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 bejesus out of middle school aged Sarah. Oh, and also other people. Is that true? You were scared of this one? Yeah. This was one of the great white girl cases of my own white girl adolescence.

I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for the Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall and working on a book about the Satanic Panic. And we're on Patreon at Patreon Dotcom. 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 warranty.

I just love hearing how this this little patter 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 by billions and I'm watching. You're putting 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 11th, the nightly news broadcasts ran 63 stories on Chandra Levy. And then in the year after 9/11, they ran three oh oh oh, yes, 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 Chiang, 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 D.C. 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 weird, flukey 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 so 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. My 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 or a congressman named Gary Condit.

Yes. California House of Representatives guy. OK, 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 D.C. seemed like a really dangerous thing for girls, especially Jewish girls.

Yes, I knew she was missing. I knew that Gary Condit was highly suspected of being involved in her death. And I think the general mouthfeel 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 it was also the summer of the shark. Do you remember this?

Oh, 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 anti special about the making of Jaws. And I was like, I don't want to go in the water there, 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 since 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 U.S. media was just at a total rock bottom.

Well, there is nothing happening is that it's not where we were because, like, must be nice.

But let's let's get into it.

Let's let's talk about Shandra. All right. So there's various accounts of Shandra'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 genes. She didn't wear a lot of makeup. She spent 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. 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 right along 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.

But 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, 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, I guess 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 L.A. She ends up going to grad school and getting an internship at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. So she ends up moving to D.C. 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 that's a that's one of the classic you're wrong about miss remembrances, 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 and she uses intern. Right. That makes it easier to advance the story.

Yeah, I think another really good show of character is people 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 Bee, USA Today, National Geographic and The Drudge Report. Wow. And she's also on Amtrak, Southwest Airlines. And Go France talked about dotcom. 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 moved 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 that.

Our men 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 it's 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 like Roman Polanski taking a Barbie to the Sistine Chapel. And 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 20s 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, 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 the stupid job that's draining my soul away.

And so I'm going to send you a picture that has taken on this on this historic occasion.

Yes, them. So that's Shandra 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. You can see the face as well. The feeling of. 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 a politician from Nebraska.

Like, yes, he has the generic face of a politician elderly. And Chandra Levy has huge hair. Yeah, you can really see the D.C. humidity in this picture. And it's just like foliage surrounding her head, like this beautiful halo. Yeah. And she just has the smile of, like, I'm in fucking Washington, D.C., like, she seems genuinely please.

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. 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, you know.

Yeah, her mother and I had the same reaction to that. 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 hard feelings about that. Yes, I got it, Chandra. I get it.

So this is the part where I have to tell you about Gary Condit's upbringing and his history as a Lutheran.

He's got a lookaround face. He's a preacher's kid, actually, although Baptist. So I was on to something.

Yeah, you were close. I mean, when you say he has 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 Vail, I mean, other than his wife actually being named Carolyn, 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.

Democrats, 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, you know, 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 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 I'm like, what? What did that ignite?

It's like, the war is going to be over. You want there to be wars forever so you can have a job like it's not.

Yeah, you're like. But why 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 nineteen.

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 with Priest.

So 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 where 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 onto 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 ethnic food. Like, what an interesting guy.

And you're like, is it like you're like, is this the best you could find? He's having a non. Yeah, yeah. So basically he's just like this boring guy.

But Shandra 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 twenty three years old, like guys your age and slightly younger are like not that great of a field to pick for. It's hard to not have a thing for older guys. When you're a twenty five year old, you're a sexual 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.

OK, well, that 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. OK. 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 in the slots at your speed dial where a really big deal.

Yes, because there were only nine of them. Yeah. We always have these stupid little technological ways of demonstrating to ourselves that we are moving on from someone who used to be deleting them from your speed dial.

Yeah. She also starts telling people.

But like in these cryptic ways, I am seeing a Harrison Ford.

Yes, gentlemen, 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.

So, yes, imagine her mom hearing this and then seeing a picture of Gary Condit being like, oh, yes, Chandra.

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 Chandra 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 planning to do that or be 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. Yeah, 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 talk to The Washington Post and he says, like they had to stop by his house on the way to the event to 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 it's clear that she wants to tell people and she's happy about it.

