Police Comb Park for Clues in Levy Death
May 23 -- Police worked through the night in Washington's Rock Creek Park, searching under lights for more clues in the investigation of the death of Chandra Levy, and they are expected to continue combing the area into Friday.
The remains of the former federal intern, who had been missing for more than a year, were found in the park early Wednesday. Public confirmation of her identity came several hours later with the help of dental records.
The 24-year-old California native was last seen on April 30, 2001, and last heard from in an e-mail to her parents the following day.
Investigators are not yet treating the case as a homicide, and the cause of death is pending a coroner's investigation.
"The medical examiner has not yet determined manner and cause of death," Metropolitan Police Chief Charles Ramsey said today on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "So right now, it's a death investigation. However, like all death investigations, we make a presumption that it's perhaps a homicide, so we cover everything that needs to be covered."
Police have asked a Smithsonian Institution anthropologist to help them determine what caused the death.
"It becomes more difficult, but it's not impossible," Ramsey said. "It's been done in the past."
Still, police do not have much to work with. All that was found were a skull and some bones, with no flesh or organs, and some jogging clothes and a Walkman radio, police said. Law enforcement sources told ABCNEWS that Levy's remains are so decomposed they may never learn how she died.
Police will also go back and conduct new interviews with people involved with the case. They may also question people not previously interviewed to try to determine whether anybody "saw anything a bit unusual but never paid any attention to it until now," Ramsey said.
Park Police Lt. Joseph Cox, the commander of the Rock Creek Park precinct, told The Associated Press that Metropolitan Police have questioned a man who is serving a 10-year sentence for assaulting a jogger in the park last year. Cox would not say when the interview occurred, according to the news agency.
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