Original subtitles

♪♪

-My dad used to say to me, "It's a 1% chance

that anything horrible is gonna go wrong."

And then the 1% happened.

♪♪

-It was the glorious '80s,

and nobody wanted to be responsible.

-Parents were always away at some country house,

so we'd be in the city, just having fun.

-We were having a wonderful time,

but that doesn't mean that people were, you know, okay.

-The young woman's body was found in Central Park.

-Attractive, popular, a week away from starting college,

Jennifer Levin had so much going for her,

and then her life ended.

-For us, Jennifer's murder was almost like a 9/11 moment.

-She was just a bubbly, outgoing, wonderful kid.

Beautiful girl.

-My daughter's dead. Will you get out of here?

-What monster did this to somebody's daughter?

And that person has to pay.

-A suspect is under arrest,

and police say he was not a stranger.

19-year-old Robert Chambers, described as a handsome preppy

from an upper class neighborhood.

-I just can't see him doing anything like that.

-I think every girl in this school had a crush on him.

He's, like, the perfect guy.

-Before O.J. Simpson, the preppy killer

was the trial of the century.

-Lurid press accounts have suggested Chambers was

the victim, forced into sex.

-Jack Litman was a fantastic manipulator.

He knew how to use the press.

-There seemed to be advances, some sexual activity

by Jennifer Levin which led to this tragedy.

-It was all choreographed to denigrate my daughter.

Unbelievable.

-Robert was a symbol of white male beauty, power, and money.

That's how he was portrayed.

-We discovered that this guy was no altar boy.

-My name is...

-I was totally shocked. -Oops.

I think I killed her.

-This was a dissolute, sociopathic,

drug addict who cared about no one but himself.

-This narrative has become something

completely different than what it actually was.

This story has never been told.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-I lived on 90th and 3rd in a walk-up, third floor.

I was an equity trader on Wall Street.

I would ride my bike at hours when the only people up

are garbage trucks and newspaper delivery trucks.

Probably in hindsight, was completely unwise.

But maybe because I was a female trader, I felt invincible.

And that particular morning, I rode over to the park.

And when I approached Panther Hill,

there was a car with blacked-out windows coming the wrong way.

So that's a little odd in and of itself.

And then as I continue up the hill,

I looked over my left shoulder.

And there was a young woman under a tree.

I was close enough to know that it wasn't right.

Her body wasn't lined up correctly.

Like, one arm was up, one leg was back.

The shirt was pushed up.

First thing I thought of was trying to call the police.

♪♪

And the first phone that I could reach was Madison and 90th,

and I called 911 from there.

-911, what's the nature of your emergency?

-When I got back, I felt that someone should be with her.

I felt a sisterhood of sorts.

It was almost like, this could be me.

I don't know how she got there, but this could be me.

After that day, I wasn't as --

I don't know if it's brave or careless,

but that morning changed everything for me.

♪♪

-We received a call about 6:00 in the morning.

Dispatchers said we have a young female, DOA, in the park.

Investigate DOA.

I was the commanding officer of Manhattan

detectives night watch.

Anything that was homicide, rape, shootings, likely to die,

we would cover it.

I said, get everyone together, and saddle up,

let's get out there.

[Siren wailing]

♪♪

We went up there, lights and sirens.

We came in, and a little bit past the Metropolitan Museum,

there was a body.

♪♪

I remember the first thing the sergeant said to me.

He said, "Wally, I understand

that a car came to the scene, a brown car.

Whether it was a Chevy, a Pontiac, or a Buick,

it was here and dumped the body."

And there were tire tracks, and he showed me

the tire tracks.

And I called citywide, the dispatcher,

and I said, "Forthwith --" I used "forthwith" a lot.

It's a fluent cop terminology.

I said, "Shut down every entrance and exit,

bridge and tunnel that enters New York City."

They closed off everything.

♪♪

[Indistinct radio chatter]

[Siren wailing]

-I remember coming into work at Channel 5,

and we heard a lot of chitchat on the police radios

about a young, white woman being found murdered in Central Park.

We don't know much more at that moment,

just the body has been found, a young woman has died.

-You know, it was tough times in New York City.

In Manhattan, Rosanna Scotto, Fox News, Channel 5.

