Testimony from FBI technicians in the Chandra Levy murder trial Wednesday underscored that there is no physical evidence linking Levy and the man prosecutors say killed her.
Several FBI experts established that no usable bloodstains, fingerprints or semen stains were recovered from items found with the intern’s body in Rock Creek Park. That is considered one of the daunting challenges for prosecutors trying to prove that Ingmar Guandique, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador, killed Levy.
Guandique is on trial in D.C. Superior Court for Levy’s May 2001 death and is accused of attacking her while she was jogging in Rock Creek Park. Her remains were found a year later.
Technicians tested multiple items found in the park, including Levy’s running tights, T-shirt, underwear, sneakers, a cassette player and shoe inserts for forensic evidence.
No fingerprint evidence was found on any of the items, Oscar Ford Cheshier, a retired FBI fingerprint technician who worked on the Levy case, testified.
Robyn Wolfe, an FBI biologist, testified that no blood or semen was conclusively found on any of the 18 items she tested over four days in June 2002.
Wolfe said several items — including the tights, underwear, T-shirt and a sneaker — tested positive for blood in an initial screening. But additional tests seeking to confirm those results were either negative or not done because the sample was too small, she said.
The preliminary test found indications of semen on the tights and underwear, but subsequent tests were negative.
Some items were also tested for DNA, but did not yield any usable results, according to testimony from Alice Brown, a biology technician with the FBI’s DNA database unit. She said the DNA from Levy’s T-shirt was “microscopic.”
The FBI experts’ testimony came after a government witness testified Guandique had admitted to a pen pal that he killed a girl.
The accused killer indicated to a woman he was corresponding with that murdering a girl was part of his criminal background, the woman, Maria Mendez, testified.
Mendez, who works for the federal government and exchanged letters and phone calls with Guandique while he was incarcerated, told a grand jury that Guandique noted a “dead girl” when he told her about a “list of crimes that he did,” according to a transcript read in court.
Under questioning from prosecutor Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez, Mendez said Guandique never denied killing anyone or said he was innocent.
Guandique could face life in prison if convicted. He is already serving a sentence in California after being convicted of attacking two women in Rock Creek Park.