It's because I'm looking at this picture of her still with her face because 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 twenty seventh 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, oh, sorry, technical reasons, but 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 11:00 in the morning. She emails them with like flights.

She's like there's one on like Wednesday, there's one on Friday. Wah wah wah wah wah wah.

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 fifty calls to this dude's office. Yeah.

And they're like, well, you know, she's passionate about water quality, but, you know, that's sixteen.

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, 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 then 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 needed to make a phone call. And like it couldn't help you as a navigational aid. Yeah.

They also find her telephone answering machine as full as 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 chirpily, 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.

OK, so they know she's got semen in her life, which is. Yes, that's normal for a twenty three year old.

That does not come back for another couple of weeks. But I'm dropping it now as foreshadowing 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 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. Yes.

And are like behind even a normal person and knowing what to do in a technological situation, which is just, 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 ten 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 dot com and read an article called How to Jog.

And she goes to the website of Rock Creek Park and looks at a map of all the hiking trails. But they don't know this for five more weeks.

That sucks. 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 like abducting her or anything.

But the building only keeps the tapes for seven days and they forgot to ask. And so the building wiped the tapes. And so they never get the tapes.

Oh, that sucks. That sucks.

So basically, as soon as this happens, the 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 go back to Gary. So they go over to his house, they ask him, what's the nature of your relationship? And he tells them the same thing that he's been saying ever since. 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 D.C., like on his own, like he has his own apartment and his family's in California or what?

Yeah. So every week he visits his family in California. So, like, he's in D.C. from like Monday to Thursday. And then Thursday night he flies back to California.

So he's alone in his apartment during the week. Oh, that's a bummer.

I know his wife talked 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. 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 like Harvey Dent or Nurse Jackie.

So apparently the cops say, did you have an intimate relationship with Miss 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 are looking at 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 the 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 he disappeared. This is nuts.

While at the moment of her disappearance, like somewhere around noon of May 1st, he was meeting with Dick Cheney, just like Dick Cheney ends up being like a character witness.

That is a great alibi. It also shows you what kind of Democrat he is to write that he's like hanging out with Dick Cheney and talking about, like, how can I how can we work together on stuff?

Yeah, but then, I mean, his entire the whole kind of like couple of days before the disappearance, couple of 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 ability of the American people to ignore the fact that, like, we still I think there 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 he yet from the beginning, it was obvious that, like, there was just no advantageous window in which she could have committed a murder.

And I was like, yeah, but it's such a good story, though. Come on.

Yeah. 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 D.C. 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 went well.

I love how you always you know, you're just very practical. And your true crime analysis like this doesn't seem thought out at all because, like, this is the worst time to commit a murder when you have no real alibi witness and 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 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 picked her up 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 D.C. for six months.

Right. So it's not like she has, like, this robust network of like exes 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. You know, 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 leaves 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 some like local coverage. And then they fly the leaves to D.C. 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 levees 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.

And 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 make something happen or spray the police into action, like, yeah, yeah. What else are you going to do? Yeah. 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. Yes. And so after this news conference on May 15, so almost exactly two weeks after she disappears, this is the story that 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 17. 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's just like Gary Condit, who's her representative from Congress, has donated 10000 dollars 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 his 23 year old girl who wasn't his intern, a great friend?

You had a beautiful friendship say more about. And it's also interesting because he didn't have to say that, like, he could have just been like, I'm giving ten thousand dollars to her parents because they're from my district and I'm concerned. Yeah. 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 commercial with a great screenwriter, you be like, oh, wait, that seems like the story here.

Wait a minute. Ferris corresponding with George Lucas. Let's go out 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's happening is from now on, there's just a drip of stories every single day, including 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 the body near his office in such an idiotic thing to do? Like you 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 a spotlight on this Condit guy.

