And so around this one tidbit of information, Dominic Dunn and others have built this entire theory of the case. Does Dominic Dunn seem to be actually arguing that this is a plausible theory or is he doing that thing he does where he's like,

I'm going to throw out a bunch of wild speculation that other people have made and I'm going to like list it in a value neutral like, oh, isn't that interesting kind of a way? What actually drives me nuts about this? And I think this happens with a lot of people, especially on TV, is that they'll put out something as if they're just speculating. They're like, sources have told me that he kidnapped her because he's part of the Hell's Angels. I can't confirm that. Right. And so he brings this up on Larry King. He says like, I'm just saying like, maybe it was the Hell's Angels. I'm not saying it's true, but we should look into it. And then another guest on Larry King is like, this is actually really irresponsible for journalists to do because

you have no evidence. You haven't told us who your source is. You're just putting this out there. And then Dominic Dunn then retreats to, well, all I'm saying is you can't rule it out. I just think you can't rule it out, which like you literally can't rule anything out. Right. It's basically impossible to prove a negative. So yes, like you can say that about almost anything. And it creates a false idea also about what journalists do when they're journalists who are like, well, I'm just going to repeat everything that I've heard from everyone. You know, it's for the public to go over now. And it's like, well, okay, that's like shearing a sheep. And then someone asks for a sweater. And you're like, here's

a bunch of wool and it's dirty and it's full of lanolin. There's your sweater. It's like, no, your job is to process the wool. Yeah. And also, I mean, he also in the same Larry King interview also puts out the theory that he heard from like one of his like Middle Eastern contacts that she was involved with like the Saudi royal family or some like Middle Eastern royal family. And they like absconded with her in a limo. Yeah, you can tell that he just likes repeating outrageous stuff in public. And those are also two mutually exclusive theories. She can't have been taken by Gary Condit as part of a Hells Angels thing and kidnapped by a Saudi prince. This is like when satanic panic stories start being questioned in the news. Like if some theory is undermined,

then you just throw out something even weirder on top of it. And it's not these things don't have to cohere together. You just have to give the public something to latch on to. Like he is indicative of I think what the entire media did at this time was they're like, we'll just print like police sources say or like someone who knew Chandra in high school says this is his theory. And like, we'll just print it. But then we'll always have these caveats, you know, like, oh, the Gary Condit says it's not true. And there's no evidence for this. But just the fact that it's in the bloodstream and people are talking about this so much, you don't remember the denials and the caveats. You remember like the outrageous story. Yes. The last thing I want to say about

the media stuff, one thing that I think is actually really interesting is every network is doing stuff on this, every newspaper is covering it. It's this huge thing. CBS Evening News, they decide early on that they're just not going to cover it and they don't for the entire time. Wow. Why do they talk later about their rationale or whose idea it is? One guy that shows executive producer, he tells the American Journalism Review later, he says, I turned on morning TV and I was sick to my stomach. I just find it beyond tasteless. It's nauseating. And then you're like, okay, so you did that then. Why not any of the other times? I know. Like, can we just do this for like lots of stuff? Like, right? Because like, if it's reasonable for a network to be like, actually, we feel this is

being sufficiently covered by other networks. Yes. Can we just do that with like Britney Spears's virginity? So basically, this is it. This is the crescendo of the media is August, early September. And then this shows you how big of a story this was that on the morning of September 11th, the Levy, Chandra's parents are on their way to film an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oh, wow. And Chad Condit, Gary Condit's grown son, is on his way to film The View. And then 9-11 happens and both appearances get canceled. Wow. And so then the story completely disappears. And we really don't hear about it again until eight months later. So now we're going to rewind. That was a rewind noise. Thank you. Yeah. We're going to rewind to a guy named Ingmar

Guandike, who is an El Salvadoran immigrant. He grew up super poor in El Salvador. His father was killed by gorillas. He somehow scrapes together $5,000 to pay a coyote to sneak into the United States. He swims across the Rio Grande. His half brother lives in Washington. So he moves to D.C. He gets a construction job. And he's basically just like 18-year-old kid doing day labor on construction sites. He's sending a little bit of money home. And he's basically really depressed and angry. And America sort of sucks. He's working his ass off. He doesn't speak the language. He's really lonely and frustrated. And so according to his girlfriend, he starts hitting her. He starts carrying a knife. He bites her at one point. Her mom says that he kicks in a bedroom door