The crime wave was probably three times

as high as it is now.

Crack was a real big problem in this city.

A lot of urban violence.

-Reporting live from Manhattan Criminal Court,

Magee Hickey, News 4.

Back to you, Sue.

-There'd be four or five murders a day

in other parts of the city.

And we would always say, "Oh, that's a drug murder.

That one you don't pay attention to."

But if something happens in Central Park

to a white person in the 1980s, everyone pays attention to it.

[Indistinct radio chatter]

♪♪

-The media was very competitive in New York City,

so you get a lot of media personnel there.

So, let's expand the crime scene as far as we can.

Let's get tape and put it around

as much as we can to keep the public out.

You don't want to contaminate the crime scene in any way.

I then got back to my dispatcher

and asked him to get Manhattan North Homicide on the phone,

get 'em in forthwith.

-I was assigned to the Manhattan North Homicide Squad.

We covered everything from 59th Street

to the northern tip of Manhattan island.

From river to river.

And all the years I was on the job as a cop,

most of our homicides were either in small apartments,

a stairwell, in between two parked cars.

So what's the crime scene, 12x12, maybe?

We got to this crime scene.

It was yellow tape almost as far as the eye could see.

We nicknamed it the Ponderosa.

-We had the tarp removed, and I took a closer look.

♪♪

It was a young woman around 18 to 20 years of age.

Her skirt was hiked up.

Her bra and her blouse were also above her breasts.

It looked like this was a victim of violent sexual assault.

She had these tan lines

that showed me there were missing bracelets.

There were marks from rings.

They were all gone.

And you could see perhaps she was wearing

some kind of earrings.

And they were gone.

So you say, maybe this was a robbery.

There were scratches and heavy bruising

all over the rest of her body.

And on her neck, there were these reddish-brown marks,

which really stood out.

From the first moments,

there's a million things going through your head.

Was there a dispute?

Is this a boyfriend/girlfriend, or is this a stranger?

Was this an attempt at rape?

Did somebody pull her off of 5th Avenue?

What happened to this poor kid?

-At that time, I was running the country's

first sex crimes prosecution unit.

So it looked like this was gonna fall under my watch,

but it was an unlikely place to think of a homicide

because nobody would have walked into Central Park

late at night of her own volition.

The assumption we all had was that this was a young woman

who had been killed

and then dumped in Central Park by a stranger.

And that the likelihood of finding her killer

was incredibly remote.

The killer might never be found.

-Obviously, it was so important to find out who she is.

She had a denim jacket next to her,

and she was tentatively identified as Jennifer Levin.

♪♪

How do you beat a woman

and just leave her in Central Park, you know?

I mean, who does that?

That person has to be caught, and that person has to pay.

So, go out and find this guy.

[Indistinct radio chatter]

[Indistinct conversation]

-I'm just gonna tell you what we have here.

-Right.

-I'm not going to answer a lot of questions.

-You do have a name.

-We have a tentative name at this particular point.

Our first efforts will be to identify her

and possibly find out what her background is, et cetera,

and where she may have been prior to arriving here.

Thanks, gentlemen.

-In NYPD, we don't make notifications of death by phone.

We make face-to-face notifications.

My duty captain said,

"Go with Mike down to the family and make notification."

So, I went with Mike down to Steven Levin's house.

And it was a tragic -- it was -- You know, you go to a house.

You see pictures of Jennifer.

Her father was there.

You know, to lose a child as a parent,

someone that's so important to you,

someone you love, that's your blood.

It was very hard.

-While we were in the apartment, the buzzer was

constantly ringing.

Somewhere along the line,

the address must have leaked out.

The press was all over.

[Woman shouts indistinctly]

-Sir, have you spoken with the family yet?

-No, I haven't.

-We'd like to get out of your way, but we need a photograph.

-It's me, Ira. I can't get up.

Bunch of reporters.

-Sir, have you spoken to --

A couple of hours after the family was informed

about what happened to Jennifer,

her uncle came down to speak to reporters about the tragedy

and about the woman who was killed.

-I am very, very hesitantly coming to the conclusion

that New York City is no longer a fit place in which to live.

I mean, it's an arm camp.

I really think it's a social experiment that's failed.