We think this Condit guy had something to do with it, which is why a grieving parents aren't placed in charge of investigations right now. 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, Harrison Ford could level with everybody and be like, yes, we were having an affair, but I didn't kill her like that. Make him look 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 it's really it's a it's a rubab 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 levees meet with Gary Condit. No cameras, no anything that 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, you're visualizing this man murdering his daughter, presumably, if you like, can't stand to look at him. That's intense. Yeah. And then you 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 her daughter has been telling her about this relationship with the 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 remember having an affair or he is 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 this 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 was like, yeah, it's close to your gym, fine.

But like Gary Condit is not that fucking famous.

They can go to like Panera Bread, Iowa. 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 be like an attractive young staffer or farmer rep or just like demonstrate to someone through context clues that, like, nothing will be happening. Yeah. Take them to Panera Bread.

And the world will also know they'll be like, oh, look, Panera Bread. Yeah, 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 responded. And so the cops come and they do interview him again. I mean, they interrogated 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.

And it's 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're a sitting member of Congress? Because I had a platonic sleepover with a hot twenty three year old like that implies either you're a liar or you are so unaware of how that will look to anyone.

But you really shouldn't be a politician because you lack the ability to gauge human reaction. Yes. Yeah. And when someone is clearly lying to your face like that, it really makes them seem like they're lying about everything.

It's not great. It's actually amazing to me that he he didn't admit it.

It is that 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. Like, it's actually like kind of shitty to not just like take the L and admit that you had the affair, 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 us, 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 and 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 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 now because he didn't.

Oh, so the police are just also lying. So everyone's lying. So everyone I mean, that's a good system to have. And also, it's amazing in this story, if you read the first couple of paragraphs are all like sources with knowledge of the meetings, blah, blah, blah, say that he admitted it and then in paragraph like twelve or whatever, the cop. 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 leaving with the affair.

They're not leaving would be in a sense that, yeah, this is also because it's gotten so famous. They get the same thing that we saw with the D.C. 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.

Oh, my God. Which is national treasure. She's literally been watching National Treasure.

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?

It's kind of amazing to me is the police, go check the police, go to the basement of the Smithsonian and like, 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. And they chase that down. They call Israeli authorities.

They have no.

And if she had gone abroad before dying, I mean, the tip line is essentially a place for people to just call and just say something that they think would be meat.

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 not nineteen forty eight. And then they bring in the Secret Service and then they check abortion records in Nevada. Again, it takes ages and then OK.

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.

So no, this is actually they have the search history. The search history has come down. So why do I always offer this charitable interpretation? Turns out to be wrong.

You know, like they know what she was searching for 15 minutes before. OK, 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 Fleck's. She says in July 2000, the attractive flight attendant that she first saw Condit sitting in a business class seat on a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Dulles. Smith, thirty nine, 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.

Our bar man, that's like such a move.

Why would you want a piece of someone else's power bar? No, not even a whole power bar.

That's so what she likes standing there looking woozy or what? I know I'm in a game. You're like, maybe this didn't happen at all. But if it did been like this just seems like a Gary Condit thing to do based on my intimate knowledge of the man from you, 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 about scaring these women, having affairs with you.

I know 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 Joleen McKay, who was an aide in his office at 22, who said she had a three year long relationship with him.

And then his wife calls her and was like, I'm begging you, please don't take my mouth. My God. She says that he was, quote, manipulative and controlling.

Hard to imagine that a politician, to be honest, there's a little guy in California who's a preacher who says that Condit had an affair with his eighteen year old daughter. And then the FBI comes to him and are like, yeah, like tell us more about the 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 Joline, his aide, say that he. 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. And then other like politicians will say this, too.

But 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 migraines since I was young. OK, 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 life. 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're like, you know, his wife's infirm. So it doesn't really matter. Like they won't judge him to the same extent.

So Guro, 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 filing on him like I feel like there's something he's like lut some 30 Rock or just like, why do you always want to that guy? It's funny because, like, I am 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.

OK, 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 LexisNexis queen.

Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what the patch I'm going to get for you for your next birthday says. I actually look 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 it 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.

OK, 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 that 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, yes, everyone can feel they have something to lose.

I mean, I also think on a more broad level, 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.

Yeah. So, I mean, just the idea that the police make someone nervous and that 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 Condit'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 universal explanation for this.

Oh, this is some Book of Esther shit right here.

There's also the category of evidence that we love on the show, which is basically that, like, you're bad on TV.