in their apartment. He's just lashing out. And so as he's in this downward spiral, he starts attacking female joggers in Rock Creek Park in the spring of 2001. So on May 14th of 2001, this is two weeks after Chandra disappears, a woman named Hala Schilling is jogging in Rock Creek Park. She jogs past this Hispanic young dude, doesn't think anything of it. And then as she's jogging, she can hear this dude jogging behind her. And she's like, oh, he wants to pass me. So she slows down to let him pass. And then he dives on top of her and attacks her. I didn't know this. But apparently in self-defense classes, they teach you that if somebody jumps on you and attacks you, you put your two fingers into their mouth under their tongue and like press down. And

it's like wildly debilitating, like kicking them in the balls level debilitating apparently. Wow, I didn't know that. But now I do. And so this Hala lady like does this to Ingmar. And he's like, ah, he just like runs away. Yeah, I just did it to myself and put a little pressure on it. I was like, yeah, that's bad. I mean, it's interesting because it feels counterintuitive to reach into the mouth of someone who's attacking you. But like, yeah, I get it. That's good to know. And so she reports it to the cops, but like he's, you know, too far gone at that point to find him. Then on July 1st, another woman named Christy Wygan is also attacked. She's also jogging in Rock Creek Park. And same sort of thing. He runs up to her. He grabs her. They sort of struggle.

They roll down a hill kind of into a ravine. And again, she's like, he's a relatively small dude, apparently. It seems he might have been using drugs or drunk at the time. She sort of fights him off and runs and then goes straight to the park cops. And so they find him sort of panting and wet, like hiding under a bush. And so this is two months after the disappearance of Chandra. They do a thing, the cops take him into custody and they do the interrogation tactic where they're like, did you attack a woman in the park? And he's like, no, of course not. And they're like, well, what we think happened is like there was probably some misunderstanding. Like you bumped into a woman in the park and like she thought it was an attack. So like, is that what happened? And then

Ingmar is like, yeah, that's that's what happened. I bumped into her and like it must have been a misunderstanding. And then they're like, was there ever a time like maybe like a month or two ago or something? You might have bumped into like a different woman and like there might have been the same kind of misunderstanding. We're just trying to help you out here. And he's like, yeah, like a couple weeks ago, like there was another woman that I like bumped into and like it seemed like she was upset, but like I just bumped into her by accident. So like what he's given them, of course, is like, these are the dates and times I'm corroborating these women's stories, but he doesn't know that that's what he's doing. He's then arrested for the assault of these

two women. And so by this point, the cops know that Chandra Levy has disappeared probably in Rock Creek Park. But this is baffling. They show Ingmar a picture of Chandra. Do you recognize her? And he's like, oh, yeah, I recognize her. But like, I didn't attack her like I saw her in the park one day. Yeah, that's not a good lie. It's not great. Because like, why would you remember her if you just saw her in the park? But then what's very weird is that these like park detectives don't contact like the main detectives. So the information that this guy Ingmar has been arrested for attacking joggers in Rock Creek Park doesn't get to the main investigators of this case. So they stay on Gary Condit for like months after this. Yikes. And so this is nuts. In October of 2001,

after September 11, a jailhouse informant comes forward and says, this Ingmar guy told me that he murdered Chandra Levy. I mean, jailhouse informants are notoriously iffy, I have to say. Yes. In one of these stories, they note in 22% of wrongful convictions, a jailhouse informant is involved. Wow. It's very easy to see why an informant would do such a thing, right? Because they're offered some kind of a deal. There is a clear incentive structure that goes into it. And so it's just not surprising that there would be rampant abuses of that. Oh, totally. And that people would be claiming that their cellmate confessed something to them. Yeah. That in fact, they never confessed at all, but which they know that the police would like a confession of. Yeah. What's also fascinating about

this one is that the jailhouse informant comes forward and tells a completely ludicrous story. So he says Ingmar Gondike attacked Chandra Levy and killed her in the park. Fine. That basically checks out. He also says, however, that Ingmar was paid $25,000 by Gary Condit to do it. Okay. And it's like, why you got greedy? You got greedy, Martin. So they give the jailhouse informant a polygraph test, which he fails. They also give Ingmar a polygraph test about whether he is in any way involved in Chandra's disappearance. He gets inconclusive results. The problem is they're doing these polygraph tests in English. And so neither one of these people speak great English. And so it's difficult to sort of get people's reactions

