Gary Condit, whose career as a California Congressman collapsed after his relationship with intern Chandra Levy became known in the wake of her disappearance, defiantly refused to admit a sexual relationship with Levy on the witness stand Monday.
“Who spends the night at my house is irrelevant,” Condit replied in response to one of several questions aimed at eliciting the nature of his relationship with Levy in the days before she disappeared in May 2001.
But defense attorneys are hoping jurors see Condit’s relationship with the 24-year-old woman as giving him a motive to murder her. That might instill jurors with reasonable doubt about the charges by prosecutors that she was killed by illegal immigrant Ingmar Guandique.
Back in the spotlight for the first time in years, Condit lashed out at the media and the police who he said treated him unfairly after Levy vanished.
Testifying under oath in Guandique’s first-degree murder trial on Monday, Condit said he would not answer any questions about his and Levy’s relationship out of “common decency” and respect for Levy and her family. “I did not commit a crime, and I did not do anything wrong,” Condit testified.
Condit was once a suspect in Levy’s death before prosecutors charged Guandique last year with killing her during a rape attempt.
Prosecutors said the illegal immigrant from El Salvador attacked her in Rock Creek Park, where he also assaulted two joggers in the two months after Levy went missing. They admit that D.C. police botched the investigation because they focused too intensely on the sensational aspect of Condit and his secret relationship with Levy, the Federal Bureau of Prisons intern. Her hometown of Modesto was in Condit’s congressional district.
Condit, 62, wearing a gray suit jacket over a pressed open-collared blue button-down shirt, said he would not describe his relationship with Levy except to say she was “a constituent and a friend.”
When defense attorney Maria Hawilo pressed Condit to at least say whether Levy had spent several nights at his Adams Morgan apartment, Condit refused to answer.
Hawilo read from a police report in which she said police wrote that Condit said he ended the relationship a month before her disappearance. “Our relationship never ended. If she were still alive today, we’d still be friends,” Condit said.
On May 13, 2001, Condit says he received a call from Levy’s father, Robert, who said D.C. police were not taking his daughter’s disappearance seriously. Condit said he called police to find out why they weren’t pursuing the case more aggressively. Condit dismissed Robert Levy’s testimony last week that Chandra told him that she and her secret lover had a five-year plan to get married. “There was no five-year plan,” he said.
Condit described to the jurors how he felt betrayed by prosecutors, set up by police and hounded by a salacious press from D.C. to California. After finishing his testimony, Condit was escorted out of the courthouse by at least five D.C. police officers, his attorneys and daughter, Cadee. He refused to answer any questions from reporters who followed him.
Kristen Byrne contributed to this report.
