Original subtitles

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

-She was identified as Jennifer Levin.

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

beautiful girl.

-My mother said, "They strangled my baby."

-This kid put up the fight of her life.

I mean, who does that?

That person has to pay.

-Police began to question friends,

and a name kept coming up.

-Robert Chambers.

Oh, who's Robert Chambers?

-She was just having her way. I was screaming in pain.

I couldn't take it anymore.

I yanked her as hard as I could, and she just flipped over me.

And then she didn't move.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Static]

-Alright.

-Robert Chambers was giving his version

of the events in Central Park between him and Jennifer Levin.

-Uh, last night I was supposed to meet a girl named Alex Kapp

at Dorrian's at 10:30, and I got to Dorrian's late.

I got there about 11:30.

-He was talking freely.

He hadn't asked for a lawyer, he did not seem nervous.

He was telling a story, and he was sticking to it.

-According to him, she's the one who suggests going to the park.

She's the one who's the sexual aggressor.

-She started to play with me. She started jerking me off.

You know, I started to say, "Stop it, stop it. It hurts."

I just grabbed 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.

-He had no intent to hurt her.

It an accident as to how she wound up dead.

-So I...

[Groans]

I was lying like this... -Okay.

-...okay, on my back, and I couldn't move,

and I managed to get this hand free, my legs are out

and she's facing this way, sitting, really, on my chest.

So I reached up like this and grabbed,

and I came down like that on my hand.

She came over this way and landed right there,

right next to the tree.

So I stood up, and, uh, I said, "Jennifer, let's go.

Let's get out of here now," and she didn't move.

So I went over and I shook the body,

and there was nothing happening, no response.

At that -- -A dead body?

-No, I had no idea.

I thought she was kidding around.

So I shook her, and there was nothing.

She didn't move a muscle, not a finger, anything.

-I wouldn't say he was arrogant,

but he certainly gave the impression

that there was no reason why we should not believe his story

and that he should just be let go.

-No, I didn't want to -- I was scared.

I didn't want to touch her.

All I did was cross the street

and sit down and sit there and stare.

No, I just stared. That's all I did.

That's all I could do.

[Police radio chatter]

-And when you see the people who arrive,

the ambulances and the other people,

you just disappear and -- -No, I stayed there,

and I watched.

I didn't say anything.

-You stayed there and watch the police come

and find the body that you left of a young woman

that you knew that you had relations with?

You just left her in the grass, somebody's daughter?

You know...

-After that, I just walked home, and I just went to sleep.

And when I woke up, I thought it was a dream.

-You thought this was all a dream?

-When I woke up at first, I was like,

you know, "That had to be a dream."

And about 10 minutes after that, the police rang up

and came upstairs to ask me some questions,

and then I've been here since 1:30.

-I pressed him, because I simply didn't believe him.

I thought his story was nonsense from the beginning.

-No.

But I'm not gonna do anything to harm her at all.

What am I gonna do, hit her with a stick or something?

-His explanation as to how this happened just doesn't jive

with what she looks like on that autopsy table.

She was all busted up, and it was -- It was gruesome.

You didn't have to be a doctor --

You could just see this with your own two eyes.

-I haven't seen the photos,

and I'd really rather not see the photos.

-I took the pictures out, and I threw the photos on the desk.

-Yes, I can see that.

Yeah.

No, I doubt I would be laughing.

It makes no sense that somebody could do that.

It makes no sense that somebody could put

your hands behind your back

and push you down and then get on top of your chest.

So, you can move if you have no arms to push anybody off --

-No way.

-Do you think I'm gonna give her the consent

to squeeze my balls and jerk me off?

Why not?

I'm -- I'm sure that I've heard

about other men being raped,

men being held up, tied up.

Well, good. You're lucky.

You're very lucky.

It's not a ve--

Good. That really makes no difference to me,

you see, 'cause it happens.

It can happen. It did happen.

Her friends knew she was all over me.

