Two women, including the former girlfriend of defendant Ingmar Guandique, testified Wednesday that they saw scratches on him around the time intern Chandra Levy was killed in May 2001.
Iris Portillo began dating Guandique after moving to the United States from El Salvador sometime in August or September of 2000 and moved in with him a few months later. She said she was asleep one evening near the end of their six- to seven-month relationship when he came home with scratches, saying someone had tried to rob him.
Guandique’s landlady had testified earlier Wednesday that Guandique explained the scratches as resulting from a fight with Portillo.
The two broke up while Guandique was in jail after his arrest on July 1, 2001. Portillo said she often called and visited him out of pity. Guandique is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador.
“He didn’t have a family here and I felt kind of sorry for him,” she said.
Portillo never mentioned the evening he came home with scratches when investigators asked her if he had ever come home dirty.
“I was trying to protect him,” Portillo testified. “I didn’t believe he was in this type of case.”
Investigators say Guandique raped and killed Levy while she was jogging in Rock Creek Park on May 1, 2001. Her remains were found there a year later. Guandique is now being tried in D.C. Superior Court.
Sheila Phillips, property manager of the apartments where Guandique lived, testified Wednesday that he had scratches and a fat lip when he stayed with her and her boyfriend for a few days in early May of 2001 supposedly after the fight he mentioned.
A September 2010 grand jury statement that defense attorney Santha Sonenberg read from stated that Phillips described Guandique’s appearance as being “consistent with having a fight with his girlfriend.”
Phillips had told the grand jury in September that she recalled the night Guandique stayed with her and her boyfriend as being two to three weeks before a May 7 burglary incident. She said in court Wednesday afternoon that she did not recall saying it was a few weeks before, and that the defendant had stayed with her during the first week of May.