Yeah. So there's like footage of him, you know, 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? You know, and 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 really no news. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, you 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 year in all of this, her aunt Linda said in the last conversation she had with Chandra a couple of days before her disappearance, Chandra said, Next time we talk, I'm going to have big news for you. Can't wait to tell you.

And that's what we're basing the news on, what Linda thinks comes. Certitudes, big news, and it's like, yeah, it could have been I think the train across France is twenty three. 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 D.C. 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.

Maybe 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, 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 friend she was going anywhere. She has a history of jogging.

The first thing we've learned about her, basically, is that she's just a 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 his criminal mastermind and her that's 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 a 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, it's one way to get rid of it.

And one of the things that robs you not just of your white male privilege, but your humanity is the murderer category. Right. So. Right. 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 a 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 love 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 watchbox, but like with no watch in it.

But then it's one of those things where he mentions it to his colleagues. He's like, l I saw this guy throw away a watch box, like whatever. And they're like, you should call the cops and tell them.

So he does. And of course, leaks out.

And it turns out this was a watch that Joline, his aide, had given him like years before. Oh, my God. But he had it in his house.

This is so dumb. I mean, we ran out of the news that we're like, let's dissect the boring, sad affair. I mean, 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 questioned him and then admitting it eventually and then being like the police can't find out that I had an affair with Joleen and gave me a watch. And it's like the police don't really care about Joleen, OK? There's like bigger fish to fry right now.

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, got to 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 so many men who just suck, but they're not murderers.

And we could just honor that through.

That is like the Gary Condit like campaign slogan. Like I said, I'm not a murderer like that was close. Like, that's as close as I get to defending him.

Oh, so there's polling on this that by late July of this summer.

Sixty five percent of the country thinks that he had something to do with Chandra's disappearance. Wow, the crescendo of this entire affair is August 23. 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 and that it'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 fair. Like, Gary, we need you to deny that you had an affair with our daughter before she disappeared mysteriously.

That's what we require for 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 them any specific requests. We would, in fact, love for him to speak about his relationship with our daughter.

Snake behavior, honestly, and also to lie on something that could be so easily checked up on and 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 Chandra Levy like you didn't think that would come up?

Why do you think you're talking to Connie Chung so she can ask you about policy, things like how 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, you're cut out for managing like a large and busy sonic franchise. That's you're cut out for Powell and you just accidentally rose all the way to this, you know, extremely powerful position that requires a skill set you absolutely do not have. Oh, 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 like really. Gary, that's that's the hill you want to die on. It wasn't a dump.

I mean, look, a trash can does there is something more nefarious 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 whole weird heart identifies with his in this moment.

And also I'm like, oh, honey, you're not going to make it better. You look better. Oh, Gary. So let's play Gary's advocate.

Is there an argument to be made before he truly wasn't having an affair with Chandra Levy?

So I think considering this is 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, yeah, there is a possibility that they had an intense platonic relationship. Right. And Chandra liked him. And so she told people that there was a relationship happening to him.

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, you know, 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 we're 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 911, when this entire story dissipates, the final crescendo of this is a cameo by a friend of the show, Dominick Dunne. Yes.

Oh, I'm so Dominick, you're here. Hello.

I know when you have to share with us, can you? Who is Dominick Dunne for people who have oh, my garage series.

OK, Dominick Dunne became a friend of the show, her O.J. 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 O.J. Simpson. He was one of the journalists who was inside that teeny little courtroom for about ten months. So. I imagine that in 2001, he would end up connected to this because he was kind of the fancy alleged murderers beat.

Vanity Fair. 2001.

Yes. And his columns on Gary Condit are unhinged.

I'm so excited. I mean, Dominick Dunne 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, that 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.

And it just goes on and you're like, wait a minute, anything to do with anything? And it's not true. And then why wouldn't you want to come from?

And like, is it I'm just like, would it affect what is he like hitting on women, you know, and Beltway bars being like, yeah, it's been tough for me.

My wife and his wife seems so nice and she's constantly having to respond to these rumors like, no, I have phones. Why do you keep asking me about this?