She told her friends she definitely gonna (no audio)

tonight, my friends know I didn't want to go with her,

I didn't even want to talk to her,

they knew I wanted to go home,

they knew I was there to see other people.

I didn't mean to hurt her. I liked her very much.

She was very nice person, easy to get along to,

and easy to talk to.

She was just too pushy, and she liked me more than

I thought -- more than anybody actually thought.

-He had this entire story down pat in his head.

This was rough sex, this poor boy --

you know, she was hurting him in Central Park.

-It was an affront to your common sense.

Will that be enough to get a conviction?

I think it would be enough to get a conviction.

-We all stood up, and, Robert, he said to me,

"Well, are we finished?"

And I said, "What are you talking about?

What don't you understand? You're under arrest.

You're being charged with murder."

So he sat back down, like, shaking his head.

He seemed shocked.

♪♪

-Robert Chambers is transported down to Central Booking

and goes through the booking procedure.

It became apparent when we went outside

that this was gonna be a large news story

from the amount of people that were there.

-From a detective's point of view,

everything's tied up in a package.

We thought this was a home run.

But that's not what happened.

-A suspect is under arrest in the murder of a young woman

whose body was found in Central Park,

and police say he was not a stranger.

-Robert Chambers had confessed

to causing the death of Jennifer Levin,

and it was front-page news everywhere.

-Chambers came into this Central Park Precinct

on his own yesterday afternoon.

He was asked to come in for questioning.

When police saw him,

they noticed scratches on his face and chest.

After several hours questioning, they arrested him

and charged him with second-degree murder.

They think the scratches were made by Jennifer Levin

as she tried to fight off his attack.

-From the beginning, we expected this was gonna be a huge story.

-Attractive, popular, a week away

from starting college in Boston --

Jennifer Levin had so much going for her,

and then her life ended.

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

from an upper-class neighborhood,

now faces a murder rap.

-It just wasn't your normal homicide.

There was something to to this that was gonna have legs

and was gonna be in the papers for a while, and it was.

-When we saw the young person who was accused of killing her,

everybody in the news room stopped in their tracks,

because here was a young man

who looked like the Hollywood Adonis.

We found out he came from the Upper East Side,

lived in a beautiful neighborhood,

attended private schools.

How did this happen?

-She was 18, a prep school graduate on her way to college.

He was part of the same New York circle, young and well-off.

-It's the haves, it's the world of privilege -- private schools,

Upper East Side, a Kennedy-esque-looking

young man accused of murder.

-The victim and the accused, both prep school educated,

came from what people called "good homes."

-You had two young white people presumed to be of privilege,

both had attended different private schools, they'd come

from a very well-known bar in the Upper East Side,

so there was underage drinking --

All of those elements just drove this case to media attention.

-This sort of story was not supposed to happen

to privileged children

who go to private schools made out of mansions

who do not leave home without American Express.

♪♪

-Being a tabloid reporter, when you wake up in the morning,

what do you think of?

You think of -- "I've gotta --

I gotta get that story."

That never leaves you.

Even 10 years after I've retired,

I still lust for that scoop every day.

Why was Robert Chambers a good story?

Well...

you have youth,

you have money,

you have sex,

you have death.

It just gripped the city.

♪♪

-That night, I went to my apartment.

I was in a very bad way.

Everyone else in my family had somebody.

You know, my husband had his wife,

and Danielle had Jeff,

and my parents had each other, and...

and I was single, and I could not --

I just couldn't cope.

I was in bad shape.

My daughter had a great group of friends, very popular,

always around people, happy, doing well in school.

Honestly, I would never have expected that.

It was shocking to me.

-After she died, people would tell me

to be strong for my parents, and, um, I don't --

I don't think people truly realize --

You know, losing a child's an awful thing.

I don't think people realize how -- how close siblings are.

It was kind like we were two sides of a coin,

and that just one side was just sheared off of me.

I'm an only child now.

♪♪

-Do you have anything else you'd like to say

about the judge's decision? -Not -- Not really.

I hope you can appreciate that feeling at this point.

-I remember very shortly after

Robert's father hired an excellent trial lawyer.