I -- A lot of people feel that way, people that I know.

I don't know.

It's just such an unreal experience.

-Sir, what did you make of this?

Did she have friends that the family was concerned about?

-I don't have the slightest idea.

No, I don't think so. She was very, very social.

Always out, but a good kid.

My brother was a wonderful father.

She was just a bubbly, outgoing, wonderful, social kid.

Beautiful girl.

-Thank you very much.

-There was a lot of people in the house.

I assume friends and relatives,

and her maternal grandfather said,

"Oh, my God, did anybody call Ellen?"

Who's Ellen?

He goes, "Her mother."

-Does Mrs. Levin live here, as well?

-No, she doesn't. -Okay.

-I don't even know if she knows about it yet,

to tell you the truth.

♪♪

-I was at work.

I got a telephone call, and it was my dad,

and he was crying.

I never heard my dad cry.

And he couldn't talk, and I said, "What's wrong?

What happened to Mom?"

That's the first thing you ask.

And he said, "It's not Mom, Ellen.

It's Jen."

He said, "We lost her."

And I started yelling, "What do you mean you lost her?

What do you mean she's lost?"

I couldn't conceive of what he was telling me.

And he said, "You have to come downtown.

We're all at Steve's office."

I got in a car down to Soho.

I still didn't know what was happening.

-The murder of a young woman

whose body was found in Central Park...

-And I hear on the radio,

the body that was found behind the Metropolitan Museum,

was that of Jennifer Levin.

And then I -- I really lost it.

The only thing that fit in my mind at that moment was,

she was in an accident, which it didn't help,

but it was at least rational.

We got to the loft in Soho,

and the photographers came running, screaming,

"There's the mother!"

Go away.

My daughter's dead. Will you get out of here?

And I still didn't know what happened.

They brought me up to the loft,

and there was my entire family, crying.

And my mother said, "They strangled my baby."

And that's when I found out how she died.

I'm gonna take a break.

Yeah.

♪♪

-Gentlemen, we realize it's a difficult time.

I assume you're here to see the Levin family.

Are you police officers?

Oh, okay.

-My lieutenant said,

"We have to find out more about what happened in the park."

Go to the morgue.

Try to document the injuries.

Now she's in a clinical setting.

Now you can really take a look.

So, I went to the morgue to see what else I could learn.

I looked at the body.

I was just totally shocked,

like, what happened to this poor kid?

♪♪

♪♪

-Iad asked the medical examiner

to join me in the morgue.

Jennifer was lying out on a gurney,

and we examined her from head to toe.

A little bit of time had passed,

so some of these injuries really come into focus.

The bruising was all over the face.

The marks on her neck were darker, deeper.

It screamed at you like, "Look at this."

It looked like she was strangled.

Her teeth were loose.

Her left eye was bulging out of the socket.

I asked, "What do you think caused that damage to the face?"

The medical examiner said, "It looks like a blow."

From an instrument, or it could be a blow from a fist?

I noticed there were, like, little half-moon marks

right over here.

What that was determined to be was from her fingernails.

Whatever was strangling her, she was trying to pull it down.

You could really see that this kid

put up the fight of her life.

♪♪

-I've always had this thing in me, I owe it to the victim

and to the victim's family to find out what monster

did this to somebody's daughter, somebody's sister.

♪♪

♪♪

-Yeah, that's in her room. -Ohh.

-Cute little baby.

-From the moment she could stand,

she would listen to us playing the Beatles, her father and I,

and she'd start jumping up and down in the crib, dancing.

This tiny little baby banging the crib against the wall

in tune with the music.

She had so much life, and she was so happy.

So we just let her party with us.

She did have that kind of personality.

She was born with a smile on her face.

-When she was a baby, I did feel protective towards her,

and for a while there, she allowed me to be.

She was fun. she was goofy.

A really full of life spirit.

And so beautiful.

-She was a character.

I mean, she just -- Jennifer really loved life.

♪♪

We were living on Long Island, and after my divorce,

we started up a whole new life, really.

-Our family was really in transition.

My dad moved to the city.

He had this really cool loft,

and Jen just thought it'd be a fun idea to live in the city.

-Jennifer moved in with her father in Soho,

'cause she was starting school in the city.