There's also the rumor that Dominick Dunne eventually get sued over that Gary Condit is in the Hells Angels and that he kidnapped Chandra as part of some like Hells Angels ritual thing.

No, Dominick, which first of all, the evidence that Gary Condit is in the Hells Angels is that he rides a motorcycle. That's it.

There's no association, really, that goes. And so around this one tidbit of information, Dominick Dunne and others have built this entire theory of the case.

This Dominick Dunne seem to be actually arguing that this is a plausible theory or is he doing that thing he does or 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 listed in a value neutral like, oh, isn't that interesting kind of way?

What actually drives me nuts about this? And I think this happens with a lot of people, especially on TV, is it they'll put out something as if they're just speculating. They're like, you know, sources told me that he kidnapped her. If she's part of the Hells 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 Hells 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 do, because you have no evidence. You haven't told us who your source is. You're just putting this out there. And then Dominick Dunne then retreats to. Well, all I'm saying is you can't rule it out. I just think you can't rule it out. It's like you literally can't rule anything out.

Right.

It's basically impossible to prove a negative. So, yes, like you can you can say that about almost anything. And it creates a false idea also about what journalists do when there are journalists who are like, well, I'm just going to repeat everything that I have heard from everyone. You know, I guess it's for the public to go over now.

And it's like, well, OK, that's like shearing a sheep. And then someone asked for a sweater and you're like, here's a bunch of wool and it's dirty and it's full of lanolin.

And 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 a theory that he heard from like one of these 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, say, panic, panic story, start being questioned in the news like some fairy is undermined. Then you just throw out something even weirder on top of it. Yeah, 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 a 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, the show's 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, OK, 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 this? Like it would be reasonable for a network to be like.

Actually, we feel this is being sufficiently covered by other networks, can we just do that with like Britney Spears is virginity?

So basically this is it. This is the 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 in 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 are going to rewind. Powdery white noise. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to rewind to a guy named Ingmar Guandique, who is an El Salvadoran immigrant. He grew up super poor in El Salvador. His father was killed by guerrillas. He somehow scrapes together five thousand dollars to pay a coyote to sneak into the United States. He swims across the Rio Grande and 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, like, 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, bites her at one point. So her mom says that he, like, 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 Hallis 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 like jogging behind her. And she's like, oh, he wants to pass me. So she slows down to let him pass. And then he, like, dives on top of her, smacks her.

I didn't know this, but apparently in self-defense classes, they teach you that if somebody, like, 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 hallah lady like does this to Ingmar and he's like, oh, just like runs away.

Yeah.

I guess did it to myself and put a little pressure on. I was like, yeah that's bad. I mean it's, it's interesting because it feels counterintuitive to reach into the mouth of someone who's attacking you, but like yeah I got 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 Kristy Weygand 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 book.

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 of 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 stories. But he doesn't know that that's what he's doing. He's been 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 saw her in the park?

But then what's very weird is that these 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. Yeah, 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 percent of wrongful convictions, a jailhouse informant is involved. Wow.

It's very easy to see why an informant would do such a. 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, but 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 Guandique attacked Chandra Levy and killed her in the park. Find that like basically checks out. He also says, however, that Ingmar was paid twenty five thousand dollars by Gary Condit to do it.

OK? And it's like why you got angry. Yes, you got greedy, Martin.

So they give the jailhouse informant a polygraph test, which he fails. They 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 did talk to 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 in.

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 this thing. And the prosecutors like like we had an informant, but it didn't work out OK. Like nothing happens. They sentenced 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 commit 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 assed. Sure. Yeah. So that no one ever asked you to do it again.

And so May 22nd of 2002, they find Chandra's body.

Hmm. 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 Chandrasekhar 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 20th 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 this sort of like little tiny warrens, like little nooks and crannies in this park.

OK, so on the one like how many acres is it? How big of a park is?

Apparently it's twice the size of Central Park. It's big.

So it's like forgiveable. 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 exactly in the victim's search history, diving in the river right there, 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. Yeah. Finding her body.

It's also very interesting because this is one of the few cases where, like this is a stranger danger of murder.

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. It's a stranger.

Well, or like pay attention to the power structure. But 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 Basker.