-Not guilty.

-Jack Litman. Wow.

Jack was one of the best around.

I think he was a brilliant lawyer,

and Chambers was very lucky to have him, indeed.

-Chambers remains behind bars at Rikers Island.

His attorney says he may use the insanity defense.

-An insanity plea an option here?

-It's always an option, but right now the plea

is not guilty, and the defense says

that this was an unfortunate, accidental killing.

Thanks a lot.

-Jack Litman was one of the preeminent

criminal defense attorneys at that time.

I had just left the District Attorney's office,

and I took a position with Jack,

and I remembered I got into the office,

and he said, "Oh, we got retained on this case."

This was a challenging, fascinating, high-profile case,

and he wanted it.

-Jack had a little extra edge,

dogged when he got on a case, kind of relentless.

But the most striking thing was that it didn't bother him

to attack victims of crime.

-If you're not zealous in representing your client,

then you shouldn't be in a courtroom.

-Well, now, what -- what does "zealous" mean?

-Zealous means that you do everything you can

within the bounds of law to represent your client.

-If he could dirty up the reputation of the victim,

he would do so,

and he would do it as far as he could get away with it.

He would go right to the edge.

-Mr. Litman, first of all, um,

I heard some reports in the newspaper

that said that he had confessed to some degree.

-He made statements that indicated, among other things,

that there seemed to be advances by Jennifer Levin

and that a series of events, sexual and otherwise,

led to this -- uh, to this tragedy.

[Car horn honks, sirens wail in distance ]

-I'll never forget it.

Saracco said to me, "Did you see the paper?"

I said, "No."

He said, "Well, do yourself a favor, go buy

The Daily News or The Post.

The headlines are "Rough sex."

-Chambers claims she forced him into a sexual encounter

that got rough, hurting him.

-Could this have happened during rough sex?

"Rough sex?

I never heard of it, but tell me more."

-Lurid press accounts have suggested

Chambers was the victim forced into sex.

-There wasn't, I don't think, a person --

certainly in New York, and maybe the country --

that weren't reading those headlines.

I mean, they were planted for a reason.

They were planted by Jack Litman.

-She was attempting to perform some sexual activity,

which he asked her to desist from -- from doing.

And when she didn't, uh, this tragedy ensued.

-Did she really hurt him,

and he didn't realize his strength during rough sex?

Was this an accident?

-Jack Litman was extremely dangerous.

He was very smooth, he was very bright.

He had absolutely no mercy for Jennifer.

It was all his client and his client was innocent.

-Jack Litman had flipped the story

saying that it was an accident and was taking it

out of a murder charge down to an accidental death.

It was so shocking.

The world of the case was twisting

and turning upside down.

-One thing is clear -- The exact nature of what was

going on, uh, between Robert and Jennifer Levin,

uh, that night, uh, will have to be explored later at a trial.

It really is.

♪♪

obert Chambers told police that the victim,

18-year-old Jennifer Levin, was really to blame,

that she attacked him during a predawn sexual encounter

in New York Central Park.

-People tend to frown on tabloid newspapers,

however, the New York Post circulation was 1,060,000.

I was named in Newsweek as "Mr. Blood and Guts"

and not at all ashamed of that title, not ashamed at all.

-By all accounts, Robert Chambers

was a proper prep school boy, brought up in an environment

of what some might call an ivory tower.

-Robert Chambers, the handsome preppy --

-The preppy murder -- -The preppy murder --

-Preppy murder -- -Preppy murder --

-Preppy murder --

-And all of a sudden, it's the preppy murder case.

-It's a frenzy -- It's a feeding frenzy, you know,

and the press just keeps

throwing that log on the fire and people keep buying it.

-He didn't do it.

-On the block where Chambers lives with his mother,

90th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues,

his neighbors described the defendant as a gentleman.

-He is the nicest -- He's friendly.

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

-He was always a very kind person.

-The media kind of, almost weirdly, were on, like,

Team Robert Chambers, even though he'd killed her.