Me and Danielle were still in Long Island,

but I had some friends in the area called Tribeca,

which very few people even knew existed.

And I moved in within the year.

Jen was in walking distance from me,

and that's when she became a real city girl.

♪♪

Jen was totally in her element in New York City.

She was always fun and excited about life,

but she met the people here that just had the same energy as her.

She was confident, and you know --

-Confident and independent.

-And independent, yeah.

So, I don't think there was much worry.

-Honestly, I didn't see it coming.

It was shocking.

♪♪

-Every single case, you have to go back

over the last steps of your victim.

What brought this beautiful girl to Central Park?

Who was she with?

Where was she in the hours preceding her death?

And then from that story, you can usually solve the case.

You begin by questioning people who knew her.

Jennifer's father and stepmother said

she had spent the night on the Upper East

Side with her friend, Alex LaGatta.

-Two detectives go up, and they interview Alex LaGatta,

and that's how the whole story came into place.

-Two detectives went up to the Upper East Side

to talk to Jennifer's friend, Alex LaGatta,

who basically sets the scene.

They learned she was at a bar called Dorrian's.

-By questioning the victims' friends to track her movements

Monday night, detectives learned she had been

to Dorrian's Restaurant,

a so-called preppy hangout where the fatal sequence began.

-Dorrian's Red Hand was kind of a legendary bar

on the Upper East Side.

It also had a reputation.

It was a place where a lot of well-heeled,

privileged kids would go.

-It was like a preppy hangout.

White, Upper East Side, wealthy families, kids

who lived a life of privilege.

♪♪

-We loved Dorrian's because it was this place

where we could all gather.

Jennifer and I used to go there all the time.

This is a good photo.

This is Peter Davis, my best friend,

Jennifer, my other best friend, and there I am.

I met Jennifer in 1984.

We worked together in Soho

at French Connection.

She was this kind of starry-eyed, young teenager

coming from Long Island.

To live in Soho in the early '80s was a big deal.

The streets were dark.

There was people living in raw lofts with no one around,

and it was not gussied up the way it is now.

Her father ran this real-estate company,

and Jennifer was a downtown kid,

and there was a kind of fast friendship.

-I met Jennifer through Jessica because it was, like,

her people are my people and vice versa.

So, I met Jennifer,

and immediately, I thought she was cool.

Everything that was different about Jennifer

was what attracted me to her.

The fact that she was Jewish

and not a WASP from the Upper East Side.

She lived in Soho.

We lived Uptown,

and we were already ingrained an enmeshed in this world.

We grew up in this bubble of rich,

Upper East Side preppy kids.

And she wasn't in that bubble.

But at the same time, I think Jennifer kind of thought

our lives were super cool.

-We were a community of privileged people

who live in big apartments and fancy neighborhoods.

We would have weekend parties at different people's house.

-I was part of that preppy, Upper East Side,

private school community.

Lots of friends.

Parents were at their country house or out in the Hamptons,

so you could always find someone

who had their apartment to themselves.

We had an enormous amount of freedom.

-There was an opening for a lot of nefarious activity.

We had booze and pot smoking, and you know,

kids were left on their own.

-It's 10:00 p.m.

Do you know where your children are?

-And in ninth and tenth grade, it was clubs.

It was a time of Studio 54,

and we would get these passes somehow or another,

and we would go.

There was a promoter, this kind of like, white,

WASPy type with round specs.

He got all the private school kids to come in.

And there was this bouncer there.

He loved me.

And I just roll up, and he'd, be, like, "You, in."

-Massive night clubs.

People doing drugs in the back allies, partying like crazy,

and taking their clothes off.

And I was just there.

♪♪

-As a teenager in New York,

I became very savvy as to who worked the door,

who worked inside, who had drink tickets.

I was on it.

-It was the glorious '80s, and we were loving it.

We were having a wonderful time.

But that doesn't mean that people were, you know, okay.

-In New York, there's a phenomenon of what I call

the gilded latchkey children.

Kids who were sort of doing their own thing.

Their parents worked very hard, professional, upper,

middle income people.

And for New York, these clubs or restaurants like Dorrian's

is what the shopping malls are to other kids.