or kind of have a back and forth. And you can imagine getting a stress response just from the fact that someone's having a hard time following. Oh my God, if I had to touch the cops in German, I'd be so stressed out. And so apparently because of 9-11, that all of the resources have now shifted to terrorism, they can't get a Spanish language polygraph specialist. And so they just kind of drop it. Ingmar gets charged in 2002 for attacking these other two women and he gets sentenced to 10 years. What's nuts is in the sentencing phase, the judge to the prosecutors is like, hey, you know, I've been seeing the Chandra Levy case in the news, same park. There's nothing there, right? Is that a thing? And the prosecutor's like,

nah, like we had an informant, but it didn't work out. Okay. Like nothing happens. They sentence it to 10 years, he goes to prison. It's interesting, right? Because if you have someone who's attempting to frame a defendant, you can see how thinking that might be true and realizing it's not would lead you to just feel that you've dealt conclusively to the whole thing and not be like, well, maybe he tried to falsely implicate someone who is guilty, but who didn't admit it to that specific person. And they didn't really do much of an actual investigation. Like they didn't actually look into this that hard. They're just like, take a polygraph. Well, it's like the thing where like you kind of intentionally half-ass a chore so that no one ever asked you to do it again.

And so May 22nd of 2002, they find Chandra's body. How does this happen? There is a dude walking his dog. He apparently collects animal bones as a hobby. And there's typically deer bones in Rock Creek Park, I guess, and like deer antlers. He's decorating his dive bar. And so he's like off the beaten track, like off the ravine looking for bones. And he finds what he thinks is like a deer bone. And then he pulls it out of the dirt and it's a skull. It's Chandra's skull. Fucking sucks. After the laptop, this is either like the worst blunder that the cops made or the second worst blunder. They searched for her in the park on July 25th of 2001. So after they saw her search history, but they stayed within

100 meters of like the paved paths. So they didn't look on all the sort of like little tiny warrens, like little nooks and crannies in this park. Okay. So on the one hand, like how many acres is it? How big of a park is it? Apparently it's twice the size of Central Park. It's big. So it's like forgivable, right? Like I can look at that and be like, I cannot expect you to have searched every single little nook and cranny in this park. However, it also seems that they were using a tremendous amount of resources based on tips that had no basis in the victim's search history. They're diving in the river. Right. They're diving in the Potomac. And it's like, surely you can spend more time in the one place that you have any reason to think she might have

been. Yes. And also by July 25th, there had already been these two other attacks of joggers in Rock Creek Park. It's again, it's like they might have still missed her, but it seems like they really could have increased their chances of finding her body. It's also very interesting because this is one of the few cases where like this is a stranger danger murder. Yeah. We're always the ones that are like, look at people that knew her. Look at the power structures. And then this one is like, ignore the power structures. That's a stranger. Well, or like pay attention to the power structures, but like except when there seems to truly be nothing there. Yeah. Unfortunately, the answer seems to be like, just, you know,

have lots and lots of time and resources. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this was the only lead they had. What's really interesting is they only had two leads, basically Gary Condit and Rock Creek Park. And like Baskin Robbins, maybe the coupons. Yeah. So basically at this point, they finally start investigating. And so in late 2002, they start asking Ingmar's like landlords and his friends, like what was he like? And they come up with the day that Chandra disappeared May 1st, Ingmar missed work. And they also speak to his landlord, who says sometime around this time, he showed up with like scratches and bruises on his face. So she's not sure like exactly when this is, but like sometime around like spring of 2001. Those are essentially the

only two pieces of information that link him to Chandra's death. And then in the same way that jailhouse informant wasn't enough to charge him before, these two pieces of extremely circumstantial information aren't really enough to charge him now. So in 2002, they're like, okay, scratches on his face, missed work. Like you can't base an entire prosecution only on that. And this jailhouse informant story has completely fallen apart by this point. So then six years goes by in 2008, the Washington Post publishes a 13 part story about basically how the DC police fucked up this case upon which much of this podcast episode is based. It's very good. And so this series includes all of this evidence about Ingmar. And this idea that Ingmar is like

very obviously quote unquote, the guy that really killed Chandra. And like, why was he never arrested? Why was he never charged with this crime? And so magically, another jailhouse snitch comes forward and says that Ingmar confessed to him. And so based on this evidence, Ingmar is sentenced to 60 years for murdering Chandra Levy. How do we feel about this, Mike? I don't know. Tell me about this other, tell me about the second informant. That's what I want to know. What's, what's their deal? So his name is Armando Morales. He is serving a 21 year sentence on drug and weapons charges. He sort of emerges in this trial as a like reformed gang leader. Like, I've been to jail, I've read books, I've done all this work on myself. And like,