-Robert Chambers -- because he was white,

lived on the Upper East Side, and because he was drop-dead

handsome -- was getting special treatment.

-This must have been an accident,

because he was too good-looking to be violent.

-Amongst the youngsters here at York Prep

who knew Robert Chambers,

there is a feeling of shock and disbelief.

-Oh, I think every girl in this school

had a crush on him, you know.

People would drool when he walked down the block, you know,

and then the guys just like --

I mean, he's like the perfect guy.

-I-I just couldn't believe it.

Rob and my boyfriend, Spencer, were the best of friends,

and the three of us would always hang out.

You walk into a room, and here's,

like, this super-handsome, six-feet-tall, chiseled jawbone,

piercing blue eyes and black hair

and he just made heads turn.

He was, like, the pied piper, and all the girls would just be,

like, following along.

I didn't believe it was possible.

-A friend called and said, "Oh, my God,

they arrested Robert Chambers," and it was shocking.

He was a grade behind me in high school.

I had a good friendship with Robert,

and he had a group of three or four friends,

and I had a group of three or friends,

and we would all hang out a lot on the weekends.

He was a really kind of quiet guy.

There was nothing aggressive about him.

It certainly didn't feel like it fit his character.

None of it made any sense to me. -I mean, to be honest,

I never ever saw Robert, uh, violent,

or I never saw him lose his temper, even.

You wanted to think it was a horrible mistake or accident.

It's really hard to fathom that happening.

-I went to the day school,

which was on 90th Street between Fifth and Madison.

Robert lived across the street from the day school,

so we would go to his house,

and so that's when I started to get to know Robert,

and we were friends -- which is slightly weird,

because my best friend was Jennifer Levin,

so I knew both of them.

I remember her saying to me, "I want to meet Robert."

I had known him for six or seven years at that point.

Why she wanted to meet him?

She must have seen him at Dorrian's or around.

And I was like, "Sure. I can do that."

[Vocalizing softly]

So, this is a diary from 1986.

It says here, "February 14th, Carla's champagne party."

There you go -- "Call Robert C."

Here's his phone number.

And that was to make the date

so that he would come to Carla's champagne birthday party

so he could meet Jen. [Lively conversations]

It was Valentine's Day.

I remember introducing them right away.

And I remember Jennifer talking to him.

He's a very stoic, non-communicative guy.

But you could see that she was trying to engage him.

She was being flirtatious.

I remember them having a good time

but all of us having a good time together.

I remember speaking to Jen in June and she said,

"I've seen Robert four or five times,

and we've had a really nice time together,

and I really like him."

And I was like, "That's great. I'm so psyched for you."

What I took by that was it meant that they were sexually active,

and that she liked him. [Static]

-Um, I...

We didn't really have --

She felt it was more special than I did.

I had sex with her three times,

twice at two different friends' house

and once on a roof.

-That summer I went away,

so I was kind of out of the picture for two months,

which is a big deal at that age.

And when I got back, I spoke to Jen on the phone immediately,

and I was like, "Oh, I miss you so much.

I can't believe it. I haven't spoken to you in so long."

She's like, "Yeah. Robert and I,

we've been having a really nice time together.

We've been dating and seeing each other all summer."

That was it.

-No, not at all.

I w-- I was always nice to her.

I was just always nice to her, 'cause we got along.

She's very easy to talk to.

She's a really nice girl.

-Literally -- literally --

10 days after I spoke to Jen on the phone,

my mother calls me,

and she says, "Jess, Jennifer has been killed.

Jennifer Levin is dead."

And I literally lose it.

Like, I just don't even know what that means.

This person who you had just spoken on the phone with,

who was your best friend was killed?

He killed her.

He (no audio) killed her.

Why?

Robert said Jennifer was this sort of aggressor

and this attacker.

It's not accurate.

The narrative that is out there about her life

and who she was is not accurate.

And that's why I'm here talking to you,

and that's why it means so much to me.

People need to find out the truth about Jennifer,

who this person Jennifer Levin was.