It's a place where the parents feel,

well, if they're all together somewhere, maybe they're safe.

-Dorrian's was really one up from a dive bar.

And they would just let you in. There was no bouncer.

You had the worst fake IDs,

and they didn't even really ask for that.

And it just became this meeting place for underaged,

New York City private school kids.

It was like a clubhouse.

A private, preppy club that you had to know about it,

like an insider's secret.

But it was always, to me, a place to start the night

and never to finish.

I always wanted to go downtown with people I thought were cool.

I remember Jennifer often wanted to stay at Dorrian's

because downtown was where she lived.

Dorrian's probably seemed so much more fun

and different and exotic.

I think she thought that was where the fun action was.

-You captured this in this little photo booth box

with your best friend.

It's a completely innocent act, and you have no clue, right,

what is to come to pass.

Fragments of a captured life

that was then less than a year later taken, ripped. It's --

[Sputters]

♪♪

-The police knew Jennifer had been at Dorrian's

with her friend, Alex LaGatta.

Alex named other friends who had been at Dorrian's with Jennifer,

so police began to question those friends.

-You know, it's the old X, Y, Z.

You talk to X, and X goes, "I left, she was with Y and Z."

Y goes, "Well, I left five minutes after X,

then she was with Z."

-The group kept getting smaller and smaller,

and a name kept coming up.

-Robert Chambers.

Oh, who was Robert Chambers?

"He's one of the crowd. He's one of us."

All right, well, we'd like to talk to him.

-Everybody at that point in time was looking for a stranger

who might have abducted her, pulled her into a car,

done these terrible things to her,

then dumped her in Central Park.

And when the detectives went to Mrs. Chambers' home

on East 90th Street, asking for Robert,

they went there because he was Jennifer's friend

and was probably one of the last people to see her alive.

Mrs. Chambers answered the door, gracious woman.

She said, yes, Robert was asleep in his bedroom.

They asked if they could speak to him.

He presented himself, and in that moment,

Robert Chambers went from being a friend

of Jennifer Levin's to a person of interest.

♪♪

♪

-When the detectives went to Robert Chambers' home,

they were assuming he was Jennifer's friend

and perhaps is gonna help them.

He came out of the bedroom,

and he had deep, fresh scratches on his face.

-It's obvious to the two detectives

that he has fresh scratch marks on his face.

But they would never show their hand.

And Chambers says, "What do you need from me?

To come to the precinct?

Sure, I'll come to the precinct."

And he went, and he got his Filofax,

and he had all these phone numbers in there,

and all of the different people that he could call.

And he came in voluntarily to help the cops.

I went in. I introduced myself.

He certainly looked the part of a super-rich kid

from the affluent Upper East Side.

Tremendous presence.

So, we shook hands.

And his right hand clearly had been damaged.

It was the fifth metacarpal,

so it's right in here, classic boxer's injury.

this was an impact fracture.

But you never want to act surprised.

You have to develop some kind of rapport with the person.

I said, "Where'd you go to school?"

He said, "I graduated from New York Prep."

I know that school. Oh, yeah, really?

I said, "Yeah, I'm from the neighborhood, you know."

He was very well-spoken, and he was very relaxed.

Finally, I said, "Tell me about your face."

"Oh, well, I was throwing my cat up in the air,

and he came down and scratched me."

And he goes, "You think this is bad..."

And he lifted up his shirt,

and there were these scratch marks

from his upper left shoulder right down to his stomach.

And they were also fresh.

And at that point, I went right about questioning him.

You know, "How long do you know Jennifer?

When's the last time you saw her?"

Right in front of Dorrian's.

And his story seemed to be pretty on point.

"I walked outside with her. I said good night.

She went her way. I went my way."

But he had this cockiness about him, like,

"I'm not worried.

You civil servants are not gonna break me.

I'm Robert Chambers."

And we continued to talk, like, a couple of hours.

And now, the tone was changing.

The mood in the room was a little more tense.

I want you to tell me one more time what happened,

and he went, "Pay attention."

"You have all my attention. I swear."

He says, "We went outside, and we walked up 86th Street."

Bam.

For the past two hours, he's been telling me

that he said goodbye to her in front of Dorrian's.

Now you're gonna tell me you walked up 86th Street

in the direction of Central Park?