Robins, maybe the coupons. So basically at this point, they finally start investigating and so in late 2002, they start asking Ima'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. Hmm. Those are essentially the only two pieces of information that link him to Chandra's death. And then in the same way, the 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, OK, 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 D.C. 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 what. 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 reformed gang leader, like I've been to jail.

I 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 you're saying is like everyone feels weird about it. Even Chandra Levy's parents in interviews were 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 yet.

And like in the park, he's apparently attacking women later on. However, I mean, based on what you've told me, like, why 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 contact. 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 his face 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 would have an escalation.

Yeah. Yeah.

As opposed to like he murders her and then deescalates. Yeah, yeah. Is like easily fought off by these other women. But then if they could fight them off, why couldn't Chandra be right. And then we have this other informant who comes forward and it's like that's possible. But like it. I'm not convinced by that.

Yeah. Is there DNA evidence?

Is there I mean there wouldn't be if they had investigated and then let him go for like months and months.

And 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 did the remains imply that she died or their 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, like an animal, like a lot of the bones have been moved 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. Any 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 Condit. 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 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 is really important.

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 Guandique of this crime, basically. And then magically we get this jailhouse snitch a couple of months later than 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 to 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 as someone who has low to no resources, will go down easily. You can just steamroll 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 are 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 in out of work actress named Babs Prowler. She's an actress that has been on House of Cards. She had a bit part on House of Cards, apparently. OK, 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 were 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 Armondo. 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 or 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, Chandra 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. I'm like, what is this? And so according to Bab's, this guy has admitted that he made up the testimony about Ingmar and that he was pressured by prosecutors to lie. And then Babbs 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 every. Is like, OK, send us the tapes. So this is the weirdest twist of the twist is they listen to the tapes and Morales doesn't say that on any of the tapes. Wow.

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 she thinks that she heard that as she she basically it's now her word against his that she's saying, like, he told me this stuff, but the tape recorder broke, were like the files 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. Armondo admits to a bunch of other bad shit. It's like, oh, I'm going to, like, shoot some, like, rival gangs. I'm like that gangbanging 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. Yeah. 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 they drop the charges against Ingmar and just let him go.

Oh, OK. So, I mean, here's the thing. Like if the evidence is all hanging on the credibility. Yes.

Of this one jailhouse informant and then if the facts come forward about his character, that means the prosecutor is like, you know what, never mind.

Do you have a strong shame if it's all dependent on this one link working or shouldn't shouldn't McShane have multiple links, 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 twenty seventeen 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.

Well 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, house.

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 to Baskin-Robbins franchises.

Let's look for 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 weird. I know that sounds 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. Right. I was just like, I'm not going to dive into this. I don't need to know.

You don't want to spend your time out of your life figuring out what went wrong with Gary Condit and Baskin Robbins.

We could do like a whole epilogue. And I would just like I'm done with Gary Condit. Deep dive, Gary Condit v. Baskin Robbins. Yeah.

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's mother still has her thumbs. Everything's fine. You know what the point of the 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, yeah, crime stories often are basically that. And it's so rare that we just let them be. And this one. Yeah. Just you cannot spin it in a way. That's where anyone seems to have triumphed, 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 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 boy.

I felt like my reputation was being raped. Gary, stop at an ATM. I know it was the equivalent to me of a rape, I've never been physically raped 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, Gary.

It's also like I thought that it would just be him using that metaphor one time in one sentence. But he was like, no, no, 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, but 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 worse than it would have been already in any circumstance.

So 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 shady.

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, the Perry Mason stories are based on Earl Stanley Gardner had a plot wheel to decide what was going to happen and 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 portrayed to villain by spies or a vital witness refuses 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. Right. I find that so satisfying to watch 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 send the frame and you're like, OK, this feels like real life. I got 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 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 if you want to hear the solution.

Well oh yeah. OK, so when you need to solve and your book you're like chop chop, got to finish. These are some of your options. Gets villain to betray himself through greed. Villain killed while he or she is trying to frame someone meets trickery with horse sense squashes obstacle by sheer courage.

Where is opens series of Baskin Robbins franchises.

That's the one I want to.