I just felt like I had to come forward with this story that Ingmar told me about him killing Chandra. And like, I couldn't keep it silent anymore. And Ingmar told me about this. And I don't know. It's like, everyone, what's interesting is like, everyone feels weird about it. Even Chandra Levy's parents in interviews are like, we think he did it. But like, this is a little weird. Maybe he did do it. But like, that's not, that's not much of a case, really. There's more evidence against this guy than against Gary Condit. But that's not saying very much. And like he's in the park. He's apparently attacking women later on. However, I mean, based on what you've told me, like, what do we have? He said that he recognizes Chandra. He's

like, I recognize her, but I didn't attack her. Although he actually pulls that back later. He tells different investigators, Oh, I saw her on TV. I recognize her from TV. I don't recognize her from the park, which is highly plausible. Because if you see someone's face over and over, you do feel like you've seen them somewhere. And out of context, you might not realize that's where you've seen them. And her face was everywhere that summer. Yes. Yeah. So interestingly, what I assumed when you were initially telling me about him jumping on these other women in the park, I assume this happened before Chandra Levy disappeared. Because intuitively, and this is just based on my own uneducated gut. But it feels to me like it would more correspond with him being

guilty if this had happened before her murder. If it would have been escalation. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to like, he murders her and then deescalates. Yeah. Or is like easily fought off by these other women. But then if they could fight him off, why couldn't Chandra be like, right? And then we have this other informant who comes forward. And it's like, that's possible. But like, I'm not convinced by that. Yeah. Is there DNA evidence? Is there, I mean, there wouldn't be if they like had investigated and then let him go for like months and months. This is what's interesting is like, there's no, because it's been so long, there's no evidence of any kind. The only sort of, I guess, forensic evidence is that, you know, she was wearing jogging pants. And the jogging pants are

tied in a knot at like the base of the legs. It's evidence that someone did something. It's not evidence that he did anything. Because it's been so long. There's no hair. There's no spit. There's no fibers. Like none of her like body is there to get samples from. Oh, and then so how does, how does it remains imply that she died? Are there fractures or anything? There's like a neck bone that's like broken, which could indicate that she strangled, but it could also indicate that like the bone got broken after she was dead. Right. Like an animal, like a lot of the bones have been moved like up to 25 feet away from her body. I think it's totally plausible that someone killed her in that park. And I think that if you're looking at candidates for that,

then you can be like, yeah, this guy is the best candidate that we know about. But also we apparently have a pretty anemic system of park policing. Yeah. This is one guy who we kind of started paying attention to a little on the early side and who just is the only candidate that we found. But like that doesn't, that just, I know, that just doesn't mean anything. It's the perfect parallel to the type of evidence against Gary Condant. There's no evidence that he was at Rock Creek Park the day of Chandra's disappearance. There's the only evidence is one place in Washington, D.C. where he wasn't. He wasn't at work. There's no other evidence that he was actually close to the crime scene. Nobody saw them together. Nobody found, you know, her hair fibers in his home.

There's no actual evidence linking him to Chandra's disappearance. Well, because it took so long for them to investigate. Yes. And you could argue that like if they had gotten on it sooner, like maybe they would have found some kind of trace evidence of her. Yeah. At that point, you're in the position of like, if we had investigated sooner, maybe we would have gotten a stronger case out of this guy, but we didn't. And so we can't. And so, yeah, can we accept that like there is no strong case to be gotten if there ever was one? Yeah. I mean, the the issue is oftentimes that we oftentimes conflate the strength of evidence versus did somebody do it. Yes. Like I think Ingmar easily could have done it. But the evidence that we have is weak as hell. Yes.