Come on. It's time to tell me the truth.

So what happened?

And you could see his eyes filling up with tears,

and he mumbled, "What's mother going to say?"

I thought, this guy could go, you know,

he's gonna tell us the whole story.

-Mike called me at home.

I had just finished dinner with my wife.

There was a girl murdered in Central Park, Jennifer Levin.

"We have a guy up here in Central Park

precinct who looks good.

Can you get involved?"

When I got there, Robert Chambers hadn't asked

for a lawyer up to this point.

He was talking freely.

I felt that if he's willing to give a videotaped statement,

it was gonna be done before he changed his mind.

Everybody has their own style,

but there are certain basic 101 stuff

when you're gonna take a statement.

I read him his rights.

I'm from the district attorney's office.

The woman, Jennifer Levin, was found dead in Central Park.

It appears she's been strangled.

Is there anything you want to say?

And you let him go as long as he wants.

♪♪

♪♪

-I got to Dorrian's late.

I got there about 11:30, and I just --

I was hanging out with my friends.

We were just talking.

I hadn't seen Jennifer yet.

And then I guess about -- sometime around midnight,

she came over and started talking to me.

Started talking about herself and her trip to California

and her tan.

And I really wasn't all that interested.

And -- Yeah.

And I kept making faces about it and stuff.

Some of her friends had already left,

and she said she wanted to go outside

and talk to me about something important.

So I went outside, and I met Jennifer.

And then we started walking up towards 86th Street.

I was fine.

I wasn't feeling drunk or high or anything like that.

We just talked about whatever, what we're doing,

where we're gonna go to school,

what we want to do in the future.

Just talking.

We walked up towards Central Park,

and she said, "Let's go in the park."

And I was saying, "No, no, I want to go home."

And she was, like, "No, let's just go sit

in the park and talk."

So I said fine.

We took this path that goes right along the museum

into the park,

and I was trying to explain to Jennifer

that I wasn't interested, and I wanted to go home.

No, I wasn't interested at all.

I didn't even want to be with her.

Well, yeah, she was.

And then she said, "Let's go over here across the road

and sit under this tree."

So while we're there,

I was saying I'm interested in other people,

and you're going away, and I don't want to be bothered.

And she freaked out.

She got up and getting all in front of me,

and she just scratched my face.

And I have these marks here.

I didn't even notice until this morning.

And I got all upset,

and I stood up, and I was saying, I'm gonna go.

I'm gonna go. This is crazy.

-She's still remaining sitting?

-She was kneeling.

And she said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

Sit down. Sit down."

And I said, "I'll sit and talk with you,

but then I'm gonna go."

'Cause I was really pissed off at this time.

She didn't really say anything, didn't call me any names.

She just had this look on her.

She was -- I don't know. She was insane.

I don't know what was wrong with her.

And she said, "Well, let me go to the bathroom."

And I said, "All right, I'll wait here."

She came back.

And she came up behind me,

and she started to give me a massage

and saying how cute I looked,

and that I would look cuter if I were tied up.

I thought she was just horsing around.

Because it just didn't seem like Jennifer,

at least the way I knew her.

And --

Yeah, I started to say that this was crazy, whatever,

and then she's scooting my hands

with both of her arms and held them together.

Took her underwear,

and she wrapped her underwear around my wrists

so they were locked, and they were behind my back

because I was leaning on my hands.

And she just pushed me back like this

and got on top of my chest, and she was facing my feet.

And she began taking off my pants,

and she started to play with me.

She started jerking me off.

And she was doing it really hard, and it really hurt me.

I started to say, "Stop it, stop it, it hurts."

And she just kind of laughed in a weird way,

more like a cackle or something.

She was just having her way,

and then she dug her nails into my chest,

and I have scratches right here of where she scratched.

See?

I was screaming in pain.

I couldn't take it anymore,

and I managed to get my left hand free.

So I kind of sat up a little and just grabbed at her.

I just grabbed her and yanked her as hard as I could,

and she just flipped over me and landed right next to the tree.

And then she didn't move.

♪♪

-You have a dead body.

You have a guy who says, "I did it."

All in all, I thought, this is the simplest case in the world.

But I had no idea.

♪♪