Why did he kill her?

What happened between them?

♪♪

♪♪

-There were 1,000 people there,

and it was so overwhelming.

-I didn't believe she was dead until I saw her in the casket.

In fact, I wanted an open casket,

which we don't normally have in the Jewish religion,

so that I could be sure that that was my sister.

-I leaned in to kiss her forehead,

but it didn't look like Jen.

[Voice breaking] That was it.

She wasn't there.

-When something like this happens to somebody you know,

I mean, especially somebody like her --

-This child was a blessing to life.

She will be life forever. Thank you.

-If you knew Jennifer and you knew Robert,

you basically wouldn't think this would happen,

but it did, and it's a shame.

It really is.

-He hurt her and he killed her,

and it was a terrible way to die,

and she died very violently,

and that's just an awful way to die.

-They're hounding everybody. -Trying to make a case --

-It's -- They're just -- They're building a case

to make him look like he's innocent, and he's not.

-He's not. -He's not. He killed her.

There's no accident. -How do you know that?

-How do I know that? -He said he did.

-He said he did. It's no accident.

Just stop. What are you doing?

-Just stop. Come on.

[Static]

-In August of 1986,

I was in my office,

and my secretary --

one of the first things he handed me

was a piece of paper in his writing.

It said Jack Litman stopped by, and that Jack's comment was

"You ought to take this case.

We could have such a good time together."

It was one of the most shocking

and just inappropriate expressions I'd ever seen.

Shortly after that,

Bob Morgenthau, the District Attorney,

came to me and expressed his concern

about the confession on tape.

[Static]

Because Steve Saracco was the one

that took the Chambers statement,

who was asking the questions on video,

Steve was gonna have to be a witness in the case,

so that made Morgenthau think that perhaps this was the time

to take him off the case as the prosecutor.

Mr. Morgenthau said it would make a statement

to have a woman prosecutor as my lead to the community.

"I really think you should prosecute this case."

-I got notified that the case was no longer going to be mine,

and to say that I was upset --

You could say that. [Chuckles]

To say that I was real upset --

You could say that, too.

To say that I'm still upset 33 years later --

I'm half-Italian.

Of course I'm still upset.

I mean, the first thing,

she had never tried a homicide before.

-When I got to the D.A.'s office out of law school in 1972,

the times were very different.

There were 180 lawyers on the staff.

Seven of those lawyers were women.

No woman had ever tried a murder case in that office.

There was the idea that this work was too tawdry for a woman.

Leslie Snyder was the first woman

allowed to handle homicides, and I was the second.

I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday

meeting with the Levins.

I did not instill confidence in the Levins

because I was so nervous.

I was running my fingers through my hair.

-She had this habit of doing this,

which, you know, I love to this day,

because it showed me that she's emotionally involved in this.

She was upset over the case,

over the way it was being portrayed,

over the attack of the defense attorney.

We felt lucky that we had Linda.

-I said to the Levins I'm going to fight

this fight for them and for Jennifer.

I want everyone to know that this is a young woman

whose whole life was on the horizon ahead

and that she had everything to live for.

-Detectives learned she had been with Chambers

in Dorrian's Restaurant, a so-called "preppy hangout"

at Second Avenue at 84th Street in Manhattan.

-This is a tale of sex and violence

among privileged teenagers

on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Magee Hickey, "News 4."

Back to you, Sue.

I was the only female reporter in the news room

who was "a preppy" from the Upper East Side at that point --

60th to 96th Street, Fifth Avenue to the East River.

It was a very rarified, preppy little world.

We were all very well off.

"What does your father do?" "Oh, I don't know.

Uh, you know, five generations back someone

made some money," you know?

If you have to ask "What does your father do?"

then you're not a preppy, you know what I mean?

It's just a whole other world.

-I was struck when I started meeting

some of these young people

that their parents had no idea where they were,

and some of the girls were as young as 16 --

16, 17.

Jennifer Levin was 18.

