Jury Selection Begins in Chandra Levy Murder Trial

(Oct. 18) -- Jury selection began today in the trial of an illegal immigrant from El Salvador accused of murdering Chandra Levy, the Washington intern whose 2001 disappearance and revelations of her secret love affair with a married congressman became tabloid fodder and ultimately cost Rep. Gary Condit his job.

At one point the top suspect in the 24-year-old's disappearance, Condit infamously tried to hush details of their romance in a painful TV interview with Connie Chung. Voters ousted him in California's Democratic primary the following winter, and even though he's no longer suspected of involvement in Levy's death, he's expected to be called to testify.

Opening statements in the trial could come as early as Thursday.

Lurid details of Levy's life and disappearance -- as well as accusations of a botched D.C. police investigation -- transfixed Washington and the nation in the heady summer before Sept. 11, 2001. As security concerns descended on the capital, Levy's case went unsolved for years.

Parts of her body were found in Washington's Rock Creek Park, where she liked to go jogging, in May 2002 -- more than a year after she vanished. In 2009, Ingmar Guandique, a 29-year-old Salvadoran immigrant linked to a notorious Latino gang in D.C., was charged with her murder.

Prosecutors say Guandique killed Levy on May 1, 2001, after trying to sexually assault her on a jogging trail in the park. But there are no witnesses and no DNA evidence, and the prosecution is relying mostly on statements the suspect allegedly made to other gang members and prison inmates, bragging about the killing.

"The stories themselves are fantastical," Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Haines said at a pretrial hearing, according to The Modesto Bee, Levy's hometown newspaper. But "they all have the same core. He attacked Ms. Levy in the woods. He took her off the path. He raped her. He killed her."

Guandique is already serving a 10-year sentence for assaulting two other women at knifepoint in Rock Creek Park, around the same time as Levy vanished. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in Levy's death. His lawyers are expected to try to find fault with detectives' investigation methods.

In 2004 and 2005, police tried to extract a confession from Guandique while he was in prison for another offense, by sending letters signed by a fake pen pal dubbed "Maria Lopez." The ruse didn't work.

"It goes to the sort of antics, the sort of shenanigans, the lengths to which they've gone to prosecute Mr. Guandique," defense lawyer Santha Sonenberg said at a pretrial hearing last week, according to The Associated Press.

When Levy disappeared, she had just completed her internship with the federal Bureau of Prisons and was due to fly home to California for her college graduation. She never returned.

Her father, 64-year-old Robert Levy, told The Washington Post that he's "pretty sure" Guandique is the man who killed his daughter. But his wife, Susan Levy, said she still has "a lot of questions."

"I don't know if I will ever get answers," 63-year-old Susan Levy told the Post.

As for Condit, since losing his congressional seat, he has run two Baskin-Robbins ice cream franchises in Arizona. Susan Levy said she met the congressman only once, just after her daughter disappeared and police were questioning him.

"He wasn't anything like I thought. I wasn't impressed," Levy told the Post. "I don't know what she was thinking."