That's why that whole beyond a reasonable doubt thing is really important. Literally the reason we have this. There's not like also not to be like Captain Conspiracy here. But there is something to the fact that the Washington Post publishes an extremely high profile series of articles accusing the D.C. police of incompetence and accusing Ingmar Guandicke of this crime, basically. And then magically we get this jailhouse snitch a couple months later and then we get the trial. Uh-huh. Yeah, the order is a little concerning, isn't it? The evidence for that is just as good as the evidence that Ingmar killed Chandra Levy, right? It's like two circumstances that line up a little too perfectly. Also, like if you need to solve an unsolved murder and give people a sense

of closure and make your police department wipe some of the egg off of your face, then a really good defendant is someone who has low to no resources, will go down easily. You can just steam roll over him and move on. Again, like I'm not saying he's innocent. I'm also not saying he's guilty. But I am saying that he's an ideal candidate for someone who can be brought to trial and convicted quickly and easily. Right. So what happens next is just an absurd series of twists. So in 2015, five years after the original trial, there's a retrial. Because there's all these appeals about like everything we've just been saying. Right. He got some lawyers who were like, hey, this is weird. This is bad. So they agree to a retrial. So they're basically just going to

start over and do this whole thing again, like more by the book. And so as this trial is going on in the middle of the trial, we meet an out of work actress named Babs Proler. She's an actress that has been on House of Cards. She had a bit part on House of Cards, apparently. Okay. So she's sort of between jobs. It seems like she gets evicted from her home because she can't pay rent. She ends up moving into this like low cost motel, her and her dog. We're suddenly in a Tennessee Williams play. Her dog gets like stuck in the sliding door or something. This guy ends up helping her dog. They end up chatting. It seems they strike up a relationship. Her and this guy, his name is Armando. He seems nice. She eventually googles him.

She discovers that he's the jailhouse snitch. He's now out of jail. And so she finds out like what he was convicted for, finds out that he was a gang leader, et cetera, et cetera. She gets kind of nervous. So she starts recording their conversations. She starts asking him like, what about this Ingmar guy? Like, did he really confess? Like, what's your deal? And so she eventually goes to Susan Levy. Shondra Levy's mother. Yes. And says, I have been recording this guy. And he says he made up the accusations against Ingmar and I have it on tape. Yeah, that's not surprising.

But then Levy feels fucking weird about it because she's like, well, who are you? This guy's convicted of killing my daughter. And like, yeah, who the fuck are you? And I've never seen House of Cards. And like, what is this? And so according to Babs, this guy has admitted that he made up the testimony about Ingmar and that he was pressured by prosecutors to lie. And then Babs also contacts ABC News, The Washington Post, a couple of other outlets. She's like, I have this bombshell news. I have everything on tape. I will send you the tapes. And so of course, The Washington Post and ABC News and everybody else is like, okay, send us the tapes. So this is the weirdest twist. The twist is, they listen to the tapes

and Morales doesn't say that on any of the tapes. There's nothing on the tapes of him saying I made up the testimony against Ingmar or that the prosecutors pressured him into it. Interesting. And does she think that she heard that? Is she? She basically, it's now like her word against his that she's saying like he told me this stuff, but the tape recorder broke or like the vials got destroyed or like something, but like that is not on tape. My guess is that she Googled him, figured out who he was, saw the connection and then wanted to believe that that exchange had taken place. And maybe wanted to cast herself in like a more of a starring role in this.

Yeah, we all want that. But then another twist on the tapes, Armando admits to a bunch of other bad shit. He's like, oh, I'm gonna like shoot some like rival gangs. I'm like back gang bang again. I'm like planning on killing this guy that like stole from me. And also what basically ends up happening is this jailhouse snitch completely ruins his credibility because the prosecutors need him to be like the reformed gang member. But now no lawyer is going to let him get away with this. If it's like you're on tape saying you're going to kill somebody and then you're also saying like believe me about Ingmar.

So this is just a story where no one knows what the truth is and everyone looks bad. And so they talk about like within five days, the case is over and they they drop the charges against Ingmar and just let him go. Oh, okay. So I mean, here's the thing, like if the evidence is all hanging on the credibility of this one jailhouse informant, and then if facts come forward about his character, that means the prosecutor is like, you know what, never mind. Do you have a strong chain if it's all dependent on this one link working or shouldn't it chain have multiple links? Is that how chains work? It's like one hit to the credibility of one witness and there just

is no case. The whole thing evaporates. Like you should not be doing cases like this. Yeah, it's like maybe you never had sufficient evidence to begin with. Yeah. So I guess everyone did a bad job. Yes, everyone did a bad job. And so in 2017, Ingmar is deported back to El Salvador and that's basically the last we hear of him. And that's basically it. That's the end of all of the legal wrangling with this case. Wow, Mike. What a complete fucking downer.

I know. Huge downer. And maybe this is a good news, though, that Gary Condit gets destroyed in his next election because he's just like politically radioactive. Yeah. So what has Gary Condit done since? You're not going to believe this. After he loses the election, he sort of bounces around for a little bit and then he ends up running two Baskin Robbins franchises in California. The very thing I suggested he do. Yes. I was holding my tongue earlier. And also that is a reference to Chandra's last moments.