Their parents went to Europe,

their parents were out in the Hamptons,

their parents didn't know if they were sleeping over

at a friend's house or whatever.

It was just a world that was totally foreign to me.

-What did we learn about these young kids?

Did they live a promiscuous lifestyle?

It raised a lot of questions like,

"What exactly happened that night at Dorrian's Red Hand bar?

-I got to Dorrian's late. I got there at about 11:30.

-During the confession, Robert told us

he was in Dorrian's

and then Jennifer came in and started bugging him.

We have to find out more about what happened.

What happened at Dorrian's the night of Jennifer's death?

♪♪

-Mike Sheehan and I, we talked to everyone

who would talk to us,

trying to put together the story of the events of the night

at Dorrian's -- very difficult.

-It -- It took us quite some time to figure out,

but they eventually painted the picture of what happened.

-On August 26, 1986,

it was a very happy night.

There was a big crowd at Dorrian's.

These kids were about to go off to college,

and it was one of the last nights

they were going to be together.

Jennifer was going to be going off to college a week later.

She was so excited.

Jennifer was gonna be spending the night

at the home of her friend Alex LaGatta.

Alex LaGatta had left Dorrian's

with a guy she was interested in.

So Jennifer was alone.

According to Chambers' statement,

he had gone to Dorrian's that night

with an expectation of meeting a girl he'd been dating.

-Last night I was supposed to meet a girl named Alex Kapp.

-Robert and I were dating,

and it was pretty jaw-dropping for me.

You know, I was 16,

and he's this extraordinarily handsome older guy.

He was 19. That was a big deal.

That night he said he'd meet me at 8:00,

but he was late, really late --

8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00, 10:30,

and I think about 10:30 or 11:00 he finally showed up.

And he sort of looked at me and walked right past me,

at which point I was now in just -- in a fury.

-I got to Dorrian's late. I got there at about 11:30.

I was hanging out with my friends.

And then Jennifer came over and said that she wanted to talk

to me about something important, so I said, "Okay."

-Jennifer had talked to her friends many times

about previously having had a sexual encounter

with him that was consensual.

She had said to two of her best friends that it was,

"The best sex I'd ever had."

-But then Alex Kapp, the girl I was supposed to meet,

that I haven't talk to all night came over.

-I don't know what possessed me.

I had some condoms.

I walked up to him, and I said, "You know what" --

super dramatic -- "use these with someone else,

'cause you're not gonna get the chance to use 'em with me!"

And I threw it in his face.

The condoms went everywhere, landed in his lap,

all over the floor.

[Laughter]

Everybody was laughing at him,

which he did not like.

-Alex started yelling at me in front of everybody.

That I stood her up, that I didn't meet her on time,

that I didn't come over and talk to her.

And while this was going on, Jennifer was laughing at me.

Yeah, because she asked me to talk to her,

and then I'm getting in trouble, and she's laughing at me,

and also the fact that the girl I'm supposed to meet,

Alex, the girl I like, is yelling at me

in front of everybody, so it was embarrassing.

-He was mad. He was really mad.

I-I embarrassed him.

So he did not like that at all.

I stayed for a bit after,

but I don't think we spoke again.

-So, Alex left, and then I walked to the bar

'cause I was all pissed off now.

-Well, "A", myself, 'cause I ended up standing Alex up

and, "B," Jennifer 'cause she's just laughing at me.

-According to Chambers' statement,

Robert Chambers held Jennifer responsible.

He was angry that she had come on to him in the bar,

that she had flirted with him.

-Jack Litman and I interviewed friends of Jennifer Levin,

and we had about a dozen signed statements

from Jennifer Levin's friends about things

that they saw on that evening

or things that they knew about the relationship.

And they were consistent with Robert's videotaped statement,

that she left with him, they went to Central Park,

and that she wanted to be intimate with him.

That helped to support, um, our -- our defense,

that during rough sex

he wound up accidentally killing Jennifer Levin.

-According to Jack Litman, Jennifer was a "bad girl."

What other kind of girl would go into Central Park

wanting a sexual encounter with a guy?

