Chandra Levy

Last Updated on June 24, 2026

Chandra Levy was a young woman from California who moved to Washington, D.C. for a job.

She worked as an intern for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

She had finished her studies and internship in April 2001.

Chandra was preparing to return home to California for her graduation ceremony.

Missing Persons Investigation

Chandra went missing in early May 2001.

Her parents could not reach her and became worried about her safety.

They called the police to report that she was missing.

The police searched her apartment in Washington DC.

They found her bags packed and ready for her trip home.

Her wallet and her keys were still inside the room.

Her computer showed that she had looked at a map of Rock Creek Park on her last morning.

The media began reporting extensively on her sudden disappearance.

Investigators discovered that Chandra had a secret relationship with a man named Gary Condit.

Gary Condit was a married United States Congressman from California.

He represented the area where Chandra and her family lived.

The police interviewed Gary Condit multiple times about the relationship.

He denied having an affair with Chandra at first.

He later admitted to the relationship but said he had nothing to do with her disappearance.

The focus on Gary Condit hurt his career and he lost his election the next year.

The police spent many months searching for Chandra across the city.

They looked through parks and buildings but found nothing for a long time.

Discovery of her body

A man walking his dog found human bones in Rock Creek Park in May 2002.

The location was a thick wooded area away from the main trails.

Medical examiners checked the bones and confirmed they belonged to Chandra Levy.

They determined that her death was a homicide.

She had been brutally attacked.

The police did not have enough evidence to charge anyone with the crime right away.

Years passed without any new answers for her family.

2006 – Case Reopened

The police department formed a new team to look at the cold case in 2006.

Investigators began to focus on a man named Ingmar Guandique.

Ingmar Guandique was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador.

He had already been arrested for attacking two other women in Rock Creek Park around the same time.

Those attacks happened in the same park where workers found Chandra.

A prison informant named Armando Morales told the police that Guandique confessed to the murder.

Morales said that Guandique admitted to attacking Chandra in the woods.

Arrest and trial of Ingmar Guandique

The police officially charged Ingmar Guandique with the murder of Chandra Levy in 2009.

The trial began in Washington, D.C. in 2010.

The prosecutors built their case around the witness testimony of the prison informant.

They did not have any physical evidence linking Guandique to the crime scene.

The defense lawyers argued that there was no DNA proof connecting him to Chandra.

They said the informant was lying to get a shorter prison sentence for himself.

The jury found Ingmar Guandique guilty of first degree murder.

The judge sentenced him to sixty years in prison for the crime.

Guandique’s lawyers appealed the decision and asked for a new trial.

They discovered that the secret informant had lied during his testimony about his past help to police.

The informant had a history of cooperating with law enforcement, which he did not disclose.

The prosecutors dropped all the charges against Ingmar Guandique in 2016.

They said they could no longer prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The government deported Ingmar Guandique back to El Salvador in 2017.

The murder of Chandra Levy remains an open and unsolved mystery.

Her family still hopes to find the truth about what happened to her in the park.