I know. It's very strange. That's weird. I know. That seems good for him, though. Does he like it? Well, apparently they failed and then there was like a lawsuit between him and Baskin Robbins. But I was just like, I'm not going to dive into this. I don't need to know. You don't want to spend time out of your life figuring out what went wrong between Gary Condit and Baskin Robbins. We could do like a whole epilogue and I was just like, I'm done with Gary Condit.

Dive, Gary Condit, Baskin Robbins. I don't care. So now he does like some real estate something, something like he's fine. I don't know. Is he still married or he and Carolyn still together? Still has her thumbs. Everything's fine. You know what? The point of this story is that Carolyn has thumbs. Women have thumbs. I really enjoy this, though. I enjoy that this is a story where nothing works out for anyone.

I know. The truth remains, you know, if it was ever accessible, it isn't anymore and just everyone screwed up because crime stories often are basically that and it's so rare that we just let them be. And this one, just you cannot spin it in a way that's where anyone seems to have triumph. Like it's just a mess and a nightmare and you, I don't know, maybe it's nice to realize that like it's disingenuous to think you can turn someone being murdered into anything else. Right. It's also an interesting story of two dudes who are both kind of shitty.

But in different ways. And there's no real evidence that either one of them killed Chandra, but we have one who like it's very easy to pin the murder on. Yeah. I just think like the whole thing to me just demonstrates like the importance of understanding the difference between circumstantial evidence and like evidence evidence. Yes. So in 2016, when Gary Condit's book comes out, he gives a bunch of interviews. And this is just like head in your hands, like, Gary, shut the fuck up.

This is what he says about what it was like going through that. Oh, why? I felt like my reputation was being raped. Oh, Gary, stop. Get an editor. I know. It was the equivalent to me of a rape. I've never been physically raped. Oh, my God. But I've been emotionally and my reputation has been raped. And just like probably with a physical rape, you probably never recover from those emotions

and those scars. I don't want to take anything away from Chandra and her family, because I know they're the real victims. They lost someone. And it's like, Gary. It's also like, I thought that it would just be him using that metaphor one time in one sense, but he was like, nope. Nope. Like we are staying with this theme. We are saying, I'm going to say I was metaphorically raped over and over. And it's like, Gary. Use another metaphor, Gary. It still seems possible to probable that like she did experience some form of sexual assault

in connection with her murder. And like even the possibility of that makes it even more terrible for you to make that metaphor than it would have been already in any circumstance. I do think the hardest cases to talk about are the ones where someone is not guilty of a specific thing, but they're just kind of shitty. Yeah. Well, and you know, I've been also watching Perry Mason lately, and I actually really admire that show because apparently the writer of the novels that the Perry Mason stories are based on Earl Stanley Gardner had a plot wheel to decide what was going to happen in his books, which means that you have various factors on various wheels. You have

the wheel of hostile minor characters whose function is making complications for the hero. You have the wheel of complicating circumstances and so on. And so when you need a plot development, you spin the wheels, I guess. I haven't used one. And you get hero is betrayed to villain by spies or a vital witness for feises to talk or false confessions. And so what happens in the story is dictated by a combination of writing out good options for narrative and then chance. I find that so satisfying to watch in Perry Mason because you'll have someone who seems set up to be the killer or you'll have a plot that seems very reasonable based on what you've seen so far. And then the wheel spins and then something completely random

just shoots into frame. And you're like, all right, this feels like real life. I get it. I see where you're going with this. Where am I going with this? Well, that it's basically like thematically Gary Condit should have done it. Right. But we have this completely random thing and we have Chandra Levy decided to go for a jog on a Tuesday for no particular reason. And then something terrible happened to her. And there is no thematic resonance. There is no larger meaning. It's just a roll of the dice and something that sucks. Yeah. And just that like we can't turn the tragedy itself into anything else. Yeah. And we can't go looking for thematic resonance in things to the elimination of the

non-satisfying option, which is basically what this ends up being. You want to hear the solution wheel? Oh, yeah. So when you need to solve, you know, end your book, you're like chop, chop, gotta finish. These are some of your options. Gets villain to betray himself through greed. Villain killed while he slash she is trying to frame someone meets trickery with horse sense. Squashes obstacles by sheer courage. Where is Open's series of Baskin Robbins franchises? That's the one I want to find.