Police probing Levy death return to former suspect

WASHINGTON -- Police are looking again at a man once ruled out as a suspect in Chandra Levy's death, partly because a lie detector test he passed was administered through a Spanish-speaking interpreter, a person familiar with the investigation says.

Investigators want Ingmar Guandique, 21, a Salvadoran immigrant, to take a second polygraph test about the former government intern's death.

Her remains were found May 22 in Rock Creek Park, not far from the site of two attacks shortly after Levy disappeared that sent Guandique to prison for 10 years.

The source said Saturday that police want a bilingual or Spanish-speaking technician to administer the second test, to avoid the situation of the first test in which both the English-speaking technician's questions and Guandique's answers had to pass through an interpreter.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators think the language barrier might have caused "some kind of discrepancy" in the first test.

District of Columbia Police spokesman Sgt. Joe Gentile would not discuss details of the investigation. He said Guandique is "someone we're interested in. No one has been ruled out."

On May 22, the day Levy's remains were found, Police Chief Charles Ramsey said investigators had interviewed Guandique months earlier after U.S. Park Police alerted them to his arrest.

"He said nothing to implicate himself with her, but then again we didn't know she was in Rock Creek Park," Ramsey said.

Levy disappeared May 1, 2001, after she left her apartment wearing jogging clothes. Guandique was convicted of attacking a woman jogger two weeks later and a second female jogger the following July 1.

Both women told police a man carrying a knife attacked them from behind as they listened on headphones to portable radios. Police said they found a radio and headphones among Levy's remains.

Authorities originally played down Guandique as a suspect, not only because the polygraph result but because Levy apparently had been killed before his attacks on the two female joggers.

The Washington Post reported in Sunday's editions that police reports say Guandique was wearing the same clothes during both 2001 attacks that led to his conviction and that that clothing has been sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington for DNA tests.

The Post quoted Guandique's brother, who lives in the Washington area, as saying investigators have interviewed him four times over the past 1 1/2 months.

The paper said Guandique, a Salvadorian immigrant, has become the focus of the Levy investigation because of the violent nature of the assaults on the two women that led to his conviction, as well as their proximity to where Levy's body was found a year later.

A pre-sentencing memorandum cited by the newspaper called Guandique "a predator" who, armed with a knife, used the isolated portions of the park "as a hunting ground, waiting beside popular running trails, selecting victims and stalking them."

In a plea bargain agreement, Guandique, now 21, admitted trying to rob the joggers.

The Post said Guandique, now in a federal prison in Kentucky, has signed a letter refusing to be interviewed again by authorities without his lawyer and that his lawyer did not return telephone calls.