The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Associated Press This undated file photo released by the family shows Chandra Ann Levy, a 24-year-old graduate student from University of Southern California, who went missing April 30, 2001, after completing a federal internship. An individual close to the investigation said the warrant was issued Tuesday, for imprisoned Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique in the 2001 slaying. (AP Photo/Family Photo via The Modesto Bee, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) - An arrest warrant was issued Tuesday for an imprisoned Salvadoran immigrant in the killing of federal intern Chandra Levy, nearly eight years after the case captivated the country and ended the career of a congressman.

The warrant accuses Ingmar Guandique (gwan-DEE'-kay) of killing Levy on May 1, 2001, as she jogged through Washington's Rock Creek Park, said U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor. Guandique, 27, is already serving time in a federal prison in Adelanto, Calif., for attacking two women in the same park in the weeks following Levy's disappearance.

"We take solace in the fact that the search for the person responsible has ended and our daughter can finally truly rest in peace," Levy's parents, Bob and Susan Levy, said in a statement given to The Associated Press. "Thankfully the individual responsible for this most heinous and terrible crime will finally be held accountable for his actions and hopefully unable to hurt anyone else ever again."

The break was a long-awaited development in an investigation that had gone cold for years after destroying the career of former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit of California. Authorities questioned Condit, her congressman, in the disappearance, but he was never a suspect in her death. Condit, a popular Democrat for a dozen years in his district, was reportedly having an affair with Levy, and the negative publicity from the case was cited as the main reason for his overwhelming primary loss in 2002.

Levy was 24 and had just completed an internship with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons when she disappeared after leaving her Washington, D.C., apartment. The Modesto, Calif., woman was wearing jogging clothes when she vanished, and a man walking his dog found her skull and bones in the park a year later.

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