Jennifer Levin was being blamed for causing her own death.

-You can characterize it as "blame the victim" defense,

you can characterize it however you want.

But we were going on what happened that evening.

Jennifer Levin's actions were, in fact,

corroborated by her friends.

Jack Litman had a job to do.

He said, "What I'm doing is defending my client."

People didn't like it.

Our response to that would be,

"Well, we didn't make this up."

-Jennifer Levin seemed to be following Robert Chambers

around that night.

It appears that he attempted to rebuff her

and perhaps ask her to stop some sexual activity

she was performing.

-Jack Litman -- I wound up hating him

as much as I hated Robert Chambers.

I did.

Because I saw the way he operated,

and he was brutal.

-Litman was really a very dangerous adversary.

I was afraid that Robert would get away with this crime.

The Levins really put all their trust in me,

and I really didn't want to fail them.

-Now, how could something like this have happened

at 4:30 in the morning and in the park --

Were you surprised about all that?

-I know that Jennifer went out at night

and she stayed out late, but it was her last week here,

she wanted to do all the partying here,

say goodbye to her friends,

and that's really it.

I mean, I'm --

I don't know think she went voluntary into the Park.

-You know, when we first heard that Jennifer made it known

that she wanted to have sex with Robert,

I didn't know what to think.

I mean, you know, back then it was still a little squeamish,

and you didn't hear about women

talking about wanting to have sex with someone.

With Jennifer, all we were painted

was this picture of a promiscuous girl.

Could it have been that she "asked for it"?

-The expression "blame the victim"

just exploded in this case.

-You just have to use your common sense.

Obviously she's too young to use her own.

-The media made it very black and white.

You knew who the bad guy was,

and you knew who the bad girl was.

-That whole, like, "she asked for it" thing,

when she started to get slut shamed

for wearing a short skirt.

Even my little 16-year-old self was like, "This is not right."

It was terrible.

-The way that it was made out to be was as if, you know,

she just met this guy at a bar,

and, you know, she went to Central Park with him at night.

No, she would never have done anything like that.

She knew him, and she trusted him.

-When I saw the headlines of what happened to Jennifer

and the sort of tabloid kind of horror of it,

it sounds like she's a slut.

Yeah, so I'm -- I'm sure she was sleeping with multiple people.

But, you know what?

She's a teenager playing the field.

[Chuckles] She's 18 years old.

Believe me, I'm sure Robert Chambers was sleeping

with anybody he could get.

I'm sure he had sex with multiple woman at that time.

Well, he's a guy. Right?

When you say that about a woman, it suddenly implies

that there's something wrong with her.

Like, this is why we're here, right?

I mean, this is honestly what we need to deal with here.

♪♪

-There were definitely moments when the Levins and I

thought we were alone against Jack Litman and the world.

The problem that we had was that all anyone could talk about

was how good looking Robert Chambers was.

It so played into his version of the events

that this must have been an accident,

because nobody who's that good looking

would have to hurt a girl who was with him.

We needed to get past the veneer of his face.

We needed to change public opinion about Robert Chambers.

-Linda said to me, "We have to find out more about Robert."

I said, "I'm here. I'm here for you.

Let's -- Let's buckle up our seats and let's get going."

The greatest advantage we had was Robert Chambers'

overstuffed telephone book, if you will,

that Chambers had with him when he was arrested.

The very first thing I did when I got my hands on that Filofax

is I copied the entire thing.

We had all of these different people,

and he kept their names and addresses and phone numbers,

and they were immensely helpful in building a profile

of who this kid is.

-And I made a rule with Sheehan

that we would not leave my office for the night

unless we had made three phone calls

to reach three people to see what they knew,

what they could tell us about him.

What I found out shocked me.

I heard over and over again from people

I was trying to interview

"I have information about his background

that you should know."

It stopped me in my tracks.

-I was just totally, totally shocked this guy

was, you know, no altar boy.

What kind of a monster are you?

-We had to take off that mask.

If people knew the truth, we could destroy

the whole picture